Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

The Hitman’s Bodyguard

By Leave a Comment

Apple Rating:

I must admit that when it comes to Samuel L. Jackson, I will see him in just about anything.  Even a movie on a plane with a bunch of snakes.   For a teacher about to go back to work, this was a good diversion. He plays the hitman of the title, and he needs a bodyguard because he is the only surviving witness who can testify against bad Eastern European President Gary Oldman.  Ryan Reynolds plays the down on his luck Grade A protection agent who is tasked to guard the life of this world’s most notorious hitman. It turns out they have met before and both have tried to kill the other. Plus, Sam knocked off one of Ryan’s clients in the past, which caused him to go downhill. And…there are more little plot quirks!  As you might expect, this summer buddy comedy is full  of action packed car chases, witty banter, menacing bad guys and even a little pathos.  Gary Oldman is fine as the villain, but I think you will be surprised by Selma Hayek’s character, who is married to Jackson’s character and  possibly uses even  more profanity than Jackson does. So if you like Ryan  Reynolds and Samuel Jackson and want to see them in an amusing fluff of a movie, you won’t be disappointed.

 

Kidnap

By 2 Comments

Apple Rating:

Let’s start with the good news. I love going to the movies.  My husband and I  go just about every week, which means we see around 50 movies a year, just  about all of them at our local Cinemark Theater.  I would like to give Cinemark Egyptian Theater a shout out.  This week they donated some promotional ‘Dunkirk’ filmstrips to my school. Hats off to Cinemark and their general manager Derick Glover!  Now for the bad news. ‘Kidnap’ is a very sub par movie.  Halle Berry deserves much more.  The basic idea is that her son is kidnapped from a park when she takes her eyes off of him for a minute to take a phone call.   Knowing she has no time to call the police, she jumps in her own car and the chase is on!  Oh that there was more than just a chase! I hate movies that have their main characters do incredibly stupid things to move the plot.  She carelessly loses her phone, runs out of gas, sets down a gun to check out a noise so that one of the kidnappers can pick it up.  She has the presence of mind to pick up a butcher knife, and then puts it down to rescue her son while the kidnapper/murderer is lurking. To top it off, after miles and miles of speeding cars, weaving traffic, horrific crashes and a stop at a sheriff’s office; only one motorcycle cop manages to appear, and of course promptly tries to stop her as she’s screaming her kid’s been kidnapped, just before the bad guy crunches him.  But, once things are safely resolved (and I don’t think I’m giving you a spoiler there), cops galore show up, helicopters included!  And in less time than it takes them to escort her and her son away, the news is already telling us about the state wide kidnapping ring this has exposed!  I call..well, you know what!  ‘Kidnap’ is only 82 minutes long and I still kept looking at my watch!!  Definitely skip this one and wait for Halle Berry to be featured in a movie that deserves the acting chops she was not allowed to use in this one!

The Book of Henry

By Leave a Comment

Apple Rating:

Do not listen to any other reviews for this movie, just this one of course.  ‘The Book of Henry’ has gotten some bad reviews, but they are not deserved.  I think this is one time where being a teacher comes in handy because the way the story plays out definitely had me rooting for the whole thing to work out well.  This is the story of a boy named Henry (played convincingly by Jaeden Carpenter) who is super-smart.  He is in a regular school rather than one for exceptional students so that he can socialize and interact with people.  He protects his little brother. And his intellectual capacity is very wide. In fact, he even runs the family finances, and has invested  his mother’s (played by Naomi Watts) waitress salary so that she has enough money in the bank to never have to work (even if she doesn’t want to think about it). Henry discovers that the sweet little girl next door, Christina, is being molested by her step-father.  Henry tries everything he can think of to get help for her and even tells the principal and calls protective services.  None of his ideas work, mainly because the poor girl’s step father is the police commissioner  and he is just a kid.  As a last resort, Henry comes up with an elaborate, and apparently fool-proof solution — Christina’s stepfather must be killed!  The problem is, despite being a genius, he is still a kid and can’t get a gun.  But then, a medical condition brings about a big change, and his mom is going to have to get involved. What will they do? (no SPOILERS!)  How the whole thing plays out is very far-fetched, yet I found the ending satisfying.  If you go, bring Kleenex; this is definitely NOT a lighthearted movie.  Teachers out there will be particularly interested in seeing how the school handles this problem.  Could they have done better?  What would you have done?   A movie that demands you think about hard issues, is a movie worth seeing.