Old Man @ The Movies

I saw a movie yesterday that had absolutely no vulgar language; it had no sex or nudity; it was about very nice people doing normal, nice things.  It was another faith-based film, but underplayed and did not exploit or overdo the religious message it carried, and, you guessed it, it was based on a true story.  UNSUNG HERO is a film about an Australian family—pregnant wife, husband snd six children—who journey to the United States to find a new life because the husband, David Smallbone (yes, that's really his name) had a very successful music business and it collapsed.  They are virtually penniless when they arrive in Nashville, move into a furniture-free, modest home and struggle.  They are fortunate to find friends in church who appear to be the most generous people on earth.  David is weak and unsuccessful in generating a new career until his wife takes over and steers him into using his talented children as the basis of their comeback.  Yes, it is corny ...

If Boy didn't kill the whole world, he sure killed most of them in this film.  The body count was enormous; I stopped counting after the first 50, and he'd barely gotten started.  From what I was able to glean from this ridiculous movie or farce or sci/fi epic, a young boy, named Boy, for reasons unknown, watches as an evil woman (played by Famke Janssen whom I thought only appeared in movies starring Liam Neeson and who appears to be a world dominating dictator in this one) kills his entire family. He runs away and seemingly comes under the charge and tutelage of a shaman; as a killing machine, he seeks vengeance on the evil woman and seems not to care whom he kills on the way.  Lots of confusing flashbacks in BOY KILLS WORLD as in Challengers, and during his quest, he rediscovers his dead mother and sister both of whom I was sure I saw killed early on.  I neglected to mention that I think Boy was deaf and mute as a youth but seems to have outgrown these defects....

My daughter and I are tennis fans, and there aren't a lot of movies about tennis, which was why we went to see CHALLENGERS.  We should have stayed home and watched the matches from Madrid.  You may have to ask someone else what this movie was about.  I''m not sure I got it.  It featured three unsavory characters, all or whom were tennis players or former tennis players, and what we saw of tennis in action on screen were not very skillful players who seemed mostly concerned with the noise made when racket hit ball.  It was loud and louder.  Off the court, the two guys were once friends, and actually more than friends.  Kissing buddies actually.  The girl, played by someone named Zendaya, was a former player turned coach who marries one of them and has sex with both of them (not necessarily at the same time).  And the two guys play against one another in the present and in flashbacks and all that happens in the film is the present mingled with ...

HARD MILES is yet another movie based on a true life event.  This time the subject is long distance bicycling and a 742 mile journey from Denver to the Grand Canyon by a teacher and four students in a boys disciplinary school—essentially a prison for troubled teens.  A white-haired and elderly looking Matthew Modine does an excellent job portraying the shop teacher with heart and mobility problems but also a long distance biker who puts together a makeshift crew of unhappy boys to join him on his vacation trek.  They are accompanied  by another teacher or aide or administrator from the "school" in a van carrying food and supplies.  The boys are trouble, totally inexperienced in bike riding, riding bikes they constructed themselves in the teacher's shop, and if that weren't enough, the school/prison is in danger of being shut down because of funding and disciplinary problems.  It is a dramatic adventure, through some wonderful scenery including the Grand Can...

I got tired of vampire movies a long time ago and was hoping filmmakers got tired of them too, but that was too much to hope for.  And along came ABIGAIL, and this time, our vampire is a teenaged ballerina named, appropriately, Abigail.  She is the daughter of a big time criminal and is kidnapped by an inept gang who have to stay with her in a spooky isolated mansion overnight in order to collect $50 million for her return.  I wasn't sure whether this was intended as a farce, but it is and to me it wasn't a particularly good farce.  I should have known what to expect from the previews, when Abigail says to one of her female captors, "I'm really sorry about what's going to happen to you."  The producers must have paid extra to the blood bank because there is an enormous amount of blood shed and spewed, and I really mean spewed and mostly over others as Abigail pirouettes her little heart away.  And one after the other the gang members are put out of their mi...

I honestly don't know what possessed me to see this film.  For no understandable reason, I thought Sasquatch referred to an indigenous family  experience.  I quickly lost that thought as it opened and realized the film was about Bigfoots, those questionable mythical creatures that supposedly roam the forests of north America.  The Zellner brothers, writers and director of this ridiculous display deserve nothing less than to be shot—or worse, made to sit through this film 22 times. To begin with, there is no dialogue, no narration.  All you get are gutural grunts and other noises from actors clad in what appear to be rotten, smelly hairy costumes, even actors like Jessie Eisenberg, who I seem to remember playing Mark Zuckerberg in The Social Network, walking upright and otherwise cavorting in the forest for all four seasons.  What is more important is what possessed me to stay for the whole 1 1/2 hours while I watched these creatures cavort on screen—defecat...

Looking for an action/comedy thriller that doesn't involve super heroes, aliens and other creatures?  Try the movie I watched yesterday in a theater that had the largest audience I've experienced since before the pandemic—THE MINISTRY OF UNGENTLEMANLY WARFARE—and happily, it's only two hours long!  It's another film based on a true story, and according to something I read, the mission was recently unclassified by the British. Directed by the sometimes interesting Guy Ritchie (onetime husband of Madonna) and starring Henry Cavil (one of many portrayers of Superman) and Alan Ritchson (the portrayer of Reacher on Netflix), it is the amazing story of the first operation conducted by a group of unconventional warriors using totally unconventional methods, created by Winston Churchill to wreak havoc on a Nazi base that was the main supplier of materials to the German submarines which dominated the war in the Atlantic—the mission that changed the course of WWII and the way war...

Because I have been expounding my theory about the upcoming presidential election to anyone crazy enough to listen to me, (my theory being that no matter who wins the election, there is going to be a civil war in this country), I was profoundly interested in the movie I saw today.  Its premise and point of view are cloudy because there is no explanation for the "war," what it's about, why it started and who are the players.  Initially, the president speaking to the nation talks about the resurrectionists (is that a valid word?) in Texas and California, and the ones in Florida trying to persuade the Carolinas to join the rebellion, but later a newscaster reports on the Russians invading Washington, DC, and demanding total surrender at the White House. That is, if I was hearing things correctly.  Perhaps it was the rebels in the White House.  The movie, well directed and remarkably well and realistically filmed, does not appear to have any political bent or motivation....

To paraphrase a once popular song that is not familiar to most of you, "it seems to me I've seen this film before...." Once again, I think, it is based on a true story, and is yet another iteration of the downtrodden sports figures overcoming all obstacles and coming out on top.  This one isn't about football, basketball, tennis, soccer or cross country running; it is about golf.  Set at the close of WWII, THE LONG GAME, starring only one recognizable star—Dennis Quaid—is about a young veteran, J.B. Pena, and his wife, who move to a small town in Texas where he has been hired as superintendent of schools. A golf nut, the first thing on his agenda is to apply for membership in the town's exclusive golf club, and he is rejected, obviously because he is Mexican-American.  He subsequently joins forces with a town resident, his former commanding officer and fellow golfer (Quaid) to create a high school golf team comprised of young Mexican-American students who work at ...

I saw MONKEY MAN today under unusual circumstances which I may or may not reveal at a future date.  It stars and is directed by Dev Patel, an actor of Indian descent whom I have seen before in Slumdog Millionaire and other films.  I think he is a first class actor, but he has really changed his image in this one from a charmer to a overly aggressive purveyor of mayhem. This film is about revenge and retribution and skillfully mixes such disparate elements as politics, religion, mysticism, fables and intense violence in surreal, psychedelic, symbolic and allegorical surroundings.  If this sounds like something more than you can handle, I hasten to add, it’s not.  But it is unique, and I came away wondering if I admired it or liked it and at this writing, I’m still not sure.  Patel plays an impoverished young man with a traumatic childhood who is a competitor in what appears to be an illegal, underground arena for no-holds-barred fights, wears a gorilla mask and i...

I didn’t think they made movies like this any more.  Leave it to the British filmmakers to find a bizarre true story like this and turn it into an absolutely delightful comedy/drama/mystery who-done-it that makes you cry one minute and laugh the next.  And the cast is perfect, starting with the talented Olivia Colman as Edith and the equally talented Irish actress Jessie Buckley (whom I don’t remember seeing before) as Rose.  They are next door neighbors in a tiny seaside town in England where Edith is s spinster living in a conservative household with her sickly mother and demanding father, and Rose is a high spirited and attractive young Irish immigrant widow with a foul mouth and a cute young daughter.  The heart of the story revolves around terribly obscene letters sent to Edith’s household and many others in the community.  The guilty letter sender appears to be Rose and she is jailed pending trial by a narrow-minded chief constable.  A female constabl...

Wait a minute. Is this deja vu all over again? Didn’t I see this movie a week or two ago?  Well, they were pretty close. Immaculate took place in s countryside convent in Italy and featured an attractive novitiate who gives birth to a baby under bizarre circumstances and with horrible consequences.  THE FIRST OMEN takes place in an orphanage in Rome and features an attractive novitiate (who speaks more and better Italian than her film predecessor, but doesn’t scream as convincingly) who gives birth to a baby under equally bizarre circumstances and with unresolved or confused consequences.  Both suggest that the infant is either a savior or the evil incarnate.  Perhaps the filmmakers expect the audience to decide which.  Omen was far more complicated, and you couldn’t tell the good clergy from the bad. In Immaculate the girl lived in the convent; in Omen, she has an apartment and has a swinging fellow novitiate who takes her out on the town before they take their...

From my reclining seat in the local theater, I did not see a lot of saints IN THE LAND OF SAINTS AND SINNERS, but I did see many sinners, one of whom was star Liam Neeson, and another, the female lead and sinner, whose mother should have used something more powerful than soap to wash out her mouth.  It was another dark Irish tale, with Neeson's brogue as thick as mud.  And his role was the antithesis of his typical ones as a hero, and I must confess, it was a far better film than those he’s starred in in recent years, and he’s far better too.  Neeson plays Finbar, a violent hit man who wants to get out of the business and lead a normal life, and he appears to be succeeding.  But suddenly, the tranquility of his little village is shaken by the arrival of Irish terrorists, led by Miss Toilet Mouth (played very well by Irish actress Kerry Condon), embroiled in the troubles plaguing the whole country.  The predominantly Irish cast is uniformly good, and I particular...

On Easter Sunday, we had a choice of three films—two were what I think are called biopics, about celebrities Gene Wilder and William Shatner.  Neither of us wanted to see them, so we took the third choice and were very happy we did, because ACCIDENTAL TEXAN was a good, old-fashion action feel-good comedy/drama that was perfect for the day.  It starred an actor you don’t see very often.  In fact, the only movie I ever remember seeing him in (though he may have been in many more) was Sideways, an offbeat comedy/drama about two men which took place in California's wine country.  The actor in Texan who teamed with Paul Giamatti in that one was Thomas Hayden Church, and he is a winner in this one too.  We are introduced in the beginning to a young Harvard dropout student who is starring in his first big movie role being filmed in New Orleans, and in his first scene, he blows it and gets fired.  He is driving back to L.A. and his car breaks down in the middle of ...

My daughter proved once again that she has better taste than I do when it comes to choosing movies to see.  UPROAR, is what I might call a sleeper because it is totally unheralded and sneaked into the local “arts” theater.  It was an excellent and delightful movie from New Zealand which supposedly depicted a true event of which I was totally unaware. a violent public reaction about racism and apartheid started and fueled by a visit of the South African rugby team to play in matches around the country.  The film focused on an overweight young man of mixed racial makeup who, up to then, had no interest in politics or anything else and was content to let things be and becomes a symbol of the demands for racial equality.  It is funny and poignant and has a real story to tell (and it is told very well).  Good acting, a fine story even if somewhat predictable. The only actor whose name I recognized was Minnie Driver as the boy’s mother (even though I did not recognize...

I visited my daughter in Virginia for the Easter weekend, and saw three movies—one alone and two with her.  I should have restrained myself and gone only with her because the movie I saw alone was, to put it mildly, ridiculous. Why don’t they let the Japanese make all the Godzilla movies because they seem to know what to do with them.  This American version, GODZILLA x KONG: THE NEW EMPIRE, had a clumsy, inept monster Godzilla, stumbling through Rome knocking down some walls of the Colosseum and then appearing in Egypt and knocking down one or more of the pyramids at Giza. That was more than I could bear.  Then they depicted Kong as a really old monster gorilla, with white beard and deeply lined face. If those two weren’t bad enough, they introduced what I can only believe was a very young future Kong, a nasty little monkey that had no redeeming characteristics.  And the plot?  What plot?  The two former adversaries clashed and knocked down everything in si...