Old Man @ The Movies

I did not keep a promise to see no more Marvel Comic films and i regret that.  I went to see DEADPOOL & WOLVERINE this afternoon and was all alone in the largest theater in the complex and it was so cold I was afraid I would get frostbite.  It was a very silly movie in which they acted as though they had just discovered the "f" word and felt obligated to use it and other profanities as often as possible.  I am sorry, readers, but I just don't understand or "get" this kind of movie and this seeming tribute to superheroes who act as though they were dumb as dirt. I hope this is a satire and was made with tongue-in-cheek, but for some reason I doubt it.  Ryan Reynolds, as one of the title stars, won easily as dumbest and silliest, but Hugh Jackman, who should know better, wasn't far behind.  I am not going to even mention the plot because I just didn't care, and with the temperature of the theater and my disinterest, I left before the torture of more th...

I avoided the crowds yesterday by opting not to see the latest Marvel Comics release Deadpool & Wolverine (which I plan to see on Wednesday) and instead went to see a movie I really didn't want to see.  I am always apprehensive about the movies starring women embarked on a quest to do something different.  THE FABULOUS FOUR starred, among others, Susan Sarandon and Bette Midler.  I must report that, in my opinion, neither the stars nor the movie were fabulous.  This was a stinker with a capital S.  It's about 4 girls who bond in New York City way back when and are the closest of friends.  One of them, Midler, now lives in Key West and invites two of them to be bridesmaids at her upcoming wedding.  She is estranged from the fourth one, a surgeon named Lou (? spelling), estranged because years before she married a man that Lou was in love with.  He subsequently died.  Are you following this?  They dupe Lou into coming with them, explai...

I goofed again, as one of you kindly pointed out.  In my Twisters (plural) review, I identified the leading players as Helen Hunt and Bill Paxton.  But they starred in Twister (singular) almost 30 years ago, snd I am reasonable certain one or more of them are dead or too old to stand up to a tornado. Sorry about that.  Despite my lukewarm review of Twisters, it was 30 times better than ODDITY, which I saw yesterday.  A young married woman is brutally murdered in a remote country house being renovated by the woman and her husband, a psychiatrist in local mental hospital.  The suspected murderer is a patient from that hospital but he ends up dead, too.  Along comes the woman's twin sister, who is not only a self-styled psychic but a collector of weird things.  And to add a twist, she is also blind which is why she can easily move freely though dark interiors.  She is suspicious of her sister's death and, in trying to get revenge for the murder, pays...

The movie i saw today played to an audience of one, and frankly, if I had known a little more, I might have stayed home, too.  I guess you'd call NATIONAL ANTHEM an interesting movie, if you are interested in a movie about the LGBTQ community and those who engage in drag activities.  Neither is on my high-interest list but I sat through all 1 hour and 36 minutes looking for something that spiked my interest.  The film follows Dylan, a twenty-one year old man (who looks no more than 16), living in a remote area with his single hair-dresser mother and a young brother to whom he's devoted.  Dylan works odd jobs where he can get them to help family finances, and one day gets a job at a ranch where he meets Sky, a deep-voiced girl, and they click.  She takes him to see a rodeo where he sees things he's never seen before involving all the sexuality he never experienced or knew about.  He seems particularly attracted to those in drag and at one point allows Sky to...

I went to the movies with my daughter in Northern Virginia on Saturday, and all the others who attended the showing felt a need to sit close to us, even though most of the theater was empty.  I would call TWISTERS a "too" movie — too loud, too many tornados, too many vehicles driving wildly into tornados, too much wind, too many explanations about tornados and too long!  It stars several actors I am not familiar with but wasn't aware they were in it, namely Glen Powell and Daisy Edgar-Jones. Not that it matters. It is a typical action-packed movie with personalities thrown in.  Edgar-Jones is a university professor specializing in handling tornados who is persuaded to come out of semi-retirement to face a monster storm.  She uses science to do the job with an under-funded team of students.  Competing with them is a team of cowboy-like irregulars from Arkansas who believe the way to quell tornados is to launch fireworks into the spout.  Most people will like...

I was looking for something that might be light hearted when I went to the movies today, nothing dark or with a deep message. I ended up seeing a movie that I would label as light-headed. It's billed as a romantic comedy; FLY ME TO THE MOON is also a drama, a fantasy, a farce, and a figment of someone's imagination in my humble opinion. Starring Scarlett Johansson and Channing Tatum, it is the story of NASA and the Apollo 11 mission to land men on the moon.  Scarlett, wearing very tight dresses throughout, plays Kelly Jones, a hot-shot marketing/advertising executive with a very secret and shady background, who is persuaded by a high-ranking man from the Federal government to join NASA and boost their image to get additional funds for the project and to persuade politicians to support the program. She is an aggressive, take-charge and take-no-prisoners type of individual who immediately bucks heads with the mission project manger, Channing Tatum, a decorated war hero pilot who ...

I knew what I was in for before the feature started because all the previews for the next several months were of movies that promised to be scary or weird or both.  And it was strange that most of the previews were for movies that had one word titles and were directed by the likes of M. Night Shyamalan and , I think, Francis Ford Coppola. LONGLEGS was weird alright but not that scary.  Longlegs is a serial killer and body mutilator played by Nicholas Cage with a ridiculous makeup job, scraggly white hair and beard and white face, spouting nonsense in the very few scenes he was in.  He is pursued by an FBI special agent, Harker, who looks and acts like she just got hired last week but is entrusted to the virtually solo assignment by her boss, a hard-nosed black man who allows her more latitude than she deserves. She behaves like a professional profiler and know-it-all despite her youth and seeming inexperience.  She also has a doting mother in the film who plays a vit...

There are two old old adages that are appropriate to this review -- You can't teach an old dog new tricks and Rules were made to be broken.  I broke one of my rules today by going to see an animated film.  I went to see INSIDE OUT 2 because a couple of my grandchildren said I would enjoy it.  I went to a 1:20 showing figuring the theater would be populated by kids and their parents or possibly teenagers because the lobby had a lot of them.  But when I sat down, I was the lone audience until about 5 minutes after the movie started, when a group of six or more adults and children entered and sat in the same row as me when the rest of the theater was empty.  I don't understand that mentality.  They sat there for about three minutes, then got up and left with one of the adults muttering "we're in the wrong theater."  About the movie though, it was charming, beautifully colorful and entertaining.  Having limited experience with this genre, even though ...

I must be a glutton for punishment.  I really disliked and was appalled by Poor Things, starring Emma Stone, who was also the executive producer, and was directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and was a painful three hours plus long.  Yesterday I saw KINDS OF KINDNESS, also starring Emma Stone, directed by Yorgos Lanthimos and was a painful three hours long.  The only difference was Emma Stone was not the executive producer.  This one, like Poor Things, was weird but not nearly as weird as Things.  This movie consisted of three distinct and unrelated stories but each featured the same actors.  The stories were interesting to an extent, but not one of them had an ending or a situation that was resolved.  Each was strange in its own way, but the third story won the prize for weirdness.  All three in their way were sexual in nature, bisexual and otherwise.  There was full nudity again, and once again Emma Stone, in one segment, felt the need to shed her c...

Two things you should know about me is that I rarely read anything about a movie before going to see it, and I rarely remember anything about a movie after I see and review it—not even the title.  The only thing I knew about the movie I saw today was that "it follows the woman who was the only survivor of the bloody incidents in X as she continues her journey towards fame as an actress in 1980s Los Angeles."  Today's movie starred Mia Goth, and she is unusually gifted.  I know I saw her in another film but can't remember the film.  I vaguely recall I thought she was pretty good in that one.  I should have suspected something because all the previews were of horror or weird or both films, and the title, MAXXXINE, with its three Xs should have been an obvious clue to anyone but me.  Mia Goth, as Maxine Minx, is a successful star of pornographic movies but wants to make it as a legitimate movie actress.  That is the main thrust of the plot.  Concurre...

One of the conclusions I came to after viewing Kevin Costner's initial effort of the  promised four part epic is, it ain't no "Dances With Wolves."  The scenery is beautiful, the music is loud but appropriate, the settings look remarkably legitimate but…  it is just another western  I wasn't aware of a real plot.  It began by showing a series of events, people  and locations which seemed totally unconnected.  Then there was a concerted effort to expand on several of the events but certainly not all of them.  Most of the effort was the one in which Costner, writer, director and actor, was involved.  I believe th movie is an honest effort to depict the west as it really was—violent, bawdy, unlawful—but I suspect history was lost somewhere along the line.  In HORIZON: AN AMERICAN SAGA - CHAPTER ONE, we see endless scenes of indigenous people killing and mutilating white settlers, military snd civilian personnel killing and mutilating  ...