I was very wary about this movie.  I absolutely loved the original Zombieland.  It was such a surprise when I saw it because I did not expect much of anything.  I remember clearly watching the movie is our local theater and just being completely engulfed in the world and the humor of the movie.  It was so great.

However, I have to say that the idea of a sequel eight years after the original release had me picturing such failed films as Dumb and Dumber To, Zoolander 2 and Vacation.  Worse yet, the trailers were anything but huge successes for me.  I was unimpressed with what I had seen so far. So the combination of this made me nervous for this film.

Zombieland: Double Tap (which, if you remember, double tap is rule #2 on Columbus’s list of rules, fitting for the second movie) does not reach the heights of that first film, but it is an enjoyable and funny film with heart and a group of characters that we care about.

Little Rock (Abigail Breslin) had no one her own age to be with and her “family” was getting on her nerves.  She was tiring of Tallahassee (Woody Harrelson) acting as a surrogate father and her sister Wichita (Emma Stone) and Columbus (Jesse Eisenberg) carrying on their relationship.  She decides to leave the White House, where the group had set up their “home” and find her own path.

Unfortunately, the zombie world had become more dangerous with the evolution of some of the zombie types so the others followed after Little Rock in an attempt to protect her.

Honestly, the narrative structure of this movie was one of the glaring weaknesses because it felt more like a series of short skits strung together with little connectivity outside of life in Zombieland.  Still, most of those skits were funny and reasonably charming so the lack of a true narrative and some pacing issues did not hurt the film much.

The strength is, of course, the great cast of characters that we met in the original and return to here.  There are some fun new additions too, especially Zoey Deutch’s Madison, the blonde airhead who stole every scene she was in.  The always great Rosario Dawson was also a wonderful addition to the cast as Nevada.

I was not a huge fan of the arrival of Albuquerque (Luke Wilson) and Flagstaff (Thomas Middleditch), although I do love how EVERYBODY is using the city where they were from as their name now.  This pairing felt like it was an old cliche and not worth the time it spent.  Plus, the result of the situation with these two resoled itself exactly the same way (or so we thought) that Madison’s situation had resolved.  It felt like a cheap repeat.

The use of the rules on the screen continued to be a lot of fun, as did the “Zombie Kill of the Year” joke.  It felt as if these running gags might get old, but they seemed to have enough gas for this movie still.

While it does not match the original, Zombieland: Double Tap does not flop as bad as many comedy sequels do, especially after such a long lay off between films.  Zombieland: Double Tap is a fun time at the movies and worth the watch.

3.75 stars

Because I watched Jexi directly after Gemini Man, it made Gemini Man seem better than I remembered.

But it is not good.

Will Smith played Henry, one of the greatest sharpshooters around, wants to retire and live a more peaceful life.  However, the government does not want to lose him so they send an assassin to kill him.  And it just happens that the assassin they sent was a younger version of Henry, called Junior.

Why would they do that?  The main villain, the man who raised Junior, Clay Verris (Clive Owen), seemed to want to treat Junior as his own son, unless the plot did not need that to be.  The third act with Clay was ridiculous.

Then, the de-aging technology (which is apparently just CGI and not the de-aging tech used in Marvel movies and such) is truly not as great as what I had heard.  There were times when the tech looked fine, mainly in the dark, but the rest of the time, that CGI is terrible.  There just is not any emotion in the face.

The dialogue is horrible.  There is so much exposition in this movie that is repeated over and over again.  The plot is dull.  Most of the action is boring or stupid.  There is a decent motorcycle chase, but it ends with such stupidity that it ruins the entire scene.  Otherwise, it is just a bunch of shooting.

Will Smith was good, but he could only do so much.  There is no reason why old Will Smith and young Will Smith’s relationship flipped multiple times and for no real reason.  I did not buy what happened even a little.

In the end, this one was not good.  It was long and dull and the CGI was nowhere near as amazing as some people think it was.

2.2 stars

I had not heard much about this movie. After watching it, I understand why.

Jexi is a film starring Adam Devine as Phil who is obsessed with his smartphone and who spends very night home, alone and staring at the screen.  When his phone is damaged, he has to get a new one and his new phone comes equipped with an A.I. (like Siri) named Jexi (Rose Byrne).  However, Jexi is unlike other operating systems.

Jexi is mean.  Jexi swears at Phil.  She insults him.  She dominates him and she takes over his life.  As this is happening, Phil meets the lovely Cate (Alexandra Shipp) and falls for her.  Jexi tries to help Phil with this relationship until things go south.

Things went south in this movie five minutes into it.  I was bored early and the scant run time of 80 minutes felt double that.

The film was desperately unfunny and the writing, dialogue and storyline was an inane as it comes… and predictable as well.  I considered a couple of times of leaving the movie, but I thought, if I can stick it through Holmes and Watson, I can make it through this one.

The film rides the one note joke about the phone being mean and swearing often throughout the movie.  The first couple of times it was worth a chuckle, but it grew old really fast.  And then, when the film implies (and not even subtly) that Jexi the A.I. caused a terrible injury to someone so Phil can be promoted, the film brushes it aside as if it never happened.

In my mind, Phil knew what had happened and that was when he should have looked into solutions to the phone problem, but he did not seem to care at all.

Michael Pena, who is a very funny actor, is a total mess here.  His character is such an over-the-top caricature it is ridiculous.  If it were trying to satirize a type of person, then they need to make this closer to someone who might actually exist.  For such a great actor, this performance was one of the year’s worst.

The film is trying to go for a message of how people become dependent on their phones, but it is, at best, surface level.  There is nothing deeper here and that message gets left behind several times.

I do like Alexandra Shipp, who, despite the crappiness of this script, looks like a star.  She is a lovely presence on the screen, but she cannot save the garbage that she is thrust into by the writers.

Dumb, dumb, dumb.  One of the worst of the year.

0.9 stars

I was a late arrival to Breaking Bad, and even then, I almost gave up on it.  As I was binging the series, I got to the plane crash part and I nearly stopped watching.  I really hated that section of the series.  However, I am so glad I did not because right after that misstep, the show became unbelievably great.

Still, I have only ever watched the series once, and it is not one where I know every little detail (sans LOST) so the new film El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie which debuted on Netflix on October 11 did not strike me as much as it would some other Breaking Bad fanatics.

Don’t get me wrong, it is still very good.

The story picks up for Jesse Pinkman (Aaron Paul) moments after the ending of the series finale of Breaking Bad.  Pinkman had just escaped and now he is on the run, avoiding the police for his role in the meth empire with Walter White (Bryan Cranston) and trying to come to grips with his past.

With that past part, there are a lot of flashbacks involved in this original story, written by Breaking Bad creator Vince Gilligan.  There are plenty of call backs in the flashbacks to the series and, since I am not necessarily a Breaking Bad aficionado, I may not have gotten the most out of those scenes.

Yet, Aaron Paul is absolutely tremendous as Pinkman, the troubled young man desperate to find a future for himself.  Paul, a multiple time Emmy winner, may have given his best performance ever in El Camino.

This film is truly a character piece encircling the life of Jesse Pinkman and providing satisfying closure to the character’s arc as well as the series’ run.  This tells the story that fans of the finale felt was missing.  Knowing what happened to Jesse may not have been necessary for the series, but the wrap up gives respect to Jesse and his legion of fans.

I’m not sure if the movie is watchable if you are not a Breaking Bad fan, but, if you are not a Breaking Bad fan, then may I suggest a series binge?  It is certainly worth the time.  Then come to see El Camino: A Breaking Bad Movie for the whipped cream on the top of the sundae.

4 stars 

With full disclosure, I fell asleep during the third act and missed the ending of this movie.  Not necessarily a great sign for my thoughts on the new animated version of the old TV show, The Addams Family.

So I am going to proceed with this review without having any idea how the film turned out.

Of course, I could probably guess and not be too far off.  This film was less than groundbreaking.

The Addams family moved into a new neighborhood, into an old, abandoned asylum with ghosts and living trees.  Just what they were looking for.  Then, a woman from a TV home repair show wanted to “fix” their home so their presence did not affect the selling of other houses in the area. Meanwhile there were a bunch of other side stories that ranged from inane to mildly entertaining.

Although there is a great cast of voice actors here- Charlize Theron, Oscar Isaac, Chloe Grace Moretz, Finn Wolfhard, Bette Midler, Nick Kroll, Allison Janney and Conrad Vernon, some of the voices felt miscast.  In particular, Finn Wolfhard, who I love, just sounded wrong as Pugsley.  Oscar Isaac and Charlize Theron were solid as Gomez and Morticia though.

The plot was slow and dull.  It had several storylines that were not what I had hoped to see.  The aforementioned home repair show featuring the film’s main villain, Margaux Needler, is the worst of the bunch, which is saying something since the whole Pugsley-has-to-do-Addams-family-fencing-dance to become a man storyline was cringe-worthy.  The only storyline that was, at all interesting, was Wednesday and trip to middle school.

However, my favorite part is clearly Lurch.  This character is the break out character of the film,  with his organ playing being the highlight.

There were a few gags that drew a giggle out of me, but it became pretty clear that this film was not targeting me.  It was made for the little kids.  Problem was that I am unsure if it is exciting enough for the short attention spans of children.  I have a feeling The Addams Family will bore the kiddos rather quickly.

There are some dark moments in the film, but no where near the recent live action films, which are both considerably better than this.  The characters are introduced to the new audience, but I am not sure that we learned enough about them to care.

I wish this were a better film.  It is not as bad as some, but it could have been much better.

2.6 stars

Here comes yet another divisive comic book movie from DC.  There have been many cries of controversy with Todd Phillip’s rendition of Joker, with people saying that this is a “dangerous” movie and that this is a bad time in our nation’s history for a movie like this to be released.  There are people who are concerned about who maybe inspired by a Joker movie to do terrible travesties.

I do not subscribe to those ideas as I am not one to ever blame the art or the artist for what someone may interpret from it.  The biggest question, for me, is … Is the Joker a good movie?  I had heard a mixed bag from a many of the critics so I really had no idea where it would fall for me.  Then, before I was heading into the theater, I ran into a co-worker who told me that they hated the movie.  I took my seat without any idea about what I was going to see.

And I loved this movie.

Arthur Fleck (Joaquin Phoenix) was a sad and damaged individual who was trying to get by in life with his job as a rental clown, trips to his therapist while taking care of his mother Penny (Frances Conroy).  It is clear from scene one that this man has a struggle with mental illness and that he is only hanging on by a thread.

It seems that one of the things that he is inflicted with is a laugh that he cannot control and that can come at the most inopportune times, particularly times of high levels of stress.

Arthur’s great wish is to become a stand-up comedian and he does what he can to make that dream a reality.   Unfortunately,  it appears that he is simply not that funny.  So one day on a train moving through Gotham City, Arthur kills three men with a gun given to him by a co-worker and events begin to spiral out of control.

Joker is a violent movie, but it is not anywhere near as violent as I had thought it would be.  Honestly, with the uproar over the social media concerns, I imagined that Joker would be much more violent and graphic.  There have been plenty of other movies more violent than Joker but those movies did not receive the scrutiny that Joker has.

The film is an in-depth character study of a man who is declining into madness and the world around him that apparently does not care.  The mental illness theme in this film comes right out of the headlines today and is probably the main reason people are uneasy over Joker.  The film does show that Joker takes those final steps into madness when he loses the ability to go to his therapist because of budget cuts.  The idea of aid for the mentally ill is vital to the story of Arthur Fleck.

As every review states, Joaquin Phoenix is brilliant as Arthur Fleck.  He is able to show you the side of this character that deserves pity and relatability without divorcing you from the fact that this is a dangerous psychopath that should not be pitied.  And at times you feel uncomfortable and maybe even a little disgusted when you can understand and relate to him.

The movie is definitely a slow burn and difficult to watch because it makes you as an audience member uncomfortable with yourself.  It does not give you a typical protagonist to cheer for and it does not provide you with the happy ever after that most movies do.  That probably shocked some people, but what do you expect when you are going to an R rated Joker movie?  Unicorns and flowers?

Watching Phoenix descend into the darkness was fascinating and seeing him transform into the Joker was amazing.  There are plenty of perfect “Joker” moments in the movie so when audiences were being warned that this was not the Joker they were used to, I think that was over exaggerating.  This was the Joker that I knew.

There are certainly many moments or scenes that borrow from Martin Scorsese’s Taxi Driver or King of Comedy and the feel is even more emphasized when we see Robert DeNiro playing late night TV host Murray Franklin, however, these moments felt more like an homage to those films rather than a theft of them.

Joker is disturbing, but in all the best ways.  One of the more disturbing aspects of Joker is the mother-son relationship with Arthur and Penny.  Frances Conroy is wonderfully off-kilter in this movie playing the mother of the eventual clown prince of crime.  There is an inclusion of Thomas Wayne (Brett Cullin) which I am not sure was needed.  I think this was used simply to keep the connection to Batman, despite the Caped Crusader not being in this movie.  There is a strange thing that happens at one point that makes you question the decision making process of Todd Phillips, but it pays off later in the film.  There are many moments like that so I suggest you do not get yourself into a Nerd Rage before the film ends.  Give it a chance before you hate on it.

Joker does feel like it goes maybe one scene too far at the end.  Otherwise, I feel that they conclusion of this movie is very powerful and speaks directly to the divide between the classes, as well as the fate of mentally ill people in today;s world.  The final bloody image with the Joker is perfect and puts an appropriate period on the end of the sentence.  The extra add on feels like something that could have been dropped.  It felt almost like a post credit scene that was not after the credits and tacked on at the end.

I was not sure how I was going to react to Joker.  I have always loved the character, but the negativity that I have heard made me doubt how I might react.  However, I was completely enthralled with this movie and, despite some of the smaller faults, is one of my favorite films of the year.

4.9 stars

We have had a lot of biopics about music icons recently.  From Freddie Mercury to Elton John, the music industry has been a hotbed of movie subjects.

Add one more to the list with the film based on the last year of the life of Dorothy Gale herself, Judy Garland.

In an attempt to get money to provide a more secure life for her children, Judy Garland (Renee Zellweger) accepted a tour of London despite her own struggles with alcohol and medication as well as her own tragic past.

Renee Zellweger is the absolute best thing about Judy. Her performance is transformative and powerful.  I believe she has to be considered the front runner, if not the lock, for the Academy Award for Best Actress from this performance.  She brings such an emotional depth to the character, from the lows of her addictions to the highs of her performances.

The character of Judy Garland is not shown through rose-colored glasses either.  We see the bad choices and the mistakes that she makes and the consequences of those actions.  One of the stronger aspects are the series of flashbacks back to the Dorothy-aged Judy (Darci Shaw) which detail the downright abuse heaped on Judy by the movie studio and her handlers who were more concerned with the image of Judy than the actual person.  There were some shocking instances of cruelty and potentially even abuse by those in power over the young girl that you understand why Judy grew up to be such a mess.

The film had a huge tragic feel to it for much of the run time.  The life that the young girl had to live through to the challenges facing the older version who was just looking for a way to be a mother to her children were heartbreaking.  Renee Zellweger was able to remain this woman riddled with poor choices without losing the connection to the audience.  Even when her own worst behavior was her undoing, you could relate to the pain and the challenges faced by the songstress.

One of the best scenes of the film included a gay couple who had waited after a show and met Judy.  Judy was so lonely that she invited them out to dinner and wound up spending an evening with them.  It was such a lovely, emotional scene that it truly helped to humanize Judy Garland.  It also effective when the couple returns later in the film.

Speaking of later in the film, the final part of the movie was just epic.  I loved how they ended the movie and I found myself with tears in my eyes from the power of the moment.  It was both sad and tragic, while at the same time uplifting and hopeful.  It ended with such a strong couple of scenes that any other flaws that might have been in the film were brushed away.

The film may have been a slow developing one, but I was riveted the entire time.  Renee Zellweger was special in her performance and the ending scene was one of the most emotional times of the year.  Judy is a terrific biopic.

4.75 stars

The new DreamWorks animated movie came out this weekend and it features a Yeti trying to get back to his home on Mount Everest before he is caught and dissected by some evil businessman.

Agents of SHIELD’s Chloe Bennet voices Yi, a teenager who finds the Yeti on the rooftop of her building.  Yi, sad over the death of her father, would go to the roof to play her violin and, little did she know, this Yeti was hiding out there.

The Yeti, which Yi calls Everest, bonds with the girl and, along with her friends, Jin (Tenzing Norgay Trainor) and Peng (Albert Tsai). she tries to help Everest find his way home.

While I enjoyed the movie, there was just something about it that felt as if the film was trying too hard.  I’m not sure what it was, but, despite there literally being plenty of it in the actual storyline, the film felt as if it were missing some magic.

Everest was revealed to have some kind of magical mystical powers that, apparently, get stronger the closer he gets to Mount Everest.  Maybe I just did not accept that premise or maybe I had never associated magic with Yetis before, but it just seemed to be a weakness in the storytelling.

The animation was beautiful with the shots of nature and the Himalayas, but the characters were anything but original.  I did like how the characters were Chinese and were very much fully fleshed out.  This was a co-production between DreamWorks and China’s Pearl Studio and I enjoyed the change.

I also enjoyed the twist of the character reveal that caught me off-guard.  It seemed as if the villains were fairly typical and then something happens that makes you look at them in a different light.  I don’t want to spoil it, but I did like the unexpected shift.

I do think this is a decent family film that kids will love and that parents will not hate.  That is a success, because the target audience is certainly the children.

As for me, despite what I felt was something lackluster at times, there was enough here to enjoy what I saw.  The film has some nice animation, a sweet story and a twist in a character that was unexpected.  Despite the flaws, Abominable was a solid animated movie and worth the 90+ minutes.

3.5 stars 

Haunt is a low budget horror movie recently released that I found on Vudu.  I had heard online critic Chris Stuckmann praise it as a really solid haunted house movie and so I figured I would give it a try.

Produced by Eli Roth, Haunt turned out to be a decent horror film that provided some serious scares and some well earned moments of fear.

A group of friends get together on a Halloween night and they decide to go to a haunted house.  The haunted house turns out to be very extreme and, eventually, turns deadly.  As they struggle to find their way to freedom, the “actors” in the haunted house reveal their true motivation.

Katie Stevens played Harper, the main protagonist of the group of friends.  She has a back story that gets interwoven into the story that is being told with the haunted house in a very effective manner.  Stevens performs her role well, truly emoting the fear and panic that is gripping her character.  Still, I like how Harper does not become a cowering victim.  She is a kick ass female and steps up when she needed to.

Scott Beck and Bryan Woods direct the movie and they do an admirable job in what is clearly a low-budget film.  They are able to create some serious tension and anxiety among the viewers with some real scares.  They do not depend on the jump scares that are prevalent in the horror genre these days.  Instead, each scare feels earned and natural.

With Halloween right around the corner, Haunt is a great addition to the haunted house genre and uses the tropes in creative and engaging manners.  It is creepiness at its finest.

3.8 stars

Ad Astra is the second movie this weekend that I saw that was receiving rave reviews but did not reach those expectations for me.  I did not like Hustlers, and Ad Astra, while I liked it more than Hustlers, was not as brilliant as I thought it would be.

Now, having said that, I will state that there were two magnificent parts of the film.  One was the special effects.  This film looked beautiful.  And the second was Brad Pitt, who delivered a special, understated and subtle performance in the movie.

Brad Pitt played Roy McBride, an astronaut who was recruited by the government to fly to Mars and attempt to contact Roy’s father H. Clifford McBride (Tommy Lee Jones), a legend who was involved in a project searching for intelligent life in the universe.  The project was causing problems back on earth called The Surge and the government wanted Roy to try and appeal to his father, whom Roy believed was dead for years.

Brad Pitt played Roy as if he were damaged goods, with a deep seeded anger that he shoved down, preventing him from having a life worth living.  Pitt is great in this movie and his performance was nuanced and compelling.

However, the film is slow through most of the run time.  It feels long and there are distinctly dull moments that work as character points, but can really drag out.  By the time they get to Tommy Lee Jones, a lot of the steam had been let out of the plot.

However, there was an epic scene involving space monkeys that I was just not sure how it happened.  Maybe I missed something with that but the monkeys were a sudden and unexpected shock in an otherwise slow burn.  (I really did not understand why the monkeys were there.  I wonder if I missed a reference)

As I mentioned, the look of the movie is amazing.  I never once wondered about something looking CGI.  I was completely enthralled by the effects and I bought them completely.  There may have been some moments where I was not sure if what they did would work (and…monkeys of course) but it never looked wrong.  I also saw the film in IMAX which made it look all the better.

Most of the cast was pretty well wasted outside of Pitt and Jones.  Ruth Negga was just there.  Donald Sutherland seemed as if he was going to be more important than he was.  I did not even realize Liv Tyler was in the movie until I saw her on the credits afterwards.

When there were good scenes, they really hit well.  It just was mixed in with too many scenes lacking pace or intensity.  Still, I think this was the best film of the weekend for me and I would recommend it, if for nothing else, but Brad Pitt’s performance and the wonderful CGI.

3.3 stars

I missed Hustlers last week, and I heard good things about it so I wanted to make sure I saw it this week.  Unfortunately, I did not find it as entertaining as I expected.

A group of women strippers, led by Ramona (Jennifer Lopez) and Destiny (Constance Wu), in order to make ends meat, start drugging high brow strip club attendees to steal money from them.

Honestly, I was bored at the first half of the movie.

I thought both Jennifer Lopez and Constance Wu were really good in their roles.  Lopez, in particular, delivers probably her best performance ever.  The problem, for me, was the rest of the film was not as strong as I thought it would be.

There are some funny moments in the film, but that is countered by the rottenness of the characters being shown.  In the end, they absolutely are criminals who are stealing from these men. Yes, these men are from Wall Street and shown as cheaters, and the film does its best to dehumanize the men (for the most part, which is an interesting contradiction to typical films), but that still does not make it right.

The relationship between Lopez and Wu’s characters are definitely the drawing point for the best scenes of the movie, but there is a lot of ugliness involved as well.

Based on a true story,  Hustlers was not the movie I was expecting, and, while I did not like this movie much, I was very much impressed with Jennifer Lopez and think she legitimately has a chance at an Academy Award nomination.

2.75 stars

Of course, maybe my opinions were altered by the jerks beside me who kept going on their phones.  I hate that!

I have heard some online critics say, “What are you expecting?  It’s a Rambo movie” when they explain why there does not need to be a good movie as long as Rambo is murdering a bunch of scumbags.

John Rambo (Sylvester Stallone) is retired and on his farm when his soon-to-be college niece (Yvette Monreal)heads off to Mexico to find her absentee father, who deserted her years ago.  Of course, she gets in trouble with all of the “hombres” in Mexico and gets tossed in a sex ring.  John has to go down to try and save her from their evil clutches.

That whole father subplot took all of five minutes to resolve.  It was resolved in the most basic and unsatisfying way imaginable.

This film is truly a mess.  What many people are claiming as its great final scene of the third act felt like a more bloody, more violent episode of The A-Team to me.  We see Rambo working on his farm to set up the traps in a montage and the villainous Mexicans stumble right into his traps.

And then the gore factor just shoots into orbit.  Some of the most brutal moments I have sen on film.  I have never been a fan of the real bloody gore, so I found myself not enjoying the final act.  And what was even worse was the bad guys were so stupid that they did not vary in the slightest from Rambo’s death traps.  They just blindly ran directly into them.  Oh, and every one of them worked perfectly.  Good job B.A and Face!

By the way, there seemed to be a political tint to some of the scenes.  Why, there was one scene where Rambo arrived at the USA/Mexico border and just drove his truck easily through the barbed wire fence.  I wonder what message that was trying to send.

I found the dialogue and much of the acting to be poor, but … what do you expect from a Rambo movie?  As long as Rambo kills people, nothing else matters.

I thought I might enjoy this one, but I was wrong.  I thought this was not a good movie and it had a bunch of things that checked off boxes of things that make me uncomfortable.  Too much gore for me, and the villains are as stupid as the victims in a slasher movie.  If you are a big Rambo fan, this will probably thrill you.  I have actually not seen any other Rambo movie so I am only approaching this as an audience member and I did not like it much.

1.8 stars

You’d think that a novel that won a Pultizer Prize could be adapted into a halfway decent film.  However, in the case of The Goldfinch, you would be wrong.

The Goldfinch is the story of a 13-year old boy named Theo Decker (played as a youth by Oakes Fegley and as an adult by Ansel Elgort), whose mother is killed in an explosion at a museum they were visiting together.  Theo sees a painting of a goldfinch chained to its perch at the site of the attack and sneaked it out of the museum as a way to remember his mother.

The rest of his life was tainted by this moment.  It seemed that things would be okay when he was taken in by the kindly Barbour family, led by Nicole Kidmon, but when Theo’s absent birth father (Luke Wilson) arrived, he had to go with him.

Theo wound up in Vegas where he met Boris (Finn Wolfhard), a Russian (kind of) speaking kid who introduced Theo to drugs and alcohol.

Meanwhile, we flash forward to Theo’s future life with Ansel Elgort where he had reunited with Hobie (Jeffrey Wright), an antiques dealer he knew as a child.  They formed a partnership that gets threatened by the presence of the painting that Theo basically stole from the museum.

This film is such a mess.  Honestly, there is such a lack of narrative progress or story structure that it is amazing that it came from such an award winning novel.  There are several scenes that are included here to set up a certain storyline that are never paid off or returned to as the film progressed.  The flash forward sequences felt completely unneeded and the last act of the film took it in a completely different direction than the entire movie had been going.

The film itself is very long and very boring at many times.  It is amazing that The Goldfinch was as long as it was as I have a hard time thinking about what happened.  There was little memorable in the movie at all.

The performances were good, for the most part.  I liked the performance from Oakes Fegley.  He was one of the best parts of the movie.  Finn Wolfhard was good too despite being saddled with a silly Russian accent.  Luke Wilson and Sarah Paulson felt as if they were in a different movie.  Still, they were decent with what they had to do.

There are some good shots as the film’s cinematography was done by the legendary Roger Deakins, but even his classic eye could not save this wreck.

The Goldfinch had a few parts that were decent, but it failed to bring them together into any sort of competent, understandable narrative.  Good performances and some nice shots were not enough to overcome the failing of the movie.

1.5 stars

Luce makes one think, and that is a rare feat these days.

Luce (Kelvin Harrison Jr) is a star high school student.  Quite the distance from where the boy lived until he was 7 years old, in the war-torn and violence-ridden Eritrea.   He was adopted by a white family, Amy Edgar (Naomi Watts) and Peter Edgar (Tim Roth).  After years of challenging behaviors, Luce has settled into an existence of a top notch student.

However, with some incidents involving dedicated teacher Harriet Wilson (Octavia Spencer), some doubt begins to rear its ugly head.  When Luce writes a questionable paper, Harriet becomes concerned with the boy’s true thoughts.  A search of his locker makes her even more worried.

The best part of the movie, Luce, is that you are never quite sure if what it seems has happened is what actually happened.  Are Harriet’s suspicions realistic or is she reading too much into it.  Is Luce being misjudged or is he manipulating everything to his liking?  You are fairly certain about a scene, and then something happens and you are not sure once again.  I like that in a script.

The performances are tremendous.  I loved the work of Naomi Watts, Kelvin Harrison and Octavia Spencer especially.  These three actors dominated the scenes that they were in and they were able to create deeply imperfect characters whom you can see as real and flawed.  Tim Roth is just as compelling, though not used as much as the other three.

This is a movie that demands attention and leaves you feeling uncertain and uncomfortable in all the best ways.  I realized after a while in the film that I was not sure what the film was about, and that was all the more intriguing.

Is Luce a hero or a villain?  Is he the next best thing or the dark evil of this generation?  Is it possible that he could be equal parts of both?  And is he being given the proper chance?  There are some powerful ideas flowing through this movie and the performances provide some amazing moments.

I’m not sure this is a movie that I want to see again, but the first viewing experience was strong and stick with you for time.

4 stars

Based on a true story, the film Brittany Runs a Marathon has its moments of humor and good will, but it also has times when I really could not care less for its lead star.

That is not to say that actress Jillian Bell who is very good in this role, but the character bounces from funny to downright obnoxious so much that it was difficult to form any lasting emotional connection to her. In fact, I preferred every secondary character in the movie to Brittany.

Brittany, a plus sized 28-year old in New York, wound up at a doctor’s office and the doctor told her that she needed to lose about 45 pounds.  To do so, Brittany started to do some running and before long decided that she was going to run the New York City Marathon.  The movie was her life as she trained for the event.

However, the more weight she lost, the less likable she became.  She clearly had traumas involving her weight from her past, but many of them did not feel as authentic as I wish they had.

As a heavy person in my own right, I kind of resent the theme here that heavy people are failures and unhappy all the time, and, by the time they bring around someone to counteract that image, it is much too late.  Brittany makes her weight be the issue that has cost her so many plans and that is unrealistic.

As she was such a jerk to all of her friends, I just do not understand why this crew of really nice people would continue to want to be her friends.  She was mean and, downright verbally abusive at times, but these people stuck with her for unknown reasons.

However, I would be lying if I said that I did not feel some emotional tug during the third act and that there was no humor here.  There were many good scenes as well.  I just have trouble with films where I can not like the main character.

Brittany Runs a Marathon is a mixed bag of a dark rom-com that misses the mark at times, but ends with a strong finish.

3.1 stars