August Movie Reviews

Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid.   I loved this movie when I was a kid and over the years I've probably seen it twenty times. Love Paul Newman and Robert Redford. Love "Raindrops Keep Falling on My Head". Love Wild West movies. I just read a book on the Hole in the Wall Gang and the book mentions this movie several times so I was inspired to see it again. It's very dated, but still great. *****

Cake is about a woman with chronic, debilitating pain, both physical and emotional. To add to her misery, her friend from their chronic pain support group kills herself. Jennifer Aniston was AMAZING!! ABSOLUTELY OUTSTANDING!! Her pain was believable. I felt the discomfort right through the TV. Incredibly performance. She was sarcastic and irritable, wore no make-up, her hair was always messy, and she looked very pudgy and bloated. I like this Jennifer Aniston. A real woman!! The story was a little depressing so it's not the type of movie I'd want to see again, but very good. ****

The Fairy is a bizarre, yet mesmerizing French love story about a fairy who grants a man three wishes. It's really fascinating and artsy with 1940's style slapstick modernized with acrobatics and dance. I especially love their dance on the roof and, of course, when the fairy gets pregnant. I actually can't get the pregnancy scene out of my head. LOL. There are subtitles. You'd think after five years of French I wouldn't need them. HA. ***

Hector and the Search for Happiness is about a psychiatrist who becomes disenchanted with his work and his predictable, perfectly controlled life and sets out to search for what makes people happy. The story was OK for a typical live-your-life-to-the-fullest-because-soon-you-will-die theme. I often have high hopes for these themes and expect some kind of epiphany on how to fix my own life, but they usually miss the mark or fall flat. This one was good. The art was great but it was added more as an after-thought where I think I would have liked more to make it more purposeful. Or I just like art. Love the actor who plays Hector. There was something authentic and sweet about him. Toni Colette has a minor role, but I always like her. ***

Horns was incredibly interesting for the first hour. It's about this guy who's girlfriend is murdered and the whole small-town community thinks he did it. Beautiful northwest scenery and adorable little town. They must have filmed it in British Columbia. YEP, they did - I just looked. Then he curses God and grows some horns. I'm not clear on why he grew horns so the whole premise seemed weak to me. Why is he the only one with horns when you know nearly half the community deserves horns? So I just went with it...it's a movie...whatever.  His horns make everyone he encounters disclose their most evil secrets and desires. It's really funny especially the doctor: "Hey, do you want to crush up some oxycotin and snort it with me???" LOL! Not everyone he encounters has a compulsive, uncontrollable urge to confess their sins and that's a mystery, too. Then he figures out he can suggest things to people and they do it. Lovely revenge. So it's a bit of a murder mystery gone wrong and then near the end it gets really weird with special effects. I would have preferred less weirdness. There were lots of obvious and not so obvious religious themes. Daniel Radcliffe (Harry Potter) was good and adorable (them beautiful blue eyes) although he seemed to be over-acting most of the time. It was an all-star cast with many recognizable faces. ***

Interstellar was WAY OVER MY HEAD. I really had no idea what was going on most of the time and all that science talk was like a foreign language. It's the future, everything on Earth is covered with a thick layer of dusty dirt and this rogue science team that is what is left of NASA is trying to find us another planet. The best astronaut in the world just happens to be Matthew McConaughy and he's a corn farmer. (Really?) He decides to leave his children to save the world which I thought was self-centered and thoughtless. Too many long, drawn out space scenes with unknown parts fitting into other unrecognizable parts. Really I was clueless, but underneath it all was the human apocalyptic story that was good, but sad. We are all going to die....it was a long 3 hour movie so it's a very, very slow death. The ending was good. ***

The Longest Week ...hmmm...I'm not sure what the point was on this one. It's about an almost-forty-something guy who is filthy rich, his parents left for a world tour when he was 10 years old and never came back. He lives in the penthouse of the hotel they own and has been raised by his servants for thirty years. Then it's all taken away when his parents decide to get a divorce and neither wants to pay his bills. He's forced to question his existence since he has never really done anything, but it never really addresses it. It's just a week of worrying that he's lost it all and then he goes back to his life. No great lessons to be learned about productivity or wealth or life. It was one of those movies where it was neither a drama nor a comedy. It was kind of...nothing...but tolerable. **

Mr. Turner is about J. M. W. Turner, the English painter. Did he really grunt like that? It was a bit creepy for me. Did he really fondle his housekeeper all the time? And if so, how do they know that or are they taking liberties to make the movie more interesting? I normally really love art history movies, but I fear I will be forever haunted by this actor's portrayal of the artist and never be able to look at Turner's art again without hearing that grunting noise and feeling repulsed. Ewww. The English scenery was beautiful, but the scenes were incredibly staged, disjointed and slow. Most of the time the actors looked as if hitting their marks and saying their corresponding lines were more important than acting natural. The story never went anywhere. *

Spare Parts is about a group of Hispanic high school students who enter a contest to create an underwater robot. The students are undocumented and live daily with the fear they will be discovered and deported. Their motivation is to gain recognition or status in order to secure much needed jobs, but failing to realize their illegal status restricts them from working. (I'm not sure why they don't understand recognition might be dangerous especially since one kid is running from ICE, but, hey, it's a movie.) Their efforts are guided by an unemployed engineer-turned-teacher and motivated by a student who believes in the American dream regardless of all the roadblocks he faces. It's sweet and heartwarming with a typical pro-education theme to make you want to believe teaching is rewarding. I think Hispanic viewers would really like it since it deals with the problems they face, but it was a little too sweet to be truly realistic.  **

Still Alice is a movie about a woman with early-onset Alzheimer's disease and how she struggles with going from a vibrant, intelligent, articulate woman to losing everything including herself. Julianne Moore plays the leading role and won the Oscar for Best Actress. Well-deserved, I might add. It's very scary and disturbing. I can't imagine. Unfortunately with my genetic mutations that make me prone to Alzheimer's I may not be limited to imagining it in the future anyway. At one point Alice says it would be better to have cancer - a disease everyone supports by running marathons and donating money - rather than having a disease that makes you an embarrassment. I watched the special features about filming and there was mention that Alzheimer's is on the top ten list for killer diseases but the only one in this list that does not have some kind of drug therapy or a way to alleviate symptoms. One of the scenes was particularly heartbreaking. Great movie. ****

This is 40 is about a couple who are turning forty. It's advertised as a comedy and the leading actress, Leslie Mann, has great comedic timing. I really like Paul Rudd. Unfortunately it's another marital comedy where everyone is fighting and screaming at each other, spouses, kids, grandparents. I never find these funny even if they have decent jokes. Maybe they hit too close to home and only people who grew up with functional families can laugh at the misery of the rest of us? Half way through the movie I almost turned it off and I think if I had I wouldn't have missed much. As it was I probably had another ten minutes to go and I turned it off anyway. Oh well. **