MOVIE - Green Book

PG-13 (2:10)

Wide release 11/21/19

Viewed 12/27/18 at Carlisle Theater with Sandy
IMBd: 8.3/10

RT Critic:  82  Audience: 94
Critic's Consensus:   Green Booktakes audiences on a surprisingly smooth ride through potentially bumpy subject matter, fueled by Peter Farrelly's deft touch and a pair of well-matched leads.

Cag:  5

Directed by Peter Farrelly 

Universal Pictures

Based on a true story

Viggo Mortensen, Mahershala Ali, Linda Cardellini

My comments:  I wish they had chosen another name for this movie.  I can understand why they used it and how hard it might'v been to come up with a proper title, but this wasn't a good one for such a wonderful movie.  Based on a true story (I always wonder how much), it takes us back to the early 60s into the black and white communities of the deep South.  Oh, how I get pissed off!  It's all about a tough white Italian American from the Bronx taking on the job of driver for two months for a cultured black pianist who is performing in Kentucky, Tennessee, Mississippi, Alabama, etc.  It's about how they slowly come around to becoming not just employer/employee, but like-minded friends.  Lots of gentle humor, earnestness, and head-shaking, maddening prejudice.

RT/ IMDb Summary  When Tony Lip (Mortensen), a bouncer from an Italian-American neighborhood in the Bronx, is hired to drive Dr. Don Shirley (Ali), a world-class Black pianist, on a concert tour from Manhattan to the Deep South, they must rely on "The Green Book" to guide them to the few establishments that were then safe for African-Americans. Confronted with racism, danger-as well as unexpected humanity and humor-they are forced to set aside differences to survive and thrive on the journey of a lifetime.

2018 Golden Globes

We'll find out on January 6th which of these will win a Golden Globe:

Best Motion Picture

     Black Panther

     BlackKlansman

     Bohemian Rhapsody

     If Beale Street Could Talk- (not coming out until 12/14 and with limited release at that!)

     A Star is Born

Best Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

     Crazy Rich Asians

     The Favourite (Although it came out on 11/23, it's a limited release and I've not seen it anywhere....)

     Green Book (Just came out)

     Mary Poppins Returns (coming out 12/19/18)

     Vice (Wide release on Christmas day)

Best Motion Picture - Animated

     Incredibles

     Isle of Dogs

     Mirai

     Ralph Breaks the Internet

     Spider-Man: Into the Spider-Verse

Best Motion Picture - Foreign Language

     Capernaum

     Girl

     Never Look Away

     Roma

     Shoplifters

Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Drama

     Bradley Cooper (A Star is Born)

     Willem Defoe (At Eternity's Gate) (limited release 11/16 - about VanGogh)

     Lucas Hedges (Boy Erased)

     Rami Malek (Bohemian Rhapsody)

     John David Washington (Blackkklansman)

Best Actor in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

     Christian Bale (Vice)

     Lin-Manuel Miranda (Mary Poppins Returns)

     Viggo Mortensen (Green Book)

     Robert Redford (The Old Man and the Gun)

     John C. Reilly (Stan & Ollie)

Best Actor in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

     Mahershala Ali (Green Book)

     Timothee Chalamet (Beautiful Boy)

     Adam Driver (Blackkklansman)

     Richard E. Grant (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) (limited release on 10/19 - haven't seen it showing is this corner of the world....)

     Sam Rockwell (Vice)

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Drama

     Glenn Close (The Wife)

     Lady Gaga (A Star is Born)

     Nicole Kidman (Destroyer) (Limited release on Christmas day)

     Melissa McCarthy (Can You Ever Forgive Me?)

     Rosamund Pike (A Private War) (wide release 11/16, but not around here!)

Best Actress in a Motion Picture - Musical or Comedy

     Emily Blunt (Mary Poppins Returns)     

     Olivia Colman (The Favourite)

     Elsie Fisher (Eighth Grade)

     Charlize Theron (Tully)

     Constance Wu (Crazy Rich Asians)

Best Actress in a Supporting Role in any Motion Picture

     Amy Adams (Vice)

     Claire Foy (First Man)

     Regina King (If Beale Street Could Talk)

     Emma Stone (The Favourite)

     Rachel Weisz (The Favourite)

Best Director - Motion Picture

     Bradley Coopoer - A Star is Born

     Alfonso Cuaron - Roma

     Peter Farrelly - Green Book

     Spike Lee - BlacKkKlansman

     Adam McKay - Vice

MOVIE - Mamma Mia: Here We Go Again

PG-13 (1:54)

7/20/18 Wide Release

Viewed 7/23/18 at Carlisle with Laura and Ella
IMBd: 7.3/10

RT Critic: 79   Audience:  76
Critic's Consensus:  Mamma Mia! Here We Go Again doubles down on just about everything fans loved about the original -- and my my, how can fans resist it?

Cag:  4/Liked it a lot - the music is awesome

Directed by Ol Parker

Universal Pictures

Based on the music of ABBA  (a 1970s rock group from Sweden)

Amanda Seyfried, Colin Firth, Pierce Brosnan, Stellan Skarsgard, Christine Baranski, Julie Walters, Andy Garcia, Cher, Meryl Streep

My comments:  Dancin' Queen....You can dance....you can jive....having the time of your life.....
I just returned from seeing this movie.  With some of it was disappointed, but with some of it I felt giddy.  Yup, giddy.  And the grand finale was GRAND!  Best part of the movie!!!  The scenes with the younger versions of the couples seemed over-acted to me, and a teeny, tiny bit off.  Loved it when the three females were performing together, young OR old.  The modern-time numbers were really wonderful.  As is the scenery...how would ANYONE want to leave that place?  Fantastic costumes, too.  And including Cher was a blast.  So. Much. Fun.  Ella really loved it, and immediately wondered if they'd make a number three!
      Perfect movie for three generations to watch together.

RT/ IMDb Summary:

MOVIE - I Feel Pretty

PG-13 (1:50)

Wide release 4/20/18, to disc & streaming July 17, 2018

Viewed May 3. 2018

RT Critic:  34  Audience:  34
Critic's Consensus:  I Feel Prettyhas a charming star and the outline of a worthwhile comedy -- but unlike its suddenly confident central character, it suffers from a fundamental lack of conviction.

Cag:  3.5 Liked it

Directed by Abby Kohn & Marc Silverstein

Studio STXfilms

Amy Schumer, Michelle Williams, Rory Scovel

My comments:  With the fabulous Amy Schumer!  Fun and funny and sweet and poignanat and all sorts of things, this was a totally enjoyable movie tied up in a big red bow.  The world has to stop judging everybody on how they look and concentrate more on how they act and think.  And the point of the whole movie:  it has to start with ourselves! 

 

RT/ IMDb Summary:  In I FEEL PRETTY a woman who struggles with feelings of deep insecurity and low self-esteem, that hold her back everyday, wakes from a brutal fall in an exercise class believing she is suddenly a supermodel. With this newfound confidence she is empowered to live her life fearlessly and flawlessly, but what will happen when she realizes her appearance never changed?

MOVIE - Tomb Raider

PG-13 (1:58)

Wide release 3/16/2018

Viewed March 16, 2018

RT Critic:  50  Audience:  56
Critic's Consensus:  Tomb Raider reboots the franchise with a more grounded approach and a star who's clearly more than up to the task -- neither of which are well served by an uninspired origin story.

Cag:  3/Liked it - good entertainment

Directed by Roar Uthaug

Warner Brothers Pictures

Alicia Vikander, Walton Goggins

My comments:  Totally stupid and unbelievable, but really fun to watch.  She would have been dead at least a dozen times, and at the very least not been able to get up andmove afterwards, never mind fight and run and blah blah blah.  It certainly kept me entertained, though.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Lara Croft is the fiercely independent daughter of an eccentric adventurer who vanished when she was scarcely a teen. Now a young woman of 21 without any real focus or purpose, Lara navigates the chaotic streets of trendy East London as a bike courier, barely making the rent, and takes college courses, rarely making it to class. Determined to forge her own path, she refuses to take the reins of her father's global empire just as staunchly as she rejects the idea that he's truly gone. Advised to face the facts and move forward after seven years without him, even Lara can't understand what drives her to finally solve the puzzle of his mysterious death. Going explicitly against his final wishes, she leaves everything she knows behind in search of her dad's last-known destination: a fabled tomb on a mythical island that might be somewhere off the coast of Japan. But her mission will not be an easy one; just reaching the island will be extremely treacherous. Suddenly, the stakes couldn't be higher for Lara, who--against the odds and armed with only her sharp mind, blind faith and inherently stubborn spirit--must learn to push herself beyond her limits as she journeys into the unknown. If she survives this perilous adventure, it could be the making of her, earning her the name tomb raider.

MOVIE - Annihilation

R (1:55)

Wide 2/23/18 On video 5/29/18
Viewed March 1, 2018
IMDb: 6.9

RT Critic: 87   Audience:  66
Critic's Consensus:  Annihilationbacks up its sci-fi visual wonders and visceral genre thrills with an impressively ambitious -- and surprisingly strange -- exploration of challenging themes that should leave audiences pondering long after the end credits roll

Cag:  4 -Creepy (good!)s SciFi

Directed by Alex Garland

Paramount Pictures

Based on the book by Jeff VanderMeer

Natalie Portman, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Gina Rodriguez

My comments:  A mesmerizing sci-fi movie that left me with many questions, and I've spent a bit of time mulling them over.  Now that I think I've figured out what the ending meant, I don't feel a unsettled as I did when I walked out of the theater.  I really do enjoy sci-fi, and this one had a bit of horror attached, which was pretty cool actually.  I love it when you have to think and think to put things together and wonder why things happened, and wait for the explanation.  It's when there's no explanation that I have trouble - especially in sci-fi, because it doesn't always have to make sense.  I'm pretty sure that this was based on a book, I'll have to check that out.  

RT/ IMDb Summary:  A biologist's husband disappears. She puts her name forward for an expedition into an environmental disaster zone, but does not find what she's expecting. The expedition team is made up of the biologist, an anthropologist, a psychologist, a surveyor, and a linguist.            
 It's been already twelve months since his last covert operation, and the rugged military, Kane, is still missing in action, presumed dead. With his wife--the successful academic biology professor, Lena--still grieving him, an unprecedented phenomenon in the swamplands of Florida will soon have her following in Kane's footsteps, as a member of a strong all-women team. So many theories try to explain the mysterious ever-expanding iridescent membrane which swallows the area; however, none was able to yield facts. What kind of startling biological transmutations lurk behind this bright and colourful kaleidoscope of horrors? In the end, what did Kane see?

MOVIE - Hostiles

R (2:15)

Wide release 1/26/18

Viewed 1/25/18

RT Critic: 71   Audience:  73
Critic's Consensus:  Hostiles benefits from stunning visuals and a solid central performance from Christian Bale, both of which help elevate its uneven story.

Cag:  5.5  One helluva movie

Directed by Scott Cooper

Entertainment Studios Motion Pictures

Christian Bale, Rosamund Pike

My comments:  I'm pretty sure this is one of those movies that you don't forget.  A tragic story, but one that mesmerized me.  Super performances, Christian Bale just can't be beat.  He lives and breathes his part.  Indigenous people versus those who took them over.  This movie is  about relationships between people, friendships past and present, the ties that bind and those that are fleeting or even meaningless.  I think this was a brilliant movie, a huge piece of US history, and a story that will stay with me for a long, long time.

RT/ IMDb Summary:  Set in 1892, Hostiles tells the story of a legendary Army Captain (Christian Bale), who after stern resistance, reluctantly agrees to escort a dying Cheyenne war chief (Wes Studi) and his family back to tribal lands. Making the harrowing and perilous journey from Fort Berringer, an isolated Army outpost in New Mexico, to the grasslands of Montana, the former rivals encounter a young widow (Rosamund Pike), whose family was murdered on the plains. Together, they must join forces to overcome the punishing landscape, hostile Comanche and vicious outliers that they encounter along the way.