Old Man @ The Movies

The movie I saw today was described by its producers as a comedy, fantasy, adventure, and further depicted as supernatural, action/violence.  To me it was the attempted resurrection of a long ago film that I long ago mostly forgot and brings back to the screen four actors from the original—Bill Murray, Dan Ackroyd, Ernie Hudson, and Annie Potts.  Why didn’t they bring back the rest? I know why not Harold Ramis: He’s dead.  But how about Sigourney Weaver and Rick Moranis.  I’ll bet when they read the script, they said, "forget about it." What I remember about the original was that it was lighthearted and funny.  GHOSTBUSTERS: FROZEN EMPIRE is an embarrassingly awful movie.  Silly, rambling, dismal plot and lots of noise and other distractions.  I’m rambling because I don’t know what else to write about this one.  The oldsters weren’t treated well.  Dan Ackroyd is supposedly a learned scientist.  He speaks in psycho-babble; and all Bill Mu...

What a surprise! Not only was the theater two-thirds full on a Sunday afternoon at 12:50, I was able to see, understand, and comprehend everything about the movie.  It was not a sci-fi, fantasy, horror or otherwise incomprehensible (to me) movie; it wasn’t even a romantic frolic. It wasn’t a mystery or a thriller or an action-packed one either. It was a straight drama, albeit not your everyday subject matter. This is the story of a late night TV host, Jack Delroy, who is trying to beat Johnny Carson in the ratings. In the beginning, he was on the rise in ratings and received a five year contract with another network.  His beloved wife contracts cancer and dies, and he’s starting to go downhill. He and his staff plan a Halloween special designed to bring him and his world back on track to success.  His guests are a psychic, a cynical doubter of psychic phenomena and the like, who used to be a famous illusionist, and a parapsychologist with a teenaged patient who presumably...

Do you know how to spot a horror film in previews?  The screen is dark, there is silence and then loud music snd louder discordant sounds slam your ears, punctuated by screams. IMMACULATE was a horror film, and i should have been more discriminating when I saw the title.  I really should have known what was coming.  I thought the movie was blasphemous and sacrilegious and yet another nun-basher.  This ridiculous film stars Sydney Sweeney, whom critics describe as a superstar and whom I saw recently in a very silly romantic comedy, as a novice American nun about to take her vows in a remote, picturesque convent in Italy that purportedly takes care of aging and sick nuns, caring for them in their final days.  In what I believe is an unprecedented situation, the convent is not run by nuns, but by an older priest or bishop and a young handsome and seemingly helpful and kindly younger man.  Things quickly go to pot when something bizarre happens to Sweeney, and ...

It’s difficult for me to say much about LOVE LIES BLEEDING, because there wasn’t much to say about it, and as far as I’m concerned, the less said, the better.  There’s not s great deal of love, except between Lou, who works in a fitness center, and Jackie, who is passing through on her way to Las Vegas to compete in body building contests.  In case you’re interested, both Lou and Jackie are female.  Lou is the daughter of Lou, Sr., portrayed by Ed Harris who is of the criminal persuasion.  There is a lot of blood, though in no way connected to love, and Jackie is the primary bloodletter.  Both women get into terrible trouble, and Lou’s job enables her to be very good at dragging dead bodies around. I have admired Ed Harris ever since I saw him in The Right Stuff.  He looks awful (I hope it was only a very good makeup job), and he should be more discriminating with the roles he picks.  I noted that Rose Glass is listed as writer and director, and I sinc...

I goofed big time, and two of you called my attention to it.  In my review of Knox Goes Away, I credited Bill Murray with a fine job as director and star.  The only problem is he did neither!  The star and director was in reality Michael Keaton, whom I dislike as much as I dislike Bill Murray so I guess no serious harm is done.  And one of the two, who happens to be my son who designed and updates the OLD MAN @ THE MOVIES blog also pointed out that I was numbering my reviews incorrectly (my math skills are as faulty as my recognition powers).  With those sins out of the way I can report on the film I saw today (my third in three days) which was okay, no more than that. Another based-on-a-true-story. ARTHUR THE KING is the improbable and hard-to-believe story of a guy, Michael, played by Mark Wahlberg, obsessed with winning a grueling four-person-team event known as the Adventure Racing World Championship, which he has entered for years but never won.  He en...

To celebrate St. Patrick’s Day I went to a movie.  And for two days in a row I enjoyed the show.  I can’t really describe my emotion as enjoyment, because ONE LIFE was a very sad, very poignant film, based on a true story yet again, about a young British stockbroker in the late 1930s, who leaves his job and goes to Prague because he is distraught over the plight of starving Czech children, living with the threat of a Nazi invasion.  The movie begins with scenes of Anthony Hopkins wandering aimlessly and dodderingly around his obviously expensive country house with swimming  pool in England, and I began to question, as the plot developed, whether the producers were just being nice to Hopkins and letting him play the extraneous role of doddering old man who added nothing to the plot.  Fortunately, things were clarified and it turns out that he is the older version of the stockbroker, Nicholas Winton, who ended up with his team rescuing 669 children and bringing th...

Hollywood, in its infinite wisdom, released five new films this weekend.  I plan to see three more and don’t have high hopes for enjoyment.  But, to my surprise,  I thought the first one was quite good and unusual.  For one, it starred and was directed by an actor I never really liked—Michael Keaton.  I apologize to him; he did an excellent job in both roles. And though the film was shot in color, the colors were so muted that it mostly appeared as though it was shot in black and white. KNOX GOES AWAY is a story about John Knox, a contract killer who is told by a specialist that he is suffering from a type of fast moving dementia and that his life expectancy can be measured in weeks and not many of them.  From then on, he explains his actions by saying he is going away.  Thus, as he goes about his remaining days, he experiences memory losses and other related happenings.  His son, from whom he’s been estranged for many years, unexpectedly arrives ...

I often wonder where the people who create movies like IMAGINARY get their funding.  I sincerely hope it’s from friends and relatives rather than banks and investors, who would surely feel victims of fraud after seeing the finished product.  This is yet another horror movie that isn’t the slightest bit scary and whose plot, dialogue and acting leave a great deal to be desired.  A woman returns with her new family (husband and two stepdaughters) to the home she grew up in.  The younger pre-teen daughter Alice finds a toy bear in the basement and it becomes her imaginary friend, pushing her to ever weirder behavior.  And it goes downhill from there, details of which I will spare you.  I award it an avid thumbs down, while 52% of audiences and 28% of critics pointed their thumbs upward. 

I apologize in advance for the words I write about this movie.  Thanks to my failing eyesight and worsening hearing problem, coupled with a movie that was filmed in dark places mostly, had difficult to read subtitles and half of the dialogue in Italian, I think I probably missed a lot of important information during its two and a half hour duration.  Despite all that, I thought CABRINI was a very good biopic, or docudrama or based-on-a-true-story (or whatever they want to call it). It is obviously the story of Francesca Cabrini, an Italian-born nun who is charged by the pope to go to America and help the poor children and immigrants.  Mother Cabrini and the few nuns who accompany her arrive in New York City to find the Italian immigrant population living in the ghetto-like community of Five Points, hated and vilified by everyone, including other immigrant minorities.  Cursed as “dago,” ”wop“ and worse, she gets no support from the Archbishop and even less from her fe...

The movie I saw in the screening room of a suburban New York City theater seated only about 20 in luxurious reclining chairs, and there were about 10 people in attendance.  In German, with reasonably readable subtitles, THE TEACHERS’ LOUNGE was a well acted, well done, well constructed movie which was offered as a mystery and a thriller, and I guess it could have passed as either or both.  It focuses on Carla, a new teacher in an upscale elementary school who teaches math and coaches sports teams and  who appears to have a good disciplinary hold on her classroom.  There are some random thefts, and the guilty party appears to be a student in her math class.  Carla doesn’t believe he is guilty and devises a plan to catch the real thief in the act.  Her plan succeeds and opens the door to classroom disruption, parental animosity and teacher rivalry.  Carla is in a heck of a mess and the film tries to resolve her problem but I’m not sure if it works, and t...

I don’t remember seeing a Japanese film with the exception of the Godzilla variety, so I had no idea what to expect when I went to see PERFECT DAYS.  What I was treated to was a warm, poignant, wonderfully directed and performed movie about a middle aged man, Hirayama, whom we watch as he wakes up in the morning, brushes his teeth, dresses and leaves his dwelling place and, after getting a beverage in a vending machine, gets in his car snd goes to work—cleaning toilets in public restrooms all around Tokyo.  He wears coveralls with the words The Tokyo Toilet on the back, in English.  And we watch this identical scenario many times during the film.  And for me it worked, and I enjoyed virtually every minute of it.  This is the story of a gentle man, totally content in his life and enjoying interaction with some people and taking pictures of trees with his camera (not a cellphone).  He has an unscrupulous but likable co-worker who does everything to avoid work...

I welcomed March by going to a movie I knew I didn’t want to see and knew I wouldn’t understand or appreciate.  And I was right.  I honestly don’t know if I saw Dune, Part 1, but I recognized none of the characters and had no regrets.  This is a movie for people who read the book or cared about Part 1, and I am not guilty of either.  I suspect this is a saga of someone looking for revenge or war and I was unable to differentiate whether this was supposed to occur in the past or the future since a lot of the action was primitive, but there were aircraft of some kind involved.  I neither recommend for or against DUNE, PART 2.  I sat through almost all of the nearly 3 hour sci-fi action film bored and chilled.  The theater must have turned on the air-conditioning because the movie took place mostly in the desert.  The rest of the world of critics and audiences gave it a thumbs up—94% and 95% respectively.