Ghostbusters (2016)

Plot: In a remake of the old movie, four paranormal enthusiasts, Erin (Kristen Wiig), Abby (Melissa McCarthy), Jillian (Kate McKinnon), and Patty (Leslie Jones) run around New York fighting and capturing ghosts. When a bad guy releases tons of ghosts into the city, they are ready.   [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Ghostbusters was fun, and I loved it. Quickly, Wiig, McCarthy, and McKinnon establish new characters that enact the Ghostbusters story. It felt new and funny, and didn't repeat the old jokes. Wiig and McCarthy are always good, but Kate McKinnon was a surprise. She was so spunky and funny.

Chris Hemsworth plays a pretty but dumb receptionist in a role reversal. He was pretty funny. If the genders were reversed, it would still be funny, but politically incorrect.

I don't care about this being a remake of an old beloved movie.  Batman, Spiderman and the X-Men are always rehashing their origin stories. This version of Ghostbusters had the female twist as well as plenty of modernizations.

Cast:  Kristen Wiig, Melissa McCarthy, Kate McKinnon, Leslie Jones, Chris Hemsworth

Directed by: Paul Feig

The Music: Great. Uses the themes from the first movie, but updated.

The Visuals: It's a comedy. The ghosts look like humorous and occasionally creepy. The fights with the balloon people were especially good.  I liked the two ghosts driving the hearse because they were having fun too. 

Rating: 3.5 stars: It was just fun to watch. 

More: .I saw it in 2D, but I understand the 3D is worth the money.

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The Shallows

Plot: Nancy (Blake Lively) goes to a Mexican beach that her now dead mother visited. She has fun surfing, when a super-giant shark attacks. Injured, she is stranded on a little rock with the tide coming in. The rest of the movie is about surviving.    [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The Shallows is a good shark movie, but still a shark movie, which all turn into monster movies at the end.  Blake Lively does nice acting in what is almost a one-woman show. Kudos to her.

The shark is omnipresent, stronger than the Hulk, and smarter than a chess master. In the realm of shark movies this is a good one, but nothing genre bending.

Highlights were the water photography, Blake's acting, the suspenseful plot and the overarching presence of the dead mother.

The unmistakable generic shark with its stereotype master movie plot twists. 

Cast: Blake Lively

Directed by: Jaume Collet-Serra

The Music: Two good songs; the best was a instrumental version of Trouble by Neon Jungle that they played during the surfing -- very fun. The closing credits song was also good: Sia's Bird Set Free. 

The Visuals: I liked the surfing scenes, and I am partial to jellyfish too. I'd love to get a tank of jellyfish.  

Rating: 2.5 stars: Fun to watch. Kinda mindless, but you knew that didn't you?

More: Blake Lively has great abs, and she had already had a baby when she made The Shallows. She is now expecting #2. I am sure Blake's bod is sending a lot of people to the gym.

Even More & SPOILER: How many girls really surf in a skimpy bikini? I noticed she had a one-piece in the epilogue.

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Temple Grandin (2010)

Plot: This is a biography of Temple Grandin, an autistic woman who works as a professor at Colorado State studying Animal Husbandry. It shows her walking through many doors and overcoming many hardships.  [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Temple Grandin, the movie, is an inspiring story, while some parts are seem fictionalized, overall it is inspirational. Claire Danes does a wonderful job play Temple who is constantly troubled, or confused. It is with sympathy and with intellect.

It is a docudrama; it feels educational, but it is fun too. 

Cast: Claire Danes, Julia Ormond, David Strathairn, Catherine O'Hara

Directed by: Mick Jackson

Written by: Screenplay by Christopher Monger and Merritt Johnson based on the books Emergence by Temple Grandin and Margret Scariano, and the book Thinking in Pictures by Temple Grandin. 

The Visuals:  Nice use of visuals to show how to think in pictures, and nice work with the cattle photography.

Rating: 3.5 stars: Nice story. Great performance by Claire Danes

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Now You See Me 2

Plot: The four magicians [Atlas (Jessie Eisenberg), Merritt McKinney (Woody Harrelson), Jack (Dave Franco), and new girl Lula (Lizzy Caplan)] from the first movie are in hiding and looking for something to do. Mastermind Dylan (Mark Ruffalo) gives them a new job, but it turns out to be an FBI sting, and they slide through tube all the way to China. They meet Daniel Radcliffe, and he is mad at them from the first movie. After this the plot becomes too complicated to write down, let's say lots of magic happens and then the movie ends. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Less than the sum of the parts. The mind just glazes over with all the wheels within wheels, and hats being pulled out of rabbits [sic]. It's not real magic, and not stage magic that actually has to work, it's special effect movie magic that is bound by no rules at all. Superimpose a twisty thriller plot, and I got lost and then bored, and actually napped during the middle.

The first movie was cool. The outlaw, Robin Hood-like magicians were so cool as they held these spectacular shows. In this movie they go global, with theoretically bigger illusions, but also way more far-fetched.

The best scene was the fight scene with Mark Ruffalo using magic tricks to get away. The worst was trying to remember what was going on with the plot. Who cares about this computer chip?

Cast: Jessie Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, Woody Harrelson, Dave Franco, Daniel Radcliffe, Lizzy Caplan, Michael Caine, Moran Freeman, Sanna Lathan

Directed by: Jon M Chu

The Music: Lively orchestral music by Brian Tyler; nothing notable.

The Visuals: There are some cool visual during the performances. I liked the urban nightscapes in Macao too.   

Rating: 1.5 stars: Actually took a nap during the middle.

 

More: Your eyes are not deceiving you. Now You See Me 3, is already in production

Even More: And why was there an FBI van driving around in London? And why were they arresting people?

Yet More: Filming was in London and Macao. Macao looked to authentic to be anything else. I wonder if there are more Chinese language scenes in the Mandarin version.

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Popstar -- Never Stop Never Stopping

Plot: Conner (Andy Samberg) and  his two friends form Owen(Jorma Taccone) and Lawrence (Akiva Schaffer) form a boy band. Afterwhile they get in a fight and Conner begins a hugely successful solo career. Conner gets all the trappings of stardom and then becomes an asshole to his old friends and everyone else. After while his stardom fades and Conner has to deal with it. The film is cut like a documentary that is intercut with interviews with music types from Ringo to Simon Cowell. [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Popstar is a comedy and a satire. It pokes fun at the music business and the culture of celebrity. There isn't much plot or character development is a simple sitcom story that is mined for jokes, including some subtle jokes. It is refreshingly free from potty humor -- though there are a lot of penis jokes, and a very funny missing penis joke.

Some of it was very funny, but it is pretty forgettable too. It was always interesting, and mostly fun-to-watch. It would have been better if the characters were a little deeper. 

Cast: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer who form the music/comedy group Lonely Island

Directed by: Akiva Schaffer, Jorma Taccone

Written by: Andy Samberg, Jorma Taccone, Akiva Schaffer

The Music: Many songs by Lonely Island; some very funny.

The Visuals: They had a big enough budget to all the scenes they needed. The big venue shows look good. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: At the theater, I liked it well enough for 3 stars. On the other hand, it is devoid of serious ideas and interesting relationships, but it had funny parts. 

 

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The Nice Guys (2016)

Plot: In 1977 Los Angeles, two private eyes, Jackson (Russell Crowe) and Holland (Ryan Gosling), search for the cast of a pornographic art movie before they are killed by unknown thugs. Holland's daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) tags along. They criss-cross LA with parties, meetings, car chases, and shoot-outs.   [imdb]    [photos]

Review: The Nice Guys is both a detective movie and a spoof of a detective movie. It emphasizes exaggerated characters instead of a high joke count. The plot mocks the twists of thrillers, and it sets-up humorous sitcom scenes.

I liked Russell Crowe, and he commanded the scenes that he was in. Ryan Gosling played an unlikeable character, and I didn't care for him. I don't know if it was the writing or the acting. Angourie Rice's character provided the lightness to the movie and gave it personality. I am certain we will see the fifteen year old in a more movies.

I was entertained but some parts dragged. They achieved a high body count, but most of the fighting not bloody. There was one scene where they come up an elevator into a gun fight, and they just stay in the elevator and go down without people seeing them. Pretty funny.  I did not care for the political parts or trying to blame crime on the auto industry. 

Cast: Russell Crowe, Ryan Gosling, Angourie Rice 

Directed by: Shane Black

Written by: Shane Black and Anthony Bagarozzi

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The Music: 70's oldies with drum-heavy orchestral music during the action sequences. I wish it was all 70's disco. You can skip Kiss and America.

The Visuals: The outdoor scenes of LA were great and the initial shots at Holland's house impressed me.  The action scenes are just OK. 

Rating: 2.5 stars: Kind of fun to watch. 

 

More: The Nice Guys was based on a true story! From Wikipedia:

Most of the interjected humor for the plot are based on the true events of Jay Joseph, a Marine Corps veteran who also worked as a private investigator and mole while stationed in Beaufort, South Carolina in the mid-to-late 1990s. Producer Joel Silver had briefly met Joseph while he was performing contract work at Silver's Auldbrass Plantation estate in 1999. Joseph's adventures as a young, new investigator, paralleled with his tenacity as a Marine, seemed to always lead to him being placed in comical - albeit dangerous - situations. Silver always thought that some of these events would be great fodder for a detective plot. Some of these stories, simply through word of mouth, were also used in the 2005 film Kiss Kiss Bang Bang, written by Shane Black, who also wrote The Nice Guys. One quote in particular for this movie, ''You're the world's worst detective'', was a line that was actually spoken by Joseph's younger sister after he told her a story about sleeping with a woman that he was supposed to be conducting surveillance on for adultery.

Even More: Writer Shane Black is responsible for Iron Man 3 and the Lethal Weapon movies.

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Money Monster

Plot: On a network like CNBC on a show like Jim Cramer's, a viewer who lost money following the host's advice takes him hostage on live TV. Host Lee Gates (George Clooney) is afraid, and steely director Patty (Julia Roberts) keeps the cameras running while the gunman Kyle (Jack O'Connell) demands answers, and the SWAT team prepares. In the background, network reporters dig into back story of the company involved.    [imdb]    [photos]

Review: Money Monster is primarily suspense with a sprinkle of satire and farce.

Highlights were Julia Roberts' acting which had equal parts determination and fear. I liked the tightly focused story; it keeps moving. Low-lights were the unrealistic story which reduced the intensity of the action, and kept reminding me I was watching a movie. Perhaps this was intended to be farce comedy, but it didn't work.

Bad guy Kyle is a bumbler, and not someone to be scared of. This is because he is victim not a real villain, and by implications all the investors are also victims. Kyle's girlfriend Molly (Emily Meade) comes on TV and tells him off on TV with plenty of funny insults; welcome humor at Kyle's expense.

I thought Money Monster was trying to be educational about high-frequency trading in the way The Big Short was about the 2007 crash, but then it undercut itself with the its ending that had a different kind of bad guy. I suppose the message is that Wall Street is crooked -- like Bernie says. There was a bit of satire of the TV business, but primarily the cast is shown as sincere good people. 

Cast: George Clooney, Julia Roberts, Jack O'Connell

Directed by: Jodie Foster

Written by: Alan DiFiore, Jim Kouf

The Music: Suspenseful electronic & acoustic music by Dominic Lewis

The Visuals: OK

Rating: 2.5 stars: I liked it OK. I'd recommend it to people, but it isn't a great suspense.

 

More: Director Jodie Foster says the film is about the rage people feel in America. People who work hard and are taken advantage of. More here. 

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