Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Tomb Raider

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You might expect a movie called Tomb Raider to have characters who spend a great deal of time robbing or at least looking into ancient tombs of some kind.  Unforunately, in this case you would be very wrong!  Tomb Raider plods on for 1 1/2 hours before we ever see the inside of a tomb.  Up until that point, Oscar winning actress Alicia Vikander, as Lara Kroft, spends an excrusiately long time seting up the story.  Nothing much happens until she FINALLY gets to the forgotten island of Yamatai and finds her long lost father, who had disappeared when she was a child, chasing a rather lame legend about a terrifying Japanese goddess imprisoned in the tomb.  Here she does have some exciting adventures, uses her boxing skills to get beat up a lot, runs like a demon and solves a few puzzles.  She does free a bunch of shanghaied sailors, forced to dig for the tomb, but they don’t really figure much in the story, which is resolved in a rather unrealisitc fashion. I thought Walton Goggins made a good, if somewhat stereotypical, villan and Dominc West was fine as her father.  I loved Daniel Wu as Laura’s traveling companion; he  was the most charismatic of them all.  I never saw the first Tomb Raider with Angelina Jolie, so I have no idea if this reboot is better or worse.  If I were you, I would go see Black Panther again, or better yet, wait for Infinity War – it should be out a theatre near you very soon!

A Wrinkle in Time

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I have been reading this book with my students on and off for almost thirty years.  I love it and so do the kids who read it with me.  I had high hopes for this movie, I wanted to like it so much and yet…….I really didn’t.  Madeleine L’Engle’s novel is a magical tale of Meg, an awkward teenager who joins a cosmic fight against the evil ‘It’ (decades before the Stephen King’s creepy clown), rescues her missing father and learns that she is worthy and loved.  The movie is visually stunning, but the joy and wonder have been completely sucked out.  The three figures who help her (they were once stars, who lost what made them stars in fighting ‘It’), are never referred to as such in the movie and are over-glamorized into fairy-ish figures with rather silly costumes and hairdos.  Where is the Mrs. Whatsit I fell in love with wearing those awkward scarves and mismatched socks?  What happened to Mrs. Who with her over-sized glasses making her look like an owl?  Her glasses now resemble a small, jeweled  lorgnette that she barely wears.  Everything is over explained as if the audience is not smart enough to understand the ideas that Ms. L’Engle never had to dumb down for her readers – the children and those who can read with a child-like appreciation.  Don’t even get me started on the visit to Camatzotz where the  terrifying conformity and peace that It claims to offer people is  only very briefly explored. The part of the book where Charles Wallace is left on Camatzotz and the return of a solitary Meg is completely left out, so that the subsequent rescue of her father and Charles Wallace in the film seem anti-climactic and confusing.   I will give the director kudos for offering a diverse cast and dazzling special effects (although the effects are limited in time and number), but they came at the cost of an interesting and magical story. I would recommend watching the 2003 version with three much better ladies playing the beloved Mrs’es.   I have a feeling that people who have never read the books might find this an okay movie, and a good one to take kids to see for the positive message, but it could have been a great movie.

Red Sparrow

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Do you get excited when you hear a movie is full of graphic and sadistic torture scenes?  Have you always wanted to see Jennifer Lawrence completely naked?  Do you look forward to  a movie with a terrible script?  If you answered ‘yes’ to each one of these questions, Red Sparrow is the movie for you.  Unfortunately, I answered ‘no’ and did not care for this movie.  The trailers make Red Sparrow sound like it will be an interesting, thoughtful movie.  If only the trailer writer could have written the script!  There are some very gruesome special effects to help explain why promising ballerina Dominika Egorova (Lawrence) is sent to Sparrow School, aka Whore University, by her sleazy uncle.  Sparrow school teaches you how to become detached from your emotions so that you can have sex as one of many methods of controlling or eliminating potential informants and enemies (the movie seems to focus mainly on the first method though).  The ultimate goal is  gain information for the Russian government.  It takes almost 2 1/2 hours to get to the minor plot twist pay-off.  This movie wastes some good actors, like Joel Edgerton, Jeremy Irons, Charlotte Rampling, Mary-Louis Parker and Ciaran Hinds.  With this talent, I expected more, but got so much less!

Annihilation

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If you go to see “Annihilation” you will find an intriguing, and yet confusing, movie.  The action starts out slow and even seems a little disconnected, but don’t give up.  After the first half hour, it gets better!  The story involves Lena, a biologist played by Natalie Portman, whose husband went on a secret government mission.  He mysteriously returns after having gone missing for a year,  but seems to be dying.  Government agents kidnap them both and take them to a strange (and ultimately never defined) facility. It turns out he was sent into “The Shimmer,” some kind of alien enclosure that has grown from where a meteorite crashed to earth near a light house, and is slowly expanding.  Everyone who has gone into The Shimmer has disappeared except for Lena’s husband ( Oscar Isaac).  Lena decides to join an expedition into The Shimmer in order to find out what has happened to her husband and perhaps find a way to save him.  Some real strange things happen in The Shimmer: time passes quickly, electronics don’t seem to work, people do not seem to need food, and people and animals change and mutate in some very creative and bizarre ways, physically and mentally-prior teams seem to have gone crazy.  Where did The Shimmer come from?  If it contains an alien life form, what do they want?  Are they benign or deadly? Unfortunately, “Annihilation” doesn’t completely answer these questions. The picture leaves much of the background of what is going on undefined and undeveloped.  You are left with vague hints, and it seems like it is up to you to fill in the blanks.  The team of women, lead by Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh,, and with a great performance by Gina Rodriguez; offers a fresh approach to the composition, dynamic and goals of such teams in these sort of movies.  It does offer breath-taking special effects, imaginative scenery and an inventive ending; yet somehow, I was still left waiting for more.

OSCAR PREDICTIONS

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Oscar season is upon us and I love it!  I don’t think I have missed an Oscar presentation in over 50 years!  I was watching when a man streaked across the stage behind David Niven.  I saw Charlie Chaplin get his honorary Oscar and a 15 minute standing ovation.  I got to see Sidney Poitier and Halle Berry make history.  I even watched as Jack Palance (who was in his 70’s) did one armed push-ups on stage.  I wonder what memorable event will happen this year?  The most fun is in forecasting who will win, and then watching and adding up your winning predictions.  So here they are – the people I think will win that coveted statue.

BEST ACTOR:  This will go to Gary Oldman, who gave an impressive tour-de-force as Winston Churchill in “The Finest Hour”.

BEST ACTRESS:  I am certain that Francis McDormand will earn an Oscar as the heart-wrenching mother of “Three Billboards Outside Ebbing, Missouri”.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTOR:  Sam Rockwell gave a compelling performance as a racist police officer who gets a little redemption in “Three Billboards”.

BEST SUPPORTING ACTRESS:  This was really hard to predict but I think it will be Allison Janney as the cruel mother in “I,Tonya”.

BEST MOVIE:  I have been vacillating between two movies, not quite sure who Hollywood is going to go with.  Well, I guess I will go with …………”The Shape of Water”.  I mean, who can argue with a woman who falls in love with a merman?

BEST DIRECTOR:  Guillermo del Toro

 

These are my main picks, but I will throw in a few bonus prognostications just for the fun of it —

ANIMATED MOVIE:  “Loving Vincent”

ADAPTED SCREENPLAY:  “Mudbound”

ORIGINAL SCREENPLAY:  “Three Billboards”

ORIGINAL SCORE:  Hans Zimmer for “Dunkirk”

ORIGINAL SONG:  This is the only one I am going out on my own on.  I have no idea what the members of the Academy will do, but I vote for “Remember Me” from “Coco”.  I just really liked that song.

 

I would really love to hear what  you think.  Leave a comment with your choices, grab some popcorn and watch with me on March 4!