Old Man @ The Movies

The movie I saw today had an appropriate title "Strange" and I didn't have a clue as to what was going on.  A narrator explains as STRANGE DARLING begins that this is the actual story of the most notorious and vicious serial killer in history, but to me the film is about two unattractive people smoking excessively and talking about sexual attraction then snorting coke snd fentanyl, getting high and handcuffing one or the other to the bed and occasionally someone is shot or knifed. There are several scenes of the woman running away from the man pursuing her with a rifle.  If this confuses you, join the club.  And despite the random shooting and stabbing, I was not aware of a serial killer.  But then, I'm an old man and this movie was made expressly so I would not understand what was going on.  I will report that critics said it was wonderfully acted.  My favorite scene was one in which one of the principals spent a long and almost silly time to die—the longe...

The movie I saw this weekend was one for which I had seen no previews and was unaware of its existence.  Seen away from home with a friend it was an unexpected pleasure.  Of course I had heard of Sing Sing, the well-known prison in Ossining, New York, up-county from where I lived  earlier in my life.  The movie SING SING was more like a documentary than a movie snd featured professional actors as well as actual inmates of the institution.  It is a well-told, well-acted and produced story of a program at Sing Sing, in which the convicts act in plays mostly written by them. It follows a group rehearsing a play which  embraces a variety of historical events (ancient Egypt, for example), and which also includes, bizarre as it might sound, Hamlet's soliloquy.  It is essentially a program of rehabilitation, and each character reacts in a different way.  It feels legitimate and is filmed almost entirely at the prison with no attempt to make it more or le...

I hope I have finally learned my lesson. Don't see a movie just because it's there. Be a little more discriminating. So, by eliminating most of the Marvel comic epics and more and more of the incomprehensible to me sci-fi films, I may have a more realistic strategy in my movie-going lifestyle.  This is the result of seeing and then walking out of the latest "big" movie, ALIEN: ROMULUS, which in no way resembled the original, which I liked and understood, and starred Sigourney Weaver, if I'm not mistaken and which was released back in the Middle Ages.  What I was able to garner from what I saw, a group of disgruntled and unwanted space explorers embark on a scavenger hunt of a deserted space station to sell what they find and encounter a gross monster, and then I left.  It is very loud, with extraordinary discordant and unnecessary sounds that made my hearing aids rattle in agony.  Younger audiences might enjoy it. And it was a hit with critics and audiences with t...

I feel obligated to preface this review with the facts that I am a sucker for human interest stories if they are well done and am an incurable romantic when it comes to love stories.  I also am a cryer and used to do it often in the past.  You should also be aware that I rarely know what any movie is about before seeing it.  Today, I was more than pleasantly surprised and absolutely delighted to watch MY PENGUIN FRIEND, based on a true story that I had never read or seen before.  A humble Brazilian fisherman (I say humble because he and his fellow fisherman work from rowboats) takes his absolutely charming young son out in the boat for his birthday.  The bot is capsized and the boy is lost at sea.  Uh oh, I thought.  This is going to be too tragic to take because what came before were scenes of an absolutely wonderful family.  The father, played magnificently by French actor Jean Reno, is despondent and literally pulls out of the world despite eff...

The movie I saw yesterday was an action thriller with a typically improbable plot.  GUNNER is the story of a highly decorated war hero (Medal of Honor and more) returning home after being missing in Afghanistan for a year.  He is anxious to establish a relationship with two sons, aged 16 and 10, who live with his ex-wife. Heretofore he hasn't been a good father, and his sons don't like him because of that and his yearlong absence.  He asks for permission to take them camping (which they are reluctant to do), and off they go. In the woods, they stumble on a hidden fentanyl producing site and in the midst of being pursued, the two boys are abducted by the lowlifes.  He is determined to find and free his boys, and takes on the dozens of criminals barring his way.  He takes care of them one after the other, and after he's done these impossible feats—killing each one with a single shot, or rendering them useless with his martial arts, he is reunited and realigned as ...