Thumbnails Jun 16

by Tony Medley

A Beautiful Planet IMAX (8/10): Highlighted by beautiful cinematography, this shows what life is like on the Space Station and some (not enough) fantastic views of Earth. Unfortunately, it has a political motive that detracts, falling in line with “man causes global warming” crowd, which is unproven. It does mention one place where man is screwing up the planet, the burning of the rainforest, but only as what seems like an afterthought when, in fact, this is the big disaster that everyone is ignoring.

Money Monster (8/10): This is either a spoof or a devastating attack on those charlatans on TV who spout all they know about investing in stocks and bonds. Director Jodie Foster, with admirable pace and good performances, shows them as the clowns they are, who don’t know their collective elbows from third base, and the damage they do.

The Nice Guys (8/10): Written and directed by Fremont Place resident Shane Black, this is one of his best, an action comedy with fine performances by A-listers Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling, despite a silly, hard to understand, story about Detroit and catalytic converters. Russell and Ryan are constantly upstaged by 14-15 year old Angourie Rice, standing 4 feet-11 inches, as Gosling’s daughter, a budding beauty who brings memories of a young Natalie Wood. Unfortunately, a good movie is almost undone by the last minute that foists puerile Hollywood politics on its audience.

The Man Who Knew Infinity (7/10): This is the kind of movie-making that I like to see. It’s educational; there’s not even a smidgen of CGI or special effects; and it’s interesting. Too bad they felt they had to put Hollywood twists into a story that would have been better told had they stuck with what actually happened. You can take a lot of this with a grain of salt.

Captain America: Civil War (5/10): I was really dreading sitting through this thing, especially when I learned it was well over two hours long. However, it wasn’t as painful as I had imagined, mainly due to the special effects and the pace. Of course there is no acting, it’s just one ridiculous fight after another between and among people who are more or less invulnerable, ad infinitum. This is a glaring example of what movies have become, which is intellectual diarrhea. Can you imagine Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy or Cary Grant playing one of these superheroes? Clark Gable in a cape? Cary Grant in tights? But, get used to it. This junk makes money. There are nine, count them, nine superhero movies in line to be made between now and 2019. If you like this sort of thing, then this is a good one. I don’t.

Mother’s Day (2/10): Long time comedic director Gary Marshall has apparently morphed from movie director to rabbi, because this preaches every hallowed politically correct bromide known to and beloved by political Hollywood. The key to how bad this thing really is is shown by the credits, which list five different people participating in the story and screenplay. Whenever there are so many people involved in getting a script to the screen, you are forewarned you’re in big trouble. I knew from the contrived slice of life dialogue during the first five minutes that I was in for a long, long 118 minutes.

Neighbors 2: Sorority Rising (0/10): Knowing that this was a Seth Rogen movie and having seen the first one, called simply Neighbors (2014), I had low expectations. I knew it would be low class, in poor taste, full of vulgarity, and bursting with f-bombs. Even so, this was much worse than I anticipated. It is one of the most disgusting, crude pieces of drivel ever committed to the silver screen, and that’s saying a lot.