After the bad film Expend4bles in the morning, I was really hoping that the second movie of the day would be better. Thankfully, I was entertained considerably more by Dumb Money than I was with that other film.

According to Imdb, “Dumb Money is the ultimate David vs. Goliath tale, based on the insane true story of everyday people who flipped the script on Wall Street and got rich by turning GameStop (yes, the mall videogame store) into the world’s hottest company. In the middle of everything is regular guy Keith Gill (Paul Dano), who starts it all by sinking his life savings into the stock and posting about it. When his social posts start blowing up, so does his life and the lives of everyone following him. As a stock tip becomes a movement, everyone gets rich – until the billionaires fight back, and both sides find their worlds turned upside down“

This true story that took place during the heart of the pandemic was amazing and really showed a conflict between the big money and the small investing individuals during this time over the GameStop stock. The movie focused in on several of the individuals and their own stories as well as Keith Gill, who was the driving force behind the movement through his online social media posts.

Paul Dano is excellent as always as the man who “just likes the stock” and who made millions through the stock market. Seth Rogen and Sebastian Stan are great as billionaires on the other side who were looking for a way to squash the online grassroots movement. There is a great cast here as well as those actors including Pete Davidson, Anthony Ramos, America Ferrera, Nick Offerman, Vincent D’Onofrio, Myha’la Herrold, Clancy Brown, Kate Burton, Shailene Woodley, and Talia Ryder.

Some of the technical aspects of the stock purchase is a touch complicated and could confuse some, but I feel as if the director, Craig Gillespie, does a decent job of making it accessible.

This was a lot of fun and enjoyable film and it told me about a story that I did not know about that had just happened in the recent past.

4.1 stars

I was not much of a fan of any of the previous Expendables franchise, though there were none that I truly hated. I did not want a fourth film, but you never know. Perhaps it is a good one after all.

Well, after seeing this, I can say that it is not a good one. Not even close. In fact, it is easily the worst of the franchise.

The Expendables are off on a mission to try and prevent a terrorist from getting his hands on nuclear detonators. When that mission goes south, the team deals with a loss and Christmas (Jason Statham) has to go rogue to prevent the dangerous situation.

There really is not much of a story. There is a mole inside the organization, but it was painfully apparent whom that was. Something happened in the first act that was so clearly not what happened that you were just waiting for the other shoe to drop.

The dialogue of this movie was utter crap. It was legitimately some of the worst written dialogue that I have ever heard. It was meant to make Sylvester Stallone and Jason Statham seem like they have fun banter, but it was so eye-rollingly bad that it only served to make me dislike these two characters all the more.

And the remaining characters I couldn’t care one thing about because the movie didn’t give me any reason to care for any of them. Megan Fox looks great, but her character is lacking any sort of personality. Andy Garcia, the new boss, is a nothing character. Randy Couture and Dolph Lundgren were old and looked it. 50 Cent, Jacob Scipio, and Levy Tran all have newer characters that I have no idea who they are or why I should care about them. The only one with any sort of characterization is Tony Jaa, and that was basically because he looked cool.

The green screen was obscenely noticeable for a film from 2023. The action was consisting of a lot of shaky cam and boring gunplay. Even some of the martial arts was not up to par, considering some of the top notch martial artists that they had in the film.

I would have considered this the worst movie of the year, but I did watch Winnie the Pooh: Blood and Honey this year and, while this is horrible, it does not reach that level of bad.

0.5 stars

I saw a trailer for this earlier in the year, but it never came around to any theaters in my area. I figured it would arrive some day on streaming. The other day, I found it on Hulu and I was excited to get a chance to watch it.

Filmed as a mockumentary, Theater Camp is a comedy directed by first time directors Molly Gordon and Nick Lieberman.

According to IMDB, “As summer rolls around again, kids are gathering from all over to attend AdirondACTS, a scrappy theater camp in upstate New York that’s a haven for budding performers. After its indomitable founder Joan (Amy Sedaris) falls into a coma, her clueless “crypto-bro” son Troy (Jimmy Tatro) is tasked with keeping the thespian paradise running. With financial ruin looming, Troy must join forces with Amos (Ben Platt), Rebecca-Diane (Molly Gordon), and their band of eccentric teachers to come up with a solution before the curtain rises on opening night.”

This was a lot of fun. It was very funny and had a plethora of characters that fit into the idea of a theater camp. While I am not a theater camp kid, I have a feeling that those who were would really relate to the situations presented here.

There were very top notch comedic performances throughout, led by Ben Platt and Molly Gordon. The kids in the film all do an awesome job, carrying a lot of the musical numbers, especially in the finale.

There is a lot of absurdity in the situations in play during the movie, but they all feel more like truth than parody.

Theater Camp was funny and breezy quick, with an enjoyable first two acts and, dare I say, an inspirational third act. It was definitely worth the wait. I would have liked to have seen this in a theater with a crowd instead of at home, but it does work anyway.

3.8 stars

This is the third film in the series featuring director Kenneth Branagh adapting Agatha Christie’s classic detective character Hercule Poirot. We have seen Murder on the Orient Express and Death on the Nile, both of which were fine, if unremarkable. The next film was A Haunting in Venice, based on Christie’s 1969 novel Hallowe’en Party.

A Haunting in Venice, however, is definitely my favorite of the three films by far.

Poirot has retired from detective work, practically removing himself from society in Venice, despite people hanging out outside his home hoping to get him to work cases.

When his old friend, author Ariadne Oliver (Tina Fey), who had made Poirot famous with her novels, came to see him, she asked Poirot to accompany her to attempt to debunk a psychic named Mrs. Reynolds (Michelle Yeoh).

The psychic was brought to a haunted house in Venice where a young girl (Alicia Drake) had committed suicide and her mother (Kelly Reilly) was desperate to contact her again.

The film did a fantastic job creating the mood. There was so much tension and anxiety throughout the story. Some of the shots from Branagh created an amazing feel, a claustrophobic or uneasy sense for the viewer.

Kenneth Branagh’s performance as Hercule Poirot has been the highlight of all three of these movies. Branagh and his mustache are the stars of this story. I love how the story incorporates Poirot’s own troubles and self-doubts from years of challenges and stress. He had lost himself from the years and part of this movie is the attempt to find his mojo.

The ensemble cast of the film is great, including Tina Fey, Michelle Yeoh, Alicia Drake, Kelly Reilly, Jamie Dornan, Jude Hill, Camille Cottin, Riccardo Scamarcio and Amir El-Masry.

The mystery really worked well. I loved how the pieces of the story was revealed slowly through the interrogations of Poirot and his superstar observations. Even when you believe that Poirot was not firing on all cylinders because there was something supernatural going on, he comes through big time.

This movie is creepy, stylistic, and filled with suspense. I have very little to criticize here. I can see some people may think it is a little slow with some of the scenes, but not for me. For me, this was paced beautifully. There were amazing shots of Venice and individual shots that were constructed with purpose and artistic flair. A Haunting in Venice was an excellent film.

4.75 stars

A few years ago there was a 2014 horror movie that I hated called Ouija. Two years later there was a sequel to that terrible movie called Ouija: Origin of Evil and I went to it expecting another flaming pile of crap, but it turned out that the sequel was considerably more entertaining.

This is what I had hoped for with The Nun II. I disliked The Nun, a film from the Conjuring universe, very much as it made #5 on my year-end list of worst movies.

Sadly, though I do think this is better than the first one, The Nun II is most likely still on target for the 2023 worst movies list.

Sister Irene (Taissa Farmiga) returned to face off with the Valak, the evil nun, who is in search of an artifact that would give the demon more power.

There are so many dumb things that happen here and the story just does not work very well for me. I will admit there are some cool scenes, such as the newspaper stand. Unfortunately, those were in the trailers (as many of the best moments were) so the shock value was not there now.

I was really bored for the first part of the film. Things picked up a bit as it moved along, but there was nothing new or interesting to carry the story early.

Taissa Farmiga did a decent job and it was cool to see Storm Reid as Sister Irene’s ‘sidekick’ Debra, even though Debra had nothing to do.

This was not a film that I enjoyed much, though the film looked good. It was a step up from the garbage pile of the first film though.

1.8 stars

This was a weird and bizarre farce of a movie, which I enjoyed very much.

Bottoms is a teen sex comedy, in the veins of American Pie or Porky’s, but taking the genre in a new and over-the-top way. I literally wondered aloud about several of the details that I saw in this film that at times felt like a parody or a satire of the type of film.

PJ (Rachel Sennott) and Josie (Ayo Edebiri) were two young girls who came up with a plan to start a “fight club” at their high school in an attempt to sleep with their crushes from the cheerleading team.

The thing is the world that they exist in is so bizarre that it seems more like a dream. In fact, the first five-ten minutes, I kept waiting for a character to awaken. They did not though.

The football players always wore their football uniforms (including shoulder pads) even at school. Mr. G (Marshawn Lynch) was a teacher going through his own problems so he did not seem to care about anything else. The whole school and town culture treated quarterback Jeff (Nicholas Galitzine) as if he could do no wrong and he and the other football players ran the school.

There were so many of these little details that the entire story felt ridiculous, but in the good way. It definitely did not prevent this movie from doing silly things because common sense says you wouldn’t do it. There were even a couple of jokes that I cringed on because it felt as if these jokes were not appropriate. The film clearly did not believe that any topic was off limit and it approached it with some real guts.

Bottoms was very funny, but it did get fairly mean-spirited at times, which made it harder to laugh at some of the situations. As soon as I was able to get past the unrealistic aspects of the film, I was able to enjoy the warped nature more.

Directed by Emma Seligman, who directed 2020’s Shiva Baby (which also had Rachel Sennott), Bottoms played with the genre of teen sex comedies. There are a lot of the typical tropes in here, but everything is so weird that you are never sure how it is going to play out. Definitely an original film in the genre.

3.6 stars

Near the end of the movie, main character Mike said “It was a good little movie.”

Au contrare.

This is an adaptation of author R.L. Stine novel Zombie Town, which, much like his Goosebumps series of books, is meant to be targeted to young readers to give them an introduction to horror, so you can expect this film to be a younger skewing movie. Still, skewing young does not excuse a film from being so stupid.

Reclusive director/filmmaker Len Carver (Dan Aykroyd) lived in a town named for him, after disappearing and stopping creating zombie movies at his high point during the 70s. Today, Carver prepared a new film for release.

Mike (Marlon Kazadi) did not like zombie movies, but he did work at the theater that had the exclusive release. However, Mike was more interested in what the girl he had been crushing upon, Amy (Madi Monroe) was up to.

When Carver was dropping off the film the day before the big release, he was hit on the head and taken to the hospital. With the film in his possession, Mike texted Amy, who hurried over to the theater, asking to see it early. Though he was not sure if this was a good idea, Mike acquiesced and played the film for her. Instead of a film, there was just white light and some magical power that transformed the town into zombies.

Mike and Amy was not changed into zombies so they ran across the town in an attempt to figure out what was going on.

This had a ‘so bad, it’s okay’ feel to it as this conceivably could turn into one of those cult films that are shown like The Room or Samurai Cop. In fact, I feel as if this film would be extremely entertaining as a film shown by RiffTrax Live. It absolutely has that level of quality (or lack there of) to it.

It was intended to be funny, but, at best, I may have chuckled once or twice. Would a ten year old find it funnier than I did? Maybe, though I am not convinced of that.

Clearly, the budget on this was all for Dan Aykroyd and Chevy Chase because the zombie makeup was basically some dark eye liner and maybe some powder for the faces.

Some things happen that defy total explanation. For example, Carver never made the hospital, but the theater owner (Henry Czerny), who had been coming with him to the hospital and had changed into a zombie, actually drove the ambulance with Carver… and he drove it as a zombie. What?

Characters were inconsistent with their motives and their actions. Carver himself was a mess of contradictions, flip flopping all over the place.

I did think that Marlon Kazadi was okay as the lead. He did not have a lot of material that stretched his acting skills, but he did have a decent screen presence. He did not have much chemistry with Madi Monroe though and unfortunately, they were supposed to have plenty. Their relationship felt mean-spirited at times and seemed more like siblings than anything else.

I intended on watching this on Saturday after The Equalizer 3, but my plans changed and I decided to go today on Labor Day instead. It was a poor choice as this was an hour and a half that I won’t get back again. There are considerably better films to introduce young people to horror, including films from the oeuvre of R.L. Stine, like the Goosebumps films or the film by Guillermo Del Toro, Scary Stories to Tell in the Dark. Don’t waste your time with this one.

1 star

Denzel Washington returned for a third time as former government assassin Robert McCall, in the action franchise film, The Equalizer 3, directed by Antoine Fuqua. The movie was originally loosely based on a CBS TV program from the late 1980s.

While on a case on Italy, McCall is wounded and ends up in Altamonte, a remote coast side Italian town, where a kindly doctor Enzo (Remo Girone) was nursing him back to health. With his injury forcing him to slow down, McCall started to appreciate the quiet life in the small Italian village.

Unfortunately, trouble was still around as a pair of brothers in the local mafia the Camorra, Vincent and Marco Quaranta (Andrea Scarduzio and Andrea Dodero) are involved in drug smuggling with a terrorist organization to raise money for their plans. McCall tips off the CIA, specifically Emma Collins (Dakota Fanning), creating suspicion among the agent.

All McCall wanted is to be able to be left alone and to keep the people of Altamonte safe. Sadly, this would not be possible.

I really enjoyed this movie, as there was a lot to like about it. Let me start with the negatives though because there are not a lot of them. The biggest issue is that the villains of this movie, the Quaranta brothers and their assembled hoodlums never felt like threats to McCall even a little bit. They are one note villains that I never believed would cause any real trouble for McCall. Every time McCall stepped up to anyone, he destroyed the fools. Even when he was wounded, it was from someone that he did not expect (no spoilers, but that moment when he is shot feels tacked on and did not provide any closure.

Other than that, this movie was great. It felt like a classic Western where you had an aging gunslinger who found a place where he wanted to live out his life in peace, only to have the danger/threats still find him, forcing him back into action. There is a bit of Clint Eastwood’s Unforgiven here, though that is a better film.

Denzel Washington is great here, though this does not feel like the character that we see in the first two Equalizer movies as much. I really thought Washington was excellent as the former assassin who wanted to just not have to use his violent skills, but would take any actions to protect the people around him. Denzel Washington is always good, but he feels totally comfortable in the skin of Robert McCall. You can see how much fun Washington is having with this role.

He has a nice, easy chemistry with CIA agent Collins. There is a pretty easily guessed connection between these characters but they have some excellent scenes together.

There is a ton of action in the film, even though a lot of times it is hard to believe. Everything is filmed beautifully and there are many scenes that look fantastic. The action choreography really works throughout, and the visuals are stunningly brutal, including some real gory moments. The contradiction of the violence and the peaceful moments of tranquility in the Italian village serve as a wonderful counter-balance.

I enjoyed The Equalizer 3 quite a bit. I’d go as far as to say I liked it more than the first two, which blend together in my head. Yes, the story has some cartoony nature to it and the villains are not threats, but the work from Denzel Washington is top notch and the action is wild to see.

4 stars

Happy National Cinema Day!

When I discovered that my local Cinemark was participating in the National Cinema Day festivities, I decided that I should go to a movie this afternoon. You can hardly beat $4 dollar tickets to a new release movie.

I am so very happy that I only spent $4 per ticket for this movie. I may have overpaid.

The latest film from Liam Neeson is Retribution (which by the way, that title has no relevance to the story at all). I had originally thought this was going to be similar to the Keanu Reeves pic Speed, but Speed was a lot of fun. The only connection to Speed was there was a motor vehicle and there was a bomb.

When we get a Liam Neeson action flick, there is an understanding that the audience will have to suspend some disbelief in order to enjoy the movie, but this film had me rolling my eyes and wondering how dumb these characters (all of them) actually were.

Liam Neeson gets in his car to go to work one morning, but he has to take his troublesome children to school first. Unfortunately, he gets a call on a mysterious phone and the disguised voice on the other end tells him that there is a bomb beneath his seat triggered when he sat down and if he did not do exactly what he said, he would detonate it remotely.

The bomber then sent Liam driving around the city doing inane things and blowing up other vehicles.

This was so dumb. Worse than dumb, this was predictable. I figured out the face behind the scheme immediately and I spotted the supposedly smart trick in the film. It was painfully apparent.

I thought Liam Neeson was pretty poor in his performance. I have seen Liam Neeson in better (and even worse) action movies where he gave a solid performance. Unlike most of Neeson’s films, in this one, I felt his performance just did not rise above the material.

Liam Neeson’s kids were played by Jack Champion (who was Spider in Avatar and Avatar: The Way of Water and the kid on the bike in Avengers: Endgame. This film will not be anywhere near those in box office) and Lilly Aspell (young Diana in Wonder Woman & WW84). The kids were fine, but so much of the dialogue was so poorly written and cliched that they did not have a chance to make anything out of these roles.

Matthew Modine is the other well-known actor involved here as Liam Neeson’s best friend and boss.

This is one of those movies where the plot could be overcome in five minutes if the characters would just react in reasonable ways. I would never answer a strange cell phone that had ‘unknown caller’ listed. If Liam Neeson just ignored the phone, everything is wrecked. Why did Liam Neeson believe that the bomber could see what he was doing? He never once gave him any evidence of that. I was constantly thinking, “no way the bomber can see him.” That took me out of the little bit of tension that the film generated.

There were so many flaws in this movie, it felt as if people involved were just going through the motions in order to get paid. Good for them… but bad for me.

1.7 stars

I was not anxious to see this movie. Based on a true story, Gran Turismo is a video game that simulates the process of auto racing, and the film tells the story of some gamers who attempted to become actual race car drivers after mastering the game.

I am not a fan of auto racing in any form. I have not enjoyed very many movies on the topic either. Outside of Rush and Ford v. Ferrari, there are not many that I have even seen (I’m not counting the old Herbie movies because they all blend together).

So with low anticipation I went to see Gran Turismo today and it was okay.

The standout was clearly David Harbour, who played Jack Salter, the man with a dark past who was entrusted to determine which of the gamers would win the contest and then help that racer become the best they could be. Harbour is always great and he brings his typical strong performance to this movie. The character had some surface traits, but the big hidden piece to the character was fairly obvious and did not seem to really hit hard when revealed. However, Harbour was very fun and did a lot for this character that was not on the page.

Gamer to racer Jann Mardenborough (Archie Madekwe) was a teenage Gran Turismo player who won the Nissan motorsport division’s GT Academy, a competition to find the best sim player and turn him/her into a race driver. Mardenborough had some solid scenes and he was easy to watch. He was believable as the teen and he had some decent scenes, especially with Djimon Hounsou, who played Jann’s disapproving father.

However, the other big name actor in the film was Orlando Bloom, who played Danny Moore, who was a marketing executive at Nissan. When you cast an actor of the stature of Orlando Bloom, you should have something vital for him to do. Sadly, Orlando Bloom felt very wasted in this film and this role could have gone to anybody.

The racing scenes were all very well done and did a great job of building excitement and uncertainty of the race, highlighting the dangers of the sport.

The movie is a basic sports movie, with many of those types of clichés solidly in place. Jann is the typical underdog story, having to overcome the obstacles that the sport, the competition and fate throw into his path. It certainly has that structure of sports movies, but the execution of that structure is decent. The soundtrack was well constructed and added to the film.

Director Neill Blomkamp brings an enjoyable film that, while it has its problems. is a lot of fun to watch.

3.5 stars

What a wild ride.

Medusa Deluxe is a murder mystery set at a British competitive hairdressing contest. One contestant is found dead and scalped. The other contestants, models and lovers interact as the uncertainty of what happened washes over them.

The plot itself is not the most important aspect of this film. The flamboyant atmosphere and over-the-top characters dominate the screen.

The other true star of this film is the director, Thomas Hardiman, who made his directorial feature debut with this A24 film. His film was shot as it was a one-shot throughout. It clearly was not and I enjoyed picking out the hidden cuts, but it is a big swing to attempt to do this as your debut. Plus, it was done so well that if you did not know much about filmmaking, you could believe that they just followed the actors with the camera. It was smooth and beautifully constructed. This was a remarkable debut as a director.

The performances are all excellent. Some of the characters are strange, but every actor does an exceptional job. Standouts included Clare Perkins, who played Cleve, a hairdresser with a serious anger problem, Luke Pasqualino as Angel, the lover of the victim, and Harriet Webb as Kendra, another of the hairdressers.

There are some really strange things happen too as the movie progresses. There is a dance routine at the end of the film that is just amazing.

Now, the murder mystery does fade as the film goes. The story itself is a little weak and does not feel like the most important part of the film. However, the dialogue is spectacular, the characters are eccentric and bizarre, and the film’s technical aspects are just excellent. There are also some impressive stunts and a scene involving fire that is outstanding.

This is an original film with some of the most creative moments in it.

I rented this film on Vudu.

4.35 stars

The latest DC movie dropped this weekend as the superhero known as Blue Beetle made his big screen debut. I do like Jaime Reyes, the most recent version of the character of the Blue Beetle in the DC Comics.

I also liked the new Blue Beetle movie, though I did not love it. It was extremely watchable and worth the time.

This is basically the origin of Jaime Reyes (Xolo Maridueña) and how he came about having the Scarab, a powerful alien artifact that gives Jaime a dangerous weapon and armor. Kord Industries head Victoria Kord (Susan Sarandon) wanted to possess the Scarab as well and she had a plan to use it to create weapons for sale.

Xolo Maridueña was wonderfully cast as Jaime. Maridueña, one of the main stars of Netflix’s series Cobra Kai, has a charismatic presence and carries himself as a star. Some of the over-the-top acting in the third act was not the best from Maridueña, but it did not pull me away from the film.

Jaime’s family was a huge piece of the film, and brought some of the most emotional aspects of the story. Uncle Rudy was played by George Lopez. Rudy was distrustful of the government and was experimenting in his brother’s home. Alberto and Rocio (Damien Alcazar and Elpidia Carrillo), Jaime’s parents, his sister Milagro (Belissa Escobedo), and his grandmother Nana (Adriana Barraza) all lived together.

The idea behind this family is very much Latino and I did not relate as much to them as I might have. Some of the cheesiest aspects of the movie were centered around the family especially including some of the unexpected skills shown by Uncle Rudy and Nana. The movie required the audience to really extend the suspension of disbelief. It is something that you really have to get past in order to enjoy the movie. I was really not a fan of the character of Milagro at first, but I came around to her as the film went on. The family grew on me as the film went on and I was able to get past the strangeness.

The special effects are pretty good and the action was really fun. There were some times when I had a difficult time hearing what Jaime was saying, but that was the only drawback to these scenes.

I mentioned earlier about some emotional scenes and there were some very powerful ones and these very some of the best scenes of the movie. No spoilers to the content of these scnes, but you’ll know them when they come around.

The humor of the film was hit and miss. Again, as with several of the other criticisms I have levied with this movie, the humor was not something that stuck out as a major flaw. The criticisms I have of Blue Beetle were all just things that did not bother me that much.

Blue Beetle was a decent film that introduces us to a new super hero that is charming and fun to watch. It may not be the best comic book film ever, but it is an enjoyable one.

3.6 stars

Typically, movies that focus on pee, poop, puke and penis jokes are not my favorites. However, when a film has those jokes and it is funny, I can excuse that style of jokes.

Strays is not an example of that. I found little funny about this movie.

Cruel owner Doug (Will Forte) hated the little dog Reggie (Will Farrell) that he got to impress a girl. When the girl was gone, he would try to dump the dog in different locations, but Reggie always found his way back home. When Doug took him to the city and deserted him, Reggie met other stray dogs, Bug (Jamie Foxx), Maggie (Isla Fisher) and Hunter (Randall Park) who befriend Reggie.

There were a couple of potentially funny moments in the film, but all the one that were potentially funny were shown in the trailers. The rest of the film may have had a couple of chuckles, but nothing that were worthy of laughs.

I will also say that the voice acting was spot on for these characters, which one would expect from the talented crew doing this work. I also thought the relationships between the four strays were solid and developed well, providing some good moments of heart to he story.

It was just too crude in many instances and the crude humor was just not funny. Because of that, it felt to be too dull of a story and the unfunny bits were more corny and disappointing than anything else.

It was a short run time, yet I felt like I was ready for it to be done early on. There were some good character moments, but nothing that held any real depth to it. when the crude jokes did not hit, which was most of the time, the film had little else to fall back on.

2 stars

Today I went back to AMC in Dubuque for the first time since prior to the pandemic. AMC had a film that I had never seen advertised anywhere. It was a sci-fi story called The Pod Generation.

According to Rotten Tomatoes, “In a not-so-distant future, AI is all the rage and nature is becoming a distant memory. Tech giant Pegazus offers couples the opportunity to share pregnancy on a more equal footing via detachable artificial wombs, or pods. But at what cost? Rachel (Emilia Clarke) and Alvy (Chiwetel Ejiofor), a New York couple, are ready to take their relationship to the next level and start a family. Rachel’s work gives them a chance to fast-track to the top of the Pegazus waiting list. But Alvy, a botanist and devoted purist has doubts. Nonetheless, his love for Rachel prompts him to take a leap of faith. And so begins the wild ride to parenthood in this brave new world with all its twists, turns, and bumps along the way.“

Honestly, the sci-fi aspects of the film were very odd. The film felt very modern with the exception of this weird pregnancy thing.

I found this to be overlong. It was almost two hours and I think it needed to cut that down to about an hour and forty minutes or so. Some of the early scenes were dull at times. Then the ending came out of nowhere and it was just done. I’m not sure the main plotline was fully dealt with.

However, I loved Chiwetel Ejiofor in this. He was remarkably charming and relatable in every scene as he bonded with the pod. Without him, this would not have been an enjoyable film at all. Emilia Clarke was solid too. I liked how it played against type having her not immediately bond with the pod and seeing how other pregnant women, especially those who were having the natural way, bonded with their child. That was clearly lacking for Clarke and she played that confusion well.

I do think that the movie had some really big ideas with its themes, but I do not think that the film reached those goals at any point in the time. It feels like a film that could have been better with another run or two through the editing bay.

Still, Ejiofor is great and does have some good chemistry with Clarke. There are some funny moments and the film gets credit for trying something different.

2.7 stars

So this film turned out to be much different than I expected it to be.

Milton (Ben Kingsley) is an older man living alone, beginning to show signs of forgetting things that worries his daughter Denise (Zoe Winters). One day, a spaceship crashed landed in Milton’s backyard and he finds an alien on his back step. Taking the alien inside, Milton bonds with the silent spaceman despite some of his comments to other people in the town lead to Denise doubting whether Milton could take care of himself anymore.

There are some parts of the premise for this movie that made me iffy about it. Specifically, the choice for the alien, eventually named Jules, to be silent is always a challenge. With one character that is verbal and the other character that is non-verbal makes it difficult to connect. However, the film does a smart thing and gives Kingsley two verbal connections in the film in Jane Curtin and Harriet Sansom Harris, as the characters of Joyce and Sandy respectfully, to interact with.

Truthfully, this film is not about Jules. It is about the three human characters and the loneliness that they feel. Jules is just the catalyst of the plot to bring Milton, Joyce and Sandy into their own orbits and to examine their personal issues at a deeper level. Each of the three characters brought a different set of troubles that were very familiar to any person, especially those of an advancing age.

I absolutely loved Harriet Sansom Harris in this film. She was such a warm and loving person who seemed to find such a connection with Jules, something that she was missing in her life. Harris is a great actor and she had excellent chemistry with Ben Kingsley. Kingsley was also excellent here as a lot of his acting came with some specific non-verbal moments, with glances and looks that told more than just his words could. Jane Curtin had less to do in the story, but she did knock home what she got to do.

The relationships were the key, but the plot itself was not working near as well. In fact, a lot of the plot of the film seemed just in the way, in particular part of the story that involved a government agency. There was also a story beat involving cats that was simply weird.

So while the film does not come together very well, the strength of the ensemble really works. This is much more of a character piece than a sci-fi movie. There are some funny moments and some deeper than expected ideas. Though everything does not necessarily work well together and I may not have loved the ending, the strength of Kingsley, Harris and Curtin made me want to know what was to become of these characters and that is a success for a film.

3.4 stars