MOVIE - Arrival

PG-13 (1:51)

Wide release 11/11/16

Viewed date at Park Place Mall on Thursday, Nov. 17, 2016 after getting my hair cut.

RT Critic:  93  Audience:  83
Critic's Consensus:  Arrival delivers a must-see experience for fans of thinking person's sci-fi that anchors its heady themes with genuinely affecting emotion and a terrific performance from Amy Adams.

Cag:  5.5  I really loved it, superior movie, may change to a 6...

Directed by Denis Villeneuve

21 Laps Entertainment

Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Forrest Whitacker

My comments:  Now that's a MOVIE!  Clever, believable science fiction where you slowly figure out what's going on, and the reality is much ... deeper ... than superficial.  I'll be thinking about this one for a long while yet.  It left me with a couple of small questions, that I'm sure I'm supposed to figure out on my own (sort of like the end of reading The Giver for the first time).

RT/ IMDb Summary:  When mysterious spacecrafts touch down across the globe, an elite team - lead by expert linguist Louise Banks - is brought together to investigate. As mankind teeters on the verge of global war, Banks and the team race against time for answers - and to find them, she will take a chance that could threaten her life, and quite possibly humanity.

MOVIE - American Hustle

R (2:09)

NY/LA Release 12/13/13; Wide Release 12/20/2013

Viewed 1/2/2014 with Laura in Carlisle

RT Critic: 92  Audience:  81

Cag:  5.5 Really loved it

Directed by David O. Russell

Film Studio

Actors: Christian Bale, Amy Adams, Jeremy Renner, Bradley Cooper, Jennifer Lawrence

My comments: No blood & guts, lots (and lots) of tongue-in-cheek humor, and brilliant acting all worked together to completely entertain me.  The story is brilliant, the characters are fun, and the 70s feel is almost always believable.  I wasn't sure throughout the movie that I should be chuckling to myself or if I was supposed to be completely caught up in the "seriousness" of what was going on - I guess I felt guilty being so entertained.  I'm glad I didn't really know about the plot other than what I'd seen in previews, because I was surprised and kept on my toes.  I was never "worried" about the outcome, and I think this made the movie all the more enjoyable.  I really loved it.

Fandango:  A fictional film set in the alluring world of one of the most stunning scandals to rock our nation, American Hustle tells the story of brilliant con man Irving Rosenfeld (Christian Bale), who along with his equally cunning and seductive British partner Sydney Prosser (Amy Adams) is forced to work for a wild FBI agent Richie DiMaso (Bradley Cooper). DiMaso pushes them into a world of Jersey powerbrokers and mafia that’s as dangerous as it is enchanting. Jeremy Renner is Carmine Polito, the passionate, volatile, New Jersey political operator caught between the con-artists and Feds. Irving’s unpredictable wife Rosalyn (Jennifer Lawrence) could be the one to pull the thread that brings the entire world crashing down. Like David O. Russell’s previous films, American Hustle defies genre, hinging on raw emotion, and life and death stakes.

MOVIE - The Muppets

Slow and boring
Wide release 11-23-11
12-13-11 at El Con with Rachel
PG (1:42)
RT critics:  97% audience: 91% (boy do I differ from them this time)
Director:  James Bobin
Walt Disney Pictures

Jason Segel (who also cowrote and produced), Amy Adams, Jack Black
Lots of cameos:  Emilyy Blunt, Jim Parsons, Neil Patrick Harris, Alan Arkin......

Preceded by five previews and a short film, we didn't walk out of the theater until two and a half hours after we walked in.  And yawn.  It was so slow, especially the scenes with good ol' Kermit.  When the whole cast broke into dance, and Jason Segel broke into song I didn't know what to think.  I love musicals, but this just didn't work for me.  I was so looking forward to it....maybe that was the problem!

Gary's "brother," Walter, a muppet, is a huge fan of the original Muppets.  So when Gary takes his girlfriend Mary (Adams) to LA for a 10-year dating anniversary, Walter accompanies them.  They go to the falling-down Muppet Studio for a tour, and Walter overhears nasty  Tex Richman planning to purchase the old property and tear it down to drill for oil.  Thus the plot is hatched to track down the original Muppets, who have all gone their separate ways, for one big telethon show.

MOVIE - The Fighter

Wow - Great accents - Great acting - Lowell, Mass!
Released 12-17-10
R (1:54)
3-6-11 (a gorgeous Sunday evening) at El con with Sheila & Terri
RT: 90 cag: 95
Director: David O. Russell
Amy Adams, Mark Wahlberg, Christian Bale

Both Christian Bale and Melissa Leo won Academy Awards for supporting actor & actress in this riveting true story about two brothers from Lowell, Massachusetts in the 1980's. They were wonderful, but so was Amy Adams. Wow.

Micky Ward (Wahlberg) has always adored his older brother Dicky Eklund (Bale) who, for a short time, was "the pride of Lowell" after he beat Sugar Ray Leonard in a fight. Now, years later, Dicky is a crack addict and Micky is trying to work his way up the ladder as a fighter. However, he's not getting very far. Then he meets Charlene (Adams), a brassy bartender who helps him see that it's time he stop bailing his brother out and lying for him one more time. His world is centered around his outrageous mother, his seven grown sisters, and the young daughter whose mother is doing everything she can to poison their relationship.

Then Dicky goes to prison and cleans up while Micky is guided by a new trainer and manager....and begins to go places. And, oh how the family hates Charlene!

As the credits begin, the real-life Micky and Dicky are seen chatting about the film. I'd love to see more of them....

Totally entertaining. It's much more a story of family than a story about boxing. There are only a few fighting scenes, and those were quite acceptable to me - a person who seriously dislikes boxing.

MOVIE - Julie and Julia

Wonderful movie - almost perfect!
Released Aug. 7, 2009
PG-13 (I'm not sure why....) (2:03)
Nov. 25, 2009 at Crossroads with Fran
RT: 74% cag 96%
Director: Nora Ephron
Meryl Streep, Amy Adams, Stnely Tucci, Chris Messina

Nora Ephron took two memoirs and wove them together. Beautifully. Then Meryl Streep BECAME Julia Child. What a performance! ! ! ! ! Superb doesn't cover it. She was incredible. Believable. Lovely. Special.

Amy Adams' Julie Powell, unhappy to have moved to a tiny apartment above a pizza shop inQueens and with her cubicle-telephone job taking calls concerning the World Trade Center, takes on a personal challenge. She loves to cook. She adores Julia Child, so decides to make every single recipe in Julia Child's Mastering the Art of French Cooking. In one year. 365 days. And....to blog about it all.

The movie weaves Julie's story - with its many ups and downs AND her super-supportive husband with Julia's story - with its ups and downs and HER super-supportive husband (go Stanley Tucci!) beautifully, beautifully. Two hours and three minutes (with five or six previews beforehand) is a long time to sit, but I could have doubled that. Just plain fun.

MOVIE - Sunshine Cleaning

Loved it - a lot
Viewed: Monday, April 27 at El Con
Rotten Tomato: 71% Mine: 95%
EW: B- Mine: A (Its beginning to appear that I disagree with EW a lot)
Genre: Comedy/Drama
Released: 3-13-09
R (1:42)
Directed by Christine Jeffs (she also directed Little Miss Sunshine)
Amy Adams, Emily Blunt, Steve Zahn, Alan Arkin

Rose Norkowski (Amy Adams) has an eight-year old son, low self-esteem, a bumbling screw-up sister (Emily Blunt), a dad who tries all sorts of get-rich-quick schemes (Alan Arkin), and a mom who committed suicide when she and Nora were young. Add to that an affair with her now-married high school boyfriend (Steve Zahn) and a cleaning job that brings in very little income, plop it all in the middle of Albuquerque, NM, and you have the basis for this movie. There were so many layers to peel through, and I loved every one of them. The relationship between the two sisters was really the crux of the whole movie, and Adams and Blunt did mighty magnificent jobs. Such acting!

Zahn's character is a cop, and while investigating a suicide he hears how much the cleaning company charges for bloody, smelly, yucky clean-ups. He convinces Rose to try her hand at this sort of clean up and removal. The gross jobs they get are part funny, part very serious, and Rose and Nora get better and better at it until Nora screws up once again and burns down one of their jobs. Without insurance, they are sunk.

Clever, happy ending. Cute kid. A new love interest -a really interesting one. Layers and layers. Totally enjoyable, real characters with a great storyline. A new favorite.

Hey, this is my 250th post since I started blogging in August. Pretty cool.

MOVIE: Doubt

Rating: Time flew by
Viewed: Tuesday, Mar. 2; Crossroads with Sheila
Rotten Tomato: 78% Mine: 80%, almost the same
EW: C+ cag: B+
Genre: Drama
Realeased: 12/12/08
PG-13 (1:44)
Directed (& written by) John Patrick Shanley
Meryl Streep (Acad Award nominee best actress)
Philip Seymour Hoffman (AcAw nominee supporting)
Amy Adams (AcAw nominee supporting)
Viola Davis (AcAw nominees supporting) ***

I had never planned to see this movie - I was nervous watching the previews (I hate the very real problem about sexual abuse concerning priests, even if it is probably just a handful) , and I've always had a....problem.....with the Catholic church. But it was dollar night, with popcorn and soda two bucks each (hey, five dollars for dinner and a movie - who can pass that up?) I'm glad I went. There's a reason why movies get Academy Award nominations. The acting was just plain superb! Viola Davis had perhaps a ten-minute part, but OH MY GOSH! I feel like I can get in front of a class of kids and act it up, but this kind of talent is just awe-inspiring. I couldn't pick out one performance and say it was better or not as good as another.

The story: Sister Aloysius (Streep) is the hard-nosed principal of a NYC parochial school in 1964. Father Flynn (Hoffman) is the middle-aged priest of the church. The two have opposing views about "keeping up with the times." Young Sister James (Adams) is a new teacher who loves teaching history to her 8th graders. She's the one who goes to the principal with things that she's noticed about Father Flynn and one of her students - a black boy who is also an altar boy.

There's never any real proof about anything in this movie, we are left to our own imaginings - as are the protagonists of the story. I've never seen the Tony-Award and Pulitzer Prize award winning play, which is said to be better, but I did enjoy this film very much. And I don't think it's FAIR to compare a play and a movie, especially when they're written by the same person. You just have to sit back and enjoy the incredible acting for an hour and three quarters. It flew by. I'm glad I saw it.