Old Man @ The Movies

Today I saw another movie, which I think most young people, even as young as my 3 1/2 year old great granddaughter might enjoy if they weren't scared off by the violent Vikings and fire-breathing dragons. This is the story of a Viking leader and his disciples, who live on a rocky island named Berk and have a long-term enmity with dragons with whom they share the island. Gerard Butler is the leader and his awful beard makes him unrecognizable. His son is a gentle young man named Hiccup who his father wants to be a dragon killer, and he is reluctant. Instesd, he befriends a young dragon and learns to ride on his back. They fly wildly everywhere. Hiccup has friends with weird names, including a girl named Astrid, all of whom are training as dragon killers. It  is nonstop action and fun, and while full of mayhem, it's not too graphic. I concluded that HOW TO TRAIN YOUR DRAGON is a young person's film but I liked it as well. I believe that films with similar titles were made yea...

Another milestone: My seven-hundredth review of a film I saw a week or so ago. Didn't understand it then and still don't. On the plus side, it was directed by Danny Boyle, whose one film I remember seeing was very, very good—Slumdog Millionzire, for which I think he won an Academy Award. But I cheated and read about it so I could say something. A deadly virus, Rage, disappears from a chemical weapons lab 28 years ago and infects a lot of people worldwide. The story is about a group who escaped the virus by moving to an island which is defended by a weaponized causeway. One of the group leaves the island to see what's happening on the mainland, and more I cannot tell you. The only star I recognized was Ralph Fiennes. I didn't understand the movie, ergo I didn't like it. This one hour and 53 minute too-long movie got a thumbs up from 87% of the critics and 83% of audiences.    . 

This weekend I was in Virginia with my two daughters, and we saw a movie—their choice. It was another auto racing film, this time about Formula 1 race cars, which run on road courses, not ovals like NASCAR and Indy races. It was well done and entertaining, and my only complaint was the noise of the cars racing. Good-old-boy Brad Pitt stars as a driver who was a phenomenal Formula 1 driver 30 years earlier, asking an old teammate, played by Javier Bardem, now the owner of a struggling Formula 1 team to take him on as a driver. He is hired and learns that his teammate driver is a black rookie driver who has an inflated opinion of himself. You recognize the intrigue here. Brad becomes romantically interested in the technical director of the team, the only female technical director of such terms. There are a lot of race scenes and spectacular crashes, and some intrigue as to the future of the team. F1 THE MOVIE is never boring despite its 2 hour and 35 minute length, and the cinematogr...

Yesterday, several days after I saw one of the best movies of the year, I saw one of the worst movies, not only of the year but for many years past. This one, with a title as bad as the film, HARD BRIDE, starred the buxom plus brassy blonde person, Rebel Wilson. I am rebelling against her appearing in any more films. This presumably action comedy is about a young girl's wedding preparations, in which Rebel believes she is going to be maid of honor because she is a longtime friend of the bride, but has been absent from her life for a long time. What no one knows is she is a federal agent, likely the CIA, and when some terrorists arrive to plunder the soon-to-be-bride's riches and take the bride hostage, Rebel single-handedly takes charge and defeats all the bad guys with any weapon available, including her hands and feet and other body parts. It is just a bad, bad movie, the kind I thought wasn't being made any more. I was wrong, but sat through the all painful 1 hour and 45...

On Sunday, we saw a movie I would describe as an old fashioned western. Starring in one of the lead roles was the unexpected  appearance of Pierce Brosnan, with a beard and Irish accent, as the decent and effective sheriff of Trinity. He befriends and rescues a young man who is pursued by the bad guys because he is seeking the gold his father supposedly buried in that area years ago. It was a thriller, and action and violence filled, and it was a nice change of pace from the multitude of garbage that fills the screens these days. The bad guys really did a job on the young man, punching and kicking him soundly. It is a decent film, populated by nice people and villains, and we both liked it. Critics obviously did not, with only 24% thumbs up and 66% of audiences. I'm now used to butting heads with the professional critics.

I saw a movie yesterday with a friend, and we both liked it, maybe I more than she. The film was based on a Stephen King story (I'm not a big fan), and it has three parts. It would have been a much better movie without the first part which we found to be dull and boring and both of us slept through most of it. But the rest of the story was first class, a poignant story about a man and his relationships and life story. It was well-acted and directed and was meaningful, whatever that means. It tells his story from childhood,  blended love and sorrow nicely, but never overdid anything. Chuck, played very well by Tom Hiddleston, is a common, likable man. Chuck is seen to be interested in dancing from his earliest days and there are some notable sequences where dancing plays a part. In one scene, he is walking home from work in a business suit carrying a briefcase. He encounters a female street musician playing s set of drums and begins to dance to its rhythm. It is a unique and wonderf...

I thought matchmakers were from a bygone era and the last one worthy of such a subject was a musical movie, Hello Dolly, set the the 1890s, starring Barbra Streisand as matchmaker Dolly Levi and one of her clients, played by Walter Matthau. Obviously, I was wrong, for on Father's Day weekend in Virginia, my daughter and I enjoyed MATERIALISTS, which was a modern day movie about a modern day matchmaker. Populated by a bunch of attractive young men and women, the film explores the life and occupation of a woman who is a very effective wizard at putting people together with a grading technique of checking "boxes" (desirable attributes). At the wedding of one of her clients, she meets a man who, from her perspective, is the perfect client (checking all the boxes)—good looking, wealthy, all the right social graces—and begins dating him. Into this relationship comes her ex-boyfriend, who is probably the worst possible client.  He works menial jobs as he pursues a career as an a...

Because there was so much ado about the director/screenwriter/producer of the film I saw yesterday, I decided to know more about him. Wes Anderson was described by critics as "auteur."  For those of you like me who didn't know the word, I looked it up. The simplest definition is "distinctive," and he certainly fits that word. I realized I had seen at least one of his films, The Grand Budapest Hotel, and recalled that it was distinctive and that I enjoyed it and thought it was funny as well. THE PHOENICIAN SCHEME was distinctive, and according to what I had read, shared other characteristics of Anderson's films. It was quirky, was about family, and had a cast of lots of Hollywood stars, some starring and others in bit parts and largely unrecognizable to me. In this one, they included Benicio del Toro (the star), Scarlett Johansson, the ubiquitous Tom Hanks, Bryan Cranston, Benedict Cumberbatch, Willem Dafoe, F. Murray Abraham, Bill Murray and on and on in min...

Today my son and I saw the movie BALLERINA. If you've ever viewed a Keanu Reeves/John Wick film, you've already seen the film we saw. Except that the violence that Wick bestows on others this time is handled by a woman. In a predictable "vengeance is mine"plot, a young girl, Eve, witnesses the murder of her father and vows to get the man, the leader of a murderous organization, who was responsible for her father's death. She joins or is recruited by a rival organization which trains young girls to be ballerinas and highly skilled assassins, schooled in all manner of weapons and martial arts. She leaves her school on her own and without permission to track down her father's killer. The group she seeks is aware of her mission and makes several attempts to stop her. She violently and efficiently dispatches all attempts and finally reaches her destination—an alpine village where every resident is a member of the group she's after. She is confronted by, of all ...

I saw another film today with my son that promises to be a blockbuster. What it is is a darn good iteration of its predecessor lookalike from 1984, with a few wrinkles. KARATE KID: LEGENDS is the story of a young proficient kung fu-trained boy in Bejing who is taken by his physician mother to New York City to pursue a new life. Enrolled in a prestigious high school, he is basically friendless until he meets a young girl classmate who works with her father in their pizza shop. The father, in debt to some unsavory characters, wants to return to his boxing days to earn enough to pay off the debt and enlists Li to help him train. His first bout ends badly. In the predictable plot, and against his mother's wishes, Li decides to compete in the city's karate championship and reaches out to his sensei in China for help in training. The sensei in turn recruits a former champion, played by the original Karate Kid, Ralph Macchio. The film is like renewing acquaintance with an old friend, ...

The film I saw yesterday was a pleasant change of pace despite the fact that it was primarily in French with subtitles I couldn't read because of my deteriorating eyesight. But enough French came back so I was able to follow this romantic comedy. An attractive young girl is working in Paris at the famous Shakespeare book shop but is frustrated by her love life and everything else. She is invited, thanks to a friend, to attend the Jane Austen residency program in England and she jumps at the chance to change her life. But her life in the program isn't all that good and is complicated by a romantic interest in a fellow classmate. It gets even more complicated when her boyfriend from Paris arrives. The film is funny and fun and relatively lighthearted and enjoyable and very different from most of the movies produced today. The actors by and large looked good and performed well. 86% of critics and 76% of audiences and I gave Austen a thumbs up.  

Because sometimes I don't read about a film before I see it, I was surprised to realize that it wasn't about a weather event, even though the winds were blowing hard over the desolate location  of the film. TORNADO, we learned late in the movie, is the name the young girl chose when she was viciously avenging the brutal murder of her father. The gang who murdered him is pursuing her through a barren landscape. While predominantly in English, other languages were spoken as well. I thought this was a strange movie, violent at times and difficult, for me, to comprehend. The followers were led by a brutal man, and they indiscriminately destroyed everything in their way, including burning a gypsy settlement where Tornado tried to hide at one point. It was interesting at times but basically dull and pointless. Critics gave it a 76% thumbs up and there were no audience ratings. I would give it a sideways thumb.