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Reviews
The Boys in the Boat (2023)
A good movie that could have been great
This is a true story about underdogs competing for glory. Every scene was predictable, and the ending was pretty apparent within the first ten minutes, so the characters needed to be interesting, and the story needed to be tight and compelling. Unfortunately, the writing was pretty bad. There were scenes where I found myself rewriting dialog in my head that was so much more interesting than what the actors spoke on the screen. We needed to understand what motivated these underdogs but were given only a few stock scenes about how poor they were. We needed personified enemies but got only a couple short scenes where someone insulted them or they insulted each other. The main character's father showed up briefly toward the end of the movie, but it's not clear if he was a good guy under bad circumstances or a terrible jerk. It didn't really matter anyway, so his character just wasted screen time.
There could have been a running visual description of the hardships of the Great Depression for some context, but instead we saw one soup kitchen in the beginning. We all know how bad Hitler and the Nazis were, but it would have been nice to have an intertwined thread showing Nazi aggression and the Americans' reaction to it, so you cared who won the final race, but if you didn't know any history, Hitler seemed to be just some angry dude.
There was no chemistry between the main character and the girl who eventually became his girlfriend. She was annoying from beginning to end and he was robotlike in her presence. After a very chaste relationship, they suddenly ended up in bed in one short, surprising scene.
The cinematography was very nice, the best thing about the movie.
In conclusion, this is a movie for a lazy afternoon in front of the TV or an airplane flight, but not worth paying the price in a theater.
Pinball: The Man Who Saved the Game (2022)
One of the best movies in a long time
Despite having played plenty of pinball in my youth (though my mom thought it was gambling), I was reluctant to watch this story that was produced by Moving Picture Institute, a libertarian production company I've known about for years. Though I appreciate their philosophy, most ideological movies are dry and preachy, so I was reluctant to watch this. On a short flight home, this was one of the shorter selections, so I gave it a shot.
This movie is great! The writing is fantastic, with clever dialog and a story that is part drama, part comedy, part love story, and even part mockumentary, poking fun at the typical exaggerations and embellishments of documentaries. The acting is great, too--touching when it needed to be, dramatic when it needed to be, and funny almost all the time. From the very first scene, I found myself grinning nonstop and even laughing out loud on the plane.
When I got home, I watched it again with my wife and enjoyed it a second time. Anyone who knows me knows that I rarely watch a film more than once, but a few are worth it. This one definitely is.
Wonka (2023)
A wonderful throwback!
This is an especially delightful movie at a time when I think we all need the joy that most movies are missing. The message is simply to follow your dream and have a good time while you're doing it. And, of course, watch out for the bad guys who want to stop you. This movie felt like a comfortable, funny, enjoyable Disney movie from my childhood. A modern Mary Poppins or Chitty Chitty Bang Bang. This prequel to Willy Wonka and the Chocolate Factory had memorable music, fun dancing, great special effects, lovable characters and mean villains, and everything you could want in a clever story. Fun for the whole family. You will leave the theater feeling much better than when you entered. Let's hope this is the beginning of a trend.
Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget (2023)
What happened?
The original was so good. What happened? This story is so predictable that in the first 5-10 minutes you know you've seen the story so many times beforw and know how it will begin and how it will end. But you think maybe the jokes and the characters and the situations will make up for it. They don't. It just doesn't have the charm of the original. So many things happen for no reason except to set up the punchline of a joke that just isn't very clever.
The original was unique, clever, funny, exciting, and touching. This one just isn't. I don't recommend it. See the original a second time instead.
The Flash (2023)
A surprisingly great superhero movie
I avoided this movie because of the horrible behavior of its star, Ezra Miller. But it kept appearing on TV while I was switching channels, so I started watching from the middle. Then I recorded it and watched from the beginning. I have conflicting feelings about saying this, but this is one of the best superhero movies in a long time. It has character development (rare for most superhero movies), action, humor, special effects, touching moments, drama, suspense, and even nostalgia. The screenplay is not simply the all-too-common theme of the bad guy wants to take over the world and the hero has to stop him. The ending, which I won't give away, was more complex than the cliché one where the hero figures out the bad guy's weakness and sends him far away in space and/or time with a hint that he'll return for the sequel.
Ezra Miller did a fantastic acting job as two different characters, but from all reports, he needs psychiatric help, and Warner Brothers lost significant revenue because of it. If it weren't for Miller's behavior off screen, I believe this would have been one of the highest grossing superhero movies of all time.
Killers of the Flower Moon (2023)
A missed opportunity
This movie covers a significant, disappointing incident in American history and could have made a compelling drama. Instead, it drags on for over three hours, including slow scenes that add nothing to the story, with a number of characters who come and go and do not add anything new to move the story along. The several long speeches seemed improvised and disjointed. Many times, I felt like I was watching a bad slasher film where I wanted to warn the characters not to do something that was going to end up badly. Why did nearly everyone in this town not suspect a plot against their lives and not connect them to the town boss until the end, even when there was no other explanation?
While the acting by Leonardo Dicaprio and Robert De Niro was excellent, Dicaprio's character never made sense. How does a man kill off his wife's family, at the bequest of De Niro's character, but never suspect that his own beloved wife will be the last victim when she is the last person that stands in the way of De Niro's character's ownership of the treasured oil rights?
Lily Gladstone does a decent job, but all that's asked of her is to look concerned and talk softly. And for someone who is represented as being smart and tough, why does she seem so bewildered all the time?
The courtroom drama at the end was over the top, and Dicaprio's character's motivations and changing testimony was given thin motivation. I expected a final emotional, cathartic confrontation between Dicaprio and De Niro, but instead got more long, quiet speeches that were unfulfilling.
Most bizarre was the radio show epilogue, coming fully out of nowhere, that seemed to add a comic touch to this serious story. Whatever mood created by the movie was totally destroyed by the goofy ending full of crazy sound effects, commercial music, and exaggerated radio announcers.
What could have been a great, classic is instead a dreary disappointment.
A Haunting in Venice (2023)
A modern whodunit at its best
I loved this movie. It took the classic structure of a whodunit, which I don't often enjoy actually, and added beautiful cinematography and sound to create a mysterious, frightening atmosphere. The acting was very good, turning typically single dimensional characters into something more. The writing was great, with well-designed story structure, interesting, eccentric but believable characters, and memorable lines. Plus, it added a philosophical dimension, exploring God, the soul, and the purpose of life. I really think this is what movies can be. It was slow, haunting, thoughtful, frightening, and clever, without superpowers, super villains, car chases, spaceships, gratuitous sex and violence, and every other gimmick that Hollywood thinks is needed to sell a story.
Babylon (2022)
A rehashed movie about Hollywood's depravity
I just saw the movie Babylon on the flight to NYC. It's weird that Hollywood would make yet another movie about the depravity of Hollywood, but this time by demonstrating that depravity on screen. And it was a rehash of tired themes in many movies about Hollywood. Maybe I was supposed to root for all the drugs, rapes, deaths, and crimes? Because there wasn't a single character who saw anything wrong with that--each character was pretty despicable. And a waste of some great acting talent.
Plus, any deep meaning was lost in the final 15 minutes when the story takes a turn into some kind of bizarre torture porn.
In the Shadow of the Moon (2019)
Good action, dangerous message
The message of this movie is disturbing. There are a group of white supremacists who read books about the Founding Fathers (Washington, Jefferson, and Hamilton are specifically noted). One of them eventually starts a civil war, and so a time traveler comes back to kill the people who read about these principles until the war is prevented. The only innocent person whose life is grieved is an accidentally killed black man. The irony of these messages is missed: it's OK to kill innocent people for a good cause; an ideology can be so dangerous that it must be stopped at any price (literally what the main character states at the end); bad speech is more dangerous than murder; innocent white people must sometimes be sacrificed; violating American principles can be necessary to maintain American principles. But the killer is the hero in the end. It's hard to think of a more dangerous message.
Blade Runner (1982)
A classic.. deservedly so
One of my favorite film, Blade Runner is a well-written story with great acting, beautiful cinematography, amazing special effects, and a thought-provoking commentary on human nature.
Blade Runner 2049 (2017)
Great commentary on humanity buried in an awful script and poor direction
The original Blade Runner is one of my favorite films. A well-written story, great acting, beautiful cinematography, amazing special effects, and a thought-provoking commentary on human nature.
The new one also has a great commentary on humanity, but it's buried in an awful script and poor direction. Some scenes have beautiful cinematography and effects while other scenes I found dreary and uninteresting. Many scenes were too long or unnecessary altogether because they didn't move the story forward or develop the characters. The main point of the story was made early on, so the rest of the film was mostly pointless scenery. And the "twist" at the end really doesn't matter to the audience because 1) it doesn't change your view of the story and 2) the characters aren't developed, so we really don't care much about them anyway.
The Holiday (2006)
Lots of talking, talking, talking, talking... zzzzz
I enjoy romantic comedies, but this one was neither romantic nor funny. There were many problems with it, number one being that everyone talked incessantly about relationships. The characters were presented as smart, serious people so it was incomprehensible that they would have such stupid relationships. Rather than playing the dippy, funny woman, as we know she does well and with a lot of humor, she played the smart, sophisticated business owner fully in charge of her life except... in a bad relationship. Same for Kate Winslet--she comes across as so smart and intense that even when she dances around in her pajamas, it seems out of character. And definitely not funny. Jack Black was seriously miscast as Kate's romantic interest even though he comes across as his usual snarky, sarcastic, smirking self. And he's only in the film for the first 5 minutes and the last 15, so why was he even in this movie? Jude Law does a great job, though the scenes with his kids are way too over-the-top cutesy, and seemingly unending. Eli Wallach showed why he was an acting legend because he was great no matter what dreck he might be in.