Movie Reviews

Hustlers

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  • Title: Hustlers
  • IMDb: link

Hustlers movie review“Stripper movie” isn’t a term that often imbues a viewer with confidence. That said, the true story adapted for film by writer/director Lorene Scafaria (Seeking a Friend for the End of the World) exceeded my expectations. While not great, Hustlers is solidly entertaining and far from the fiasco of Showgirls.

Set in the early 2000s, the film focuses on a struggling stripper’s (Constance Wu) friendship with the club’s main attraction, Ramona (Jennifer Lopez). Taking the newbie under her wing, Ramona helps Destiny (Wu) earn enough money to keep her grandmother’s house and pay for several high-end shopping trips. The script offers some insight into a stripper’s mentality towards her clients (as Destiny learns to bilk them of as much money as possible).

Stradding the 2008 Wall Street crash, the film shows us the glory days of high-price clients for Ramona and Destiny and the slim pickings just a few years later where the pair, and a couple of new girls (Keke Palmer and Lili Reinhart) step-up their game from maximimizing a drunk client’s spend to actually drugging them and maxing out their credit cards.

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Angel Has Fallen (And Can’t Get Up)

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  • Title: Angel Has Fallen
  • IMDB: link

Angel Has Fallen movie reviewGerard Butler returns as Secret Service Agent Mike Banning who was introduced in the dumb, and not really that much fun, Olympus Has Fallen. Things haven’t changed much. The sequel frames the decorated agent as the mastermind behind the assassination attempt of the President (Morgan Freeman). Armed with circumstantial evidence, and ignoring the agent saving the President’s life and his service record, a dimwitted FBI Agent (Jada Pinkett Smith) fingers Banning for the bad guy while his friends at the Secret Service do nothing to help. Luckily for our hero, the real villain is just stupid enough to not only fail to kill his patsy but also arrange for his escape allowing Banning to go on the run and attempt to clear his name.

Since it isn’t much of a list, let’s look at what works in the film. I’m always happy to see Piper Perabo who offers the film’s best performance as Banning’s wife, angry at him for keeping secrets about his health but not enough to believe her husband has become a terrorist. And second, there’s Nick Nolte who is the only one having fun in this dog of a movie that takes the ridiculous events far too seriously.

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Dora and the Lost City of Gold

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  • Title: Dora and the Lost City of Gold
  • IMDb: link

Dora and the Lost City of Gold movie reviewI wasn’t expecting too much from a live-action adaptation of Dora the Explorer, but I will admit that I was pleasantly surprised by what I found in Dora and the Lost City of Gold. Far from perfect, the film does have charm and enough brains to both celebrate and poke fun at the educational animated series which spawned it by having Dora (Isabela Moner) raised by her parents (Michael Peña and Eva Longoria) in the jungle helping to explain her quirks (such as talking to her backpack or making up songs about the most mundane things). Although ultimately not as successful, it’s tone and humor reminded me of 2007’s Nancy Drew.

In Moner the film’s producers chose wisely. She’s just sweet, honest, and precocious enough to make us buy this version of Dora who is forced to leave the jungle and stay with family while her parents go off on their latest adventure in search of a lost city. The film offers not one but two fish-out-of-water plots as happy-go-lucky Dora struggles in the city to fit in before she, her cousin Diego (Jeff Wahlberg), and two new friends (Madeleine Madden and Nicholas Coombe) are kidnapped back to the jungle by treasure hunters seeking the lost city.

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Hobbs & Shaw

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  • Title: Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw
  • IMDb: link

Hobbs & Shaw movie reviewThe Fast & Furious franchise has produced a series of films over the past two decades that range from fairly okay (Fast Five and Tokyo Drift) to largely forgettable (see everything else). Fast & Furious Presents: Hobbs & Shaw may not have a lot going for it but it does have Dwayne “The Rock” Johnson and Jason Statham who take their bickering to the next level when forced to work together on a joint CIA and MI6 assignment (despite neither one working for either agency).

The plot steals more than a little from M:I-2 when an agent (Vanessa Kirby) injects a deadly virus into herself rather than let it fall into the hands of terrorists. Hobbs is tapped to find the agent, who our suped-up super-villain (Idris Elba) and his super-secret villainous organization have framed for the theft and deaths of her team. Ryan Reynolds gets a fun, if largely unnecessary, cameo to bring the hero onboard. Shaw‘s motivations are far more personal.

The film offers plenty of chase sequences but far less muscle cars and heists than the usual Fast & Furious flick. In fact, other the the forced family theme shoved down the audience’s throat at every turn, Hobbs & Shaw feels like a rather purposeful departure from the franchise which spawned it.

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Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood

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  • Title: Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood
  • IMDb: link

Once Upon a Time ... in Hollywood movie reviewThe latest from writer/director Quentin Tarantino includes all the trappings that fans have come to expect over the past two decades. Overly talky, in need of a little editing, with a few too many shots of his characters’ feet, Once Upon a Time … in Hollywood is still quite entertaining and easily the best film Tarantino has made since 2009’s Inglourious Basterds. Most comparable with Death Proof, Once Upon a Time offers a slow build-up focused on character and snappy dialogue before jumping headfirst into an explosive finale.

Set in 1969 Hollywood, the plot follows the exploits of western star Rick Dalton (Leonardo DiCaprio) on the downside of his career, his friend and stuntman Cliff Booth (Brad Pitt), his new neighbor Sharon Tate (Margot Robbie), and the Manson Family. The separate threads will eventually intertwine late in the film’s final act on one fateful night in the Hollywood Hills, but for most of the film Tarantino takes his time with each, featuring the Dalton/Booth friendship most prominently with plenty of inserts of the the actor’s glory days as the star of Bounty Law which came to an abrupt end after he started chasing a movie career.

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