Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

The Last Duel

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The Last Duel is based on the true story of the last trial by combat in medieval France. Matt Damon plays Jean De Carrouges, a respected knight who is brave and skillful in battle. Jacques Le Gris (Adam Driver) is a squire renowned for intelligence and wit. The two men start out as friends, Jean even saves Jacques’ life in battle; but it all quickly goes wrong. The Count d’Alencon (Ben Affleck) however, hates Jean and goes out of the way to deny him his rightful position and privilege; while giving Jacques the position and makes him his right hand man. Jacques is enamored of Marguerite, De Carrouge’s sweet, beautiful wife (Jodie Comer) and takes liberties with her while Jean is away fighting in Scotland. She accuses Le Gris of raping her, thus setting up the famous duel when Jean demands the King grant him trial by combat…to the death. Director Ridley Scott has decided to tell the main events of the story three different times through the eyes of each main character. Obviously each retelling is slightly different than the last one. There is a religious court and legal wrangling that shows how little rights and protections women, even noble women, had in that society. The duel is the last resort to clear Marguerite’s name. If Jean doesn’t win, she will be put to the stake! Will she be saved? Tune in to find out! I enjoyed this movie, but I can’t quite give it a Golden Apple. Repeating events (with slight differences) three times made the middle of the movie drag. However, there are the great, gritty action scenes you’d expect of Scott, and the world of Middle Ages France is recreated very well. If you like period pieces based on true events that you probably didn’t even know about, this is the movie for you.

The Justice League

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Batman and Wonder Woman band together in this movie to organize a group of super heroes to, you guessed it, save the world!  These DC super heroes are not as interesting as the Marvel ones.  There are several reasons for this.  First of all, the writing is kind of lackluster and doesn’t have the snap or pizzazz of the recent Thor movie or even Guardians of the Galaxy.  Next, this movie kind of jumps over the back stories for The Flash, Aquaman and Cyborg.  These characters could have been fleshed out more, especially since they didn’t get a prior movie to establish who they are and what they’re about. As someone who is totally unfamiliar with the comic books, I would have appreciated more back story for these characters instead of merely a sentence or two of exposition.   Last of all, killing Superman off and then bringing him back from the dead just seemed kind of dumb.  On the other hand, this is not a bad movie.  Aquaman, as played by Jason Momoa, is a hunk, and definitely not one of your cookie cutter hero types.  Ezra Miller makes a humorous and interesting, and even a bit endearing, Flash.  As she has previously demonstrated, Gal Gadot is great as Wonder Woman.  Ray Fisher as Cyborg didn’t get enough screen time for me to decide if I liked his performance (or his character).  I also felt Amy Adams was wasted as Lois Lane, but then, how much dialogue can you have between her and “zombie superman?”  (Even though he wasn’t really a zombie, just re-animated).  Jeremy Irons as Alfred handles his sardonic dialogue with a stiff British upper lip as he deadpans several references to Wonder Woman and Batman not taking the opportunity to romance it up a bit.  All in all, this is an enjoyable movie and I am sure you will be entertained.  However, if you only have time to see one super hero movie, you might be better off seeing Thor Ragnarok!

The Accountant

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I love this movie!!  It is one of the quirkiest action movies I have seen in a long time.  There are plot twists, flashbacks, and an autistic “hero.”   The screenplay by Bill Dubuque is sophisticated and smart.  The story centers on Christian Wolff, an autistic accountant who may have underworld connections.  J.K Simmons is the Treasury agent who wants to find him.  There are good supporting performances from Jon Bernthal and Anna Kendrick, as well as Jeffery Tambor and John Lithgow.  This is Ben Affleck’s movie all the way though.  I have taught many students who had Asperger’s or high functioning autism and I can tell you that Ben nails his portrayal of these often misunderstood individuals.  Be prepared though, there is a lot of violence in this movie, more than you might expect if you have seen the movie trailer.  In a way that is too bad, because I think older kids could learn a lot from this.