I must jump on the The Avengers: Infinity War bandwagon. I thought the film was very well made. They managed to juggle a few plotlines at the same time and tie them up together at the end in a meaningful way. The visuals were stunning too.
Surprisingly, Book Club is still in theaters six weeks after its release, and the movie has nothing to do with sequels or comic books. We saw it last night and the theater was half-filled with middle-aged women (including my sister and me). I saw only one man in the entire room! Book Club's plot is quite simple--four women meet once a month to discuss a book they've read, and their most recent choice is 50 Shades of Grey. The movie is quite funny with lots of laughs. My only dislike of the movie was that it was difficult keeping straight which husband/boyfriend belonged to which wife.
I went to see Sorry to Bother You because Armie Hammer is in it.
I don't know what to think of this movie. It's a science-fiction comedy, but it's depressing. Kind of an offspring of The Hunger Games and Being John Malkovich. Some violence and a small bit of nudity, but the main reason for its R rating is that the F word is in every other sentence. Hearing that got annoying after a while.
Armie is typecast again as a rich arrogant jerk (I wonder sometimes how much he is acting!). He and Danny Glover are the only actors in the movie I recognize. Danny gets to say his trademark punchline in the movie.
The promos talk about how the story is about an African-American telemarketer who uses a "white" voice to sell more items over the phone. Except for some books/videos mentioned early in the movie, you never do learn what the company is actually selling.
Anyway, by the end of the movie, people are turning into horses.... You figure it out.
P.S. I don't know why I didn't think of this years ago. I'm going to start showing you my movie ticket.
The Darkest Minds is the latest teens-save-the-world-from-the-apocalypse-based-on-a-young-adult-novel. The only two details that are different in this movie are (1) the heroine is African-American, and (2) she doesn't go off by herself in the end.
It's an okay movie. I had never seen any of the actors before; they were all new to me.
Alpha is a physically beautifully movie, filmed at national parks in western Canada that stood in for eastern Europe 20,000 years ago. Alpha is considered the earliest-ever-set boy and his dog movie. It's about a young man injured and abandoned for dead during a bison hunting trip who must make his way homeward alone. He injures a wolf who is part of a pack hunting him, and when the other wolves leave, he takes pity on it and takes care of it. The two eventually become friends.
The movie's plot is similar to The Revenant and Man in the Wilderness, but all the characters are dressed like those in The Road Warrior. I enjoyed this movie very much.
The movie is PG-13 for its violence and is in a made-up language with subtitles.
Although it seems like an innocent family movie, it is not, so any youngsters seeing it should be 10 and up.
Apollo 13 from 1995 is my all-time favorite movie, and because of it I see every space movie that comes out. First Man is not the adventure story that Apollo 13 or The Right Stuff was. It's a drama like Hidden Figures, focusing on Neil Armstrong's relationships with his family and his co-workers. I never knew that his toddler daughter's death is part of the reason that he was so reclusive.
It's a good movie but it is slow at times.
This review of Welcome to Marwen is from the point of view of a doll collector. I went to see the movie because of the dolls/action figures. I am not a fan of Steve Carell and of computer animation. Marwen is good but not great, although it keeps your attention and never is slow. It's a little creepy at times, and much more violent than you'd expect. It is most definitely not a movie for small children.
The other reason this movie is PG-13 is the story behind Hogie's attack. It's never mentioned in the previews. He likes to wear women's high heels. One thing you learn in the film is that stilettos were invented in 1954, and all the dolls wear them. Their feet are even higher than Barbie's.
One detail you will notice is that all the good animated characters are female, not including Hogie. All the villains are male. The manufacturer of the girl figures is a made-up brand called Glamonistas with many joints, but I don't know the movie's series names for the boy figures.
The movie bounces back and forth in time a lot, and since the movie's producer was Robert Zemeckis, there are a number of blatant references to Back to the Future, one of which made me roll my eyes.
Bohemian Rhapsody is much better than A Star is Born. The acting, plot, music, sets and especially the costumes are more impressive. I hope that the soundtrack gets released on an LP like last year when I bought The Greatest Showman LP.
Both Rhapsody and Star are too long and the last third drags, but the first two thirds of Rhapsody are wonderful. You will want to sing along with the songs and in fact, some theaters are showing sing-along versions.
I am glad that this movie is doing well and is playing after several months in the theater.
Mary Poppins was the first movie I ever saw in theater. My grandmother took me downtown on the bus to the Albee Theater the day after Easter in 1965. I was 4 years old. (I looked it up--the movie was released Aug. 27, 1964, and I saw it April 19, 1965. In those days movies were shown in theaters for much longer than now.)
Normally I avoid sequels but I felt obligated to see Mary Poppins Returns! I had hoped to wait until Easter to see it, but alas, the movie is not doing nearly as well financially as expected. It was released two months ago and is in far fewer theaters than earlier, so I saw it yesterday.
It was very, very good but not excellent. The sequences for the songs about the book covers (which was supposed to be "Supercalifragilisticexpialaodocious") and the balloons (which was supposed to be "Let's Go Fly a Kite") went on too long and were a tad bit creepy. But I really liked the other songs and loved when they incorporated some of the original movie music. There were umpteen references to the 1964 movie, some of which made me laugh out loud, and even a few that reminded me of Savings Mr. Banks and the Disney Pirates moves. However, I did not get the comment that Emily Blunt as Mary Poppins made when she was getting on the bicycle and she mentioned something about riding an elephant. Did Blunt ride an elephant in another movie?
I was glad to see Dick Van Dyke at the end. I learned later that the woman walking the dog, named Willoughby, was played by Karen Dotrice.
I had originally planned to see Hotel Mumbai, about the 2008 terrorist strike on the Taj Hotel in India, on Tuesday evening. Instead I went to see it Wednesday afternoon. I am glad I changed my plans. That movie would have given me nightmares had I seen it in the evening! Mumbai was excellent, but it was the most violent movie I've ever seen. The killings by the terrorists by AK-47 or grenades was almost constant. Not even the R-rated Vietnam War movies I've seen over the years were this violent.
I am still thinking about the movie and how disturbing and upsetting it was. I did not realize that it wasn't just the hotel that was attacked, but that there were attacks all over the city that same day.
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