Adnerb the Movie Nerd

Movie reviews from a middle school teacher's perspective

Suburbicon

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What’s not to love?  A script written by the Coen Brothers,  directed by  George Clooney, and a stellar cast that includes  Matt Damon, Julianne Moore (playing twins no less!) and Oscar Issac.  So, why did I not love this movie?  Well……the first half of Suburbicon is extremely boring.  It starts out in a perfect, stereotypical middle class, white 60’s neighborhood where everything looks perfect.  Matt Damon’s character is married to a disabled woman who has a twin sister.  He seems the typical, button down good father and husband. During a home invasion, his wife ‘accidentally’ dies.  Is it an accident? In a plot twist reminiscent of the far, far better Fargo, we find out that Matt Damon’s character may not be the perfect Mr. Cleaver father after all. Mayhem ensues.  Interspersed within this plot is an almost completely different movie that involves the first Black family to move into all white suburbia.  By the time you get to the end of the movie, you feel like you have been hit on the head with a not very subtle point.  As always, the Coen Brothers include some dark humor and a few surprises, but it is just not enough.  Instead of going to see Suburbicon, I would recommend looking for Fargo on Netflix and watching William H. Macy “fleeing the interview.”

Kingsman: The Golden Circle

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Colin Firth could read from a phonebook (do they even still have those?) and make it sound high class, but even he wasn’t quite enough to make the “Kingsman: The Golden Circle” a worthy sequel to the first movie, partly because he’s hardly in it in an effective way.  The Golden Circle misses out on being as entertaining as the first one for several reasons.  First of all, why put Jeff Bridges, Halle Berry (two Academy award winning actors), Michael Gambon and Channing Tatum in a movie and not give them much to do?  Their appearances were short lived and inconsequential.  That was very perplexing.  Also, I found Elton John’s story line (he has been kidnapped) rather sad and seedy instead of humorous and campy.  On a positive note, Pedro Pascal, a fan favorite from Game of Thrones, gets to ham it up as an American agent who uses a lasso instead of a gun.  Mark Strong returns and gives the the best performance as “Merlin.” He is the only surviving member (along with Eggsy played by Taron Egerton) of the Kingsman after their headquarters is blown up by  Julianne Moore in a rather unbelievable plot device.  She  is great, as the over-the-top villain named Poppy, an evil pharmaceutical maker (okay, that’s not a stretch)  who also makes a killer hamburger.  This is not a bad movie, in fact, if you loved the original Kingsman, I think you will like this one.   It does have a few laughs and the kind of over-the-top cartoonish violence that you would expect from such a movie.  if you go, you will be entertained, just not as much as you were with the first one!