Tiffany Haddish can be really over-the-top, but she can also be very funny.  It is usually graphic or lewd in nature, but that can be funny.

In Nobody’s Fool, she was funny about a third of the time.

The rest of the film is a giant mess.

Tanya (Tiffany Haddish) has just been released from jail and she is staying with her sister Danica (Tika Sumpter).  Danica has a relationship with a man online whom she had never met, but they seemed to be soulmates.  Tanya believes that her sister is being catfished and goes about trying to prove this.

Now, that is what the trailers make you think this movie is about, but it really is not.  First of all, Tiffany Haddish is not the lead character.  She is at best a supporting character.  The film is about Danica and her relationships.  After the whole catfish this ended (early on), she had a relationship with Frank (Omari Harwick) and that relationship was rocky.

Not because of Frank but because Danica was a rotten person.  The film tried to make her out the protagonist, but she was simple a horrible person whom I did not want to cheer for even a little bit.  She was rude and mean spirited.  She caused people pain everywhere she went.

Why should I want poor Frank to end up with Danica when she treated him like something she scraped off her shoes?  She was stuck up and mean.  I would have totally kicked her to the curb if I were Frank.

This is a Tyler Perry movie and none of these people feel like real people.  They feel like poorly written characters in a movie script.  They do things that reasonably intelligent people simply would not do.

The exception here is Whoopi Goldberg who plays Danica and Tanya’s mother and she steals the movie every time she makes an appearance.  She is absolutely the best part of Nobody’s Fool and I wanted more of Whoopi.

This is just a mess of a film that does not know what the narrative is meant to be.  These characters are dumb and our protagonist is as unlikable as you can be.

1.5 stars

Boring.

Boring.

I did not enjoy this movie at all.

Honestly, as soon as it started up, I thought to myself that it was totally CGI and that it looked more like a cartoon than a real place.  Even the real world part was all CGI and I am not sure that was needed.

The movie features a young girl Clara (Mackenzie Foy) whose mother has dies and Clara finds her way into a strange and magical land that her mother was the Queen of ( I guess) and has to help save it from within.

This magical land is not Narnia.  It is not Wonderland.  It is not Oz.  It is a land of four realms and there are problems.

Yawn.

The Nutcracker (Jayden Fowora-Knight) is the last Nutcracker around, but he goes by Captain.  His name is Phillip. He reminds me physically of John Boyega in Star Wars without the charisma.

Helen Mirren is here too.  I usually love her, but she seems as if she is going through the motion as the mysterious Mother Ginger.

There is so much of nothing going on here and I was so bored.  Every once in a while I noticed some recognizable music that told me this was the Nutcracker, but those moments were few and far between.

I just did not like this film and the tons of children in the theater I was in did not help the movie going experience.

1.3 stars

There were times in this movie where I had goosebumps.

Some may say that the biopic about the rock band Queen, led by one of the greatest front men in the history of rock music, Freddie Mercury, was too simple and basic of a story.  And the performance required of an actor to bring back to life Freddie Mercury was a task extremely challenging.  Fortunately, that job fell into the talented hands of Mr. Robot’s Rami Malek, who proceeded to unfurl a performance for the ages that combined perfectly with the magnificent music of Queen into a cinematic experience unlike most others.

I am uncertain if Malek performed the songs or if they were lip synced, but they were perfectly constructed into the narrative and brought what could have been a typical and unremarkable biopic into a marvelous musical engagement.

The film begins and ends at the Queen performance at Live Aid, the worldwide concert to raise money for starving people in Africa.  The concert scenes in Bohemian Rhapsody were wonderful and stirring.  Malek became Freddie Mercury before our eyes and embraced the character like few others could.

Although his performance transcended the film, Malek was not the only strong performance in Bohemian Rhapsody.  Gwilym Lee brought Queen’s guitarist Brian May to the screen and Ben Hardy embodied the drummer Roger Taylor.  Both band members were able to illuminate the complicated relationship with their eccentric lead singer.  The band displayed a wonderful feeling of family, where even when they fought, it was clear that they had each other’s backs.

No scenes exemplified this more than the scene where the band arrived at the offices of EMI record executive Ray Foster (Mike Myers, in a funny and surprisingly ironic performance).  Queen seemed to be completely together, a single mind shown to the world, intent on releasing the six minute Bohemian Rhapsody as their single, despite the objections of Foster.

Other scenes that were the best ones in the film were the scenes of the band and how they came up with the great music that they did. The creation of Bohemian Rhapsody the song is an epic section of the film and highlights the creativity of the musicians involved in Queen.

The relationships within the band were stretched to the limit, as many families are, with the introduction of Paul Prenter (Allen Leech) and the distancing of Freddie from his family by way of drugs, alcohol and sexual experimentation.  Leech must have done a marvelous job, because I hated that man, who threatened to tear the band apart by placing himself square in the middle between the band and Freddie.  The resolution of that situation in the movie was tremendously satisfying.

Another relationship that was beautifully rendered was the one between Freddie and the love of his life, Mary, his ex-wife who is truly his soulmate.  Mary knew Freddie was gay before Freddie knew it, and yet she did not blame him for his confusion.  The relationship was so powerful that it survived through the trials that Freddie heaped upon it.

While Bohemian Rhapsody, the movie, is not as experimental as the band Queen was with their music, I did not find that to be a problem.  As a big fan of Queen’s music, it was expertly interwoven in the movie and, along with what should be an eventual Academy Award nominated performance by Rami Malek, elevated what could have been typical biopic fare into something that was killer.  Killer Queen for sure.

I really don’t know why the reviews on this film are so mixed.  I think it is one of the best films of the year.

4.7 stars

This is a movie that, when I think back upon, I notice issues that I did not think about when first watching it.

I will say on the first viewing of Mid90s, the directorial debut of Jonah Hill, I enjoyed the narrative of the film and I did not have much problems with it with a notable exception of an uncomfortable sex scene that I wondered how they could get away with filming.

However, in retrospect, there are issues of misogyny, homophobic behavior and the aforementioned sex scene that should be questioned in a film being released in 2018.  I will say that the film is taking place in the mid 1990s and much of the language and thoughts are accurate to the times being shown.  Does that “artistic vision” make the use of these acceptable?  Were they necessary to display the time frame of the mid 1990s accurately or does it just highlight a deeper problem in the script?

It is hard to say.  If you remove the questionable material, you still have a story of a young boy Stevie (Sunny Suljic) who has an abusive older brother (Lucas Hedges) and a mother (Katherine Waterston- dreadfully under used here) who has her own problems to deal with.  Stevie finds a connection with a group of skateboarders made up of older kids, led by the cool older boy and best skateboarder among them Ray (Na-kel Smith).  Stevie bonds with this group and faces the problems of alcohol and drug abuse, jealousy from within and teenage rebellion.

This group of skateboarders was shown considerably more developed than a typical movie of this fashion.  Each member of the group had their own motivations and personalities and it makes this seem like a much more realistic film.  Yes, the female characters of this movie, including the terribly undervalued Katherine Waterston, are poorly developed and based on cliches and stereotypes, but the film’s main focus is on the group of boys.

There are some really powerful scenes, but there are also some scenes that feel disjointed and out of place.  Some of it is uncomfortable and other aspects of it are very strong.  Much of the language is irritating to listen to, but it certainly is the way teens talked during that time period.

My first response after walking out of the theater was positive for Mid90s and I will be giving the movie a recommendation, but I would warn those who may be easily offended that this may not be the film for you.

3.5 stars

This was an animated movie that I had not seen yet, despite it being out for several weeks.  It is not that I was actively avoiding Smallfoot, but I was having trouble finding a good spot for it to fit into my schedule.  There always just seemed to be other movies that I wanted to see more.

It is not that I had heard negative things about Smallfoot, but it was truly just a scheduling issue. So the last couple of weeks, I was looking to fit it into my schedule and I finally got to see it today.

It was fine.

Migo (Channing Tatum) is a young yeti whose goal is to take over as the official gong ringer from his father Dorgle (Danny DeVito).  During a round of gong-ringing practice, Migo winds up overshooting the gong and lands elsewhere in the Himalayas.  As he was heading back, an airplane, something the isolated yeti had no idea about, crashed, revealing the infamous and long believed to be mythological “smallfoot” aka a human being.

The existence of the smallfoot shook Migo’s belief system to the core, as his culture’s ultimate rules, held on by the Stonekeeper (Common) says that there is no such thing as a smallfoot, and if that stone is wrong, then what else might be wrong as well?

When he returns to his village, Migo is cast out because of his blasphemous ideas, and he set off on an adventure to find proof of the existence of smallfoot.

On that adventure, Migo comes across TV reality show star Percy (James Cordon) and he takes him unwillingly back to his village to prove the stones wrong.

Smallfoot is fine.  There are some interesting concepts hidden inside the story, in particular the use of the stones as a way to question religion and the way religion demands dedication from its believers.  And the film does not make it so obvious that you feel preached at.  I’m sure there are some who found that aspect of Smallfoot irritating, but I liked the idea they were going with.  It is not developed enough, in my opinion.

The animation and voice work here were fine, but there is nothing here that would really make Smallfoot memorable.  It seems to be a serviceable film.

The songs, however, were all very much dull and unremarkable.  With the exception of the Under Pressure (Queen) parody performed by James Cordon, the music of this film is as disposable as can be.

I did like how the language barrier between yeti and humans cause a problem.  And while the joke got a little stale after awhile, it was nice to see that there were more language problems here than there was between the Americans and Russians in Hunter Killer, which came out this weekend.

I am glad I finally got around to seeing Smallfoot, even though it is most likely an animated movie that will settle into the recesses of my brain after a while with little to be remembered for.  Still, it is not a bad film to show the children and it has a few intriguing plot ideas that are touched upon.

3.2 stars

In what may be Robert Redford’s final movie appearance, we see the charm and warmth of the actor who has been one of the greats in cinema.  Unfortunately, if you look at it closely, the character he is playing is anything but.

Redford is playing the real life Forrest Tucker, an old man who loved robbing banks.  He would walk into the bank, politely showed the gun to the teller or manager, and quietly walk out after receiving the money.  Everybody said he was a gentleman.

However, he was still robbing the bank.

After robbing one of his banks, Forrest met Jewel (Sissy Spacek), woman whose truck had broken down and he took a fancy to her.  They spent some time together, but it does not curtail the criminal activities from Mr. Tucker.

Redford is wonderful here, as is Spacek.  Their relationship is one of the best parts of the movie.  They are two pros and you can tell that every second they spend together.

I did like the character of John Hunt, played by Casey Affleck.  Hunt was the police officer who put together the clues of who Tucker was.  He was able to link the robberies together and found a strange relationship between Tucker and himself.  Tucker has some kind of odd connection to him once he discovered that he was searching for him.  Tucker even went as far as to leave notes for Hunt.  Affleck was very good here.

The film dragged some and I had a harder time rooting for Tucker as he just continued to show little to no remorse for his criminal activity.  Still, the film was watchable and Redford was great.

3 stars