The premise of Moonfall is that the moon is an alien-made structure that was put in place for some unknown reason (which will become apparent later). Astronauts Brian Harper (Patrick Wilson) and Jo Fowler (Halle Berry) are working on a satellite when they are attacked by a mysterious black cloud thingee. It swirls around with intelligent appearing malevolence and though they escape, it ends up causing another astronaut’s death. No one believes Brian about the black cloud and he is blamed (and fired) for the catastrophe. The movie then skips ahead ten years where the moon is acting weird, is off course, and heading for Earth. Oh no!! The U. S. military’s bright and apparently only idea to stop this is to nuke the moon, yes, you heard me right, nuke the moon! Since there are apparently no other astronauts or rockets available, Jo and Brian find an old relic and decide to go up into the moon and save the day. Wait, they need help. Why not take an overweight conspiracy theorist who has some serious anxiety issues and has never been in space? Because his theories appear to be on target! That is where K.C. Housman (Game of Thrones’ John Bradley) comes in. The movie is full of government cover ups, conspiracy theories, sentient A.I, kids in danger, separated families,and bone-headed decisions. I found most of the movie silly and the reason for the ‘moon fall’ kind of dumb. There is a large amount of exposition in the last half hour of the movie. And a lot of the action, particularly the movements of the moon, really strains credulity…be ready to suspend a LOT of disbelief. Of course,in all movies where the Earth is in danger, a major landmark must be destroyed. You will have to watch for yourself to see which one they get in this movie. Should you see this movie? I definitely wouldn’t pay to see it in a theatre, but on a rainy Sunday afternoon, if nothing else was showing, it would definitely pass the time.
Kidnap
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!