Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Hereditary

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I provide this movie review as a PUBLIC SERVICE to all of you looking to avoid a terrible movie.  Do not listen to any of the critics out there who have annnoited this movie as the next “Get Out.”   I loved “Get Out,” but I can not say the same for this mess!  Do  not read any further if you plan on seeing this movie, despite all of my warnings, as there are a few spoilers mixed in.  Let me start out be saying that ‘Hereditary’ starts out promisingly.  Toni Collette is a superb actress and she does give a fine, creepy performance as a distraught artist mom (seems to be her main strength, crazy and distraught), grieving over her own mother’s death.   Her movie daughter, Charlie, and son, Peter, have issues of their own. Alex Wolff stumbles through his slacker stoner role with only minimal pathos; but Milly Shapiro is one of the creepiest kids I have seen in a movie in ages.  However, she is not really in the movie for very long, the major presence she seems to have in the trailers is quite misleading.  If the movie had focused  on her character, I think I would have enjoyed it much more, but her death is a key point in the developing ‘plot.’ The first half of the movie did contain genuine suspense; but also some gross-out scenes, especially involving a character’s pretty improbable decapitation.  Obviously, horror movies have characters doing stupid things, like going into a dark, creepy basement late at night, but this movie had so many such plot devices that it became ludicrous. Add in plot holes that you could drive a truck through and it became ridiculous – several people in the audience laughed at several points at the improbabilities.  SPOILER ALERT: Someone in the movie gets into a car accident in which their sibling passenger is gruesomely killed (see above).  Instead of calling the police, he drives home (with the dead body in the car) and goes to sleep!  When the mother discovers the dead body the next morning; after the screaming, the movie cuts right to a funeral. What?  No police, no counseling, a  disengaged husband and father (Gabriel Byrne sleepwalking through a mailed-in performance) does nothing.  The kid just goes back to school.  Later, as the “plot” develops, he brutally bangs his face into his desk in front of the shocked and strangely inactive class and teacher, apparently breaking his nose, and his parents calmly take him home and put him to bed?  Really?  No hospital or mental health evaluation?  A strangely chirpy woman who meets the mom at a group for those who grieve, goes the extra mile in pursuing the mom. Why? You should begin guessing by now.  She teaches the mother how to conduct a seance that brings people back from the dead after only one brief lesson?  The increasingly psychotic mom  then talks the disengaged husband and the increasingly jittery and crazed teenage son into a ridiculous seance of her own. It rapidly gets worse and more goofy.  I’m sure we were supposed to be grossed out and scared when one of the main characters cuts off her own head, but by this point, it was just all so silly!  If you want to see half of a good movie, and watch an ending that is so ludicrious you contemplate asking for your money back, then by all means go see this movie.  I do have one question though for Gabriel Byrne,”What kind of dirt does the dirctor have on you?” This one makes ‘Mother’ look great.

Jurassic World: Fallen Kingdom

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I am pretty sure that I would want to visit a Jurassic Park as envisioned by Steven Spielberg and the original book by Michael Crichton.  Yes, things went wrong; but if scientists could bring dinosaurs back safely, admit it, you couldn’t stay away either.  However, I can’t imagine many people would want to go to a Jurassic World, with its sheer commercialism and lack of feeling and empathy, its wanton disregard for anything other than making money.  The newest entry into the Jurassic frachise demonstrates the pessimistic notion that people will do anything, and I mean anything, to feed their greed.  The movie opens with the abandoned island doomed because of an impending volcanic erruption.  All dinosaurs will perish. This is a big moral dilemma.  Should these creatures, who were engineered in a laboratory and have no business livng in our century, be saved – or should  nature be allowed to take its course?  Luckily (or is it?) for the dinosaurs, Sir Benjamin Lockwood (James Cromwell), the former business partner of John Hammond (Richard Attenborough) and the team that created the original park, wants  to step in and save as many of these noble creatures as possible,  To this end, he hires Claire Dearing (Bryce Dallas Howard) and Owen Grady (Chris Pratt) and others, to retrieve the dinosaurs and place them in a reserve where no one will be able to bother and/or exploit them.  As you can imagine, this may be his intent, but it’s not the real plan.  Lockwood’s assisstant and right hand man Eli (Rafe Spall) has plans that are utterly mean and cruel.  This is a character beyond redemption! (Pretty much as all the bad guys in these movies are).  But you will find everything you would ever want to see in a Jurassic movie in this one: gorgeous scenery, realistic dinosaurs, evil scientists and a cautionary quote from Dr. Ian Malcolm (Jeff Goldblum).  All of this being said, Jurassic World is scary, emotional and exciting.  I won’t spoil it here, but Jurassic World has one of the most sequel-worthy endings in the history of franchise summmer movies.  I’m betting Chris and Bryce have already been committed to a resolve-the-teasers movie! So, there will be a sequel; oh yes, you will want to go see it!

Upgrade

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Not many people have heard of this movie, and that is too bad.  This is a well done little gem, one that in bygone days would have been called a B movie. Think of a cross between Death Wish and Altered Carbon and throw in a little West World and Ex Machina and you have Upgrade.  Set in a near future society where most people have self-driving cars and classy tech, Grey Trace ( played by Logan Marshall-Green) is a throwback to a simpler time.  He restores vintage cars and sells them to bored rich people.  One of those rich people is a tech company honcho who shows Grey and his wife a special new gizmo that will ‘change everything’.  After their visit, something goes wrong while they are traveling home – his wife is murdered and he is paralyzed from the neck down.  Luckily for Grey, the billionare tech master and inventer has an experimental cure called STEM that can repair his body with an upgrade.  This upgrade leaves Grey with almost super-human strength, reactions, and agility.  But…and it’s a big but, STEM also has a personallity of his own.  With STEM’s guidance, Grey now has the ability to find his wife’s murderers and seek justice, or peprhaps it is just revenge.  Either way, things do not go as planned and there are several twists.  This taut thirller is well written and acted and even throws in a little humor. Do not take kids to see this though as the R rating is certainly justified and I found myself closing my eyes at some of the violence.  But all in all it remains an intriguing movie — a good summer popcorn movie to see in-between the super hero movies.

Solo: A Star Wars Story

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It can’t be easy to play a beloved character like Harrison Ford’s Han Solo.  I saw my first Star Wars movie in 1977, so  I have been in love with this character for over forty years and was very ambivilant about seeing somone else in the role.  However, since this is a prequel, and Alden Ehrenreich is playing a young Han, I decided to give it a try.  I was pleasantly surprised.   Ron Howard’s directing is competent and he doesn’t stray from the formula that has made the Star Wars movies so popular.  Alden does a decent job as the young Han, but I had more fun with the supporting players.  Woody Harrleson was great as Tobias Beckett, a smuggler always warning others not to trust anyone (does that include him?).  I also loved Donald Glover as Lando Calrissian,  who has a smaller but crucial role.  Interesting how he loses his prized Millenium Falcon in a card game…  But just as Han has his Chewie, Lando doesn’t pilot the Falcon on his own. What Star Wars movie would be complete without a sassy android?  This one is no exception.  Phoebe Waller-Bridge plays a combination C3PO – sidekick with an attitude, who incites other droids to throw off the shackles of human domination a la Westworld.  I also enjoyed all of the little origin tidbits like why Hans last name is Solo, how he meets Chewie, what the Kessel Run was all about and how the story gets to Mos Eisley on the backwater planet called Tatooine.  Emilia Clarke is also fine as Hans first love, who may have a dark secret or two.  Cue Paul Bettany as a delightfully evil Dryden Vos, gentlemanly but vicious head of a vicious criminal cartel. There is enough action to keep everyone happy although I did feel the movie was too long.  For a summer popcorn movie though – this isn’t a bad way to spend an afternoon!

Deadpool 2

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Deadpool 2 is exactly what you were expecting – no more and no less.  It is full of ‘wink wink’ jokes and exagerated gruesome violence, just like the first one.   Ryan Reynolds is fantastic again as Deadpool, the reluctant super hero.  In this outing, Deadpool joins forces with – among others – Domino, Shatterstar and Bedlam, to save a teeneage boy from Cable, who is from the future and wants to prevent the boy (who has X-Men like powers) from growing up and killing Cable’s family.  He plans to do this by killing the boy.  Along the way, Deadpool gathers other super heros to help him; creating his own team he calls X Force.  Success for the team is NOT an option.  He and TJ assemble an interesting assortment of ‘heroes.’  My favorite was Domino, whose super power is that she is extremely lucky!  This is not a spoiler, but if  you look carefully you can spot Matt Damon in a cameo as an old man; and some of the newer X-men, including James McAvoy.  The best cameo in my opinion though is when Brad Pitt shows up.  You have to look quickly though because if you blink, you will miss it.  Deadpool 2 is a follow on to the first in story line; and doesn’t deviate from the things that made the first such a success.  It may not be quite as entertaining as movies like Infinity War or Black Panther, but it is definitley funnier.  Oh, and I wouldn’t bring younger kids to see it, this isn’t an R-rated movie for nothing!