***** Exceptional
**** Great
*** OK
** So
So
* Blah
Before I Fall was
about a high school girl who dies...and then she lives the same day over and
over again until she learns how to right all the wrongs in her life. Not too
long ago I saw a movie with a similar theme, but this one the relived day
changes every time which made it more interesting. I love the message to live
each day to the fullest, loving those around you and not taking anything for
granted because that one day will last forever in the memories of others. I
really like the lead actress Zoey Deutch. She's been in a couple great films
lately and always gives outstanding performances. ****
The Cakemaker is
a Israeli-German film about a baker, Thomas, who has an affair with Oren, a
married man who is in Berlin once a month on business, flies back home to
Jerusalem to his wife and son. This goes on for a while and then Oren gets hit
by a car and killed, disappears out of Thomas's life for a time until Thomas
finally figures out what happened. He heads to Jerusalem and gets a job at
Oren's wife's cafe. All the performances were good, the lead actor was
exceptional. At times it was a little slow, some of the scenes unnecessarily long
which tends to be a German style. ***
The Country Doctor is
about a country doctor in France who finds out he has a brain tumor. He is sent
a young woman doctor to be his assistant and/or replace him should he decide to
take his doctor's orders and rest. But he doesn't. It was a sweet movie filled with great
characters and a doctor who loves his work and his patients. Yeah, it was a
fantasy. ***
The Good Doctor is
about an intern (Orlando Bloom) at a hospital who seems to be very by the book and
appropriate. He has a young woman as a patient and I'm not sure what happened
but he kinda-sorta falls for her, gives her sugar pills, and she ends up back
in the hospital at which time he starts screwing with her meds so she gets
worse. I think he wanted to keep her at the hospital, but instead, she dies.
One of the orderlies (Michael Pena, who I always love in every movie he's in)
finds her diary and although nothing inappropriate happened between the doctor
and the patient, the orderly blackmails the doctor for drugs, but refuses to
give him the diary. So the doctor laces some drugs with cyanide and murders the
orderly...anyway...it was a movie about the true nature of doctors. LOL. Very
slow. Even when it gets weird it's not that interesting. **
Homeless is
about a teenage boy whose father is in prison and he's lived with his
grandmother taking care of her until she died. He's now homeless, living on the
streets during the day, staying at the shelter at night until he is kicked out
for using his cell phone. It was depressing and frustrating. He didn't seem
very smart or resourceful. For instance, he knows the rules of the shelter, but
he uses his cell phone anyway and gets booted. That was just stupid. He spends
what little money he has on a new hairdo...really? He gets a job holding an ad
sign for a restaurant and when a co-worker invites him to sleep on her couch,
stashes his savings in one of her couch pillows? Really? He couldn't find a
better hiding place? She finds it, steals it, and kicks him out. He starts
hanging out with a girl who clearly likes him, but he never asks her if she
knows anyone who needs a roommate or can offer him a place to stay. Instead he
goes apartment shopping with her. He can't afford anything but he's looking at
two bedroom apartments. Hmmm...Maybe I expect too much from an eighteen-year
old and I'm overestimating what should be his survival instincts, but I would
think even desperate kids would try to find a way to live in the world and be
safe. It's got to be frightening in a city alone at night. I kept wanting to
scream JUST ASK FOR HELP! I liked he was
very honest. I think the writers could have had him so desperate he'd be
shoplifting or stealing from people. And he was adorable...I'm surprise they
didn't include a scene where someone was trying to recruit him into the sex
industry. And I'm a little miffed at his dead grandmother for not finding him a
home before she died...they don't give a lot of details on his background. If I
knew a homeless kid was honest, I'd invite him or her to come live with me. Regardless,
it was sad. ***
Jasper Jones has
got to be the absolute weirdest coming-of-age movie I have ever seen! It's
about a kid, Charlie. Late one night Jasper Johns knocks on his bedroom window
and says he needs help and Charlie is the only one he can trust who will
believe him. Charlie doesn't even know the kid and has been told he's
dangerous. Even so, he climbs out his window and followed Jasper into the
woods. Really? Hmmm...where they encounter a dead girl hanging from a tree.
Jasper says he just happened to find her. Really? But because he thinks the
police will blame him for her death, asks Charlie to help throw her body in the
pond. And the kid just goes along with it. Really? Anyway, the whole story is
pretty stupid and gets more bizarre. Toni Colette plays Charlie's mother. Great
1960s costumes. **
Logan Lucky is
about two West Virginia brothers who pull a very well-thought out heist at the
big NASCAR race where they use money tubes to transport their money into a
safe. All-star cast with Channing Tatum, Adam Driver, Daniel Craig, Katie
Holmes, Riley Keough, and Hilary Swank. It was good. ***
The Measure of a Man is
about a teenage boy who is the quintessential bully target: insecure,
overweight, geeky. Every summer he is forced to go on vacation with his family
their cabin at some kind of resort where he's expected to hang about in a
bathing suit and be tormented by the town bullies. This year he gets a job
working for a rich guy (Donald Sutherland) doing the landscaping for his acres
of lawn. I was a little disappointed because it seemed to have so much
potential. Sutherland attempted a very upper-class accent but it came out very
unnatural and his character was more irritating than mysterious. Near the end
he flashes a number tattoo on his arm but with just a hint of his past they
never really address it. Unfortunately. **
Megan Leavey is
about a directionless woman who joins the Marine Corp for something to do. She
ends up being a bomb detection dog handler with a dog named Rex. Great story.
****
Memento is
about a man (Guy Pierce) who is searching for his wife's rapist and murderer,
but during the incident he was injured and left with a brain injury that
prevents him from short term memory. He uses polaroid photos with written notes
on them and tattoos on his body with facts to help him remember things. It
works backwards, from the end of the movie to the beginning in snippets.
Bizarre or maybe clever, but great mystery as your brain has to work really
hard to piece together everything - very much like his experience. ***
The Middle Distance is
about a man who's father dies so he leaves Los Angeles and goes back home to
the Midwest, or the middle of nowhere in the middle of winter. His brother and
brother's fiancee are there and they plan to get the house ready for sale. The
brother is called away for work leaving him alone with the woman. I'm not sure
the point. Wasn't much to the story...typical "can't go home again"
theme with no redeeming message. Kinda boring. **
Night Comes On is
about Angel who gets out of juvenile detention on her eighteenth birthday. Her
goals are to find her father and kill him for killing her mother. She locates
her ten-year old sister in hopes of getting his address, but her sister wants
one day of fun to celebrate her sister's birthday so tells her their father is
living at the beach. It's very heartbreaking on so many levels. Excellent
performances. ****
The Quiet Place was
a really creepy alien movie where the aliens are blind but have really great
hearing. So this family has somehow survived by being very quiet. And then the
mom gets pregnant. OK, so who is so incredibly stupid they don't know sex
results in screaming babies??? Really? Is it worth the risk? They risk death to
have sex. Maybe this is a commentary on how stupid humans are? The movie was
very nerve wracking. I don't like jumping out of my skin every five minutes,
but it was good for a thrill. ***
Return to the Hiding Place is
about the Dutch Resistance who were a group of college students working through
the Ten Boom safe house. It was very Christian-focused so cleaned up for PG-13
audiences. Good story. ****
Rumble Fish I
can't believe I've never seen this movie, but now I know why. It's horrid. Bad
script, bad story, and bad acting from a very young Matt Dillon, Nicholas Cage,
and Diane Lane. They all look like they are about 15 years old. Mickey Rourke
is also in it, very young as well. It was like some kind of noir film for the
1930s, very melodramatic, about gang wars. Kind of like West Side Story without the music, but this was made in the 1980s.
Not sure the point. Lost interest right away. *
The Tale I had no idea
what this movie was about since the writing on the DVD cover was so small, but
it had an all-star cast that was intriguing. It was about a journalist-professor
(Laura Dern) who's mother (Ellen Burstyn) finds a story she wrote when she was
thirteen years old and she begins to unravel her childhood recollection against
the actual experiences she had at a riding school she attended one summer. Her riding instructor was the "most beautiful
woman in the world" who pimped her out to the track coach (John Ritter)
who grooms then sexually abuses her under the guise of love. Teenage girls who feel invisible, unloved,
and unimportant are so easily manipulated. It was so disturbing and creepy.
Excellent movie and superb performances, but so disturbing. I really think some
men need to be castrated. ****
The Ticket is
about a blind guy who regains his sight and his whole world opens up. He begins
living the life he always wanted, gets promoted at work, buys a new wardrobe
and a new car (learns to drive), and begins making decisions on his own much to
the dismay of his wife who has taken care of him all his life and now thinks
they should be making decisions together. He feels he was held back by her and
his disability. He leaves her for a co-worker and becomes driven and
self-centered. Then he loses his sight again....oops. It was a little slow. **
The Twelfth Man is
a World War II movie about a group of Norwegian resistance fighters who go on a
secret mission to create havoc, blow up a few German things. When their contact
is dead and they are left vulnerable, a Norwegian Nazi sympathizer reports them
and their boat is attacked by a Nazi ship. Eleven of the twelve are killed or
captured, tortured for information, and promptly executed. They know from
documents the twelfth man escaped but after they shot him and chased him into
the below zero degrees fiord, they assume he didn't survive. He did. Good god!
Crawls out of freezing water, crawls and stubbles across the snow with a
bleeding foot half shot off. The Nazi commander (Jonathan Rhys Meyers - who
makes an outstanding Nazi monster) doesn't believe he's dead and has a
reputation to uphold so the man hunt begins. The whole of Norway assists this
guy to escape as a national resistance effort. It's quite an amazing story
based on a true story. It's a bit unbelievable everything he endured starting
with the fiord swim. Then there is getting buried in an avalanche. Wow. A very
COLD movie! ****
The Ultimate Gift was
a sweet movie about a spoiled rich kid who's wealthy, but absent grandfather
left him nothing but a game of challenges for him to get an inheritance and his
encounter with a smart-mouth little girl who is dying. A little sappy, but
tolerable. ***
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