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THE LOVERS Review THE DINNER Review — — A couple of thoughtful films about well seasoned people
THE LOVERS Review
I’m always thrilled to see films made by and for people over 35. Not that I don’t love all the fabulous Millennials in my life, but I grow weary of movie focusing on their trials and tribulations that seem so trivial and self absorbed from my lofty, craggy perspective atop all these many decades.
UNFORGETTABLE Review — Memorable? Not so much
I’m not gonna lie. There will be no awards waiting for this one — not even a Razzie, because it’s not bad enough for that. Still, you might say it’s so bad it’s good fun.
Sixty years ago they would have put Joan Crawford and Bette Davis in the lead rolls, and we would have heard about rousing catfights both on and off the screen. (That’s a plug for FX’s fabulous Feud: Bette and Joan — a limited series you should binge this very weekend, if you haven’t seen it)
FATE OF THE FURIOUS Review by Staci Layne Wilson
@StaciWilson
The Fast and the Furious film franchise started way back in the early 2000s, modestly with just a few muscle cars and a handful of up-and-coming actors. Nowadays it’s big box office biz thanks to its stupendous stunts with ever-increasingly exotic vehicles and megawatt action stars like The Rock (Dwayne Johnson) and Jason Statham. The previous Fast and Furious film, simply entitled Furious 7, is reportedly the sixth highest grossing film of all time.
Lisa Johnson Mandell says this La La Land real estate video may be the best she’s ever seen — and she’s seen a lot!
Here in L.A., you can’t just snap a few pretty pictures of your home, have your agent post them and then expect your house to be snapped right up. At a minimum, you have to make a video with a slide show and music. If you want to step it up a notch, you can throw some swooping drone to footage in. Some big-budget home sales videos even do a scripted production, hiring actors to tell a provocative tale in the home.
THE BOSS BABY Review by Lisa Johnson Mandell — The birth of yet another classic Alec Baldwin character
Okay, before I even start, I just have to get this off my chest: Does anybody else see a likeness between Boss Baby and Presidential Press Secretary Sean Spicer? I know any resemblance is purely coincidental, since Fox animators began work on Boss Baby long before Spicer became part of the national zeitgeist. Maybe there’s more of a resemblance between Melissa McCarthy as Sean Spicer and Boss Baby:
Ghost in the Shell Review by James Mandell
Midway through Ghost in the Shell, there’s a scene when two women are conversing and one asks the other “What are you?” For good reason. We’re about a century into the future and have reached the synchronicity tipping point, blending Asimov’s man and robot concept into a more “perfect” entity.
Scarlett Johansson plays Major, a killing machine in a literally skintight jumpsuit, fashioned via mechanics and brain transplant. Based on the cult manga and anime story, she awakens on an operating table as the movie opens, getting encouragement to take her first breath from the doc (Juliette Binoche) in charge of her construction team.
Beauty and the Beast Review: One of Disney’s greatest best live action fantasies yet, I see no reason for super conservatives to avoid it
Readers, please! I know some of you are wondering about the ‘big gay moment’ you’ve heard so much about in Disney’s latest live action version of Beauty and the Beast. Let me reassure you that the whole issue is nothing more than a ridiculously over-hyped tempest in a teapot. Blink and you’ll miss the few vaguely gay references. The rest of the film is a fabulous Disney epic, and you would be missing out on a superlative cinematic experience if you chose not to go for whatever reason.
LIFE Review — by guest critic and sci-fi rocker James Mandell of Cereal Atomic
Life belies your basic survival problems in outer space. Its log line pretty well sums things up: We Were Better Off Alone.
Clever, but I was better off before I saw it. Once again, we’re given a sci-fi fantasy slate of suppositions we need to accept in order to suspend our belief in reality and enjoy the film: creatures like this somehow existed on Mars, aliens have magical powers and space stations are made of swiss cheese.
Get Out Review — A brilliant cinematic surprise
Horror never has been my favorite genre, but I’ve gone absolutely gaga over Jordan Peele‘s cunning, creepy and clever Get Out. It’s frightening in so many delicious ways and on so many different levels.
The concept is this: White girl (Allison Williams) takes black boyfriend (Daniel Kaluuya) home to meet the parents. She tells him the worst he’s going to have to put up with is listening to her dad (Bradley Whitford) talk about how he would have voted for a Obama a third time, but you know that ain’t right. I’m not going to say one more thing about the plot, because discovery is have the fun…and half the fright.
The Great Wall Review
The Great Wall Review
This is an important film in that it’s China’s most expensive production, it was helmed by Yimou Zhang China’s biggest director, and it was made with an international cast with a universal audience in mind. It stars Matt Damon, who is being billed as a “global superstar,” apparently one of the most popular action stars the world over.
With all those resources, it has the potential to be a mega hit, or a mega bomb. In truth, it will probably be neither. But I did find it entertaining.