January Movie Reviews

*****   Exceptional

****     Great

***       OK

**         So So

*           Blah

Ain't Them Bodies Saints is about a young couple (Casey Affleck and Rooney Mara) who have robbed something. When the police surround them and they are engaged in a gun fight, the woman shoots an officer. She's pregnant. Her boyfriend gives up, takes the blame, goes to jail, and writes to her every day asking her to wait for him. After four years in prison he escapes and makes his way back, but a whole lot of people want to see him dead for reasons that weren't quite clear (other than he's done a lot of stupid stuff). Excellent performances. I have no idea what the title means. ***

Anita is the story of Anita Hill, the woman who was sexually harassed by Clarence Thomas who was head of the EEOC and later nominated to be a Supreme Court Justice. She came before a Senate committee to discuss her experience because she thought it was the right thing to do. The senators treated her like she was on trial and failed miserably at justice. Thomas played the race card and accused everyone of stereotypically discriminating against him and all those old, white senators backed off. He ended up being confirmed which makes me want to vomit, but it's no worse than idiots voting and electing a predator as president of the United States. It's incredibly embarrassing society has learned nothing in twenty years and any progress that has been made was wiped clean with one election. It was an excellent movie on integrity and how that experience affected Ms. Hill's life. ****

Anita  I just happened to come across this movie while looking for the above movie and read the first line of description: "Anita is the story of a young woman with Down syndrome..." OK. I assumed that was it. The first fifteen minutes or so we are introduced to Anita and watch how much she is dependent on her mother for care. We also  meet her adult brother and his wife. I almost turned it off not seeing where the plot might go (because I failed so miserably at reading rest of the description on the DVD case!), but then the next day mom takes Anita to the shop she runs (or owns) and leaves Anita locked in the shop while she runs an errand just down the street. Obviously she does this a lot, but I kept thinking Oh! that can't be good and Oh! The movie is about to get interesting. Anita doesn't want her to go but mother assures her she'll be back before the big hand on the clock points straight up (about 15 minutes). Well, the place blows up!! Terrorists bomb the office where mom ran her errand and it takes out the whole neighborhood. This was an actual event and the deadliest bomb in Argentine history. Anita, now able to get out of the shop since the windows are all shattered, wanders the streets of Buenos Aires. Initially she is scooped up by a medical patrol and shipped to the hospital across town and then she wanders away from the hospital because no one is bothering to keep an eye on her! She meets all kinds of people who half-ass help her only because she follows them around asking where her mother is or saying she's hungry. She spends too much time out on the cold street in the dark sitting in the rain not knowing what to do or being yelled at by people who are too stupid to figure out she needs help. You'd think someone would have called the police. It was very frustrating. It was a very moving story about survival against all odds. English subtitles. ***

As Cool As I Am is about a teenage girl and her dysfunctional family. Her mother's parents were killed when her mother was a teenager. Teenage mom hooks up with a teenage boy who was raised in an orphanage and they have a daughter together. Sixteen years later the father is home for a week every three months and her mother, bored but forbidden to get a job gets a job anyway and starts meeting men. In spite of all the dysfunction, the girl is rather well-adjusted and more mature than both of her parents combined, finding comfort in watching television chefs, cooking, and her new boyfriend who has been her best friend for the past ten years. The theme and reason for that weird title is kids from normal families are boring...kids from screwed up families are always interesting and cool. It's an interesting human relations story. ***

The Big Wedding is about a very blended family with ex-wives, adopted kids, birth mothers, philandering husbands, girlfriends, boyfriends, and how they all get along. All-star cast with Robert DeNiro, Katherine Heigl, Amanda Seyfriend, Topher Grace, Susan Sarandon, Robin Williams and Diane Keeton looked spectacular. It was incredibly boring. Not funny and not interesting, just boring. *

Blended is about a man (Adam Sandler) who's is raising three girls after his wife died and a woman (Drew Barrymore) who is raising two boys after her husband had an affair and she divorced him. Their first date is horrible, but the two families coincidentally end up on vacation together. Remove all the incredibly stupid humor and it would have been a good movie. It had some very sweet moments and tender scenes. ***

Boy takes place in 1984 in the New Zealand countryside where an eleven-year-old Michael Jackson fan, Boy, lives with his grandmother, little brother and four younger girl cousins. His little brother thinks he has strong superpowers because he caused their mother to die when she gave birth to him. His grandmother leaves for a week to attend a funeral (leaving all those little kids home alone!) and his father who has been in prison and shows up with his two loser friends in hopes of finding the money he stole and buried while trying to escape. The father is thirty going on ten years old, wears an army helmet, plays war, and Boy adores him. He brags to other kids about all the adventures his father has had, imagining various scenarios in his head. The reenactments of Michael Jackson videos are hilarious especially since they are set to indigenous music. It's a sweet story about an imaginative boy who wants to grow up. The accents were a little difficult to understand. ***

Crystal Fairy & The Magic Cactus is quite possibly the weirdest movie I've ever seen. LOL. Not interesting, just weird. It's about this American boy and his three Chilean friends and their quest for the San Pedro cactus which is an hallucinogen. They plan to leave for the beach, but at the party the night before they meet an American girl, Crystal Fairy, and in a drunken stupor, the American invites her to come along. The next morning he doesn't remember inviting her along and he's not happy about it. She's very bizarre with her New Age cosmic philosophies, but he's incredibly strange with his uptight geekiness. They clash constantly which adds to the irritation. At one point she returns to the room she's sharing with all these young men, fresh from the shower and walks around naked in front of them. They start calling her Crystal Hairy then Hairy Fairy.  They continue to the beach, searching for this cactus which is in everyone's yard, but no one wants to sell. Eventually they just steal one. They get to the beach, cook it up, drink the juice, and hallucinate. No great drama. I thought for sure they'd be vomiting all over or something. Crystal hikes up to the mountains, loses her clothes, then gets lost herself. It was very bizarre with very bizarre characters. Not sure what the point was. Not much of a plot or theme or message. Just irritating people doing irritating things. I must be getting old....**

Equity was about investments, hedgefunds, money, and sleazy Wall Street dealings...most of it went right over my head, but Anna Gunn who's character was an ambitious investment banker gave a great performance. **

The German Doctor was about Nazi doctor Josef Mengele's stay in Argentina with a family at their hotel during the 1960s. He is injecting their young, growth-stunted daughter with experimental growth hormones and her mother who is pregnant is given "vitamins".  He seems to have their best interests at heart and the Nazi followers around him idolize for being an outstanding doctor, but the end suggests he's been continuing the experiments he did in concentration camps. It was rather creepy especially with the dolls. Subtitles. ***

Ghostbusters (2016) with girls! Go girls! This, of course, is a modern remake of the original 1984 Ghostbusters. The original cast had cameo appearances: Dan Ackroyd was a cab driver, Bill Murray a ghost-debunking scientist, and Ernie Hudson was hearse-owning mortician. By the end of the movie I wondered how I missed Harold Ramis. I looked online -  he died in 2014, but all his children were in it so that was sweet. It had the goofy-stupid humor style Melissa McCarthy does so well with a few great LOL lines. The special effects were really good although perhaps overdone. I absolutely love Kate McKinnon. There is something so bizarre, original and wacky about her that is just hilarious. ***

Godzilla Way too much weird science and not enough human experience. I'm of the belief the basic theory needs to be somewhat plausible and this was too abstract and all-encompassing. If they can't make the science simple and secondary, then leave it out. The Godzilla beast was cool. He definitely wins the award for ugly, but the other weird looking alien things were too industrial looking - like robots or spaceships with talons. I still have no idea why all of a sudden these beasts were up and roaming civilization (Las Vegas!). The special effects weren't that good. The story was too convoluted and lacked in realism with little human emotion. The obvious death and mayhem wasn't even in the faces of the survivors. No one seemed to care...including me! *

The Hollars is about family. The mother (Margo Martindale, who I love) finds out she has a brain tumor and as she waits for surgery her husband and two sons keep her company.  Lots of odd characters, relationship issues, and a lovely dry humor. ***

In A World is about the voice-over industry and all their quirky personalities. Carol (Lake Bell) who's father is one of the voice-over kings,  is a voice coach and lands a voice-over job although she seems directionless, living with her father until he throws her out for his young girlfriend. I just couldn't get into it. It wasn't funny, it was a little boring and thirty-year-olds living at home irritate me. *

Midnight Special  Such a weird title for this movie.  It's about a little kid that does weird things...light beams come out of his eyes, pulling nuclear detection satellites from the sky, turning on cars. He can't go out in the sun without causing an earthquake and at night he wears goggles. A religious cult has been caring for him most of life and the leader has used the kid's information for his sermons, but that same information coincides with top secret government information so the FBI moves in. His father and father's friend "kidnap" him to take him someplace. They hook up with his mother and it's a mad chase to get him where he's supposed to be before the religious cult snatches him back or the FBI grabs him. Eventually he makes it known he's from an alternative universe where everyone there is like him, but they don't really clearly explain how he got to Earth or was born of these two Earthlings. It was a little too mysterious and far-fetched, not as interesting as I would have expected. ***

Money Monsters is a financial investment television show hosted by (George Clooney) and produced by (Julia Roberts). In the middle of a live episode a young, disgruntled investor who has lost his meager inheritance after taking the host's advice to invest in a major company  takes the host hostage, forces him to wear a bomb vest, and demands answers. Lots of movies about the sleazy world of investing lately. There was one scene where the host tries to get the public to buy the stocks in order to get back the lost $800 million dollars and save his life. I thought, Oh, so Hollywood...but the problem with this is America is a country filled with apathetic deplorables who thrive on hate and would rather see someone die on TV for the fun of it than help them.  For a moment expecting an idealistic Hollywood feel-good moment, I almost lost interest and then the unimaginable happened...not only did the public NOT buy stocks, but the stocks went down so I assume the public sold their stocks just to see this guy die! HAHAHA Very realistic! Welcome to the world of Dump and this was before he was elected. Good movie. ***

The Reluctant Fundamentalist is about a Pakistani man who wants the American dream, goes to Princeton, gets a job at a hedgefund as a financial analyst of companies, becomes very successful...and then 9/11 happens. He's constantly harassed by airport security and police officers, discriminated at every turn. It discourages and "hardens" him (his description). Feeling like he has lost his identity, he quits his very prestigious job, goes back to Pakistan, and becomes a popular professor at the local university.  When a professor at his university is kidnapped by extremists, the CIA, with no evidence whatsoever, believe he had something to do with it and send it a foreign correspondent to get information in the guise of an interview.  Extremely intriguing story of distrust and discrimination based on ethnicity. Riz Ahmed is absolutely GORGEOUS! All-star cast, perfect performances, very well done. ****

'71 is about a young British soldier on his first ever deployment. They send him to Belfast in the middle of the Catholic/Protestant conflict to try to "keep the peace". He finds his unit is there to support the Protestant terrorism of the Catholic neighborhoods. A riot breaks out in retaliation for the military abuse, he is separated from his unit, and they leave him there. How does he survive in a hostile environment? The PIRA are trying to find him to kill him and the Protestant Military Reaction Force (MRF) are trying to find him supposedly to get him back to his unit, but there is a whole lot of back-alley deals being made between the factions so it was impossible to know who he could trust. What a mess. Great performances. Horrible history. I went to Belfast in the 1980s and it was a war zone. I stayed one stressful night and left early the next day. Too scary. ***

The Shallows or "Jaws 2016". It's pretty gruesome. Girl (Blake Lively) goes alone to secluded, secret beach for some surfing, gets attacked by a ginormous shark but manages to swim to a little rock 200 feet from the beach.  Shark circles around for the next twenty-four hours watching for an arm or leg, and of course, the tide goes low (lots of rock) but then it goes high and the rock starts to disappear. Shark also snacks on three unsuspecting people who get in the water while the girl is stranded. The first guy he kills I cheered, Serves you right, sleaze bag asshole!  I guess I am cold-hearted. The beach is stunning as is the girl - I would like very much to look like that in a bikini although I'm still dumbfounded how it stays on her when she's swimming. The shark is pure horror, of course. This movie is not for anyone with a weak constitution. I considered not seeing it, but I am not much of an ocean swimmer anyway so I figured why not. Excellent photography especially the underwater camera work. Legs dangling, arms waving...everything looks like a tasty morsel to a shark. ****

Sleepers is about four boys growing up in Hell's Kitchen. They do something really dumb and end up in a school for boys where the sadistic guards torture, beat, and sexually assault them repeatedly. Thirteen years later two of the boys who are street thugs (Ron Eldard and Billy Cruddup) run into one of the guards (Kevin Bacon) at a restaurant and shoot him dead.  Another boy (Brad Pitt) who is now a District Attorney volunteers to be the prosecuting attorney devises a brilliant scheme to expose the boys' school. The fourth boy (Jason Patric) works with him to carry out the plan and take down the remaining guards. The all-star cast includes Robert DeNiro, Dustin Hoffman, and Minnie Driver. They are all so young! Ah ha! I now remember why we were so ga-ga over Brad Pitt. Excellent performances, outstanding movie, but disturbing story. *****

10,000 Saints Set in the 1980s, Asa Butterfield is an adopted, yet semi-fatherless teen who has a drug problem. After a night of partying, his best friend dies from a drug overdose and the one night stand is pregnant with the best friend's child.  They all end up in New York  with Asa's dad and the best friend's brother trying to make sense of life. Ethan Hawke plays the father. He's an hilariously easy going stoner with few parental skills and no filter. Great role for him. ***