Old Man @ The Movies

On a beautiful windy spring day, I saw a movie that was definitely an action thriller. THE ACCOUNTANT 2 stars Ben Affleck, who also produced the film, and appears to be the sequel to another film with the same name, minus 2, which I obviously saw but have no recollection of. Affleck is a robot-like accountant who heads a firm doing what kind of work I don't know that utilizes young people who are fantastic as hackers. He gets involved with a federal agent on a case I am not sure of, but it involves a female assassin and others of ill repute. And then his brother appears, after an eight-year separation, and they work together helping the Fed. They are wise-cracking all the time in a love-hate relationship, which kept a lot of the audience in stitches.  I didn't think they were that funny, but I rarely do when erratic behavior and violence is occurring. Near the end of the film there is what feels like an hour-long gun battle culminating in the rescue of a busload of children who...

The movie I saw on Friday started out as a drama about relationships and spiraled down to a film about sexual preferences and activities. A man and his wife are living in his family home in Kansas and are joined there by his brother, who has been missing in action for a couple of years. Nonetheless, they bond, perhaps too much bonding between brother-in-law and wife, and make plans to sell the family home and then join forces in California, and embark on some undisclosed business venture. The couple, Muriel and Lee, move and buy a tract home in California awaiting brother Julius, who has stopped off in Las Vegas to satisfy his gambling habit. Before Julius shows up again, restless Muriel has discovered something secret that she likes, gambling on the horses and she is very successful at it. Julius shows up and the movie falls apart, with Julius having a relationship with a man and Muriel with a woman.  And nothing better happens for the rest of this far too long hour and 57 minute ...

Perhaps it's just me. I'm too old, or too cynical or can't see the forest for the trees, but I am baffled by the thumbs up ratings by critics (98%) and audiences (97%) given to the movie I saw early last week. I found SINNERS to be shallow, meaningless, confused and confusing, and certainly not worth the price of admission. This what-am-I-doing movie focuses on the lives of twin brothers, played by Michael B. Jordan, who leave their rural hometown in the deep south to go north to the big city, get in trouble and return home seemingly to start all over again. The brothers and the movie lost the way at home, and the movie goes from being about criminals and such to a surreal story of vampires and violence. In my opinion it was pointless and poorly done. And as if they thought they were in Bollywood, there were inappropriate sequences of singing and dancing. It was an agglomeration of every silly movie I've seen over the years. Maybe I should pack it in, but if I were you ...

I spent the Easter weekend with my daughter Tracey in Virginia, and we walked to her local theater where we saw a movie she had selected. It was a very good, very unusual and very entertaining film entitled THE BALLAD OF WALLIS ISLAND. Wallis Island, as near as we could figure, was off the coast of England, Ireland or Scotland, and its almost only resident is an eccentric man who won the lottery twice and could thereby afford  to pay a once popular vocal group to come to put on a concert just for him on the beach. Herbert, the lead, who is given $500,000 when he arrives to this bizarre situation not aware that Charles, the eccentric, has also invited his onetime bandmate, who was also his lover. It was funny and poignant and more sad than happy, and the music was interesting and not at all familiar to me. But the actors, including the always reliable and accomplished Carey Mulligan, and characters they played were depicted in a good way. The one hour and 40 minute film was enjoyabl...

I went to see a movie I wasn't sure about because of the subject matter. WARFARE was likely the most realistic war film ever produced, probably because it was written by two Iraq war veterans who were recounting what they experienced. This is the story of a platoon of soldiers on a surveillance mission in Iraq deep in enemy territory, and things go very wrong.  It is as realistic, I suspect, as it could possibly be, not one of those typical Hollywood war movies that makes heroes out of everyone, with occasional comic relief. This is the real thing, and you wonder how they're going to get out of this mess they're in. It was well-acted, produced and directed and does not avoid or gloss over the sordid images of war. I have no personal experience to compare it with, but have spoken over the years to many guys who did, and this movie feels like the real thing. The one hour and 29 minute film passed quickly and never dragged. 94% of critics, 93% of audiences, and I gave it an un...