The second movie I saw today was director Guy Ritchie’s new film, which turned out to be one of the most Guy Ritchiest movies we have seen in awhile, The Gentlemen.

The Gentlemen featured the story of Mickey Pearson (Matthew McConaughey), a British weed kingpin, who is trying to sell off his organization to Matthew (Jeremy Strong), while Chinese rival Dry Eye (Henry Golding) tried to get involved.  Meanwhile, private detective Fletcher (Hugh Grant) is telling a story about what is happening to Mickey’s right hand man Ray (Charlie Hunnam).

That summary paragraph is tough to read, I know, but the movie itself is very convoluted in the plotting which makes summarizing it difficult.

In an opposite situation to the other movie, The Turning, that I saw today, The Gentlemen started slow and I was not in to the movie.  Most of the first half to two-thirds of the film felt dull and dragged for me.  There was some good dialogue during this time, but I was just not engaged or interested.  I actually considered once about heading home.  However, the film really wound up the story well, interweaving the plot contrivances and the story beats into a rousing finale.  I came out of The Gentlemen feeling positive about the overall presentation.

It goes to show how important a final act can be.  A movie could be totally saved by a strong finish, despite being a film I considered leaving.

Matthew McConaughey worked as the week lord of Britain and a cool overall dude.  Charlie Hunnam might have had the best role of his career here.  But my personal standout was Colin Farrell, who played Coach, a trainer of young men who gets wrapped up in the intrigue of these criminals when his young men knocked over one of Mickey’s marijuana farms.  Farrell’s performance was exceptional and stood out among a solid cast.

I am not sure I enjoyed the style of the presentation of this movie.  There was a lot of exposition from Fletcher and I found that dragging badly. It was when that narrative style choice ended that I believe the film began to turn around.

Despite the fact that I came out of this with a positive note, I have a feeling that it will not be a film that sticks with me for a long time.  A strong ending helped make this work, but I wish the whole film was as good as the last 25 minutes.

3.1 stars 

I saw two movies today and it was a weird coincidence.  One was pretty good and then had a miserable third act that totally ruined it for me whereas the other one was slow and dull for the first part but really came together in the end, saving it for me.

I’ll start with the one that had the third act that ruined the movie.  Ladies and gentlemen… The Turning.

Based on the novel The Turning of the Screw, this film sees Kate (Mackenzie Davis), a young governess, hired to look after and teach a young girl named Flora (Brooklynn Prince) after her parents had died.  Her mischievous brother Miles (Finn Wolfhard) returned from private school to cause trouble.  However, the estate in which the children live is apparently haunted.

I came into this with low expectations, which probably helped the first couple of acts.  I was somewhat in on the story because I expected that there may be something mysterious happening.  And the film was being shot well.  They avoided the typical jump scares and seemed as if it were heading towards some kind of psychological horror movie.  It got my hopes up.

Understand that the first part of the movie still had its issues.  Flora was afraid completely of leaving the estate because she thought she would die, and I do not think that Kate ever once asked her about it.  When things started going wrong, Kate could have easily left at any point.  There is a point where she thinks about it, but it seems to me that she would have gone way earlier.

Kate felt as if she was over the top a lot, and, as a teacher, you would think that she would have had a better grasp on how to deal with a misbehaving child like Miles.  She immediately treated him poorly, snapping at him as he was disturbing his sister’s studies.  That moment did not do any good at creating a relationship between her and Miles.

So there were issues, but it still felt as if the movie had a plan on where they were taking it. Au contraire.  The third act came along and turned into a confusing, convoluted mess with a ghost and a mishmash of the story up until this point.

And worse yet… the ending totally blew any good will the film may have still had right out of the water.  Honestly, it was one of the worst endings (if you want to call it that) that I have ever seen.  I am just flabbergasted that the movie thought this was a good idea to end this movie as it did.

Mackenzie Davis was fine, but she felt as if she was overacting.  Finn Wolfhard and Brooklynn Prince were effectively creepy.  The housekeeper (Barbara Marten) was probably the standout in the movie, creating a character that clearly had more knowledge than the others in the story and looked sufficiently scary.

While, for a while, I was on board with The Turning, it took a hard left and derailed any potential enjoyment I may have had.  Unfortunately, the last third of the movie out weighed the other parts in this case and ended with a very negative feeling.

2.6 stars

Antonio Banderas received an Oscar nomination for the performance he gave in this Spanish film, Pain and Glory.  I try my best to see these performances to be complete.  I do not see too many films with subtitles, but I have seen a few this past year so I was excited to see Pain and Glory offered on Vudu.

Now, let me get this out of the way immediately. I had some problems with the subtitles.  I did not mind reading them as the film progressed, because, with the other subtitled films I have seen, you forget that you are reading and get lost in the story.  However these subtitles were, at times, very difficult to read because of the background on the film.  Some of the white print was very hard to see and, since I do not speak Spanish, that took me out of the film at times.  It felt as if it took longer for me to forget that I was reading the film and to engage in the story.

Having said that, the trouble reading the subtitles was not a major draw from the film, which was beautifully done.  Antonio Banderas was truly great in his role and the story of his character’s life filled the screen.

We saw (what we thought were) flashbacks to the character Salvador Mallo (Antonio Banderas) childhood, an intelligent young boy living in poverty with his mother Jacinta (Penelope Cruz).  These flashbacks are interspersed with the current life of Salvador, a great movie director who was broken down and sickly, recently hooked on heroin and trying to get over back pain from a surgery and the death of his mother.

The tale seems to be an autobiographical tale of director Pedro Almodóvar, who is a renowned Spanish film director.

One of my particular favorite bits about this film is that it avoids the cliches fully.  You think about a broken down, heroin addicted director and you have a story that comes into your mind about what is going to happen.  You could not be farther from the actual story.  Every time the film begins a convention where you expect a certain response, it take a different path and it was very welcome.  The moments are not used to milk out the melodrama, but to serve as character development and traits for choices made by the character.  It is a wonderfully designed and laid out story.

Antonio Banderas was amazing too.  He plays Salvador with such pain and hurt, but also with a noble honor.  He did not have to go over the top to display the pain the director was feeling, nor to show the depression he was gripped in.  It is a top line performance.

Penelope Cruz and newcomer Asier Flores (who played young Salvador) are also wonderful here, and their relationship is one of the best in the film.

Once I got past some of the issues with being able to read the subtitles, I really enjoyed Pain and Glory.  It was very well done and deserves the credit it has received.

4 stars 

I had missed the Fandom presentation of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot a few months ago and I have been unable to see any of the tour dates for the film.  It has been rolled out in a very creative and different manner.  I love Kevin Smith as a speaker, a storyteller.  However, I will admit that I have not been a huge fan of too many of his movies.

Honestly, it is mainly the stoner stuff that I have never been a fan of and it has been a major aspect of Kevin Smith films.

Still the new movie from Kevin Smith was a surprisingly heart-filled film with some real funny moments and a ton of cameos from the oeuvre of Kevin Smith.

Let’s face facts.  This was never going to be an Oscar movie.  Jay and Silent Bob Reboot was silly and had plenty of stupidity going on, but it had some really funny lines and situations.  Being funny always helps out a movie.

Jay and Silent Bob (Jason Mewes, Kevin Smith) head on a road trip to Hollywood in an attempt to stop the new reboot of Bluntman and Chronic directed by Kevin Smith.  Along the way, Jay stopped off in Chicago to see his old flame and he discovered that he had a 18-year old daughter Milly (Harley Quinn Smith) that he never knew he had.  They all headed off to Chronic-Con in Hollywood.

Jason Mewes was surprisingly good as the sudden father,  There was some real great moments between Mewes and Harley Quinn Smith.  I thought this was the best performance she has given yet in any of her father’s films.

By the way, there was a “Martha” joke with Ben Affleck that I laughed at for five minutes.

The movie has a ton of meta jokes and I generally like that idea, especially if they are funny.

I am not sure if this is ever going to get a wide release or if it will just continue to be Kevin Smith travelling around the country doing watch-a-longs with live audiences.  Either way, this is a fun film that you can just enjoy and laugh with.

3.4 stars 

To prepare to see this movie, I watched Bad Boys and Bad Boys II on Netflix this past week and I hated both of them.  I mean really hated them.  It did anything but get me ready to watch this franchise expand once again.

However, I was pleasantly surprised with how much I enjoyed Bad Boys for Life, the third film starring Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.

Seemingly unrelated law enforcement officials begin to be killed by an assassin which brings the Bad Boys, Mike Lowrey (Will Smith) and Marcus Burnett (Martin Lawrence) back to the front of the action.

Sure, the plot is thin, but this movie is a fun watch.  The best part of the first two films in this franchise was the relationship between Mike and Marcus and the chemistry between Will Smith and Martin Lawrence.  They have not lost that spark despite not filming a Bad Boys movie since 2003.  These two fall right back into these characters.  Yet there is one difference.  This time they felt more in tune.  Both characters had some things happen to them that brought more of a depth to the character than they ever had in the previous films and it was very welcome.  There was a feeling of maturity to the characters that was more than just them growing older.

I think a key issue is that we no longer have Michael Bay directing.  He directed the first two films whereas this one was helmed by Adil El Arbi and Bilall Fallah and the difference is significant.  There are scenes that were added to give the film a Michael Bay feel, but they are not over used and help make this a Bad Boys movie.

The action was fun and cleaner.  There was less use of shaky camera and I could see the action happening.  Are there still too many silly explosions?  Of course.  It is a Bad Boys movie.  But they all feel more like a homage than the basis for the scene and it helped me suspend the disbelief than I could in the previous movies.

There were some actual stakes involved here too, including a couple of scenes that I was shocked by.  I liked how the story developed and, while I may not have loved the ending reveal, it did not take me out of the movie.

Of course, the story was, at best, okay and there are plenty of plot holes around.  It is far from a perfect movie, but it certainly is a good time at the theater.

This is easily my favorite film of the Bad Boys franchise and, if there is another in the offing, I would welcome it which is more than I thought after watching the first two.

3.8 stars

Well… it isn’t the worst movie I saw this weekend.

Thanks to The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson, which I streamed on Vudu this weekend, Dolittle looks good in comparison.  However, that is not an excuse because Robert Downey Jr.’s first film since ending his run with Marvel is a terrible movie.

Doctor Dolittle (Robert Downey Jr) has become a recluse after the death of his beloved wife.  However, a boy named Stubbins (Harry Collett) arrived at Dolittle’s with an injured squirrel and a girl named Lady Rose (Carmel Laniado) also showed up with an urgent message from the Queen and, along with his animal friends, forced the doctor into action.

So many things wrong with this movie, but I want to start with a positive.  I do believe that the film has heart.  It wants to be good and it does give a positive message as it moves forward through the plot.  Little kids probably would like this film, and it is reasonably safe for them to watch it.  Kids 8 and under would most likely be the target audience of Dolittle.

That was about it for positives.

I have no idea what accent Robert Downey Jr was using, but it was not a good choice.  I am not sure how you can have one of the most charismatic actors working today and have a character as dull and uninteresting as Dr. Dolittle.  Maybe he was doing his best to differentiate John Dolittle from Tony Stark, but, if that were the case, he took it too far.

The cast of the voice actors was tremendous, but the voice acting itself was unremarkable.  Not one of the voice actors stood out as a great performance.  That is a shame with as many top notch stars that were involved.

The CGI was, at best, adequate.  There are way too many moments when the CGI stood out as noticeable and that is something that you simply do not want in 2020.

There was a lack of humor in the film, despite its attempt to be funny.  Again, some of the humor may have been targeted for 8 year-olds and under.  SPOILER: an example of horrible humor was the third act joke where Dolittle was pulling things (armor, bones, bagpipes) out of the rectum of a dragon, which then farted in Dolittle’s face.  Ha Ha Ha.  Yeah, that was a good one.  *SARCASM*

The use of the character of Stubbins was a fail too.  Though the kid gave a decent performance, the movie decided to have the boy learn how to talk to animals as well.  I found this odd because if anyone is able to learn how to talk to animals by practice, then what makes Dolittle special?

The villains of the movie were total losses.  Nothing but one note characters who do certain things simply because the plot needs them to do it.  They are boring and do not help create the necessary threat for there to feel as if there is any danger for our heroes.

This film wanted to be a magical adventure filled with action and humor for the whole family and it came up really short on this.  It did not have any magic, very little adventure and juvenile humor.  It also somehow made Robert Downey Jr. dull.  And the budget on this movie is $175 million dollars.  Dolittle is a bad movie that will not come anywhere close to that number.

But it is better than The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson.

1.5 stars 

I guess the streaming path can rise up and bite you too.

Going to my third streaming film of the last few days, I watched The Murder of Nicole Brown Simpson on Vudu.

I should not have.

Like everyone at the time, I was enthralled with the Simpson case back in the 1990s.  However, watching this movie made me feel as if I needed a shower.

It is my own fault too, because I was warned in a video by Chris Stuckmann.  He talked about how bad the film was and how disgusting it was.  He was 100% correct.  There are scenes in this movie that makes your skin crawl.

The film has such a disrespect for the victims of this crime that it is shocking.  They push the idea that a serial killer known as the Cross Country Killer, Glen Rogers.  was the actual murderer of Nicole Brown and Ron Goldman.  Nicole and Ron’s murders are shown in gruesome detail and it felt as if they were being punished.  The film even made it seem as if it was Nicole’s fault for inviting the Cross Country Killer into her house in the first place.

Mena Suvari was fine as Nicole, but some of the other actors in this film felt like amateurs.  There were so many that were wooden and unemotional that it was painful to watch.  Taryn Manning (from Orange is the New Black) was so out of place as Faye Resnick that it bordered on distracting.

Calling this a Lifetime movie is an insult to Lifetime movies.  The film is ugly, uninteresting and cruel.  It is exploitative at best.  There was a scene where Nicole is dreaming and she is acting out a famous scene from Nightmare on Elm Street where the actress climbs up on the ceiling.  It is a note for note copy of it.  It is completely out of place in this movie and including it serves no purpose.

I wish that I had taken the advice of Chris Stuckmann and not bothered with this obscene drivel.  I did not though and now I have a leading candidate for the worst film of 2020.  It immediately joins the list of my most hated movies of all time (Movie 43, Holmes and Watson, batman & Robin, The Last Knight, this).

Of course, at least it was in focus.

0.2 stars  

I returned to the streaming services for another new movie this weekend while the ice and snow is being removed.  This time I went to Netflix and found a film from Tyler Perry called A Fall From Grace.

Jasmine Bryant (Bresha Webb) was a public defender assigned to a murder case so she could get a plea deal for the client, Grace Waters (Crystal Fox).  Grace was accused of murdering her husband Shannon (Mehcad Brooks) with a baseball bat. Although there was no body found at the scene, Grace is ready to plead guilty.  However, Jasmine starts to see some of the evidence that makes her rethink what was going on.

I did not hate this film, but the film feels very much like a Lifetime special.  The plot has so many contrivances and so many scenes that do not fit together than it feels very disjointed at several points.  Some of the ideas come out of nowhere and do not work in tandem.  Anything in the courtroom setting was very weak and poorly written.  The acts all have a different feel to them and they seem like completely different movies.  Those problems really hurt the flow of the film, which is also too long.

Characters acted in ways that was inconsistent with ways they had acted in previous scenes.  Phylicia Rashad was probably the standout character as Sarah, Grace’s best friend.  The character of Jasmine was all over the place, though Bresha Webb did what she could.

I do think the film took a chance at putting forth a compelling mystery and thought it could keep the audience on its toes with the story.  Although I do not think the film was very successful in its execution, I have to respect the attempt.

This is not a very good movie, but for a Netflix original on a snowy Saturday night, there are worst films that one could watch.  Is it entertaining?  Somewhat.  Is it dumb?  Sure.  I wouldn’t go out of my way to see it and I wouldn’t want to pay money to see it, but just to watch while sitting on the couch, you could do worse.

2.6 stars 

A snowy Friday night really restricts the chances of getting to the movie theater.  So since I will probably not get to see this week’s two new releases until Sunday, it is nice to know that I can still find some movies to watch and review thanks to streaming.

In this case, it is Amazon Prime where I discovered the new film called Troop Zero.

Young girl with the white hair, Christmas Grace (McKenna Grace) is fascinated by the stars and outer space and, when the chance came around to get her voice on a record that was being recorded to send out to space, she would stop at nothing to win that prize.  Even if it means joining the Birdie Scouts, a Girl Scout-like organization.

However, Christmas had to find other members to join the troop which turned out to be a difficult chore.  Christmas compiled a group of local quirky kids such as the hellion Hell-No (Milan Ray), the silent but deadly Smash (Johanna Colon), the gender confused Joseph (Charlie Shotwell) and the one-eyed evangelist Anne-Claire (Bella Higginbotham).

But they also needed a “Momma” and, since her own mother had died, Christmas recruited her father Ramsey’s (Jim Gaffigan) legal aid Miss Rayleen (Viola Davis).  The rag tag group still faced conflict by the snobby girl troop led by Miss Massey (Allison Janney).

This film has a lot of heart and it is not afraid to show a group of kids who are extremely different as the leads of their movie.  McKenna Grace carries herself amazingly well as she is given some very heavy lifting by this plot.  The character beats she played are extremely strong and she is exceptional in the role.

All of the kids are very engaging and fun to watch.  There are some wonderful moments between Viola Davis and Allison Janney, two of the best actresses you will find.  Both take what could be stereotypical, one-note characters and bring them to life with their strong work.

Yes there are some cliches here.  The mean girl Birdie Scouts are the same in every film like this.  There were a few other moments that would fall under spoilers that were cliched.  The film countered that with some extremely original characters and allow the children to explore these characters.

In the end, this is a sweet and kind movie with a positive message and some solid performances.  There are some emotional moments as well and the finale is unexpected.  Troop Zero may have some connections to other movies of the same type, but I enjoyed watching this one.

3.7 stars

Here is the second 2019 film that was given its wide release in 2020. meaning that I had a chance to see it for the first time.

Just Mercy is the true story of Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan), a Harvard educated lawyer, who moves to Alabama to start up a group to try and provide justice for people convicted and awaiting execution on death row.  He met up with Walter McMillian (Jamie Foxx), a man convicted of a brutal murder that he did not commit, but was railroaded onto death row because he was black and because the community needed someone to pay for the crime.

It is astounding that injustices like this case can go on in America and it truly highlights the issues we have in our judicial system when it comes to race.  How a man could wind up on death row with such a flimsy case against him is shocking and should be something that we all are ashamed of as Americans.  Because the case was so thin, the drama provided in this movie is top notch.  There is a sequence involving an electric chair execution that is just painful to watch.

Jamie Foxx is tremendous in his role.  He goes through the full ringer and the acting in the third act of the movie is some of the best I have seen from him in any movie.  Michael B. Jordan is solid as Bryan, but he is not at the same level in this movie as Foxx.  The secondary characters are well acted and provide a lot of balance for the film.  Brie Larson is good as Bryan’s aid/associate.

This is a performance heavy film, though there are strong moments throughout as well, including the aforementioned execution scene.  There are a couple of scenes where Bryan faces racially motivated situations that show how racism is embedded within our culture.  The fact that this was going on in the town where Harper Lee based her “To Kill A Mockingbird” and people kept referring to the museum dedicated to that book is one of the most ironic aspects of the film.

Just Mercy was better than I thought it would be, as I had heard some middling reviews of it.  Every review stated how good Jamie Foxx was in his role, and I agree completely.  The film ended with a statistic that for every 9 executions in this country there is one person released from death row who was falsely convicted.  That is a devastating stat and makes one wonder about the effectiveness of the death penalty.

4 stars 

For me, January 2020 is currently 0-2 so far.

The second movie I have seen in 2020 that was actually first released in 2020 (not counting 1917 or Just Mercy) was Underwater, a sci-fi/horror thriller film that takes place at the bottom of the ocean inside a subterranean laboratory.

At first, the crew believes that the lab is devastated by an earthquake, but, as it is crumbling around them, they realize that it is much more than an earthquake that they will need to survive.

While there is some tension involved, there are way more problems here than there are positives.

The biggest issue is that there were no characters with any depth to them (pardon the pun) at all.  The characters are as follows:  Kristen Stewart, the Captain, T.J. Miller, the black guy, the bearded guy and the other girl.  Their attempts at characterization included “you have a daughter” and the fact that bearded guy and other girl were a couple.  T.J. Miller carried around a stuffed animal and did his T.J. Miller shtick and that was about all.  Honestly, it became a joke to me as I was watching, using these names for the characters as they went along.

Kristen Stewart was fine and there was a spot near the end where she proved herself to be queen bad ass.  Stewart was easily the best part of the movie and she continues to distance herself from Bella Swan with every choice.

The setting was a total mystery because they spent almost zero time setting up the location.  I had no idea where we were at any point and it bugged me that this could have been a very frightening situation with a touch of world building.

Things were hard to see throughout and there were problems with the science of the whole thing.  The logic was way off (other girl apparently had never been in one of the diving suits despite working at the bottom of the ocean.  That seems as if it is a bit of a job requirement).

There were some interesting sequences of tension, but, since I did not know anything about any of these people (you’ve got a daughter!), I had a hard time caring at all.

I did think the ending was decent as they wisely focused on the main character, Kristen Stewart.  She was the one whom we had the most to connect to and she pulled off that epic bad ass moment just recently.

In the end, this is better than the last 2020 horror movie (The Grudge), but not by a ton.  Skip this and go see 1917.

1.75 stars 

Every year there are a handful of movies that are released in 2019, but are not released wide enough for me to see until 2020.  I place those films on their own special list at the Year in Review in December.  I think I have found the film that will be at number one on that list.

1917 is a masterpiece.

Absolutely 100% brilliant from the start to the finish.  Director Sam Mendes (Skyfall, Road to Perdition, American Beauty) has created a film that is powerful, poignant, emotional and gorgeous (as well as sadly dour at times).

Two young British soldiers (Dean-Charles Chapman, George MacKay) are sent on a mission during World War I behind enemy lines to try and prevent other troops from being led into a German trap.

That’s all I’m telling you about the story.  It is such a wondrous film that you want to go in with as little prior knowledge as you can to really appreciate what the actors and the production team was able to accomplish.

Both Chapman and MacKay do outstanding jobs as the two young soldiers, determined to struggle to get the message through.  We learn about these characters through their dialogue and actions, amazingly showing us who these two men are without telling us in needless exposition.

The imagery of the war was breathtaking.  There are so many horrific images around here that there can be no mistaking the terrible price of war.  The entire trip is filled with tension and creates a distinct feeling of anxiety in the audience that you are never sure what is going to happen.

The story is simple, but the simplicity of the story is what made this so amazing.  It did not require plot twists and surprises because what they have is so powerful on its own.  Gigantic stakes in both emotion and physical.

Recently inducted EYG Hall of Famer Roger Deakins is utterly perfection in his cinematography in this film.  The shots are totally brilliant and tell the story in such an unbelievable way.

The one thing that I found a bit shaky was the whole “one-shot” technique that the movie was filmed in because early on in the film, I was looking for the places that were where the filmmakers would have the cuts.  That was a little distracting at times early and felt a tad gimmicky.  However, those feelings disappeared as we continued on into the movie and that technique helped create a distinct audience feeling that we were right there with the actors.  So while at first I was distracted, I get used to it and it really helps the storytelling.

1917 is a master class in technical film making.  It is also completely thrilling, emotionally compelling and beautifully shot movie that really should be seen at the theater.  It was one of the best movies released in 2019.  Now that it is released wide in 2020, do yourself a favor and go see this masterpiece.

5 stars