I've seen only bits and pieces of A Clockwork Orange, but I have to say that the new, bizarre drama Everything Everywhere All at Once seems to be a combination of Clockwork and The Secret Life of Walter Mitty (both the story and its two movies). Everything is R-rated, not just because of the F word and the gory fighting but because some of the fighting is disgusting.
The premise is this: Evelyn, a Chinese-American middle-aged woman who runs Laundromat, is being audited by the IRS. Her father is disabled, her husband wants a divorce, and Evelyn's daughter is angry that she won't accept that the daughter is a lesbian and has a girlfriend. That sounds simple, but it isn't. Evelyn is contacted by a man who looks like her husband but he's from another universe, and he asks her to battle a demon who looks like her daughter. It's at the IRS that most of the switching back and forth between universes takes place. Evelyn also gets to see what her life would have been like if she had never married her husband.
Also, the dialogue switches back and forth between English and Chinese subtitles. This is a very hard movie to watch because you really have to concentrate for more than 2 hours!
In the movie, I immediately recognized Michelle Yeoh as Evelyn and James Hong as her father, but until the closing credits I did not realize that the evil IRS auditor was Jamie Lee Curtis!
Was it a good movie? I loved the fact that the protagonist was a blue-collar Asian American middle-aged woman. Things do work out at the end, as Evelyn has become stronger emotionally as a result of seeing all her various selves. But the violence was ridiculous, particularly one scene that had body parts digitalized out, perhaps on purpose. I am assuming that there will be an unrated version of this movie released, and you will get to see everything!
The looks of the characters and the spectacular backgrounds were the best part of the computer animated film The Bad Guys.
This movie is about five animals: a wolf, a rattlesnake, a tarantula, a shark and a piranha. They are all friends. The wolf is tired of his bad image and wants to change his reputation.
The animals are beautiful and I especially liked the cat that was rescued from a tree. The story is in Los Angeles and the backgrounds of the city, which are accurate but surrealistically bright, are absolutely stunning.
The only actor's voice whom I recognized was Craig Robinson's.
Downton Abbey: A New Era was good but not great. It is far sillier than the previous movie and the series, with lots of one-liners and gags. There are two separate plots: Violet has inherited a villa in the Riviera, so some of the family (but not her) go to visit it, and a film crew comes to make a movie on the Downton estate, and Lady Mary comes to the rescue.
I've seen movies that stole from other movies before, but the last movie I'd ever have imagined to be crossed over with Downton Abbey is Singin' in the Rain. You have to see it to believe it.
I know that I broke my own rule of never seeing sequels, but there are 10,000 sequels playing right now at the theaters, and Downton seemed to be the best of the bunch.
I have just one question though, and if you've seen the movie, you'll know what I am referring to: Why didn't he just ask his mother?!!!!!!
Mom and I enjoyed a sweet little movie called Mrs. Harris Goes to Paris. It's about a 1950s British housekeeper who comes into some money and then goes to Paris to buy a couture gown from Christian Dior.
I read the Paul Gallico novel, Mrs. 'Arris Goes to Paris, in the 1970s, and there was a TV movie starring Angela Lansbury in 1993, which I watched but don't remember. So I don't know if the new version can be called a remake or not.
She meets many new people during her week in France and of course changes their lives, while becoming more self-confident herself. And the dresses are beautiful, although they are not something I could wear myself. Except for her quasi-boyfriend, played by Jason Isaacs, I didn't recognize anyone in the movie. The movie keeps your interest and isn't slow, although it is based on a 1950s novel and there is nothing exciting or heart-racing in it.
At 2 hours and 39 minutes, Elvis is at least 39 minutes too long. Too much time is spent on his musical background as a boy and teen, and not all of it pertains to him directly.
My one sister loved the movie, but my other sister, my mother and I were not impressed. It was a good but not great movie. I wanted more Elvis music and less of others that he was influenced by.
The only person you will recognize in the movie is Tom Hanks, who plays Col. Tom Parker. And he is a MESS in this movie (on purpose)!
Three important details that were skipped over were the making of Jailhouse Rock, The Ed Sullivan Show appearance, and his final American tour before he died. The movie implies that all Presley did after 1968 were his Las Vegas concerts.
One detail I did learn was that Elvis wasn't drafted into the Army. The FBI wanted to place obscenity and disorderly conduct charges on him, and gave him the choice of the army or jail.
Fall is fast on its way in becoming a low-budget indie cult film and a sleeper hit. It's the most nerve-wracking movie I've seen in years.
Two young women decide to climb an abandoned 2000-foot television tower in the California desert. They get to the top and then the rusted ladder they used to climb up breaks apart, and now they are stuck up there.
No matter your experience in climbing, you will notice the mistakes the women make. The ones I noticed were that they didn't wear hats, didn't wear sunscreen, didn't bring jackets for if it got cold and didn't bring enough water. More importantly, they didn't tell anybody where they were going!
I am not going to elaborate on all the trials and tribulations they had. But what I am going to write about is the spectacular scenery and the cinematography. It is stunning. And it is best to see this movie in the theater because a TV, no matter how big the screen, is not going to show you just how high up these girls were.
For the first time in my life, I saw two movies in one day. It's something I'd thought about for years, and the $3 movie day on Saturday, Sept. 3, gave me the chance to do it. I hope that the theaters will do the same thing again next Labor Day weekend.
The first movie I saw was Minions: The Rise of Gru. It is only 90 minutes long, so I was able to catch another movie right after that. Gru is just okay. It takes place in the 1970s and the disco music was quite amusing. I loved the original Despicable Me movie--I thought it was one of the funniest movies I'd ever seen. The sequels have been somewhat disappointing and the characters aren't as likeable. However, I did realize that Gru and I are the same age! In the theater, not many people laughed at the slapstick. The disco music was what amused everyone.
The other movie I saw on Sept. 3 was an adult fantasy movie called Three Thousand Years of Longing. The only actor I recognized in the movie was Idris Elba, a genie who has been released from his bottle.
At first I thought the movie was a Baz Lurhmann production of a Salman Rushdie novel. The story looks like something both of them would have been involved in, but it is based on a short story by someone else.
The story takes place in Istanbul and in and around the Mediterranean. A British woman who has bought an unusual bottle at an antique store takes it back to her hotel room to clean, and the lid breaks off and out comes the genie. He of course grants her three wishes, but first he tells her his life story and three previous people that he assisted over the millennia, starting with the Queen of Sheba.
The movie keeps your interest but the ending is a little confusing. The movie is rated R for a reason, and frankly, the reason is kind of disgusting.
In many ways, Ticket to Paradise seems like a remake of Mamma Mia, without the music: a young couple getting married; the girl's estranged parents, who haven't seen each other in years; the tropical setting (beaches, brilliant blue sky, palm trees); and the large family in colorful outfits. The only thing missing was the music. In one beach scene I kept expecting Christine Baranski to come out and sing her suggestive song. Mamma Mia is better, and not just because of Abba. Ticket is a little slow in places and there aren't as many comedic lines as there should be. And the comments by the Balian characters' thick accents (at least they were authentic) were hard to understand at times. There are some subtitles but I think there should have been more.
The Amazing Maurice is a computer-animated movie based on the Terry Pratchett novel The Amazing Maurice and his Educated Rodents. It's about a young man named Keith (see if you catch the other Partridge Family reference in the movie), and his trained cat Maurice and the assorted trained rats. The rats invade a town, then Keith comes in with his fife and lures the rats away, for a fee. Then they meet the real Pied Piper....
The CGI is wonderful, and this is most definitely not a Disney movie. I would not take very small children to this because it's a little tense in places and the plot is more complicated than you think it might be. I really liked the movie, but then I really like cat movies anyway.
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