Continuing on the streaming services for new movies, I watched the new release Lost Girls on Netflix this morning and it was very compelling.

Based on a true story, Lost Girls tells about the disappearance of 24-year old Shannon Gilbert, and her mother’s desperate struggle to find her, to get any help from the local police and to deal with feelings of guilt.

Mari (Amy Ryan) was not a perfect mother, by any stretch of imagination, but when her daughter disappeared, she became an unapologetic tenacious warrior, butting heads with everyone involved in the situation.  Many of the police involved did not take the situation as seriously as they may have since Shannon was working as a sex worker at the time.

Gabriel Byrne played the police detective Richard Dormer, who was in charge of the case.  While searching for the missing girl, police accidentally uncovered the remains of several other girls.  These girls ultimately were shown as victims of the Long Island serial killer.

The film is painfully compelling and paints a picture of Mari, warts and all.  She is the most fascinating of characters here and her anger carried through the entire film.  Much of the anger she displayed came from a place of self-guilt.  She had plenty of struggles with Shannon over the years and she could not help but know that she had contributed to this moment in time for her daughter.  Amy Ryan does a wonderful job of bringing this woman to life.

Though the film does not have a satisfactory conclusion, the filmmakers did an admirable job of providing the viewers with as much closure as they could.  I understand that they were working with an unsolved case, as the film states at the very beginning, and a certain amount of disappointment was going to come with that.

There does feel as if there are several ways this could have been taken that would have made this movie even more compelling, yet the film has some solid performances and is worth the watch.  Just be aware that there will not be a happy ending with the story wrapped into a tight little bow.  Plus, there is text to read at the end that really could have sent this movie into a different direction.

4 stars

The latest family friendly film arriving on Disney + is based on the YA novel of the same name by Jerry Spinelli, called Stargirl and it was sweet.

Teenager Leo Borlock (Graham Verchere) was an average student at Mica High School until he meets a charismatic, free-willed new student named Stargirl (Grace VanderWaal), and his life was never the same.  Her ukulele playing at the football game made her into a good luck charm as the school embraced her quirkiness.  Popularity can be fleeting in high school so when things went wrong, Stargirl found herself shunned and Leo found himself confused and desperate to figure things out.

This is the type of film you would expect to find as an original on Disney +.  It featured a healthy dose of magic and goodness, just the type of fare that Disney has thrived on over the years.

Grace VanderWaal is an absolute star.  She had an amazing aura about her that made her someone who you had to keep your eyes on every second she was on the screen.  She had an undeniably special feel about her.

But she was not on screen alone and her co-star, Graham Verchere was solid as well.  He was a perfect foil to Stargirl’s magic.  Verchere’s Leo came alive when he was with Stargirl and Verchere played this beautifully.  His vulnerability filled his performance opposite Stargirl’s confidence.  There was a magic between them.

The story was fairly simple and did not go into a great deal of specifics, but there are some solid moments.  I especially liked how Stargirl did not make the right decisions every time and, unwittingly, does something that hurts a fellow student.  Stargirl was not perfect.  She was flawed as anyone.

The music of the movie was weaved into the story in a wonderful manner.  The music at the football game and then, eventually, at the dance really helped capture the imagination of the audience and created a dream-like state.

Stargirl is a coming of age movie with a lot of Disney magic involved and some great musical numbers.  Some characters are shorted in their development, but the pairing of Stargirl and Leo is what the film is about.

3.75 stars

“The creatures outside looked from pig to man, and from man to pig, and from pig to man again; but already it was impossible to say which was which.”
― George Orwell, Animal Farm

The Hunt was originally intended to come out in September 2019, but wound up being delayed until this weekend.  The controversy surrounding this movie was clear and the battle lines were drawn.  Lots of controversy and complaining from people who had never seen the movie.

After seeing The Hunt, I can understand why there are people who are polarized about it because it is very clearly a movie that is divisive.  However, I do not understand the anger directed at it since it is obviously a satire and both sides of the political world is lambasted equally.

A group of people from the “deplorables” are kidnapped by some “lefty elitists” and taken to a mysterious location.  They are drugged, gagged and scattered around.  Once they come to, they start being picked off, one by one.  Scattering, the group attempts to avoid the people hunting them.

The first act of this movie was extremely unexpected because as you meet a character that feels as if this was the main protagonist that you are meant to follow, something would happen that makes it clear that this was not the person we were meant to follow.  It’s shocking and it is funny.

Betty Gilpin from GLOW eventually is revealed as the main protagonist of the film and she is just amazing.  This is a star-making performance for her and she is unbelievably likable here.  This is even more impressive since there really is very little effort made to develop characters.  Most of the characters do not get past their surface structure. Betty Gilpin is no exception.  Her development is minimal, but that does not prevent her from being an awesome, kick-ass character.  The end shows that there may have been a reason for the lack of character here, and it may even be worth it.

The violence is vicious and gory.  Some of the kills are well designed and entertaining while others felt as if they were simply there for shock purposes.  I have seen more violent movies so this is not a disqualifying feature for me.

The movie does have a message, in particular, about social media and the nature of it, but the message is not pounded into your heads, although it is not necessarily subtle either.

This was a funny satire with some cool action involved.  Betty Gilpin is an early season leader for Kick Ass Female of the Year in what should be a competitive year in that category.  You may be offended by The Hunt, but, if, like me, you are not, then you will probably laugh and have some good time with an over-the-top movie.

4 stars

This one is better than the last one.

All the Bright Places is a coming-of-age/teen drama movie featuring Elle Fanning and Justice Smith and it is based on an international bestselling novel by Jennifer Niven.

Theodore Finch (Justice Smith) is out running one day when he comes across Violet Markey (Elle Fanning) on the edge of a bridge.  Stopping, he brings her back from the edge and they eventually begin a relationship.  However, there are problems because Finch has his own baggage from a childhood of trauma.  There are some serious mental health issues on both sides of this relationship and yet they seem to find the best in each other.

The story itself is only average.  The two of these characters are quite inconsistent through much of the film and, while that could be a trait of the age, it does not help us connect with them.

However, both Elle Fanning and Justice Smith are charismatic and charming.  They share a great chemistry and fill the screen with the power of their personalities.  You connect with them considerably more because of the actors playing them than the story they are playing out.

There was a bit too much melodrama in the movie for my tastes.  They bounced back and forth between the two of them for much of the run time.  Maybe that is the point, but it feels as if they left too much out from the story of these people.

I have not read the book, but I wonder if it provided more of a opportunity to understand who these characters were and why they acted the way they did.

Still, this was a fine film, if for nothing more than the performances of the two lead actors.

3.4 stars

I have begun my “Not Going to Theater While Coughing” streaming service watch today on Netflix with a film called Twin Murders: The Silence of the White City.  The summary on Netflix made me believe that this would be an interesting film.

Nope.

A criminal profiler (Javier Ray) returns to Vitoria-Gasteiz  at the same time that a serial killer, thought to be in jail and being prepared to be released, has begun leaving corpses killed using bees.

I lost interest in this fairly quickly.  The story was not intriguing as I had hoped it would be and was predictable and uninteresting.

The biggest problem with the movie is that it is actually a Spanish language film, but this version is dubbed in English.  Because of that, the actors on screen do not match with the words they are saying and the voice over acting is hardly as emotional or human as it should be.  The voices lack the impact of the real voices.  I would rather had heard the real voices in Spanish and read the subtitles than hearing this half-hearted English translation.  It is nearly impossible to grasp the real performances these actors give because of it.

I hope the next one is a better film.

2.1 stars

One has to admire the bravery of the performance in this movie from Ben Affleck.  He has recently suffered from alcoholism and had checked himself into a treatment center and this could not have been easy to play this role.  Yet he did it and he was tremendous in it.

The Way Back is a sports movie with more.  Jack Cunningham (Ben Affleck) was a former star high school player at the Catholic High School.  The basketball world was at his feet, but he chose to leave it behind.  A troubled life followed which included a separation with his wife (Janina Gavankar) and an alcohol problem.

When his old high school’s coach had a heart attack, Jack is offered the position of head coach, working alongside assistant coach Dan (Al Madrigal) of a team with a group of problematic players who have not been successful.

The basic basketball scenes in this movie are nothing new.  In fact, it would be fair to say that most of the basketball scenes here are extremely formulaic.  Not to say they were not well done, but there was absolutely nothing new about any of them.  Everything that happened was something that we had seen before.

However, the scenes with Jack and his troubles were very well done and brought an uncertainty to the story.  The final act of the film was just strong and really took the film into an area where you were not sure what was going to happen.  That was a refreshing switch from what had been a predictable tale.

Ben Affleck was magnificent here.  He brought a depth and an anguish to Jack Cunningham that was relatable and understandable.  You wanted to see this guy overcome his demons, but the film does not take that easy route.  Just because his basketball team was having success, it did not mean that the problems that had haunted him and had driven him to hide in a bottle were gone.  In fact, it may have made those issues all the worse.

I do think the film felt a little long, but I am not sure where you would have cut.  The film was more about Affleck than it was the game of basketball.  Because of that, some of the characters on the basketball team were shorted in development.  The movie was Affleck’s story and it gave him the minutes to show it.

Directed by Gavin O’Connor, who also directed feel good sports movies Miracle and Warrior, found a way to subvert the expectations of the genre with this movie.  It seemed that this was going to be just another formulaic sports movie, until it wasn’t.

Powerful and difficult to watch at times, The Way Back is a good movie with a strong lead performance.

3.8 stars

Back in the 1980s, there was a TV program on ABC called Spenser for Hire and starred Robert Urich and Avery Brooks.  I never loved this series, but I watched it a few times.  So you can forgive me that I did not figure out that the new film on Netflix, Spenser Confidential is a return to that character, this time starring Mark Wahlberg and Winston Duke.

Based on the novel “Wonderland” by Robert B Parker and directed by Peter Berg, Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) was a cop convicted of assaulting his police chief.  After serving his time, Spenser returned to his life with the intent of leaving his home in Boston and heading out west to drive truck.  However, a group of crooked cops and drug runners throw problems in his path.  Spenser has to team up with Hawk (Winston Duke), a MMA fighter who was living with Spenser’s mentor, Henry (Alan Arkin), to try to solve the murders of a couple of Spenser’s previous colleagues.

I had some problems with this movie.  First and foremost, it felt as if the film did not know what kind of film it wanted to be.  At first it felt flashy and dumb, like a Michael Bay movie.  Then it seemed like it wanted to be a buddy cop movie.  Then, it tried to be a slapstick comedy.  Then there was serious drama with the crime story.  All of these different styles did not fit together in this case and really clashed.  By trying to be it all, this movie was never able to be itself.  It failed in all of the different tones.

Wahlberg and Duke were fine.  Duke will always be M’Baku from Marvel’s Black Panther, and, unfortunately, this version of Hawk was nothing like the Avery Brooks version.  I understand the attempt to take the character in a different direction, but this was a real tangent.  Arkin was the same basic character that Arkin is in every movie these days.  There is a character named Cissy (Iliza Shlesinger), Spenser’s former girlfriend, but the less mentioned about her the better.  This character is easily the most annoying and least engaging character on the screen.

And Marc Maron is here too, but he is wasted.  His character is so disposable that I am not even sure what his role here was.

The story is totally messy.  It was convoluted and confusing.  It wanted to be a mystery as well, but that played like every low-level buddy cop film you’ve ever seen.  The bad guys are woefully underdeveloped and are basically one-dimensional crooks from your typical crime movie.  Nothing special about any of them.  They kept referring to Boylan (Michael Gaston), the police chief Spenser assaulted, but we knew so little about him that their use of him felt like lazy writing.

The comedy in the movie was just such a flop. There is one scene with Spenser and a dog that is as dumb as it can be.  I am not sure I can recall any of the humor actually hitting.

This was just a bad movie and a failed attempt to bring the character of Spenser back to relevance.  Wahlberg and Duke worked okay together and would be the best part of this movie.  They are absolutely not enough to save this silly reboot.   I do not think fans of the Spenser for Hire series or the Robert B. Parker novels featuring the character of Spenser will enjoy this movie much.

2.3 stars