September Movie Reviews

*****  Exceptional

****    Great

***      OK

**        So So

*          Blah

The Book of Love is about a girl who's dad died at sea and a man who's wife recently died and how they come together. Great potential. Jason Sudeikis is a great actor, but some of the other performances weren't so good. Or maybe it was the script, or the direction. The music was composed by Justin Timberlake and although it was nice, it was a little too epic for the simplicity of the story. **

Deepwater Horizon is based on the true story of an oil rig in the middle of the ocean, corporate greed (BP has got to be the worst company in the universe, maybe even worse than Monsanto), and the disaster that follows as it blows to smithereens killing too many people. Great cast: Kurt Russell, Kate Hudson (Oh, I'm just now realizing these two were in a movie together! Funny.), Mark Walberg,  Gina Rodriguez, and John Malkovitch. Sometimes the Louisiana accents were hard to understand. Typical disaster plot - they spend the first half hour introducing the characters so you feel emotional about them, then the next half hour showing the camaraderie between them, next fifteen minutes to showcase how sleazy BP is, and then the big bang and survivor rescue. Good story. ****

Hacksaw Ridge Incredibly violent war scenes. I'm not sure if they were the worst I've ever seen, but very graphic with guts all over, body parts, half faces, large black rats eating the bodies. Pretty gruesome and incredibly realistic. Great story. Andrew Garfield was superb. It's about a young man who is a conscientious objector, refuses to even touch a gun, but he enlists to be a medic so he can save lives not take them. Of course, he gets a lot of grief for being the odd man out. In the end a lot of his comrades were really glad he was there. I like a story about moral conviction. ****

Hello, My Name Is Frank...I Have Tourette's was a strange little movie with poorly written dialogue and substandard performances. Obviously it's about a man with Tourette's Syndrome, more about the girl who just graduated from high school. Her mother was Frank's caregiver for most of her life and she is torn between her future and caring for Frank herself as a promise to her mother. On top of that she has plans to visit the grave of her best friend on the best friend's birthday although their relationship was unclear. She and her two friends along with Frank travel across three states (!) to get to the cemetery, again, not sure why the best friend lived so far away. I didn't like the ending as it really made no sense along with the rest of the movie. Too many loose ends when what should have happened seemed clear to me. **

Jaws What a classic! It's now 40 (?) years old and it's still great. Of course, the first time I saw it I couldn't sleep for nights because of the nightmares and for years I never went into the water. Love Richard Dreyfuss. When so many movies from the 1970s seem intolerably dated, this movie can stand the test of time. Such a classic. *****

Lolo is a French movie about a sociopathic mama's boy who sabotages all of his mother's relationships. She meets a man in the country who is moving to Paris. He is sweet and naive, and way too trusting. It has some funny lines, especially when the women get together and talk about sex. **

Looking Both Ways is an Australian movie about people preoccupied with death: a woman who's father just died, a man who has been diagnosed with cancer, a reporter convinced most deaths are suicides, the girlfriend of a man who was hit by a train. This plot was supported by flashes of headlines, television news casts, and articles. The woman who's father just died is an artist but sees disaster around every corner anyway. As she walks down the street she imagines the subway above her going off its rails and crashing, or the man walking his dog as a rapist...and this plays out in her imagination as art. The art/cartooning is really spectacular. The man just diagnosed with cancer sees the disease eating away at bodies. He imagines the smoker next to him with skin cancer cells or he reads that masturbation and sex eat cancer cells so as he's kissing the woman, he sees his cancer cells disappearing. Loved the art and the death theme, but it seemed as if there was too much going on, too many non-death-related storylines diluting the plot. It needed more focus. Still, it was interesting. At times a little slow. Lots of scenes with birds flying in the sky. The DVD was slightly damaged so I had to suffer through skipping every now and then which didn't help. ***

Loving is about the interracial couple who defied the system and changed the law allowing interracial marriages. The racism is so disturbing and more disturbing that it persists in modern society. Will we never evolve? ***

Maximum Ride is about a science gone-wrong that created a bunch of hybrid humans as weapons. They were kept in cages and experimented on as children, transported to a mountain cabin to emotionally mature, recaptured. Not-so-good script, not-so-good acting, but it was an interesting story. **

Priceless is about human trafficking, stealing girls and making them prostitutes. It starts out with a man who needs a job and agrees to transport "cargo" for a night. Accidentally he finds out the cargo are two Mexican sisters who believe they are coming to the United States to work off their father's debt as maids or waitresses. It has a lot of God-talk, great looking lead actor, the dialogue is staged and mushy. But interesting. ***

The Take was about an American pick-pocket (Richard Madsen from Game of Thrones, I didn't recognize him...) in Paris who steals a bag that has a bomb and when it goes off he is blamed as the terrorist. CIA agent (Idris Elba from Star Trek) finds him and uncovers the plan. Great story, very intriguing. Lots of scenes of fancy fighting that went on too long at times. ****

Twentieth Century Women was about a single, divorced woman (Annette Bening) in 1979 trying to raise a teenage boy. She feels she can't do it alone and asks her two roommates to help guide him to be a better man. Annette Bening was great, but the story was strangely unappealing and her character oddly unlikeable. **

ONLY TWELVE  MOVIES??? ONLY!!! Lately my library sucks at courier service. It's taking way too long to get deliveries. Not sure why, but I'm going days without any movies. Very frustrating.