Author Archives: Ron

About Ron

I like to watch movies and share my thoughts on them. I have been writing reviews and distributing them since 2013.

Just Mercy

Just Mercy                          4 stars

Just Mercy, written and directed by Destin Daniel Cretton is mainly a legal drama about a young lawyer, Bryan Stevenson (Michael B. Jordan) from the East coast who has taken a case to free a wrongly convicted black man of a brutal murder in rural Alabama in the early nineties.  Walter McMillian (a superb Jamie Foxx) is a private logger who was sentenced to death for the killing of a white teenage girl based solely on the unsubstantiated testimony of a convicted felon who was pressured into identifying McMillian as the killer by a corrupt local sheriff.  There was no physical evidence linking him to the crime.  The film is based on a true story about an attorney who is still active today fighting for unjustly convicted, mostly black prisoners.  It is the type of story we have seen frequently from Hollywood, but is aided by the quiet reflective scenes involving Foxx who just wants his previous life with his family back.  The villains of the story are the usual corrupt district attorney and sheriff who care more about their own records than about justice for the citizens.  The movie is a long one at 136 minutes, but the viewer stays involved due to the performances of the three main actors, Jordan, Foxx and Brie Larson as Bryan’s support advocate.  The movie clearly portrays the prejudices against black men that tear communities apart.  Despite the fact that it has been nearly thirty years since the events in the movie took place, many of these same problems are still with us today.  At the end of the movie, the postscript tells us that prisoners on death row are proved innocent at a rate of one out of nine, clearly an intolerable situation.  Please try to see Just Mercy when you get a chance.

Hustlers

Hustlers                               4 stars

Hustlers stars Constance Wu and Jennifer Lopez as strip club dancers who come up with a scheme to get even with their rich clients and former employers who have been taking advantage of them for years.  It stars Jennifer Lopez as an exotic dancer is probably the best role of her career.  What is there not to like about that?  How did Jennifer not get an Oscar nomination for this?

Ad Astra

Ad Astra                               4 stars

Ad Astra is last year’s emotional and grand science fiction movie that starred Brad Pitt as an astronaut sent on a mission to make contact with a rogue astronaut who is threatening the solar system.  It is a quiet contemplative film while also containing moments of intense action.  Past movies it has been compared to include Apocalypse Now and 2001: A Space Odyssey.  It opens with a thrilling scene where astronaut Roy McBride (Pitt) is helping in the construction of an enormous space antenna when disaster strikes sending him hurtling toward earth.  Later, he learns that a series of electrical disruptions may be due to a lost space mission sent to Neptune twenty years earlier that was commended by Roy’s father, Clifford (Tommy Lee Jones).  The Space Command has decided that Roy is the best suited to try to make contact with the rogue mission.  The movie has a realistic feel to it and the events in space seem to be plausible.  Private interests seem to have taken hold on the moon that even leads to space pirates with raiding parties!  The movie really succeeds with the quiet performance of Pitt aided by a fine Tommy Lee Jones.  There is also a small role for Donald Sutherland that is carried off well.  So, see Ad Astra for the role that Brad Pitt was not nominated for.

The Irishman

The Irishman                      5 stars

Much has been written about Martin Scorsese’s newest gangster movie, The Irishman, about the relationship between Teamster union president, Jimmy Hoffa (Al Pacino) and mobster hitman Frank Sheeran (Robert De Niro).  It is quite a masterpiece and at nearly three and a half hours in length, a challenge to last through in a single sitting.  There are plenty of brutal murder scenes as one would expect in a mobster movie and strained relationships between family members especially the women involved.  The special language used by the gangsters is always present as the characters have a certain way with words that sanitizes their true intent.  We hear Frank talk about how he is sorry about his life when we all know he doesn’t really mean it.  The movie was especially expensive to make which is partially due to the special effects used to “deage” the main characters to allow us to see them over a span of fifty plus years.  Never before have we seen what aging mobsters are like. (Since they typically don’t live to see their later years.)  Here we see Frank in a nursing home after all his associates are long gone and his family will no longer see him.  I especially want to take note of the performance of Joe Pesci as Russell Bufalino, the Italian mob boss in an understated role different from how we are accustomed to seeing him.  He deserves his Academy Award nomination.  The film earned ten nominations altogether and deserves its standing as one of the best films of the year.

Sentimental Value

Sentimental Value           5 stars

From filmmaker Joachim Trier comes one of the best films I have seen about family dynamics and the lasting effects of trauma on generations. Renate Reinsve stars as stage actress Nora who still lives in the family house in Oslo that has been in the family for multiple generations. She has just had the memorial service for her mother, who raised Nora and her sister, Agnes (Inga Ibsdotter Lilleaas) when their long absent father, Gustav (Stellan Skarsgard of Dune and Nymphomaniac: Vol. 1 & II), a famed filmmaker, who walked out on the family when the girls were young suddenly shows up. The two sisters still resent their father leaving, but Gustav acts like things are still normal between them. On top of that he offers Nora the starring role in his new movie that he has written especially for her. Nora says no way to the offer and soon after Gustav shows up with a famous American actress, Rachel (Elle Fanning of Somewhere and Maleficent) to whom he has offered the role. Things then become personal when the location of the film is to be the family home. In addition, Gustav convinces Rachel to dye her hair the same color as Nora’s plus he wants to cast Agnes’ young son, Erik, as the son of Rachel’s character. It gets even more shocking when it is revealed that the film will feature a suicide in a manner like an actual suicide that happened in the family many years before. In this way the film becomes art imitating life, something that is just too much for Nora to contemplate, given the events in her family. Both Lilleaas and Fanning are both stunning as actors in the movie, but the film really belongs to Reinsve and Skarsgard, who play well off each other and make you realize that neither is the villain here. They are just trying to work through the pain of their circumstances. This is the second time that Joachim Trier and Renate Reinsve have worked together with their previous film being The Worst Person in the World (which I previously reviewed). Don’t be turned off by the subject matter as things work out in the end, but I won’t say how. Sentimental Value, I believe will be seen as one of the best films of the year.

One Child Nation

One Child Nation                              4 ½ stars

One Child Nation is a documentary about a subject we have all heard something about but that very few of us know the whole story.  The filmmaker, Nanfu Wang tells us in very personal terms about China’s policy of allowing families to have only a single child in the name of improving the productivity of the country.  This policy, that lasted from 1979 until 2015 was responsible for many thousands of forced abortions, sterilizations, infanticide and government abductions of children from their parents.  The film was thoroughly researched and tells the story through many personal interviews with those who were forced to carry out the government policy and with those directly affected by it.  Wang was personally affected by it as she was born in China during the policy and had a younger brother who might have been lost if he had turned out to be a girl.  Wang herself has a boy’s name because her family was hoping for a boy, which is the much preferred gender to have as children.  In the nineties when international adoptions opened up in China, the government started the practice of forcing children to be separated from their parents and placed in orphanages where they could then be allowed to be adopted by western parents.  The film is an important one to see as it shows what an authoritarian government can be capable of.  This is the second documentary from Wang who was only in her early thirties when it was made.  Her films which were filmed in China has brought her unwelcome attention from the Chinese government.  The interviews are done in Chinese, but her narration is all done in English.  Let’s hope that she continues her good work in the future.

Marriage Story

Marriage Story                  4 ½ stars

Marriage Story, written and directed by Noah Baumbach is probably his best work to date.  That is saying a lot as I have previously enjoyed Mistress America, While We’re Young, Frances Ha and Greenberg among others.  Unlike those earlier comedies this one is strictly drama as it tells us about a marriage that is coming apart.  It accurately shows the pain and emotion that comes with the impending divorce of Charlie and Nicole (played by Adam Driver and Scarlett Johansson).  The pair have decided to divorce but haven’t worked out the details when actress Nicole moves from New York to Los Angeles with the couple’s son, Henry, leaving Charlie a successful play director to work with his theater group in New York.  Things become serious when Nicole hires divorce lawyer Nora (Laura Dern) and she asks for full custody of their son.  The writing of the dialogue is first rate which coupled with convincing performances from the three main actors makes the discussions and conflicts all seem real.  You will feel the pain coming through as the couple go from loving each other to resentment and distrust.  Laura Dern especially is excellent showing that she deserves the Academy Award for her acting.  You won’t be laughing through this movie, but will be gripped by the performances.  If you are more interested in comedies though, you should check out Baumbach’s earlier screenwriting efforts.

A House of Dynamite

A House of Dynamite      3 stars

It has been eight years since Kathryn Bigelow’s last movie, Detroit, and now the movie everyone seems to be talking about, A House of Dynamite, has been showing on Netflix after a brief theatrical run. Academy Award winner Bigelow has impressed us before with her high-tension thrillers like The Hurt Locker, Zero Dark Thirty and Detroit so now she has turned her attention to showing us what the launching of a nuclear missile at the United States might look like. Unfortunately, the intention of depicting this kind of crisis doesn’t fit well into the format of a 90-to-120-minute movie. The idea is to show as realistically as possible how the US military would respond to an attack by a single nuclear missile fired at the middle of the country from an unknown adversary. Since the time it takes from detection to impact is only nineteen minutes, there is a lot of extra time to fill in. Bigelow’s answer to this problem is to first show the events in the White House situation room with some additional scenes from military bases, but then when the missile arrives, we back up several minutes and replay the events from different perspectives including those of high-ranking officials. Then we do it all over again, this time with POTUS (Idris Elba) being the focus of most of the scenes. So, after the first time through much of the tension is gone as we know what to expect. The big question is what will be the response of the US military. Will the president order an all-out retaliation, or will he accept the loss of a major city, hoping to deescalate the situation? Another problem with the film is that there are so many characters, many of which only appear briefly. We don’t get the chance to know their story or what makes them tick. There are plenty of big names in the movie including Rebecca Ferguson, Jared Harris, Tracy Letts and Jason Clarke that expertly play their parts, but I would like to know more about their characters. I understand that many military consultants were employed to get the details right. But sometimes realism doesn’t result in the most interesting movie.

Frankenstein

Frankenstein     5 stars

For his entire adult life Guillermo Del Toro has been obsessed with Frankenstein. The famed writer/director and winner of three Oscars previously brought us Hellboy, Pan’s Labyrinth and The Shape of Water. He reportedly has thoroughly researched all previous works on the subject of Mary Shelley’s gothic novel, even building a room in his house dedicated to the story of Frankenstein. His own version of the story is now on-screen starring Oscar Isaac (Inside Llewyn Davis, Ex Machina) as Victor Frankenstein, the brilliant doctor obsessed with the creation of a living being made from dead body parts and Jacob Elordi (Saltburn, Priscilla) as the misunderstood monster. The viewer is amazed at the elaborate sets that include Frankenstein’s laboratory complete with glowing nineteenth century electrical equipment and a complete sailing ship trapped in Arctic ice. The story is largely true to the original novel (which I read around thirty years ago). Isaac plays the doctor with high intensity and makes us believe he sees himself as a sort of god but who is lacking in empathy toward his creation. Elordi, with his large frame and soft eyes makes us sympathetic toward the naïve creature, but fearful when he goes into a rage against those who would harm him. His appearance is startling with elaborate makeup, making it appear he is put together with many parts. The carving up of dead bodies and assembly into a new body looks horrifyingly realistic. The movie will certainly earn an Academy Award nomination for Makeup and Hairstyling as well as Visual Effects. Christoph Waltz (Inglourious Basterds, Django Unchained) puts in an appearance as Harlander, a collaborator of Frankenstein who has his own agenda. Mia Goth (X, Pearl, Suspiria), the new scream queen, is Elizabeth, the beautiful fiancé of Victor’s younger brother, who is the only one that can see the beauty and the suffering of the monster at the hands of Frankenstein. As in the book and unlike some of the film adaptations, this monster becomes fully articulate and can express the torment that the world heaps on him. He comes to hate Frankenstein for creating him but giving no thought as to what would come after, forcing him to be alone in a world that despises him. Much of what the creature says comes straight out of the Shelley novel. It’s clear that del Toro is sympathetic toward the monster as he characterizes him as someone desperate for human affection but then changes him into an instrument of vengeance against his creator. This may not be del Toro’s best movie. But it’s certainly a close second to The Shape of Water from 2017, a movie that shares some of the elements of Frankenstein.

Portrait of a Lady on Fire

Portrait of a Lady on Fire               4 ½ stars

Portrait de la Jeune Fille en Feu or Portrait of a Lady on Fire is a complex love story with only female characters set in eighteenth century France that is certainly very difficult to describe.  A young painter, Marianne is commissioned to paint a portrait of a noblewoman’s daughter (Heloise) who has spent her adult life in a convent and is to be married to a Milanese suitor.  The problem is Heloise is to think that Marianne is there as a companion and is not to know that her real purpose is to paint a portrait.  Thus, the painter has to do the painting in secret without the benefit of a posed subject.  The relationship between the two young women changes and grows throughout the slowly developing plot as we learn more about Heloise.  How she wants to enjoy her freedom and is less than enthused about her planned marriage, about the suicide of her sister and the failed attempt at a portrait by a previous painter.  It is a well put together love story about a slowly growing attraction between the characters and a resentment of the circumstances of their lives.  The story is told with very few characters and a minimum of dialogue.  An additional feature is how the film shows just how difficult it is for a painter to create a painting, something I don’t remember seeing before.  For those who love period romances, Portrait of a Lady on Fire is highly recommended.