Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

A Simple Favor

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Anna Kendrick and Blake Lively are spot on as two very different moms who become best friends.  This is a rare comedy thriller that works on both levels.  Paul Feig adeptly directs a snappy script by Jessica Sharzer, which was adapted from a Darcey Bell novel. We open with Anna Kendrick playing perky helicopter mom, Stephanie, who dishes helpful household hints via her vblog.  She is extremely  energetic and her vblog has a growing following (though her local “friends” from her son’s school find it, and her, as something to make fun of, due to her very  overinvolved personality).  Lively plays the drop-dead beautiful Emily, the fashion diva who asks the comparatively “plain” Stephanie to share a martini while their sons have a play date.  They have absolutely nothing in common, but Emily intrigues Stephanie with her brash and very earthy attitude.  Soon, Stephanie finds herself more and more involved with Emily, while wondering why they have become best buds in just a few short weeks.  Emily increasingly asks Stephanie to watch her son and she becomes more and more involved, meeting Emily’s sexy husband (Henry Golding) and becoming virtually a nanny.  Then, Emily calls with an emergency, and can Stephanie come yet again to watch both kids, which is the simple favor of the title.  As you probably can guess, Emily disappears leaving her son and sexy husband behind.  Sephanie begins to suspect that Emily she wasn’t who she appeared to be when a body is found!  What?!  The rest of the movie is compelling film-noir, with lots of twists, double-dealing and enough secrets to keep you guessing until the deliciously satisfying ending.  Yes, it is a little over the top, but so what?  This movie is so entertaining that you won’t even notice.  If you liked ‘Gone Girl,’  you are going to love ‘A Simple Favor!’

Peppermint

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If you enjoy movies like ‘Death Wish’ or ‘The Brave One,’ you will probably enjoy Jennifer Garner’s foray into the revenge movie genre.  She plays Riley North, a woman who survives a brutal attack by drug cartel gunmen while her husband and daughter die before her eyes.  Riley is infuriated when a corrupt system – the judge, district attorney AND defense attorney are almost cartoonishly bad – allows the murderers to go free.  She is remanded for psyciatric evaluation, but escapes and spends some years off the gird learning to fight and use weapons so that she can come back and get revenge on the drug cartel and judicial officials on the take who subverted justice through their greed.  John Ortiz  and John Gallagher, Jr. are the LA police officers on the case and Method Man makes a brief apperance as well.  I don’t feel this movie is as good as some of the others in this genre though, so you might want to consider the new ‘Death Wish’ with Bruce Willis instead.  Of course, as in all of these kinds of movies, there are some plot holes, the inevitable dirty insider in the police department and seemingly impossible events that occur.  I was a little disturbed to see several  people who brought their kids to see this one.  It is extremely violent and I heard two of them talking to each other as they left.  One child said, “I hated this movie” while the other replied, “I didn’t like it, it was boring.”  I wish people would read reviews (like Adnerb, for example) before taking kids to see something that has the potential to  affect their kids.  Anyway, if you want to see a female kicking butt, don’t mind a lot of violence, and can ignore some plot inconsistancies, this movie will pass the time on a rainy Sunday afternoon.  Just don’t bring the children!

Operation Finale

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This movie is a rather low-key political thriller based on a true story.  In this compelling tale, set in 1960, the Mossad, Israel’s nascent intelligence agency, has gotten information that the notorious Adolph Eichmann, the architect of the “Final Solution,” is alive and living under an assumed name in Argentina along with his wife and sons.  Many Nazi’s escaped Germany at the end of World War II, but Eichmann was one of the higher level SS escapees avoiding justice, and one that had an especially central role in the adminstrative machinery of the Holocaust.  Oscar winner Ben Kingsley plays Eichmann in a stellar performance, showing the facets of a man who sought to escape the responsibility for what he’d done, but was still haughty and arrogant while maintaining a familial gentility with his own people.  The philosopher Hannah Arendt  coined the term “the banality of evil” referring to Eichmann, and Sir Ben’s performance demonstrates how apt the characterization is.  Oscar Isaac ably performs the role of Peter Malkin, one of the Israeli agents tasked with bringing him in, with subdued passion and intensity.  After the Israeli government decides to kidnap Eichmann and take him to Israel to stand trial for his extensive war crimes, a tense cat and mouse game ensues between the Mossad agents and the ex-patriate Nazis and their sympathizers among the Argentinian politicians trying to find them and end their mission.  Why they must do this and how it is accomplished makes for an engaging movie.  If you are interested in WWII history and how this Nazi war criminal was brought to justice, you will definitely enjoy this film.

BlacKkKlansman

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BlacKKKlansman is a highly entertaining and thought-provoking movie from director Spike Lee.  John David Washington (son of Denzel) stars as Ron Stallworth, the first African American detective to join the Colorado Springs Police Department.  (The story of his actual life is pretty amazing). He is largely sidelined in menial positions until the Chief decides to give him an opportunity as an actual detective.  He teams up with Flip (Adam Driver) and Jimmy (Michael Buscemi), and basically on a whim, calls the local KKK.  He has several phone conversations with the local leader Walter (Ryan Eggold of “The Blacklist”) that lead him to ask his Chief if he could run an undercover operation.  After he talks his partners and Sergeant (Ken Garito) into it; he comes up with a scheme to infiltrate the local KKK.  While he talks on the phone with Walter, Flip actually meets the group and gains their confidence (except for one overly suspicious and creepy Klansman).  He and Flip succeed, and Flip is taken in by the group, who become convinced he is a like-minded recruit. Ron even convinces none other than KKK Grandmaster David Duke (Topher Grace) that he is a white redneck who wants to join the organization.  He also becomes emotionally involved with a black student leader who hates cops.  Once he reveals his cover to her, things get complicated.  The resolution of all the issues is fast paced and tense.  Both Washington and Driver are fantastic, with good support from the entire cast (including Ashlie Atkinson as a disurbingly submissive and racist wife of the suspicious Klansmen).  The issues examined in this movie are scary and disturbing, and no less timely now then they were at the time of the movie’s events.  Spike Lee delivers a great movie; although if you are a fan of President Trump, you will not like the way that he not-so-subtly juxtaposes what is going on in today’s America with Stallworth’s story.

The Meg

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Think of this movie as a cross between Jaws and Sharknado, and you will know exactly what to expect going in.  Of course, the plot is improbable to say the least.  The Meg of the title is a prehistoric Megalodon, a gigantic ‘extinct’ shark that was said to grow up to 75 feet long, and could eat whales!  The science (sort of) they use to establish how it survived all those millenia and is still around today is pretty farfetched, even for these kind of movies.  Be that as it may, a group of scientists are trapped on the bottom of the ocean after The Meg trashes their submersible.  It is up Jonas Taylor, played earnestly by Jason Statham, to rescue them.   After he does, they of course have to go after it before it goes on a rampage at a beach so packed with people, it makes “Jaws”‘s Amity Island seem like a deserted beach.  And of course, they don’t catch it – right away at any rate.  Rainn Wilson is a really not that evil as the bad guy who funds all of the science.  He’s nice, until he shows his true colors. Statham is also given a pretty improbable love interest.  This movie is at its best when it shows the shark.  It is at its worst when it tries to add humor and pathos.  Nothing here gets too scary or too gorey – there were a lot of people in the audience with kids.  Because of that, the whole thing plays like a 50’s movie.  I almost expected to see giant crabs or maybe even Gargantua.  Despite giving this movie an apple core, I say go see it if you want unadulterated mindless entertainment, not to mention a cute little dog that seems to swim forever.  Sometimes, that is all we want out of a movie.