The 5th Wave is supposed to be the last of the teen-saves-the-world-from-the-apocalypse. The first one was City of Ember, back in 2008 (and in my opinion, the best, with Divergent being second).
Although not a bad movie, The 5th Wave has nothing original. You have the adolescents training in the army, the teen on the lam, the alien conspiracy, and, of course, the CGI explosions.
Wait until the movie comes to TV.
I'm not sure what the point of Hail, Caesar was. I was disappointed in the movie. It was only somewhat funny and was very slow and kind of dull.
The previews and reviews have been vague about the plot. That's because there really isn't much of one. There are two subplots that have little to do with the main story, and the main story is very different from what the previews indicated.
The publicity indicates that George Clooney's character, named Baird, is an actor who gets abducted. It turns out the kidnapers are a large group of script writers who discuss philosophy and communism. And the movie that Baird is filming has nothing to do with Caesar other than the time period. The movie-within-a-movie is about the centurion who says of Jesus after the crucifixion: "Truly this man was the son of God."
They finally got it right. Risen is a Christian movie, and it is beautiful: well-written, with spectacular scenery, great cast, and NO stilted acting!
Before I saw the movie yesterday, I thought Risen was going to be about the Roman centurion who saw Jesus crucified and announced, "Truly this man was the son of God." (That was the premise of the movie The Robe.) Then, as I watched the movie, I thought it was going to be about Matthias, the man whom the 11 surviving Apostles chose to replace Judas.
But the plot is about neither of these; rather, it is about the man who was Pontius Pilate's head of the centurions. To put it in 21st century TV procedural terms, the movie is about the police chief heading the investigation into a missing dead body.
I was so impressed by this movie that at the end I wanted to applaud!
How many books has Nicholas Sparks written? And how many of them, like John Grisham's, are interchangeable?
The latest Sparks movie is The Choice, the story of a husband who must decide whether to sign the "do not resuscitate" form for his comatose wife. The movie has the couple who hates each other at first, the flashbacks and the Carolinas scenery. The only detail that is missing this time is the older narrator.
Not that The Choice is a bad movie. Like all of Sparks' stories, you get pulled in and realize at the end you enjoyed the movie more than you should have.
The Witch has a typical horror movie scenario: isolated family, accusations toward each other, creepy scenery, not much plot, and an ending that makes no sense. It will show up on the SyFy channel in a few years, and you can watch it then.
So just what was The Witch about? It's set in New England in the 1600s (I'm assuming) when a family with an overzealous father is kicked out of the local town for preaching a different religious interpretation of the Bible. At first you are sympathetic toward the family, thinking it has a more moderate vision, but actually the father is just the opposite, a fanatic.
At least, that's what I think the plot was.....
There was an interview with Sally Field in the March 21, 2016, issue of Time. I agree with these comments of hers.
"The industry has always, but certainly now to a huge degree, played to young men, and made a self-fulfilling prophecy about films that aren’t directed toward young men by saying there’s no audience for it. So they put no money in it, they don’t promote it, and then when it doesn’t make as much money as the films for young boys, they say, “You see?” There’s a whole lot of people who want to see stories that they can identify with, and they’re not male and they’re not white and they’re not young."
Oh, my goodness! Race was awesome! It was everything I had wanted 42 and Unbroken to be! I was barely aware that more than 2 hours had passed when the movie was over.
When the movie was first released, the first thing I noticed was the title. One of the best and most subtle puns ever. Watching the movie, I didn't know any of the actors, but it doesn't matter. In fact, it probably helped, because I wasn't distracted by "that's so-and-so." Race is the story of runner Jesse Owens and his trip to the 1936 Olympics in Berlin. Two things I learned: that the United States wasn't sure it wanted to participate at all, and that all the film footage of the Berlin Olympics was actually made by a woman.
The actor who plays Luz Long, the German track star who befriends Jesse, stole every scene he was in.
I will definitely watch this movie again when it comes on TV.
Allegiant made little sense.
I've mentioned before that the Divergent movies were my favorites of the teen angst/apocalypse movies. Allegiant was way weirder than the other ones. It's the same "feel" as the earlier ones in the first half of the movie. But in the second half...
Allegiant started borrowing heavily from Star Wars, Logan's Run, Firefly, Tomorrowland, you name it. Not the mention the whole Nazi/eugenics plot. It became a straight science fiction movie. And a very confusing one. I kept thinking there must be scenes of explanation missing. If you've not seen the previous Divergent movies, don't see this one before them, because the movie will make little sense.
Keanu is your typical violent, somewhat funny, foul-mouthed buddy picture, a story about two somewhat nerdy guys who get involved with drug dealers. The only original detail in this movie is the cat, a kitten named Keanu, who gets kidnapped by one of the gang members. I had a hard time keeping straight which gang the two main characters were going after, since they seemed to be on both sides, and who currently has the kitty. You'll quickly figure out that some of the sequences are fake setup scenes.
I would never have bothered seeing Keanu except that it was about a cat. I loved the little kitten, who was the best actor in the movie!
It's a shame that guys don't go to chick flicks any more. They are missing a lot of funny, gentle and touching stories. That's what I felt about Sally Fields' Hello, My Name is Doris.
The title is simple enough. She's at a conference in the beginning of the movie and wears a stick-on name tag.
Doris is a 60-something dowdy accountant at a creative arts firm in New York. She'd lived with her mother all her life in a house where they had both been hoarders. Now her mother is dead and Doris is kind of lost. She compensates by developing a horrible crush on a new co-worker half her age, John.
John has a bit of a crush on her, and invites her to a nightclub with a live band they both like. The band's leader is also taken with Doris, so much that he asks her if she might model for the cover of the next CD.
I won't give away any more of the plot. However, I was curious as to whether the band in the movie, Baby Goya, actually exists. I really liked its music!
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