Old Man @ The Movies

I made a decision after going to see FURIOSA and leaving the theater before the film ended.  I'm just too old and disinterested to waste time seeing these action-filled Marvel comic superheroes and their ludicrous exploits that I honestly don't understand.  Furiosa, I suspect, was intended to capitalize on the successful franchise introduced in 1979 and starred Mel Gibson.  I also suspect that no one in the audiences today were even born when the original was in theaters.  This one, like the others, looks like it takes place in Australia and is sometime well in the future and depicts a dystopian world (I had to look up the definition of dystopian to be sure it meant what I wanted it to).  And I can't tell you much more than that.  It is a world filled with awful biker people, led by a man with the inappropriate name of Dementus.  A young girl, Furiosa, leaves her peaceful home and is abducted by the big D.  This is a movie filled with very loud noises and growling motorcycl

This past weekend I has the pleasure of seeing a very good movie with my daughters.  They invariably pick the best movies for us to see together.  This one was another based on a true story, and for a change, in the epilogue to the film, the real life main character of the film actually vouched for its authenticity.  The is the inspiring and often painfully tragic story of a brilliant young Chinese boy, Ming Wang, caught in the horrors of the Chinese cultural revolution, who against all odds travels to America and receives degrees from Harvard and MIT and becomes a renown eye surgeon and who, with his American colleague, creates a procedure which restores sight to s blind person.  This amazing story is very well presented and skillfully acted, with the only recognizable actor, Greg Kinnear, who portrays Dr. Wang's colleague.  It depicts China in a very poor light because of the harshness of the revolutionary movement and the hardships inflicted on the population.  A nun brings a yo

I like and admire John Krasinski as a comedian (The Office), an actor and more recently as a writer/director of The Quiet Place. He appears to be a nice and talented man.  But I'm not quite sure what he was trying to do with the film I saw yesterday—IF.  Did he make this part live actors, part animated creature movie for children or for adults or did he hope to appeal to both?  Based on my experience in the theater yesterday, he missed the boat.  The only other people in the theater with me were a father and his young son, and they talked continually and loudly throughout the movie which suggests that neither was interested in what was going on on the screen.  I would describe If as a fantasy, a light-hearted, colorful film inhabited by a star-studded cast of actors (Krasinski, Emily Blunt, Matt Damon, Sam Rockwell, and Maya Rudolph, among others) and some very cute computer-generated lovable beings who were the real stars of the movie.  I think most of the actors did voice-overs o

I should be more observant.  I did recognize from the previews that I was in the theater that seems to be reserved for horror films.  And I didn't really notice that the title of the movie was a little unusual, i.e., THE STRANGERS; CHAPTER 1, because I didn't really believe that the filmmakers would blatantly announce there would be more chapters.  But they did because at the end of the film, the words "to be continued" rolled across the screen.  How dare they?!! This is the story of a nice young couple making an extended road trip, and they stop in a tiny offbeat village to eat.  There's a strange group in the restaurant and when our couple leaves, they find their car won't start. Conveniently, one of the others in the restaurant owns a car repair shop, examines things and tells them he needs to order a part from another town which he can't do until the morning.  There's no hotel in town but a waitress offers to drive them to a cottage available for t

Too often Hollywood believes in the statement, more is better, and what resultsis more horror films, more sequels. more franchises, more super heroes and King Kongs and Godzillas, etc., etc.  I happen to be a simian lover, starting way back to Tarzan movies and Cheetah, his pet chimpanzee, which is why I went to see KINGDOM OF THE PLANET OF THE APES.  Believe it or not, I actually persuaded my bride (we were on our honeymoon in Spain thanks to her job as a flight attendant with Pan American) to visit the Barcelona zoo where we viewed the world's only albino gorilla in captivity.  He was just an infant then.  I subsequently revisited the gorilla some 50 years later while on a business trip.  He was huge, still white, in his own building.  I hasten to add, he did not remember me. Back to the movie.  I enjoyed the original Planet films, including the ones where apes were trying to take over the world.  They were civilized, spoke and rode horseback.  But this one was one too many.  Alt

I saw a second film this weekend with a dear friend in suburban New York in a theater she discovered in another suburban town.  Obviously a theater that does not appear to feature conventional films since neither Wildcat nor THE OLD OAK were ever previewed in my theater at home.  This one I would describe as an old fashioned classical melodrama, well acted, well directed and well photographed.  It takes place in Northern England in a once thriving mining town that has fallen on hard times as the mines have closed.  The Old Oak is the town tavern owned and operated by a nice guy named T.J.  It appears to be the last vestige of social intercourse in the town.  A family of impoverished Syrian refugees move into town and a friendly but unlikely relationship develops between TJ and a young Syrian woman named Tara.  The equally impoverished townspeople begin to resent the immigrants, and there is an increasingly prevalent and sometimes violent situation developing.  They don't make movie

I tried to see Star Wars, Ep 1, The Phantom Menace, but after s late start because of a power glitch in the theater and within 40 minutes two more power glitches, I concluded I was not meant to see that movie and I left.  The part I did mange to see did not resemble any of the Star Wars early episodes I saw in yesteryear.  The next movie I saw was unusual and about a well-known author I am totally unfamiliar with—a southerner named Flannery O'Connor.  I knew the name but had never read anything she wrote nor anything about her. WILDCAT was a deep movie, seemingly moving in and out of her subconscious as she ponders her need to write and delving into the psychological and philosophical aspects of her life.  She visits her mother, well-played by Laura Linney, with whom she has an uncomfortable relationship, as she looks for answers to her problems with a priest and her conscience. At 24, she develops lupus, the illness that took her father's life when she was quite young. She als

Before the movie starts, Ryan Gosling (star) and David Leitch (director) have a filmed face-to-face with the audience.  They explain that in the movie, Gosling is a stunt man, and Leitch claims that he was a stunt man at one point in his career. Believe it or not, according to Wikipedia, he was indeed, including 5 times as one for Brad Pitt. And THE FALL GUY is s love story about stunt men because there are more fights, falls, shootings, explosions, fiery people and falls from heights than you have ever seen in any other movie.  While in some respects, it's a romantic comedy (an on-off romance between Gosling and a director, Emily Blunt), this movie is action filled from start to finish. And it's one of those films in which you sense everyone had fun making it. It's funny and silly and the principals work very well together.  There are some unexpected scenes, like one in which Emily Blunt sings a love song in a karaoke setting.  The plot is complex. Gosling, who is recoveri

On a rainy Sunday, I went to see another movie, one for which I had seen previews for months.  The previews were better than the movie, although the movie wasn't all that bad.  TAROT is another movie designed to scare you, and it was closer to scaring me than most of the others.  A group of obviously affluent young people are having a wonderful time at an outing in the country and come across a deck of Tarot cards in the house where they're staying.  One girl admits to knowing how to read horoscopes from the cards and proceeds to tell everyone what's ahead for them.  She breaks a rule of tarot readings because you're not supposed to read cards that aren't yours.  Big mistake.  When they get back to the city (each living in a foreboding looking residence), each in his or her turn is subjected to awful things, accompanied by very loud noises and music, including one episode in which the young man has gone down to take a subway and in every corridor, he encounters a su

I was duped, lured to the theater with the promise of an old fashioned sci-fi mystery thriller.  Sometimes I read a précis of a movie I am thinking of seeing.  MARS EXPRESS sounded like a winner, about private detectives, one a human female, the other a male android in 2200, being sent to Mars to solve a mystery.  Imagine my dismay when the film started and turned out to be what I believe was a French-made animated film of poor quality graphics.  I persisted for 45 minutes, hoping there was something redeeming about this one, but never found it and left the theater disappointed.  In that 45 minutes I saw no evidence that there was going to be interplanetary space travel or any kind of mystery to be solved.  And the dialogue was in English, so I don't think I missed anything.  Sorry to report there's nothing more to be said.  Animation was set back 50 years by this one in my opinion, but I guess I am severely anti-animation!  Critics and audiences alike proved how wrong and back

The one year I lived in Chicago, 1978 to 1979, Cabrini Green was going downhill.  When first conceived, it promised to be the perfect public housing project, combining high-rise apartments and roomy row houses.  Located on the north side of Chicago, it would house 15,000 predominantly African-Americans at its peak but it's all gone now. The time is 1992, and this is the setting for WE GROWN NOW, a well-done, well acted and very interesting movie about two young boys, Eric and Malik, who find in one another reasons to bond.  It is wordy and perhaps a little too philosophical. and though it was only about an hour and a half long, it felt much longer because it dragged at times.  The settings in school, on the streets and in their housing, all of which looked clean and comfortable, a striking contrast to the squalid conditions I was aware existed there.  Although as one boy states, "I was born here, will live my whole life here and die here," the boys wander and discover won