Old Man @ The Movies

Yeah.  My movie choice for yesterday seems desperate, but there’s one thing you can always say about films made in Bollywood.  Despite the language problem and the sometimes difficult to read captions, you can manage to figure out what’s going on because they're not too complex. I saw an interesting one yesterday even though it was about 2 1/2 hours long.  This one was entitled FIGHTER snd it was the Indian version of Top Gun, with the hero even more outrageous, insubordinate  and courageous than Tom Cruise.  It is about the Indian Air Force snd their mission to fight rebel terroristic activists led by an evil guy easily identified by his deep voice. It is focused on a special team assigned to this mission and led by the Indian Tom Cruise Patty (also called Shami by his family) who is romantically involved with another team member.  It is a thriller snd features some good air fights and, as we have come to expect, group dance sequences in the midst of all the goings-on.  This one h

You know what a B movie is-- traditionally, a low budget film  particularly in the Golden Age of Hollywood which generally was the second film in a double feature and lacks quality and meaning and everything else. In other words, a stinker! Today I saw FOUNDERS DAY, a movie I would rank as a C movie. When I say rank, that’s what this movie is.  It is the saga of a lousy small town, populated by what appears to be about 35 rotten people, portrayed by awful actors who shouldn’t be allowed to join the union. The wonderful story line? They are in the midst of a  mayoral election, with incumbent, an absolutely dreadful egotistical woman running for re-election. It’s also the time of this crummy town’s annual celebration to salute the founder whoever that might have been. The high school students are gross and undisciplined. They have sex on the teacher’s desk when he leaves the room. In the midst of all, a grotesque serial killer appears, killing everyone in sight.  Leading the investigatio

It sounded interesting, and the premise was intriguing for a movie. Taking place on an international space station, two crews of astronauts from Russia and the United States together enjoying one another’s company when they all view a massive world war breaking out on Earth.  Each crew is secretly ordered to take control of the space station. Wow! With a premise like that, how could it miss?  Oops!  It did.  Life aboard the space station was handled well photographically with weightlessness and all that jazz.  But nothing really happens; there is no tension; you can't tell the good guys from the bad.  And it’s just plain boring snd you just don’t care what happens, if anything does.  And the actors and actresses (unknown to me) tried hard but failed.  As one critic wrote, “In space, no one can hear you yawn.”  I was surprised that 64% of critics gave it a thumbs up👍. Audiences were more discriminating with only a 43% thumbs up👍.  Prospects for this weekend at the movies are dim,

I’m glad I searched more diligently for my movie choice over the weekend because the website showed that the length of one of the films I was considering was over 3 hours and I did not want to be sitting that long again. Subsequent looks indicated it was less than 2 hours, so I saw FREUD’S LAST SESSION and was very glad I did. This film depicts an imaginary meeting between Sigmund Freud and a professor at Oxford, C.S. Lewis, who gained fame later as an author of such well known works as The Chronicle of NARNIA.  Sickly Freud, who has cancer of the mouth, is angry at Lewis who allegedly satirized Freud in a book, and they engage in an intriguing dialogue on love, sex, philosophy and the existence of God.  The discussion takes place in Freud’s home in London and occurs on the day Winston Churchill declares war on Germany at the start of World War II.  Anthony Hopkins plays Freud and and Matthew Goode was Lewis and both were excellent. Full of flashbacks of both men’s early life, and furt

Before I went to see MEAN GIRLS,  I did some research to test my memory and to discern whether I had seen the first iteration, which I learned had been released some 20 years ago. I did not but I think I would have preferred to have seen the first version but I don’t think I missed much.  I also don’t think Tina Fey, the screenwriter, changed anything significant.  Except someone added a lot of bad songs and dancing, none of which added to my enjoyment of the latest effort.  Tina was so desperate that she reprised her role as a math teacher and drafted poor Tim Meadows to play the principal again.  This film was largely populated by a bunch of unknown-to-me actors and actresses without much ability or spunk. For those of you who care, this is a high school movie about high school antics. The innocent transfer student who has been home schooled while living with her parents in Kenya hasn’t a clue on how to behave amidst the anti-social behavior demonstrated by her classmates.  She makes

Some of the typical action/thriller movies go a little too far for me.  THE BEEKEEPER, starring Jason Statham, also went too far, but for some unfathomable reason, I actually liked it and was upset when it was interrupted by a power outage in the whole multiplex.  Fortunately, it was fixed quickly, and the mayhem resumed, unchecked.  Statham is an actual beekeeper in a remote area and his neighbor is a sweet woman whom he describes as the first person to ever take care of him.  Like me, she was only semi-computer savvy, and everything is stolen from her when she reports a problem with the computer and in dismay, she kills herself.  Jason reverts to his previous occupation as the enforcer, called Beekeeper, for a super secret, unsupervised government program which is turned to when all else fails.  He wants to avenge her death by wiping out the organization that conned her, and it has countless levels reaching to the ultimate financial source of all the companies, the president of the U

I have to be more discriminating regarding the movies I go to see, even if I see most of them free.  Take NIGHT SWIM, for example, which I viewed today.  It is billed as a horror film; what it really is, is a horrible film that wandered all over the place looking for a comprehendible plot unsuccessfully.  If I try to explain it, you’ll get just as mystified as I was.  In short, a family, consisting of husband, wife and two teenaged kids, moves to a new area looking for a place to settle down.  It appears that the husband is a major league baseball player either recovering from an injury or suffering from MS.  They settle on a funny-looking house with a swimming pool that is neglected and has gone to pot, and they resurrect the pool and swim and play in it a lot, including the pool perennial game "Marco Polo." The pool is unusual because it is fed by a natural spring, and the waters seem to have magical powers because the husband is getting better every day.  Incidentally, I w

I had more of a passing interest in auto racing because at two different times in my career I was involved in auto racing—in the Bahamas during annual Speed Weeks which pitted top sports car drivers from all over the world and in Florida where the company Nascar racing team, featuring the famous “King" Richard Petty,  reported to me.  This one, FERRARI, presumably based on a true story is about ex-Formula 1 driver Enzo Ferrari, who at this point is an entrepreneur running a company with his wealthy wife.  They manufacture luxury autos which are promoted by racing.  Enzo is played by Adam Driver (he’s just okay) and his wife is Penelope Cruz who is excellent..  He also has a mistress.  Mourning their son, the Ferrari’s are in constant conflict as the company is going downhill because they are over-extended.  There are, naturally, endless scenes of car racing accompanied by relevant noise, and I fell asleep often during the film. I didn’t find it all that exciting or dramatic.  72%

I think the movie I saw yesterday might be described as a romantic comedy by the newest generation and the most current “hot” directors. It bore no relationship to romantic comedies of my era, which starred actors like Katherine Hepburn and Cary Grant, or even Julia Roberts and Hugh Grant.  This one was very silly, very raunchy and very predictable with language to match.  Two very attractive young people (Bea and Ben, played by folks I never saw before) meet and are instantly very close for an evening.  A statement not meant to be serious and not meant to be heard by Bea cools the relationship just as quickly.  But as fate would have it, they are both invited to a destination wedding in Australia (Bea's sister is marrying another woman) and parents and everyone else are trying to rekindle these made-for-each-other folks.  They figure the best way to deal with this is to pretend they have rekindled.  There are wonderful views of Sydney, its memorable harbor and opera house and Bond

2024 has not started off so well as far as movies are concerned. At least, not for me. I went to see THE COLOR PURPLE yesterday, with absolutely no recollection of its previous version. I was not only not impressed; I was bored and left after about an hour. Despite the involvement and talents of Oprah Winfrey, Stephen Spielberg and Quincy Jones, I thought it was dull and wandered aimlessly and featured an agglomeration of lively but inappropriate dancing (as in movies from Bollywood) and equally inappropriate singing. Perhaps I am over-movied! It seems to be a story of a terribly mistreated girl (woman) who moves from one unfortunate situation to another, with no escape in sight.  That’s as much of the movie I stayed for. And, as usual, I am completely at odds with critics and audiences who gave Purple 87% and 95% thumbs ups respectively.  Sorry about that.

To celebrate my 500th review, I thought I’d go back in time and review how and when they started.  My first review was written on May 29, 2015, when I was only 86 years old.  It was written for my children to prove I was doing something more than feeling sorry for myself after my wife died  The movie was San Andreas, and the review was three typewritten lines.  “Saw San Andreas today.  It wasn’t bad - lots of action.  Glad I didn’t see it as a 3D version.  I wouldn’t have been able to dodge all the buildings falling.”  Three line reviews continued until October 16 when I saw two movies in one week and wrote 10 lines.  They were two movies with all-black casts—Birth of a Nation  and Queen of Katwa.  I think by then a couple of my grandchildren were added to the mailing list.  It wasn’t until February 7, 2016 that my reviews became longer and I reviewed two movies in one review—Fences and Hidden Figures and from then on, like Topsy numbers of films grew and numbers of the mailing list as

I am sorry to report that my first review in the new year and my 500th one is not about one of my all-time favorite movies. And in my humble opinion does not deserve any laudatory praise; but the critics and most audiences felt it was very good.  Pure and simple, POOR THINGS is pornography on the big screen. Produced by Emma Stone, who also stars in it, the film follows the life of Bella, a suicide brought back to being by having her brain replaced by her new born baby’s, the procedure being performed by a badly facially scarred and deformed Dr. Baxter, played by a totally unrecognizable Willam Dafoe. As Bella, who calls the doctor “God”, is developing, she totters and speaks like a baby, and Emma does a good job with this until she discovers sex and runs off with an equally unrecognizable roué, played wonderfully by Mark Ruffalo, despite being being engaged to be married to Max, a medical student working for Dr. Baxter to chronicle Bella’s  growth.  She tires of the roué and begins wo

Some months ago I read a book I really enjoyed and recommended to others and was excited when I learned it was going to be made into a movie.  Directed by George Clooney, THE BOYS IN THE BOAT film, while not as good as the book, was a very good movie, although one of my grandsons described it as “okay.”  Starring no one I had ever seen or heard of except for Joel Edgerton as the coach, it is an inspirational sports story based on a true one in the tradition of Chariots of Fire and other films which trace success stories from the brink of failure.  It is poignant and funny and exciting and even includes a tender romance which does not deter or mar the story in any way.  This story concerns a bunch of young, destitute students at the University of Washington during the depression whose only way to stay in school is to compete for a place on the junior varsity 8-man shell coached by a legendary man.  Rowing is a back-breaking, arduous sport in which I briefly participated when my football