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:

MOVE - Hector and the Search for Happiness

R (1:54)

Limited release 9/19/14

El Con - by myself - 10/9/14

RT Critic:  31  Audience:   66

Cag:  6/Awesome  5/Loved it  4/Liked it a lot  3/Liked it  2/It was okay  1/Didn’t like it

Directed by Peter Chelsom

Relativity Media

Based on the book by Francois Lelord

Simon Pegg, Rosamund Pike, Toni Collette, Stellan Skarsgard

My comments: This is a movie that stays with you.  It's stayed with me - for days now.  I've created my own list, trying to figure out what makes me happy.  The movie?  I loved it.  I really loved it.  I'd like to go back and see it again.  It didn't get good reviews from critics, and I haven't even read them.  This will go down as a favorite movie for me, I think.  Definitely quirky.  Off-beat.  Tongue-in-cheek.  Clever.  Absurd.  
       There was one, somewhat disconcerting element.  Two days before I saw this I saw Gone Girl, where Rosamund Pike is a psychopath.  She has a pretty-decent-sized part in this story, with an entirely different persona.  It was hard not seeing her as the psychopath!d  She did a wonderful job, though, I almost wish I hadn't just seen her play such a seriously different part.

RT Summary: Hector (Simon Pegg) is a quirky psychiatrist who has become increasingly tired of his humdrum life. As he tells his girlfriend, Clara (Rosamund Pike), he feels like a fraud: he hasn't really tasted life, and yet he's offering advice to patients who are just not getting any happier. So Hector decides to break out of his deluded and routine driven life. Armed with buckets of courage and child-like curiosity, he embarks on a global quest in hopes of uncovering the elusive secret formula for true happiness. And so begins a larger than life adventure with riotously funny results. Based on the world-wide best-selling novel of the same name, Hector and the Search for Happiness is a rich, exhilarating, and hilarious tale.

MOVIE - The Railway Man

R (1:56)

Limited Release 4-11-14

Viewed at Carlisle Theater (reminds me so much of the Criterion, except it doesn't smell old and musty) Wed. 6-11-14

RT Critic: 66 Audience: 70

Cag: 4/Liked it a lot (I had to....It was Colin Firth....)

Directed by Jonathan Teplitzky

The Weinstein Company

Colin Firth, Nicole Kidman, Stellan Skarsgard, and a young man named Jeremy Irvine, who played the young Firth beautifully

My comments: I always love stories that are based on a true story, but always wonder how much is close to the truth and how much is fictionalized.  I really enjoy the way this one was told; overlapping present and past, reality and memory to piece everything together. I usually refuse to go to war movies, but this one (probably because of Firth) tempted me too much not to go.  What happened to the British prisoners, especially the protagonist, Eric Lomax, was more-than-horrible-and-horrifying, but it's good to get a good dose or reality once in awhile.  It's too bad that this is the reality, though....

I am NOT fond of Nicole Kidman at all.  This role didn't help me like her any more, although I guess she did an acceptable job.  I'm not even sure why I dislike her....just never liked any of the roles I've seen her do, I guess.....

Rotten Tomato Summary: Based on the remarkable bestselling autobiography, THE RAILWAY MAN tells the extraordinary and epic true story of Eric Lomax (Colin Firth), a British Army officer who is tormented as a prisoner of war at a Japanese labor camp during World War II. Decades later, Lomax and his beautiful love interest Patti (Nicole Kidman) discover that the Japanese interpreter responsible for much of his treatment is still alive and set out to confront him, and his haunting past, in this powerful and inspiring tale of heroism, humanity and the redeeming power of love.