Money Monster is great! It's also quite nerve-wracking.
Kyle, a young man invades a live TV cable money advice show hosted by Lee (George Clooney). Kyle had taken Lee's investing advice and now the stock he purchased has lost $800 million worldwide. He wants to know why, or he will kill Lee.
Lee and Patty (Julia Roberts) and the other investigative reporters need to learn the answers before Kyle shoots Lee or sets off a bomb on the set.
Did anyone else think the guy in the bathroom was going to play Bruce Willis's Die Hard character?
Free State of Jones is a re-enactment about a forgotten place and time during the War Between the States. It takes place in Jones County, Mississippi, in which a bunch of poorer Confederate soldiers (not wealthy plantation owners) desert the Confederate Army and hide out in the swamp with some runaway slaves. The group eventually grows in size, led by Newton Knight (Matthew McConaughey). They aren't with the South, but they aren't really aligned with the North either.
I don't know if the Jones folks were actually ambitious and idealistic, or just wanted revenge. The movie has battle scenes in which both whites and blacks, and men and women, are fighting together against a Confederate outfit.
The only other person I recognized in the movie was Keri Russell. The movie is long, a little slow, and very violent at times, but I liked it immensely.
Normally I avoid sequels, but I saw Alice: Through the Looking Glass anyway. Why? A) Because it was showing at the one-screen theater down the street from me; B) It's not doing well; and C) Johnny Depp has had a lot of bad publicity.
It's been decades since I read the Lewis Carroll novel, and remember little of it. But the plot of this movie has almost nothing to do with what I do remember of the story. Alice is a young woman whose family is almost penniless, and she avoids the situation by jumping into a magic mirror. Once in the mirror, she must go back in time to save the Mad Hatter's family. Far more complicated than what Carroll had ever dreamed of!
Oh, and the movie was just a tad bit creepy.
It seems like a new Jane Austen novel adaptation is released every six months. Love & Friendship, based on a novella called Lady Susan, is the latest one.
You wanted to smack the two main characters. Friends Susan and Alicia are quite devious and untrue to their husbands. Susan is now a widow and penniless, and travels from one estate of a distant relative to another. Eventually the other characters pick up on her selfishness and ask her to leave.
The movie is a comedy, and some of the comments are quite funny. The ending is a bit of a surprise.
A Hologram for the King is a bizarre cross between Lawrence of Arabia and every show you've seen involving salespeople and their offices. It's a physically beautiful movie but there isn't a whole lot of plot. I'm not sure what kind of statement the producers were trying to make with it.
Salesman Alan Clay (Tom Hanks) and three computer techs from a company that makes holograms are sent to Saudi Arabia to convince the king and the Sauds to buy the company's technology. The business people with the Sauds keep ignoring the Americans, much to the anger of Alan's bosses, who cannot understand the delays.
There are several oddballs in the movie and a potential romance. I'd advise waiting to see this on TV, except for the fact that the desert scenes are spectacular. If you've seen Lawrence of Arabia in the theater, you will know what I am talking about; in fact, there are several references to that movie in Hologram.
I know Texas is a huge state, but has anyone else noticed that the majority of the evangelical Christian movies are set there?
The most recent is Miracles from Heaven, a touching story about a 10-year-old girl whose intestines are unable to process food. She is in terrible pain and is slowly dying. The trips to be treated by a specialist in Boston have been to no avail.
Then there is a freak accident...
I was moved to near tears several times in this movie. The actress who plays the little girl named Annabelle is excellent.
It used to be that Barbie stories were inter-related. Now each doll is in its own universe.
The Barbie I learned about today was in a new computer-animated movie called Barbie: Star Light Adventure. She and her widowed father live on a nature preserve planet in a distant galaxy. The galaxy's problem is that its planets are slowing their rotation and the stars are gradually twinkling out.
She and four other subjects of King Constantine are asked to join him on a mission to get to the center of the galaxy and find its core/heart and relight it.
This universe's Barbie does not know any of "our" universe's Barbie family or friends (Ken, Midge, Skipper, etc.)
I enjoyed some of the movie but there were parts that dragged and other parts that made me roll my eyes. If I had been a little girl (and there were several in the audience), I probably would have had trouble following the storyline and gotten a little bored.
Oh, and Barbie's parents are unnamed. I don't know if they were supposed to be named George and Margaret or not.
Remember The Shaggy Dog and Oh Heavenly Dog? The new Kevin Spacey movie Nine Lives has the same plot, except with a cat instead.
A very rich businessman named Tom Brand who has been ignoring his family falls off the side of his skyscraper. Now Tom is in a coma, and the souls of the cat he just purchased and his own soul have switched places. Meanwhile Tom's coworkers are taking advantage of his absence and planning to sell the company, which Tom the cat must prevent, with the help of his family.
The movie has the look and feel of a 1970s Disney live-action movie. In fact, it was kind of disorienting at times because the "look" was so accurate. If Tom hadn't had both a wife and an ex-wife, and if there hadn't been numerous litter box jokes, Nine Lives could have been filmed 40 years ago.
Although not a great movie, I am planning to buy the DVD.
Independence Day: Resurgence was supposed to be a blockbuster but it wasn't. It was on its last day at the second-run theater, so the ticket was only $1, so although I normally avoid sequels, I went to see it.
It's very confusing keeping all the characters straight. Will Smith's character is dead, although you never learn what happened to him. However, Jeff Goldblum, Judd Hirsch, Bill Pullman, Robert Loggia (in a cameo before his death), Vivica Fox and even Brent Spiner (don't ask) all are in the movie, and how they all get together again is even more convoluted than in the original film.
Many of the new characters looked alike, and I wasn't sure who was related to whom. The story takes place in numerous locations and not only are you not sure where everyone is supposed to be, sometimes they'd appear in another setting without warning. I got no "vibes" from any of the new characters either; they were just kind of blah.
Mom and I really enjoyed Florence Foster Jenkins, Meryl Streep's movie about a woman in the 1940s who has a horrible voice but loves to perform opera. There were at least 40 women in the theater, all of them over the age of 40, and one man. Everyone laughed a lot, including my mom.
There's a reason that the movie is rated PG-13 instead of a mild PG, and it isn't because of the mild cursing (I heard only three bad words). Florence has a sad secret, and it comes as a surprise, even a shock, halfway through the movie.
The guys who see all the comic book and CGI movies but nothing else won't "get" Florence Foster Jenkins, but everyone else will.
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