Movie Reviews

The Age of Adaline

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  • Title: The Age of Adaline
  • IMDb: link

The Age of Adaline

The Age of Adaline takes an intriguing premise about a woman who has lived for more than a century, through the rise of women’s rights, technological booms, two world wars, and the rise of an Information Age all of which it effectively turns into a Nicholas Sparks trashy romance novel. Blake Lively stars as Adaline Bowman who, through a ridiculous premise of laughable pseudo-science a narrator (Hugh Ross) is needed to help explain, stopped aging and looks the same today as she did in 1929. Hiding for most of her life with only a daughter (Ellen Burstyn) who knows her secret, Adaline sheds her identity every ten years to hide her condition. Preparing for just such a move, Adaline encounters a wealthy artist (Michiel Huisman) and, for the second time in her life, falls in love.

Despite the film’s sci-fi set-up neither director Lee Toland Krieger nor screenwriters J. Mills Goodloe and Salvador Paskowitz are interested in exploring the various times and lives Adaline has lived except in the most superficial of ways. It’s sad because the film casts an actress that looks at home in a variety of styles and the period set direction (what little we see) is competently done.

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Woman in Gold

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  • Title: Woman in Gold
  • IMDb: link

Woman in GoldDirector Simon Curtis‘ Woman in Gold is an odd film not good enough for awards consideration but also choosing not to become an action-suspense film about stolen Nazi art. Much more a straightforward drama, I’d compare it to 1998’s A Civil Action, a more engaging film with a similar arc of a lawyer whose money-first philosophy is changed by taking on an emotional case he can’t possibly win.

Based on the true story of Maria Altmann‘s (Helen Mirren) attempts to regain possession of her family’s lost masterpiece from the Austrian government, Woman in Gold is a slow-moving drama starring Ryan Reynolds as the lawyer hired by Maria to take on a foreign government. Reynolds and Mirren work well together as the unlikely pair to take on Austria (even if Reynolds casting seems like an odd choice). Well-acted and shot against the backdrops of Vienna and southern California, the story is intriguing if never fully engaging. Despite its cast (which also includes Katie Holmes, Tatiana Maslany, Elizabeth McGovern, and Jonathan Pryce) Woman in Gold is a good film that never fully lives up to the promise it offers flashes of early on.

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Furious 7

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  • Title: Furious 7
  • IMDb: link

“Cars don’t fly.”

Furious 7The latest entry is neither the best (Fast Five) nor the worst (2 Fast 2 Furious) of the franchise. Taking place after the events of Fast & Furious 6, Furious 7 introduces Deckard Shaw (Jason Statham) as the brother of Owen Shaw (Luke Evans), who the team took down in the last movie, and the man responsible for killing Han (Sung Kang) in The Fast and the Furious: Tokyo Drift. Now Shaw is targeting Hobbs (Dwayne “It’s Okay to Call Me The Rock Again” Johnson) and every member of Dominic Toretto‘s (Vin Diesel) team.

Despite Paul Walker‘s death during filming, Brian O’Conner‘s role in the film isn’t truncated thanks to the use of CGI and a little trick photography involving his two brothers. The film ends with a nice farewell for its fallen star although, despite discussion of making more Fast & Furious films, the character isn’t killed off on-screen making you wonder what kind of role Brian could possibly play going forward.

As with all the previous movies, the strengths of the latest film are its stunts which get larger and more ridiculous. Like the last film, this one stretches all credibility during its climax.

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Home

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  • Title: Home (2015)
  • IMDb: link

HomeAlien occupation has never been so cute. Based on the children’s book The True Meaning of Smekday by Adam Rex, Home begins with the invasion of Earth by an alien race known as the Boov who relocate the entire world’s population to suburban-style camps while taking the rest of the planet for their own.

Oh (Jim Parsons) is a likable screw-up who finds himself on the run from his own people when he accidentally discloses the location of their new home to the alien race which has been pursuing the Boov across the galaxy. After encountering another fugitive in a human girl named Gratuity “Tip” Tucci (Rihanna) the two, along with Tip’s cat Pig, are thrown together as Oh agrees to help Tip find her mother Lucy (Jennifer Lopez) while learning there’s far more to the planet and its complicated people than the Boov’s buffoonish leader Captain Smek (Steve Martin) believes. Despite the number of humans and Boov shown on screen, Home has a tiny cast list. Other than Oh and Smek the only Boov who gets any lines is traffic cop Kyle (Matt Jones), who Oh mistakenly believes is his best-friend and who is sent to track Oh down after his latest mistake.

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The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel

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  • Title: The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel
  • IMDb: link

The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel2011’s The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel boasted a cast that was able to elevate its source material to create a likable, if lightweight, film about a group of elderly travelers finding a second home in India by choosing to stay in “The Best Exotic Marigold Hotel for the the Elderly and Beautiful.”

The sequel returns most of the cast, and director John Madden, but almost none of the charm of the first film. The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel wastes it cast and beautiful backdrop with enough romcom cliches, misunderstandings, overreactions, and poor judgement to fill half-a-dozen Three’s Company‘s episodes or three Kate Hudson movies.

The drama surrounding the hotel this time around centers around Sonny Kapoor’s (Dev Patel) impending marriage to Sunaina (Tina Desai) and plans to grow his brand with the acquisition of a second hotel. Neither is going as smoothly as Sonny would like leading to the script slowly turning the charming young man into an intensely dislikable character and his bride into a woman too dense to understand the basic nature of the man she’s about to marry.

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