Category Archives: 2019

The Good Liar

The Good Liar                    3 ½ stars

The Good Liar brings together two senior Hollywood legends in Ian McKellen and Helen Mirren for an intricate con game as McKellen’s Roy, an experienced con man seeks to gain the trust of elderly widow Betty (Mirren) and deprive her of her millions in life savings.  We get a steady building story for a while as we learn of Roy’s background as a con man and see how he convinces Betty that he is everything she is looking for after they meet with the help of an online dating service for mature people.  All is not perfect as Betty’s grandson Stephen (Russell Tovey from Years and Years) gets suspicious and looks into Roy’s background.  The viewer gets a good dose of Roy’s character as certain scenes make it clear that he has little regard for the suffering of others.  Things take a turn when flashbacks reveal some of Roy’s true story dating back to the 1940’s.  After this point things start to get a little unbelievable when the characters make decisions that you wouldn’t expect them to.  The movie does have a twist as all good con movies should, but it’s not unexpected as the promotions for the movie have already hinted at it.  This movie gets an A for the acting talents of its stars and C for the story.  It’s best to see this one if you haven’t already seen the previews.
 

Knives Out

Knives Out                          4 ½ stars

One of the best movies of this year has to be Knives Out, the traditional murder mystery in the style of Agatha Christie.  Written and directed by Rian Johnson, the renowned detective Benoit Blanc (Daniel Craig) has been hired to solve the murder of crime mystery writer Harlan Thrombey (Christopher Plummer) who has been found in his estate with his throat cut.  There is no shortage of suspects as his entire dysfunctional family seem to have enough motive to do him in.  there is plenty of changes in direction and red herrings as are required in a good mystery.  One such event happens at the reading of the will which points to one particular suspect of great interest.  It is then up to the great Blanc to sift through all of the clues and mis-directions to come up with the real explanation for Harley’s demise.  The movie is filled with stars including Don Johnson, Jamie Lee Curtis, Michael Shannon, Ana de Armas, Toni Collette and Frank Oz.  This is a very enjoyable film that will keep your interest throughout.

Bombshell

Bombshell                           4 stars

My first reaction to Bombshell is that any movie that features Charlize Theron, Nicole Kidman and Margot Robbie deserves some major attention.  And for the most part it delivers.  It tells the story of a small group of women at Fox News endured years of abuse at the hands of the CEO, Roger Ailes and finally banded together to bring him down in 2016. The performances by Theron as Megyn Kelly, Nicole Kidman as Gretchen Carlson and Margot Robbie as a fictional character, Kayla are all first rate.  John Lithgow does a convincing job as Ailes, the perv who controls the lives of these women and treats them like his personal playthings.  The film stops short of indicting the entire network of Fox for its corporate culture that allows this behavior to take place.  You certainly don’t get the feeling that Rupert Murdoch (Malcolm McDowell) really cares about these women.  He is only too eager to put all the blame on Ailes and put his name in all the headlines.  One very memorable part of the movie are the interchanges between Kayla and Kate McKinnon’s character, Jess Karr who is a closeted Democrat and lesbian working at Fox and knows what has been going on for years.  The movie doesn’t tell us much about what happened to these people beyond 2016, but it is certainly worth seeing.  Look for a few Oscar nominations to come from Bombshell.

Cats

Cats                                       1 ½ stars

I am sure that everyone has heard about the screen adaptation of the Broadway musical Cats that recently hit theaters.  There has been plenty of controversy about it mainly about the CGI effects making the cast look like some sort of human-cat hybrids.  So I had to see it for myself and it was something of a shock.  There are plenty of stars on the screen in a story that is confusing at best.  I will try to give some description of what is going on.  The story concerns a tribe of cats called the Jellicles that hang out around an abandoned theater in London.  One night a new cat called Victoria portrayed by ballerina Francesca Hayward, is tossed on the street where she is introduced to an array of felines that all have their own stories.  It happens to be the annual night of the Jellicle Ball when the old cat Deuteronomy (Dame Judy Dench) makes the choice of which of the eligible cats is worthy to be chosen to ascend into the Heaviside Layer and be rewarded with a new life.  Each of the possible choices gets a featured performance involving music and dance which includes Rebel Wilson’s fat and comical Jennyanydots, James Cordon’s Bustopher Jones, Jason Derulo’s Rum Tum Tugger, Ian McKellen’s Gus the Theater Cat (in one of the best performances), Jennifer Hudson’s Grizabella, who sings the powerful “Memory” and Laurie Davidson as the classic Mr. Mistoffelees, the mysterious magical cat.  Unfortunately, there is a scheming villain, the evil Macavity (Idres Elba) who uses his magic powers to exile each of the felines onto a boat in the Thames where his henchman Growitiger (Ray Winstone) holds them all prisoner.  This way Macavity plans to be the one to achieve the coveted Heaviside Layer for himself.  Macavity is enabled by his associate, Bombalurina, a wily cat played by Taylor Swift who puts her own spell on the Jellicles using her own brand of catnip.  Can the Jellicles overcome these magic spells and defeat Macavity?  By this time does anybody care?  The CGI costumes are very distracting with the cat ears, cat tails and other features applied to the cast.  And then there are the miniature creatures featuring dancers representing the mice and cockroaches that the cats are hungry for.  I felt the film may have had more success if it was just treated as a stage production on film without all the special effects.  They could have saved themselves a lot of money besides.  So now you know what Cats is all about.  Now you will be able to save yourselves the torture of enduring this mad spectacle.

Little Women

Little Women                    4 ½ stars

Greta Gerwig, the writer/director behind Lady Bird brings us her take on Louisa May Alcott’s classic Civil War era novel Little Women.  In her version, the tale of the four March sisters is blended with Alcott’s struggle to be a successful author placing older sister Jo, (played by Saoirse Ronan) as the creative writer of Little Women.  Another difference from earlier movies, of which there may be as many as seven, she puts the timelines in parallel showing us the older siblings trials alongside scenes of the girls living together in their family home with their mother (a good natured Laura Dern).  And it is done using the same actors in both settings where previous versions have used younger actors to portray the teenage sisters.  They may not all look like teenagers, but I thought the approach worked well especially with how active and energetic the actors are.  The movie shares the aspect of the earlier films that shows how dependent women were on finding a good husband in order to succeed in life.  Of special note is the role of Amy (Florence Pugh) as Gerwig makes it clear that she is the obstinate and ambitious one, as she is seen maturing the most of the sisters and the one who ends up with the boy next door, Laurie played by Timothee Chalamet.  The film is rather long but I find I didn’t really notice it all that much as the scenes seem to fly by at a fast pace keeping us engaged the whole time.  Gerwig is said to have read the book Little Women multiple times growing up and it is clear that she gave it her best effort as a writer/director.  Be sure you see it.  It is bound to earn a few Academy Award nominations.

1917

1917                       5 stars

1917 is a war movie that features no great battles of armies and no grand strategies of generals.  Yet it succeeds in conveying the horrors of war and the dangers of being a soldier in one of the greatest conflicts in human history.  Sam Mendes tells us the story of two British Lance Corporals who are sent on a mission to deliver a message to the commander of a British force that is about to launch an attack into what is described as a trap set by the German army.  This force is otherwise cutoff from communication in the days before wireless radios, so these two must venture through No Man’s Land in daylight to deliver the critical message.  Mendes, through the miracle of today’s special effects and tiny mobile cameras manages to film the scenes with an absolute minimum of cuts.  The result is a feeling that the audience is right there with the soldiers as one horror after another unfolds before them.  In addition the effect is aided by a superb score from Thomas Newman that captures the feeling of dread in No Man’s Land and the fast pace of the action sequences when the enemy is confronted.  The sets are just as I imagine what World War I looked like including the dead soldier’s bodies peering from the mud and the contrast of the construction of British trenches vs. German trenches.  Mendes used two unknown actors in the parts of the Corporals in order not to distract from the film’s focus.  The two young men are very effective in their roles so he made a good choice.  There are some well-known actors in supporting roles including Colin Firth and Benedict Cumberbatch as commanding officers who perform well.  I had been rooting for Quentin Tarantino’s “Once Upon a Time in Hollywood“ to win the Academy Award for Best Picture, but now I will have to go with 1917.  I find it even more compelling than Dunkirk from a couple of years ago.

Yesterday

Yesterday            3 stars

Recently we have been getting a string of movies that honor musicians of the past.  See Bohemian Rhapsody, Rocketman and Blinded by the Light.  Last year’s Yesterday was Danny Boyle’s tribute to the music of The Beatles which imagines what it would be like if the legendary British rock group never existed.  In this movie an alternate timeline suddenly appears where nobody remembers The Beatles except for one struggling British musician, Jack.  After a mysterious bus accident when the lights go out all over the world, Jack discovers that he is the only one who can remember the band’s songs.  Thus, he has moved into an alternate timeline where not only the Beatles, but also Coke and cigarettes do not exist.  Jack is so obsessed with remembering and recreating the songs that after singing them he goes a step further and claims that he actually the songs himself, a move that brings him wide acclaim and fame.  He even gets the aid of singer/songwriter Ed Sheeran who appears as himself.  In the end though the thing that is most important to Jack is his manager, Ellie, who he has known since childhood.  Thus, the movie becomes more of a romantic comedy than an exploration of what made the Beatles so great.  There is really no exploration of the group or the times that their music was born in.  I understand that the original script was more about the occurrence of the alternate timeline and less of a romantic comedy.  I can’t help but wonder what an interesting movie that would have been.  Nevertheless, it was very entertaining to hear many of the Fab Four’s great hits again.

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.