I FEEL PRETTY  3.0***

   In the reviews for this movie some people were offended by the way Schumer’s character, Renee, is supposed to be perceived. That is as an insecure young woman because she isn’t skinny enough, pretty enough, etc. But the movie tells a different story. Yes, in the beginning, Renee is very insecure about her appearance. Her eyes well up with tears when she removes her cute outfit and reveals the uncomfortable pair of Spanx hidden underneath or when she run errands in a sweatshirt and yoga pants  and is mistaken by a customer as a store employee.  She makes a Big-style in a thunderstorm wish and hopes to magically transform herself into someone with supermodel looks.  

Renee is a regular New Yorker with a dull desk job doing online work for Lily LeClaire, a high-fashion cosmetic firm run by  the gorgeous Avery LeClaire ( played marvelously by Michelle Williams as an entitled but smart woman with a high squeaky voice). Renee joins a fitness club where she’s fat-shamed by an employee and tries to sweat her way to the smile and shape of her dreams. But in the process, she falls off the bike and takes a hard knock to the head and when she comes to, the face and figure she sees in the mirror are the ones she’s been dreaming of, although only she can actually see herself that way.. Everybody else just sees Renee as she’s always been.

Convinced that she’s now a goddess, Renee proceeds to dazzle people — although they’re  impressed by her amazing self-confidence, not her looks. Over time Renee starts to have it all. She gets the dream job working at  the LeClaire Headquarters, winds up with a boyfriend who adores her and even wins the respect of her sleek and stylish co-workers. Renee’s positive self-image is infectious and draws others into her orbit. They are dazzled by her sincerity and conviction. Unfortunately, her success goes to her head and jeopardizes her friendship with her two girl friends who have always loved her just the way she is.  

When she hits her head again, the effects of the first injury are reversed. Once again, she is plagued by self-doubt. But the feelings of everyone who has come to love and respect both versions of Renee have not changed. To the outside world, she’s still amazing. Sadly, she is once again crippled by her insecurity and she is the only one who can change that. This notion of self-acceptance is the hard lesson that Schumer’s character, Renee, must learn . How it ends, you have to see for yourself,

This film shows how most  women feel insecure about their looks to some extent, even the gorgeous ones who are perceived to be perfect. At the end of the day, what truly matters is how you feel about yourself. Nobody can make you really, deeply, honestly feel pretty except for you.

Schumer shines in I Feel Pretty by completely and fearlessly buying into the premise, and delivering  funny lines that slice into the shallowness of valuing beauty over brains and celebrities over common folk.

 I Feel Pretty finds a whimsical, funny, relatable, and entertaining way to convey that message. It isn’t easy, but it  feels a whole lot better to embrace your imperfections and love your unique self.

Rated PG-13 for sexual content, some partial nudity, and language | 

BEFORE I FALL  2.8***

          A great look at today's teen youth, which at first is mainly about the negatives. It quickly moves into something more serious as it tackles the question of what would you do if you thought you only had one day to live and that day keeps repeating? In a way this is similar to the classic Groundhog Day, but has more drama and very little comedy. Ultimately this is a film teens and over should see if you're serious about discovering what's really important in life.  

It’s a mystery-drama based on the popular 2010 Young Adult novel, of the same name, by Lauren Oliver. It tells the story of a high school senior who discovers she's reliving the last day of her life, over and over again, apparently until she can figure out what she needs to do to make things right. The film stars Zoey Deutch with, believe or not, Jennifer Beals, playing the mother. The film has received mostly positive reviews, from critics and fans alike.
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Samantha Kingston (Deutch) is a popular high school senior, who’s planning to lose her virginity on the night of Cupid's Day.  She goes with her  “mean friends” (and she is too) to a wild party that night,  skips the sex ( the guy gets too drunk) and then dies in a car accident  with her other popular friends. The next day she wakes up to find out she's reliving the same exact day, and then the next several days she keeps waking up to find out the same exact thing. Samantha slowly realizes that she needs to set things right, in her life and with those of her friends in that repeating day in order to hopefully change things finally.

The movie is surprisingly insightful in dealing with high school life and the dynamics of being popular verses being an  outcast or the object of bullying. It's something the  flawed main character has to learn, and then  better herself by learning, in order to finally set things right. This movie  has a  moving, message about how we  treat others (and how we should treat them).    

Rated PG-13 for mature audiences for content involving drinking, sexuality, bullying, some violent images, and some  language all involving teens. 

CHAPAQUICDDICK  2.5***

      

 “Chappaquiddick is based on the real life incident in July 1969 involving the death of Mary Jo Kopechne and the events following. Basically, Mary Jo (a former secretary for Robert Kennedy), died when Senator Ted Kennedy crashed the car he was driving into a small wooden bridge late at night and the car flipped into the water. He escaped although you never find out how. She dies, and the  tragedy was greatly compounded due to what happened next---Kennedy quickly left the scene and failed to report the incident until the next day…more than 8 hours after the event.  It's unclear whether Kennedy actually made attempts to save Kopechne himself (he maintained that he did) but he did go get his friends, Joe Gargan and Paul Markham, fairly soon after who did dive into the water but were unsuccessful in extracting the Mary Jo.

If Kennedy had an excuse for not contacting the police immediately ,certainly his behavior the next day was disgraceful. The movie shows how Kennedy's efforts to cover up the incident were quite involved, from his initial plan to tell the authorities that Kopechne was driving, that a doctor prescribed sedatives for him for a non-existent concussion and then his wearing a neck brace at the Kopechne funeral, attempting to play the part of the victim.

Even more fascinating is the gathering of a Kennedy "inner circle". The power players included Robert McNamara and Ted Sorensen and it shows them trying to manage/manipulate the authorities and the press coverage.

The film can best be classified as a docudrama and  sticks to the chronology of events that occurred.  The problem with this approach is that the narrative  becomes a dry rehash of the events that transpired. The movie does put its own spin on things and ends up drawing a complex but negative portrait of Ted Kennedy (played  convincingly by Jason Clarke, a dead ringer for the Senator). 

I CAN ONLY IMAGINE   3.2***

        First recorded in 1999, MercyMe’s “I Can Only Imagine” is the best-selling, most-played contemporary Christian song since the invention of the radio. Written by a Texan named Bart Millard who fell into singing and songwriting after a high school injury ended his football dreams. Millard’s life story, culminating in the composition of the song, is the subject of this polished, faith-based drama named after it, a movie that caters to Christians and other people who enjoy wholesome stories about redemption.

I Can Only Imagine is based on the life story of Bart Millard. After living a traumatic childhood caused by an abusive father , young Bart finally reaches the last straw and storms out of his Texas home, leaving everything behind to distance himself from his toxic dad and to chase his dream of a musical career. Bart's story of how the band started and what led him to write the chart-topping single, I Can Only Imagine, is an inspiring journey of redemption, hope, and forgiveness. Unlike most Christian films this is not preachy and the acting is good.   

The actor in the starring role, J. Michael Finley, is spot on believable  & since he's a Broadway actor/singer he can sing quite well. Dennis Quaid, as the abusive father, and Trace Adkins, as the manager of the band, add to an excellent cast. . It's a down-home type of movie that doesn't depend on special effects but on good story-telling. The richness of the color photography is pleasant in this day of hyper-CGI stuff   

This movie will touch your heart, move you to tears and have you singing out loud. Take your family to see this movie, it's a good one. My wife saw it with me and thoroughly enjoyed it.

      A Quiet Place  4.0** as Horror movie

  

       Horror has been flourishing in the past few years with a number of movies proving you can actually scare a   n audience if you put the time and effort into the craft of a film. John Krasinski, most famous for playing the role of Jim Halpert in TV’s The Office, brings us a new horror in the form of A Quiet Place, and the result is one of the most intense movie experiences you could wish for.

Evelyn and Lee Abbott (played by real life couple Emily Blunt and John Krasinski) live with their surviving children, Regan and Marcus on a farm. They live every day in silence to survive the threat of horrific  creatures that hunt by sound. They are presumably extraterrestrials and they roam the countryside listening out to the slightest of sound ( they are blind but have enormous very sensitive ears and huge “raptor-like” teeth) and upon hearing a sound they rampage to the source of the sound and devour the source. Grotesque yet creatively designed creatures that are shrouded in an ominous veil.  

The simplicity of the concept makes A Quiet Place such a fascinating premise but it's the execution that sends it to soaring heights. Krasinski has crafted a horror film that grabs you in a vice-like grip from the very first shot, not letting go until the end credits start to roll, honing in perfectly on the use of sound and silence for some of the most intense sequences in recent memory.

The fear factor in A Quiet Place comes from the tension and suspense Krasinski develops throughout, a true standout sequence being when a heavily pregnant Evelyn finds herself evading a creature as she goes into labor. It's moments like this one that had me gripping the arms of my seat and holding my breath numerous times throughout.

Coming to the performances, A Quiet Place possesses the rarest of the rare in horror films with a cast who all deliver great performances. Parents should always be protective of their children but the situation they find themselves in here adds another layer to that and Blunt and Krasinski excel in showing the desperation they face to keep their children safe. Child actors always make me feel a little cautious going into a film however, both are very good here.

If you are a horror movie fan ( monsters yes but not any real gore) or a thrill seeker try out this movie but strap yourself in and take a lot of deep breaths before the movie starts because you’ll be holding your breath a lot during the movie.

  Rated PG-!3 for terror and some bloody images.

GAME NIGHT   3.2***

Sometimes it takes you days after seeing a film to decide whether you liked it. Sometimes it takes you until the final scene. Sometimes it takes you an hour. However with 'Game Night' I knew within minutes I was in for fun ride. The film starts off hilariously and not only does it never ease off, it also continues to ramp things up until the very end. 

The film revolves around Max and Annie, played by Jason Bateman and Rachael McAdams. They run a friendly but competitive games night each week, with their friends. One week, Max's older more successful brother, Brooks comes to town and hosts a kidnapping mystery night. Unfortunately, his night goes awry as Brooks is genuinely kidnapped. Unaware that they aren't playing the game, Max and Annie and their friends start to investigate and uncover more than they could possibly imagine. 

The story is so much fun. There are so angles it comes at you from. Not only do we have a kidnapping mystery of sorts, we have three  couples all approaching it from different angles with their individual shenanigans going on. There is hardly a weak scene to be found and if one joke doesn't land, sure enough there's another hilarious one to make up for it seconds later.

Comedy is always a subjective thing, but I have to say that I laughed a lot while watching "Game Night".  The jokes are smart and witty and the couples feel genuine and the relationships real.   Admittedly, it goes from the memory fairly quickly once the lights come back up, but certainly worth seeking out - though perhaps at home, rather than at the cinema.

For some reason it is Rated “R” for some language and mild violence but is a “

Okay I saw “Ready Player One” in 3D at the Imax at Marbles downtown Raleigh and it was spectacular. So much so I was at a loss for words to describe it. So I carefully looked over several reviews and selected the 2 below. The first is only a quote from the review but I loved how in a paragraph she sums up the ultimate joy and fascination in the movie.  The Second is a full review by Neil Pond who absolutely nails it.

It is not a movie for some people but for those for whom it appeals to, especially for those who love the1980s, it is a must see and I strongly urge you to see it on the big screen and in 3D

Ready Player One  4.0***

BY REBECCA MURRAY ON MARCH 29, 2018

Ready Player One is like waking up on Christmas morning to find all your favorite toys from years gone by, many of which you’d all but forgotten, gathered together and just waiting to be played with. It’s amazing that Ready Player One is able to play to all age groups and both sexes. Not all references and characters will mean something to every audience member, but it doesn’t matter because if you don’t catch something others in the audience are reacting to, the next scene will probably include something relatable to your age group.

 

 

 By NEIL POND  

Ready Player One
Starring Tye Sheridan, Olivia Cook, Mark Rylance & Ben Mendelsohn
Directed by Steven Spielberg
PG-13

On your mark, get set, geek out!

The race is on, from the opening scene, in director Steven Spielberg’s deliriously dazzling cinema sonnet to pop culture and everyone who loves it.

Based on the award-winning 2011 sci-fi novel by Ernest Cline, Ready Player One is about a teenager, Wade Watts (Tye Sheridan), living in a bleak pile of mobile homes—“The Stacks”—in Columbus, Ohio, in 2045. Like most everyone else in the dystopian times, Wade spends his days strapped to a virtual-reality headset and escaping—as his avatar, Parzival—into the sprawling game called Oasis, a dream-like theme park for the senses where anything is possible.

In Oasis, you can be anything or anyone, do anything, go anywhere. As Wade points out, you can climb Mt. Everest with Batman, ski the pyramids, or race the virtual streets of Manhattan in the DeLorean from Back to the Future while dodging King Kong and the T.rex from Jurassic Park.

The Oasis is great fun, but Wade’s in it for more: He’s looking for the three Easter-egg clues left behind by the game’s late, great creator, James Halliday (Mark Rylance), a gamer guru who promised that whoever finds them all will win it all—the trillion-dollar rights to his Oasis kingdom.

He’s joined by a dashing, pixie-like female gamer, Art3mis (Olivia Cooke, who starred in Me and Earl and the Dying Girl), who has her own reason for wanting to win the game.  Lena Waithe, who played Denise on Netflix’s Master of None, provides the voice of Aech, pronounced “H,”a hulking, gentle-giant warrior avatar and Parzival’s best friend in Oasis.

But a scheming corporate weasel, Nolan Sorrento (Ben Mendelsohn), wants control of the Oasis, too—to take it over, charge people to play and turn it into a massive income stream with virtual advertising. And he’ll do anything to get it. When it looks like Wade/Parzival is making headway finding the eggs, Sorrento calls in his army and his orc-like hit-man, I-R0K (comedian T.J. Miller, who gets some of the movie’s best laugh lines) to stop him.

The movie is a spectacular, geek-centric explosion of fanboy references to classic films, videogames, music and props, mostly from the late 1970s and ’80s. There’s the Iron Giant… and the creature from Alien… I spy a Devo hat! Hey, isn’t that the space pod from 2001: A Space Odyssey? And the winged Winnebago Chieftain camper from Spaceballs? Didn’t I just see Tomb Raider’s Laura Croft at the bar? And Harley Quinn and The Joker? And there’s the devil doll Chucky!

Tunes from Joan Jett, Van Halen, Blondie, the Bee Gees and Tears for Fears cue up at just the right moments to synch with something happening onscreen; Atari gets a particular shout-out; and an iconic 1980s horror movie becomes the sprawling, surprising extended centerpiece for one of the Easter egg clues.

There are so many things jam-packed on screen, so many times, there’s no way you can absorb everything, especially in one viewing. And if you didn’t watch a lot of movies, and play a lot of video games—like Street Fighter, Mortal Kombat, Joust and Gundam—in the 1980s, well, just sit back and let it all wash over you anyway, and bask in its roaring river of nearly nonstop pop nostalgia.

Ready Player One is a thrilling treasure hunt, a sensational salute to our not-so-distant pop-culture past and a potent proclamation about the boundless power of imagination—from a director who, not coincidentally, has himself been responsible for creating some of the most stirring movie moments of all time during the past 40 years.

Although it spends most of its time in the Oasis, with its characters’ avatars, Spielberg brings the story—and the message—home when they all meet and interact and get to know each other in the real world. As a director, he’s always known the heart of any story is with characters we care about, who care about each other, who laugh and love and hurt and hug.

Reality may be a pain and drag sometimes, Rylance’s character, Oasis creator Mark Halliday says, “but it’s the only place to get a decent meal.”

That may be true, but the effusive escapism of Ready Player One is the perfect snack—a bountiful, overflowing buffet of just about everything a movie lover would ever want, served up by a superstar director who loves movies just as much as we do.