I ignored this movie the first week it was out.  I caught up with it this week and I have to say that I did not dislike it as much as I thought I would.  However, there are a couple of major issues with it that really make me uneasy about recommending it.

Emilia Clarke plays Katrina (or Kate as she insists), a young woman with a bad attitude that acts extremely selfish.  Her attitude has pushed her family away and has made her depressed with her life.

When she meets Tom (Henry Golding), an unassuming and kind man, she begins to fall for him, but he is very mysterious, disappearing for several days at a time.

I did enjoy some parts of the film. I thought Emilia Clarke was good as Kate and I thought a bunch of the secondary characters were original and well used.  There may have been too many side plots with these characters, but they were definitely intriguing.

I said that there were some major problems that kept me from fully engaging in this movie.  The biggest problem was that I knew what the big “turn” in the film was going to be back when I saw the trailer.  I kept watching the film, looking at each scene trying to see a place where I would be wrong, but, with each scene, I was even more sure I knew what was happening.  And, of course, I was right.  It is a bad sign when I can see the twist coming in the trailers (and that is without the trailers giving away too much as they sometimes do).

Then, why does this film have such a connection to the music of George Michael?  We get a ton of George Michael songs and Wham songs, whether they make sense with the story or not.  I know Last Christmas is a Wham song (although I do not think I had ever heard it before today) but why does that mean we need “Freedom!” or “Faith.”  I found all the George Michael distracting.

Directed by Paul Feig, Last Christmas was co-written by Emma Thompson, who also appeared as Katrina’s mother, Petra.

I am very split on this movie.  It was better than I expected it to be, but the problems with the movie prevented me from enjoying it fully.  I am on the fence with this.

2.9 stars

I am not a fan of auto racing, not even a little bit.  So when the critics say that you do not have to like auto racing to like the new movie, Ford v Ferrari, you can believe them because I loved this movie.

Ford v Ferrari is the true story of how the Ford Motor Company decided to compete and win the 24 Hours of Le Mans, a race in France that had been won by rival car company, Ferrari, for several years.

Ford Company, led by Henry Ford II (Tracy Letts), hired former race car driver Carroll Shelby (Matt Damon) to help design a car that could beat the cars from Ferrari.  Shelby brought in brilliant, but troublesome driver Ken Mills (Christian Bale) to help create and eventually drive the car.

Ford Motor Company had personal problems with Ken, especially weaselly Leo Beebe (Josh Lucas) who held a personal grudge against Ken.  Ford consistently threw roadblocks in the path of Ken, before the 24 Hours of Le Mans.

Honestly, the movie is not really Ford v Ferrari as much as it is Ford v Ken and Shelby.  The rivalry with Ferrari is in the film, but it is significantly in the background of the narrative.  It was vitally important for Henry Ford II to jump into Le Mans, but after that, it is an after thought.

Christian Bale is always great, and this is no exception.  He loses a lot of weight for this role once more and throws himself into Ken Miles.  We get a lot from Ken and his family, his wife Mollie (Caitriona Balfe) and son Peter (Noah Jupe).  Jupe has been a wonderful child actor and he has some really solid work here too.

Matt Damon is every bit as much of the star of this movie as Bale.  Shelby starts off with a heart problem that forces him out from behind the wheel of the race cars.  Damon and Bale have amazing chemistry with one another and you fully believe in their friendship.

The race scenes are very well done and, apparently, are combinations of practical effects and CGI.  I can honestly say that I could not tell what was practical and what was CGI.  I saw the film on the IMAX screen which showed this film in the best possible aspect.

The film is very long (over two and a half hours) but truly did not feel as if it were long.  The flow of the movie moved along tremendously well and kept everything working together.  There are some scenes of emotion that work as does the humor.

Ford v Ferrari is a very strong film with some top notch performances and a compelling story.  The third act race is about as well done as you are going to get.

4.4 stars

The Good Liar is the new film from director Bill Condon, featuring two legendary actors, Sir Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren.

McKellen is a con man, out to find a wealthy widow that he can scam out of her money.  He has plenty of irons in the fire but he was looking for that windfall.  Mirren is that wealthy widow who is searching for something since the death of her husband.

They hit it off immediately and seem to form a bond, to the dismay of Mirren’s grandson.

There is no doubt about the best part of this film.  Helen Mirren has always been a personal favorite of mine.  She always is fantastic, even if the film itself is not good.  And Ian McKellen made his name in geek culture as Magneto and Gandalf.  Putting these legends together is a wonderful treat.

Watching these characters interact was charming and warm, even though you knew there was a darkness at the heart.

I was enjoying the film as it was moving along, but I had some real problems with the third act.  The film feels as if it falls apart in the end for a couple of reasons, both of which would be considered spoilers so I am going to have to just say that the third act was quite a step down in my opinion.  It was painfully obvious what was happening making it pretty predictable and silly.

Even though the ending was not as strong as the first part of the movie, I enjoyed the rest of the film enough to give this a pass.  There were some satisfying, albeit hard to believe, moments in the end and two amazing actors.

3.15 stars

Classic animated movies being rebooted as live action has been the trend over the last few years and now the most recent version has come to Disney + as Lady and the Tramp joins the ranks of Aladdin, Lion King, Jungle Book and Cinderella.

Sure, the original 1959 animated version of this movie may not have been in the same class of those movies, but there is at least one iconic scene everybody knows that involves spaghetti.

This is a very good choice of film to place on Disney + for its start up because it is well known enough to get eyes on it, but it would not make the millions of dollars at the box office as many of the other live-action movies have done.   Here it is one more positive for Disney +.

As for the film itself, it is good.  I enjoyed watching it on my own TV.  I wonder if my opinion would have been different had I paid money for it at a theater.

Prim and proper house dog Lady (voiced by Tessa Thompson winds up on the street and meets scroungy street dog Tramp (Justin Theroux) and the pair form a bond, despite being pursued by the overly-dedicated dogcatcher (Adrian Martinez).

The talking dogs are a problem here, just as the talking lions were a problem in The Lion King.  The facial expressions are not right and the mouth just moving can be creepy and off-putting, not the response that the film would want.  However, it did become less so as the film progressed so it may have been that I got more used to it than I was at the start.  The CGI on the mouth was acceptable for a streaming service film, but would have been more of a problem in a big budget released film.

The voice acting was fine, especially that of the wondrous voice of Sam Elliot as Trusty.  Among the live action actors, Yvette Nicole Brown stood out as the cruel and mean-spirited Aunt Sarah.

As a family film, Lady and the Tramp is a must see.  There is a wonderful goodness about the tale and the characters.  It may not be the upper echelon of Disney movies, but it is still quite recognizable and a perfect starter for Disney +.

3.3 stars 

I was looking through Netflix and I realized that I had not seen very many documentaries this year.  So I decided that I would watch several of the docs over the next month to get ready to see which one was the best one around. All these have been released in 2019.

I started on Netflix and watched a short one (around 42 minutes) called Fire in Paradise.  This told the story of a terrible camp fire in 2017 that decimated a town in California named Paradise.  This was totally shocking and tense, seeing pictures and cell phone images from the heart of the blaze.  The interviews with the people who survived this encounter was absolutely heart wrenching.  You could almost feel the heat coming through the screen. This doc was seriously good.

4 stars

Next doc I moved over to Hulu to watch The Amazing Johnathan but this one was less involving to me than the last one.  Johnathan is a magician who found out that he had a heart condition, and that was something that I was not interested in seeing.  I did not find Benjamin Berman that charming and the doc went into a different path that was odd.

2 stars

I had had the chance to see this one in the theaters, but I did not want to see it.  That was too bad, because The Biggest Little Farm was tremendous.  I would have loved to see it in the movie theater.  This told the story of a couple and their dog in an attempt to bring an area of farmland outside of Los Angeles back to life.  They faced all kinds of problems from birds to coyote to soil that was “dead.”  This was wonderfully education and as compelling as could be. I should not have skipped this one.

4.4 stars

Next up on Hulu was a documentary called Jawline and it was about a 16-year old boy named Austyn Tester, who wanted to build a career by posting videos on YouTube and Instagram.  This film was interesting because it followed the young man who had some initial success, but apparently wound up back in his life in Tennessee.  The film discusses some of the drawbacks of social media too.  While interesting, I would have liked to know more, go deeper.  It never seemed to go fully into the theme.  It was entertaining though.

3.3 stars

The final one today on Hulu is Ask Dr. Ruth which is the story of iconic sex therapist Dr. Ruth Westheimer’s life, career and influence to the world.  The documentary included more than just the sex talk that she had became famous for, but also looked at her past, including her escaping the Holocaust and how she grew up to be Dr. Ruth.  Ruth Westheimer is such a charming and funny person who is able to speak so honestly that you can understand why she became such a sensation.

4.5 stars

More to come later…looking for the time to watch the Bob Dylan/Martin Scorsese doc on Netflix.

Edit:  BTW…Dr. Ruth was a sniper.

Yeah… 

It’s been a while since we have had a good pulp noir film, and Edward Norton’s passion project fills that gap respectfully.

Norton is the writer/director/lead actor of this new film. Motherless Brooklyn, which tells the story of a detective whose boss/friend gets killed in pursuit of a big case.  Lionel (Ed Norton) has some version of Tourette’s Syndrome, though that name is never used, and it gets in his way as he tries to weave his way through the complicated case at the heart of his friend Frank’s(Bruce Willis) death.

The film is slow and it is long, but I did not find either of those as a drawback to the movie.  I found this interesting and engaging.  It was a mystery story that we had to uncover exactly what had happened.  We knew the result and who committed the crime, but we had to discover the reasons.

Part of that had to do with Alec Baldwin’s big bad New York developer character, Moses Randolph.  I am not really sure where the inspiration for this character came from… (just kidding).

The story took place in the 1950s in New York.  The atmosphere of the film was one of the best parts.  The atmosphere helps make the noir successful.  Ed Norton did the voice over and it worked.

The performances were good to great.  The story was fine.  I had picked out the “surprise” part early on so that did not shock me.  And there was some epic music happening with the score too.

I believe that watching this movie requires patience, because it is a slow burn, but the trip is worth it.  These days of instant gratification, this is a throwback to the old days of movies.

4.1 stars

I legitimately had no idea anything about director Bong Joon Ho’s newest film, Parasite.  All I knew about it was that it was an international film (I am not even sure if I knew it was a Korean film although I did know it was subtitled) and that a bunch of the online critics that I like and respect claim that it is one of the best movies of the year.

I even did not realize who Bong Joon Ho was.  Later on I discovered he was the director of Snowpiercer (which I loved) and Okja (which, not so much).

I have seen some older Korean movies this year, Old Boy and Train to Busan, but those did not give me any idea what I might be seeing.  I thought maybe the parasite in the title of the movie might be some kind of plague like the zombies in Train.

So I really did go into this movie with as much of a blank slate as you are going to get in this world of social media and easy accessible online trailers.

I am glad that I knew so little because it was able to let me move along with the story and allow the movie to provide its twists and turns as it is meant to be.

I don’t want to spoil anything so you can have a chance to go in as fresh as I was, but the film features two families of differing classes that intersect with each other in a strange and original way.

The cast is great.  All of these actors brought the goods here, creating characters that were appealing despite being people that may not be the grandest example of humanity.  You can understand all of them and relate to them which is quite a feat.

The film is shot beautifully and the contrasts between the classes were distinct.  The film has many great moments of humor and also has some dramatic darkness.  Midway through the second act, the film shifts a little bit to become even darker than it had been up until that point.

It is one of the top international films of the year and should be an Oscar contender.  Go in with as little knowledge as I did.  It is worth it.

4 stars

The previous to movies that I have seen in the theaters, Jojo Rabbit and Doctor Sleep, I gave five star reviews.  Can that string continue?

Nope.

The latest John Cena comedy called Playing with Fire came out this weekend and saw Cena as a “smokejumper” which is a kind of fire fighter who jumps from helicopters into the heart of blazing fires to battle them.  Cena’s character, Jake Carson, is a legacy smokejumper descended from one of the greatest smokejumpers off all time and he has a drive to follow in his late father’s footsteps.  One day, Jake and his crew arrived at a cabin in the woods that was one fire and saved three children.  Unable to contact their parents, the firefighters had to look after the kids.

I already knew that this film was going to be a major step down from the recent run of top notch movies I have seen.  While I understood that this film is really not made for me (it is targeted at those around 10, maybe), that does not excuse the film from being as poor as it is.  Lots of poop jokes and predictable plotlines punctuated this film.  John Cena is fine and his comedic timing is pretty good. He just needs something comedic to do.

The film also has a couple of great actors in it.  I love Keegan-Michael Key and he was the one character that I found even remotely funny.  He is another actor in this movie that deserved more than what was given to him.   John Leguizamo is here too, but he is totally unremarkable as a character.  Tyler Mane (Sabretooth from the X-Men movies) plays a character named Axe, who does not speak, but does carry around an axe, for no apparent reason.

The kids are competent.  Brianna Hildebrand (Negasonic Teenage Warhead from Deadpool) is the oldest of the kids, Brynn.  None of these kids, who apparently have lived through some serious crap in their lives, act as if they are anything but mischievous kids.

Though this movie is supposedly targeted toward children, there are several storylines that do not feel like a child would want to see.  There is a relationship between Cena and Judy Greer that is as forced as could be and there is a subplot about John Cena’s job and desire for a promotion.  Neither of these feel as if they belong in a kids movie.

To be fair, the movie does have some heart and should get some points for being sweet.  The ending, while seen from a mile away, does its best to tug on the heartstrings of the audience.  The ending was sweet enough to make me bump its score up probably a half a point.

Not that it is going to be a big score.  Halfway through the movie, I was considering this one of the worst films of the year.  Now, it will probably make the top 30 list, but it may not be in the top 10.

1.5 stars 

I am a fan of The Shining.  When I say this, I mean the movie.  I have not read the book written by Stephen King that apparently is different enough to have King hate the Stanley Kubrick movie version.  It is a big dust up between them.  So when King wrote a sequel to the book, that made adapting it to the big screen a serious challenge.

The major issue is that audiences are very familiar to the Kubrick movie and if the sequel, Doctor Sleep, would not embrace the film, I believe that there would be issues.

I have also not read Doctor Sleep, the novel by King so I will not be looking at how they adapted the book to film.  I heard some people criticizing the movie because of some changes or omissions from the source material.  I do not believe that is fair, but I certainly understand it.

I go into this detail mainly to show that I will only be reviewing the movie that I saw on the screen, not the book or the adaptation of said book.

The movie I saw was fantastic.  One of the best horror films of the year.

We meet a grown up Danny Torrance (Ewan McGregor) years after the events at the Outlook Hotel and the years have not been kind to Danny.  He had become an alcoholic to depress the shine that caused him such troubles.  However, after starting his life over and hopping on the wagon, Danny receives a mental contact with another Shining user, young girl Abra (Kyliegh Curran).

Everything is not perfect though.  There is a group of creatures, led by Rose the Hat (Rebecca Ferguson), who feed on the Shine of people like Danny and Abra.  The power of the young Abra attracted the vampiric characters toward her and forced Danny to step up to help her.

This was a truly scary film that did not rely on jump scares.  The terror was real, built on tension and creepiness.  The horrific situations were difficult to watch at times.  There was one brutal scene involving Rose the Hat, her cultists, and a baseball playing kid (who is played by a kid actor in a surprise cameo) that absolutely stays with you.

The moodiness of this film is tremendous as I was constantly shifting in my seat.  It makes the viewer uncomfortable because you really do not know what is going to happen and that uncertainty is a gift in today’s movie going experience.

The performances were wonderful throughout Doctor Sleep.  McGregor is as good as he always is and Rebecca Ferguson raised her game.  However, Kyliegh Curran deserves a ton of praise for her work.  She had to bring a lot to this role as the new kid with the Shine and she delivers big time.  She was one of those young actors whom you know you have to keep an eye on because, if her career continues as such, she is going to be a superstar.

Thanks to Rebecca Ferguson and a group of very strong actors, the villains, which could have been disposable one note monsters, are actually very well developed for the minimal screen time they received.  You see the connection between this group of killers and you can almost appreciate how their relationship is shown.  They are obviously monsters, as the scene with the baseball kid showed in spades, but you can somewhat see their warped view of their lives.

The movie looked great and horror veteran director Mike Flanagan simply knows what he is doing in this genre.  The shots are wonderful and the pacing is just right.

I have heard some complaints about the third act of this movie, but I thought it was just about perfect.  I loved the resolution of the story and the emotional depth from these scenes.  There is one scene in particular between McGregor and Henry Thomas (yes, the kid from E.T.) that was powerful to me.

I was fully engaged with Doctor Sleep from the start.  It has a long run time, but it did not bother me in the slightest.  Great performances and amazing horror elements make this an experience that is frightful and anxiety-ridden.  It is a excellent sequel to the Kubrick classic.

Second one in as many reviews, but I think it deserves it.

5 stars 

I have been excited for Jojo Rabbit for some time now.  However,when I hear about these independent films that are supposed to be so amazing, many times they are fine, but not to the level that everyone claims.  There have been several this year that fall into that category for me.  I worried that I was looking forward to Jojo Rabbit too much.

After seeing this, I can safely say that Jojo Rabbit is utterly brilliant and one of my absolute favorite films of 2019.

I can understand the tentative nature of people who may not think it is a good idea to have a film where a young boy has an imaginary friend who is Hitler.  I have to say it caught me off-guard when I first heard about it too.  But with Taika Waititi attached as writer and director, my anxieties soothe.  I loved Waititi’s Thor: Ragnarok and What We Do in the Shadows so I believed that, if anyone could navigate the issues, it would be Waititi.

Anyone who lists the version of Hitler in this film as a reason to hate it has already made up their mind that they were going to hate it.  Taika Waititi does a masterful job of playing this “Adolf”, the imaginary friend of Jojo (Roman Griffin Davis), a 10-year old German boy who idolizes the Fuehrer and joins the Hitler Youth.

After an unexpected result, Jojo discovers that his mother Rosie (Scarlett Johansson) has been hiding a Jewish girl name Elsa (Thomasin McKenzie) in the walls of their home, shaking the boy’s preconceived notions to their core.

The performances of this movie are off the frickin’ chart.  Let me start with the actor playing Jojo, Roman Griffin Davis.  This is Griffin’s feature film debut and that is totally unbeleivable because everything in this film depends on this young actors ability to deliver his lines and carry the emotional heft of the scenes.  There are some moments of levity that Davis pulls off brilliantly playing opposite Waititi and, also, Sam Rockwell, who plays a heavy drinking and quickly sinking Nazi Captain Klenzendorf.   Yet, Davis has some deep and life-affirming moments with Scarlett Johansson as well.

Still, the heart of the film is probably the relationship and the interactions between Jojo and Elsa.  These two young actors make you fall in love with them in one of the most unconventional ways imaginable.  Thomasin McKenzie is a star in the making.  Her every minute on screen lights it up and you cannot help but notice how effervescent she is.

There were also a couple of scenes that caught me completely off guard and nearly caused me to break down. No spoilers, but the emotion in this movie is powerful and elevates this above just another comedy.

It is a comedy, though and it is laugh out loud funny all the way through.  Stephen Merchant appeared as a Gestapo S.S. agent and he brings a ton of humor while still being as tense as any moments in the movie.  It also led to a ridiculously funny “Heil Hitler” scene.  Rebel Wilson gets to do some broad comedy as Fraulein Rahm, an assistant to Captain Klenzendorf.  Wilson brings some fantastic physical comedy in a supporting manner.

Then, Taika Waititi’s performance as Adolf was note perfect, and it had to be because he was walking a dangerous line with this role, but Waititi understood that humor allows one to transcend almost anything and that the satire of Adolf Hitler, one of the worst monsters to ever step on the planet, can be used to spread a message of anti-hate.

Jojo Rabbit delivered on every expectation that I had and it is a damn near perfect movie.  I loved this film and Taika Waititi has done it again, bringing a vision to a story that sounded as if it had plenty of hand grenades. I don’t think anything was ever going to catch up for me to Avengers: Endgame, but Jojo Rabbit is right there.

5 stars

Back in May, a film came out called The Intruder, and I skipped watching it.  You see, the trailer to the movie basically showed everything that I needed to see, including a big chunk of the third act so I was not sure why I needed to see it.  So, despite a couple of times when I thought about going to The Intruder, I decided to let it pass by.

Then today I found it for $0.99 on Vudu and I thought that that was a price that I could not turn down.  Certainly, it would be worth $0.99, right?

Well, it wasn’t quite worth the $0.99.

Dennis Quaid played Charlie Peck, a widower who sold his beloved house to Scott and Annie played by Michael Ealy and Meagan Good.  At first, it appeared that Charlie was just having a difficult time parting with the house that he had spent so many years in, but then it became obvious that he was mentally unhinged and wanted to have Annie for himself to the point of attacking her and trying to keep her against her will.

You say that is too much detail and that I may have spoiled too much.  Well, you’d be right, but that was what the trailers had in it so it is fair game.

There are some really dumb scenes in this predictable film.  It takes Annie way too long to accept the fact that Charlie is a loon because she was too busy getting mad at Scott for stupid things.

It seems that Dennis Quaid is having fun hamming it up as this coo-coo but he does not have near enough energy to make up for this film.

I am not unhappy I watched it, and I am glad that I did not spend the full cost on it.

2 stars

I have heard a lot of critics say that this is the best Terminator movie is T2, and, while that is definitely the case, it is not setting the bar very high.

The movies in the Terminator franchise have fallen somewhere between poor and totally rotten since T2: Judgement Day so a competently made Terminator movie would easily be the best since T2.

That does not mean this is a great movie or that I loved Terminator: Dark Fate.  The best I can say for the film is… it’s fine. However, there are no new ideas as the entire film is basically a retread of a strange combination of Terminator and T2.

A powerful Terminator (Gabriel Luna) is sent back from the future to kill someone, in this case a girl named Dani (Natalia Reyes).  The resistance of that future time line sends a protector, Grace (Mackenzie Davis), to keep Dani alive.

Does that sound familiar?

The film also adds Linda Hamilton back in as Sarah Connor and Arnold Schwarzenegger as a Terminator for nostalgia.  It was the film’s way to connect the films of the past to the new film of 2019.

I enjoyed both Linda Hamilton and Arnold Schwarzenegger’s performances in the movie and they did a nice job interacting with the new characters.  Schwarzenegger was very funny in his role and makes a character, that could be the worst of the film, likable.

However, something happens at the very beginning of the movie that.I suspect will be a major dividing point among Terminator fans.  While I did not hate what happened, I can certainly understand why some people do.  I do find the eventual result of the first scene to play out in a silly way that stretches my suspension of disbelief.

I found the action to be a mixed bag.  The highway chase, as seen in the trailers, was not bad, but it felt like something I had already seen.  I was bored with the action in the airplane, but I thought the final third act throw-down was decent.  Some of the CGI was shaky at times, especially when showing the future timeline with the Terminators coming out of the water.

Natalia Reyes and Mackenzie Davis are both very good in their roles, even though you could easily assign previous characters from the Terminator franchise as being replaced by them.  There really is not a lot or originality in this new film.  Still, The Force Awakens was very similar to New Hope and that does not make Episode VII bad, per se.

I have a feeling that this film may be one of those films that I originally recommend but, over time, continue to think poorly about.  I found Terminator: Dark Fate to be an okay movie and it looked good on the IMAX screen that I watched it on, but there is just something unremarkable sticking in my craw.

3 stars

When I was younger, I really liked Harriet Tubman.  I really did not know what it meant or how heroic she actually was, but her story appealed to me.

This was why I was excited to watch the biopic Harriet, based on the harrowing life of Harriet Tubman, one of the top conductors on the Underground Railroad.  Starring Cynthia Erivo, Harriet does a very good job of showing us the challenges faced by one of our nation’s truest freedom fighters.

There were many things about Harriet Tubman’s life that I did not know and I wondered how accurate the film was in portraying her life.  I especially wonder how close to the truth it came with her former master Gideon Brodess (Joe Alwyn) and his pursuit of Harriet.  This feels very much like a cinematic addition to the story, but I will admit to not knowing for sure. (edit… looks as if he is made up, but the Brodess family was in fact Harriet’s owners).

The film may have brushed over the voyage Harriet went on when she escaped from her master and traveled to Pennsylvania.  I am not sure that the movie showed how distressing the trip truly was and how unbeleivable it is that she was able to survive, let alone go back to aid other slaves in their journey to freedom.

Cynthia Erivo was wonderful as Harriet, bringing the iconic hero to life and showing how strong and determined she was.  Cynthia Ervio is a star in the making and this movie may give her the push to start that progression.

While the biopic may be a conventional one, Harriet still brings a really string story of a historical figure that spreads a positive message, something we could really use these days, and whose bravery and heroism in the face of cruelty and hatred is inspirational.  I always liked Harriet Tubman, and, now that I know more about her, I like her even more.

4.1 stars