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Karate Kid: Legends (#692)

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I saw another film today with my son that promises to be a blockbuster. What it is is a darn good iteration of its predecessor lookalike from 1984, with a few wrinkles. KARATE KID: LEGENDS is the story of a young proficient kung fu-trained boy in Bejing who is taken by his physician mother to New York City to pursue a new life. Enrolled in a prestigious high school, he is basically friendless until he meets a young girl classmate who works with her father in their pizza shop. The father, in debt to some unsavory characters, wants to return to his boxing days to earn enough to pay off the debt and enlists Li to help him train. His first bout ends badly. In the predictable plot, and against his mother's wishes, Li decides to compete in the city's karate championship and reaches out to his sensei in China for help in training. The sensei in turn recruits a former champion, played by the original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio. The film is like renewing acquaintance with an old friend, ...
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Jane Austen Wrecked My Life (#691)

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The film I saw yesterday was a pleasant change of pace despite the fact that it was primarily in French with subtitles I couldn't read because of my deteriorating eyesight. But enough French came back so I was able to follow this romantic comedy. An attractive young girl is working in Paris at the famous Shakespeare book shop but is frustrated by her love life and everything else. She is invited, thanks to a friend, to attend the Jane Austen residency program in England and she jumps at the chance to change her life. But her life in the program isn't all that good and is complicated by a romantic interest in a fellow classmate. It gets even more complicated when her boyfriend from Paris arrives. The film is funny and fun and relatively lighthearted and enjoyable and very different from most of the movies produced today. The actors by and large looked good and performed well. 86% of critics and 76% of audiences and I gave Austen a thumbs up.  
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Tornado (#690)

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Because sometimes I don't read about a film before I see it, I was surprised to realize that it wasn't about a weather event, even though the winds were blowing hard over the desolate location  of the film. TORNADO, we learned late in the movie, is the name the young girl chose when she was viciously avenging the brutal murder of her father. The gang who murdered him is pursuing her through a barren landscape. While predominantly in English, other languages were spoken as well. I thought this was a strange movie, violent at times and difficult, for me, to comprehend. The followers were led by a brutal man, and they indiscriminately destroyed everything in their way, including burning a gypsy settlement where Tornado tried to hide at one point. It was interesting at times but basically dull and pointless. Critics gave it a 76% thumbs up and there were no audience ratings. I would give it a sideways thumb.
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Mission Impossible: The Final Reckoning (#689)

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As May comes to a close and another summer season of movies is about to start, I saw another film. I know I get carried away sometimes in my often cruel treatment of film stars, but I write what I think, and that's not going to change. I hope this was the last time I have to watch little Tommy Cruise do things that no one has the right to do--over and over.  MISSION IMPOSSIBLE: THE FINAL RECKONING is another film I felt I had seen before.  Little Tommy doing things with his shirt on or off that no one is his right mind would attempt, and you are seduced into believing it happened. And it doesn't just happen once; it continues throughout the entire 2 hours and 49 minutes. Once again little Tommy is called upon to save the world, this time from a thing called the Entity. And this action-filled, endless, exciting movie culminates in an extraordinary calisthenic scene involving two WWI vintage biplanes and little Tommy hanging on for dear life as he leaps from one plane to the oth...
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Friendship (#688)

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Yesterday, my theater complex was filled with patrons including many young kids. I was confident that my theater wouldn't be crowded. They were there to see the blockbusters: Mission Impossible, Lilo and Stitch, Thunderbolts, and Final Destination. I chose FRIENDSHIP, described on the theater's website as a comedy and some of the audience laughed at times. In my dotage, I must have lost my sense of humor because I saw nothing remotely funny about this film. I would describe it as weird, with a capital W. As near as I can figure the plot, a young man in suburbia delivers mail to a neighbor (the mailman had mistakenly delivered it to him) and instantly is attracted to him. I suspected it was going to turn into a film about homosexuals. But no, it turned into an agglomeration of meaningless scenes in a variety of settings, in which the star, Tim Robinson (known by one of my grandsons) behaves in a manic and worse manner.  I had already lost interest in this film so I honestly am u...
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