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A beautiful traditional Western featuring two virtuoso actors, one of whom happens to be a 12-year-old German kid. It may be a bit slow-moving for some tastes, but I found the story and the chemistry between Tom and Helena absolutely captivating. Something wonderful managed to make it out of 2020.

I absolutely loved this movie, a period piece set during WW II in which the horrors of Treblinka play a pivotal role. The plot was compelling, and it held my interest throughout the film. The acting was superb, the musical score was gorgeous, and the overall look of the movie was beautiful. I cannot begin to understand the mediocre reviews the critics gave to this movie, especially when so many of them seemed to think "Jojo Rabbit"--a weird and monumentally unsuccessful attempt at satirizing **** and the **** worthy of consideration for Oscars. "The Song of Names" has a bit of an art-house air to it, but it is precisely the kind of film that intrigues moviegoers in search of more than a cinematic display of special effects.

I noticed the mediocre reviews, and so I waited to rent the DVD. After had I watched the movie, which I enjoyed thoroughly and which caused me to pause the video several times so I could look up information about the characters on my smart phone, I wondered what there was not to like. I have seen my share of war movies, and "Midway" was one of the better ones in that genre. The movie attempted to be accurate historically. The Japanese were not reduced to caricatures, as they so often are in WW II flicks. I am not a connoisseur of CGI, and I don't know that I can tell when it is being employed well or poorly. I thought the battle scenes were depicted realistically. Perhaps the fact that this is a traditional rather than an artsy-fartsy recounting of an epic battle in a pivotal war in modern human history is what has earned it only a grudging golf-clap from the pajama boys in the critical community. Normal Americans no doubt will appreciate it a lot more.

It was a cute movie for families with kids. Artistically, it was crap. The acting was bad, the characters were absurd, the story was ridiculous and totally predictable. But it still had a certain charm. If I were married with younger kids, I would consider it a perfectly respectable weekend rental.

I tend to enjoy period pieces, and, although this one might be considered a chick flick, I enjoyed it. Ronan is arguably the finest young actress of our time.

This movie was just plain weird. It was billed as a satire on ****, and it tried to make the training of **** Youth funny; but it failed spectacularly. It did not even work as an illustration of the senselessness of war, the despicableness of anti-Semitism and other forms of bigotry, or the horror of socialist totalitarianism. I drove 40 minutes to see it because some critics seemed to believe it was Oscar-worthy. I could not disagree more.

The movie was odd and difficult to follow, with flashbacks and no discernible plot. I kept watching in vain hope of perceiving a story line about which I could care. The characters were dysfunctional and generally unpleasant. The dialogue was laden with gratuitous obscenities. The movie was obviously made for Hollywood about Hollywood by Hollywood, and so I am sure the denizens of that synthetic world believe Tarantino has created an artistic triumph. It was a long, drawn-out self-indulgent waste of a Saturday evening.

I rented the DVD of "Harriet." It is an excellent biopic about an American hero about whom most of us know relatively little. It should become a staple of middle and high school history classes. Artistically, the film was satisfying, with an excellent screenplay and acting. I am surprised to read several harshly critical reviews from viewers, but they seem to have an underlying political bias.

"Richard Jewell" was, by far, the finest movie I saw in 2019. The actors who portrayed Jewell, his attorney, and his mother were excellent; and the story of the Olympic Park bombing and its aftermath was told in an absolutely riveting manner. There was applause in the theater at the conclusion of the movie, which, in my experience, is rare. The content of the movie is something every American needs to see and understand. Many people are dismissive of the gross violations of civil rights, the multiple transgressions of policy, the unethical and illegal investigative practices, and the extreme prejudice that were revealed recently in Inspector General Horowitz’s detailed report concerning the despicable abuse of our FISA courts, which were established primarily to prevent another 9/11, which was a major systemic failure of our government to protect us. They cannot believe our government would do such things. "Richard Jewell" is a reminder of the perfidy of federal law enforcement and the fact that any person who works for a federal agency should be approached with the utmost skepticism and with fifth amendment rights at the ready. In the case of Richard Jewell, gross misconduct on the part of both the federal government and the media caused a man who had conducted himself heroically and who had saved countless lives to be smeared for months. We Americans would like to believe that the sordid tale was a one-off, but it has been repeated many times since the Olympic Park bombing. "Richard Jewell" is both an artistic triumph and a much-needed wakeup call for Americans who, plagued with either naivete or ignorance, are far too willing to trust both the government and the media.

I have always felt blessed to have been alive and listening during the heyday of one of the greatest tenors in the history of opera. I experience sheer exhilaration when listening to recordings of Pavarotti singing. I enjoyed this documentary immensely not only because it contains lots of clips of Pavarotti performing but because it also captured his extraordinarily engaging personality. Few classical musicians obtain the status of rock stars, but Pavarotti had the requisite exuberance and love of people to draw millions of fans in to what many regard as a rather esoteric art form reserved for the privileged classes. He was a force of nature. I loved the interviews with people who knew and worked with him, and I found the interviews with his first wife and his daughters particularly fascinating. Pavarotti let his passions train-wreck his personal life, and he never had the self-discipline to manage his voice and his career the way his colleague Placido Domingo, who is still a viable singer, has. He was possessed of a rare talent, but he was definitely a flawed human being, as we all are. Nevertheless, the viewer can't help but love the man. I am eagerly awaiting the opportunity to obtain his documentary on DVD so I can enjoy it repeatedly.

This movie acquainted me with a period of time about which I had learned nothing in history class, and I found the drama both depressing and extremely compelling. Although the story progressed slowly, the actors did an excellent job of building and maintaining the dramatic tension among the characters; and so the movie engaged and held my attention to the very end.

I have yet to see a movie--including Moana--involving Dwayne Johnson that was worth the price of admission. "Hobbs and Shaw" was no exception. It was ridiculously violent and loaded with gratuitous and unrealistic action scenes. The final showdown, fought with prehistoric weapons in the homeland of Johnson's character, was downright asinine.

I just watched this movie and absolutely loved it. Parts were funny, parts were poignant, parts were inspiring: it left me a happier person for having seen it. Perhaps my "white privilege" or whatever other imaginary maladies Leftists ascribe to normal people prevented me from noticing how "preachy, manipulative, and frustratingly cliched" it was. The critics seems to have the long knives out for any movie--even a movie based on real occurrences--that suggests that people can overcome racial, cultural, and socioeconomic differences and come to care for each other. When I contemplate the many horrendous movies the critics thought were pinnacles of the film making art, I realize they are incapable of venturing intellectually beyond their insular little politically correct worlds and that their opinions are vacuous. When there is a significant disparity between the critics and the audience, the critics might benefit from a bit of reflection.

"The Favourite" is a period piece that features beautiful sets and costumes and a soundtrack of primarily Baroque music. Critics seem to bill it as a comedy; but, unless you consider ill health, psychological disturbances, treachery, and sexual perversion terribly amusing, you probably will fail to crack a smile during this entire sordid travesty of film making. I certainly did not hear anyone in the theater laughing. The audience consensus after the bizarre ending of the movie seemed to be "What on earth was that?"

I read both of the professional critics' reviews after having thoroughly enjoyed watching "In Harm's Way." I am not a connoisseur of CGI, and I did not let substandard production values, occasionally stilted dialogue, or a plot condemned as "formulaic" keep me from being thoroughly engaged by the story and charmed by the artistry of the actresses playing the widow and her young daughter. As I so often observe, critics praise to the skies films that have little or no appeal to normal theatergoers while they look down their noses at movies that average people want to watch.

"First Man" starts out well enough, but it gradually becomes cumbersome and somewhat boring. The epic length, the dialogue I had to keep rewinding and replaying at higher volumes through my stereo speakers so I could understand it, the overemphasis on melodrama involving the wife and kids, and the studied downplaying and internationalizing of what was a uniquely American triumph leaves the viewer with a feeling best summed up in one word: "meh." I am sure there is all manner of high-end filmmaking craft that effete artsy-fartsy critics might appreciate, but the movie fails in its most basic mission: to engage and entertain the viewer.

I very much enjoyed "Bel Canto," although I quickly realized it lacks the mass-market appeal of movies that open on multiple screens at a cineplex. Instead of attempting to blow away the audience by all manner of special effects and frantic pacing, it tells an interesting--perhaps quirky--story involving a large ensemble of interesting--definitely quirky--characters. It explores a phenomenon called Stockholm Syndrome, in which captives eventually begin to sympathize with and even support the people who take them hostage. The plot occasionally strains credibility, but the many reviews I read of the movie universally observe that the movie is quite faithful to the novel on which it is based. I was able to identify Renee Fleming's voice as the one being used for the soundtrack before I had it confirmed by the reviews that is was she providing the lovely singing. Multiple languages are spoken in the dialogue, but the English subtitles ably assist the viewer. I thoroughly enjoyed the movie despite the critics' lukewarm response to it.

Utter garbage. Vile language, nudity, scatological and gynecological references, jokes that land with a thud and fail to evoke so much as a chuckle, and a plot so absurd that the viewer is motivated to endure till the end just to find out how the writers attempt to salvage it before the credits roll. The $1.87 I paid to rent it from Redbox was too high a price to pay for a chance to watch such bilge.

Not sure why I rented this. I suspected watching it would lower my IQ by around twenty points. I'd seen the first "Mamma Mia" movie on a cruise ship in Alaska. All I remembered about it was that Pierce Brosnan could not sing to save his life and that the plot was terminally silly. This sequel/prequel is carried by Lily James, a British actress who first impressed me as Churchill's young secretary in "Darkest Hour." She lights up every scene in which she acts. She has singing, dancing, and acting chops to burn. Cher, at the ripe old age of 71, appears toward the end of the movie. The plot again is terminally silly, but the movie is saved by the sense that a bunch of actors who genuinely care for each other are having an extraordinary amount of fun together.

Philadelphia has some gruesome tales in its history. Ira Einhorn famously murdered his ex-girlfriend, stored her remains in a box in a closet in his home, fled the country, was extradited after over two decades of freedom in Europe, and is now in prison for murder. Were it not for a determined district attorney, he might have gotten away with murder. Kermit Gosnell, were it not for a drug raid and a few determined investigators and prosecutors, might also have gotten away with murder. The story of the raid, the subsequent investigation, and the trial was codified into a gruesome book which subsequently was converted into a mercifully less horrific movie. Although the bizarre subject matter should have had writers and producers standing in line to make a movie about it, "Gosnell" required crowd funding just to get it produced. Once it was produced, it took considerable time to get it released into a limited number of theaters. The reluctance of Hollywood to touch the subject matter, of course, was political rather than artistic. Certain stories just are not suitable for dramatization. The fine movie "****" was too hot to handle until The Lion of the Senate had been dead for the better part of a decade. He was a Kennedy, don't ya know? Camelot and All That Rot. It will be interesting to see how long it will take for a movie to be made about the Monica Lewinsky story, although it has all of the elements necessary for an Oscar-worthy effort. Gosnell was too hot to handle because the kindly old Doctor Kermit was celebrating the most sacred sacrament in Leftist theology: abortion. Filmmakers, who generally are to the left of Lenin philosophically, feared that the Gosnell story could not be told without having to depict for audiences the grim reality of what abortions entail--even abortions performed by licensed medical doctors using sterile technique in well-equipped medical facilities. They, or course, were correct. Telling the Gosnell story involves telling the abortion story, and some topics are better left unexplored. Some movies created by Christian or conservative producers cause me to cringe because, artistically, they are third-rate: stilted acting, hokey dialogue, obviously preachy interludes, lame production values. Gosnell holds its own quite well as a work of film making. It is a compelling drama from beginning to end, with a fine screenplay, excellent acting, and respectable production values. How much artistic license was taken with the facts of the case will be revealed, no doubt, by critics looking for reasons to nitpick. However, for the record, the "people die" line--one that drew gasps from the audience--is right out of grand jury testimony, and the heartless bureaucrat who uttered it eventually lost her job as a result of her negligence. Artistic license is taken in most films. "Hidden Figures" made a huge deal about the mathematical genius having to race across campus to another building every time she needed to use a restroom because she was African-American and was being treated condescendingly and insultingly by her white male colleagues. Unfortunately for the filmmakers, that mathematical genius is very much alive, and she revealed in interviews several years ago that none of those incidents actually occurred. So a central theme of that movie was nothing but artistic license. I doubt any such blatant fictionalizing was incorporated into the "Gosnell" screenplay. The facts of the case are compelling enough without adding Hollywood special effects. I am wondering if any critics will pick up on one little zinger inserted into the movie that almost caused me to laugh out loud. I happen to be a classically trained musician, so I knew immediately that somebody decided to have bit of subliminal fun. Hint: piano recital scene. I will be fascinated to see how the critics evaluate this movie--if they even bother to review it at all--and whether the movie earns its way from a limited release to a broader distribution after this first weekend. Time will tell. In the meantime, go see "Gosnell." It is well worth the price of a movie ticket and a couple hours of your time.

I rented this from Redbox thinking it might be an amusing satirical period piece, given that I grew up during the heyday of intense competition among local news teams in major cities. Suffice it to say the movie is not funny. It is stupid and crude. The caricatures of the anchorman, the sports guy, the weather guy, and the features reporter are so outlandish and divorced from reality that they fail as satire. The jokes fall flat on their faces after buildups so predictable that, when the jokes finally come plodding along, they evoke eye rolls rather than chuckles. Painful to watch. I'm halfway through it, and I honestly do not care how it ends. I'm ejecting the DVD and thanking my lucky stars I did not pay full price to rent it.

Hollywood's pathologically distorted view of world and national politics managed to turn a reasonably tolerable action movie--replete with lots of explosions and special effects--into a downright laughable piece of implausible garbage. Every absolutely predictable button was pushed: the perpetrators of the coup were linked to "white supremacist" organizations, Muslims were untainted by original sin and had no connection whatsoever to terrorism, the military industrial complex ruled all, and the idealistic young black POTUS, horribly acted by whoever was playing the role, wanted to "make a difference," don't ya know.... The eleven-year-old girl character was as improbable as the actress playing her was insufferable. Absolutely embarrassing from beginning to end. I always wonder how producers can create these artistic travesties and watch them without realizing how bad they are.

This movie recounts an interesting event in the history of attempts to bring **** to justice, but it dwells too long on the psychological battle between the Israeli agents and Eichmann, and it loses momentum. I came away from the movie wanting to get on the internet and do some research into just why Argentina was willing to host such a notorious war criminal and to allow its law enforcement agencies to interfere with the Mossad's mission.

Two veteran actors, William Hurt and Helen Hunt, manage to rescue this self-consciously inspirational film after the young actresses playing the central characters in the drama almost kill it with the most downright amateurish overacting I've seen this side of a made-for-TV melodrama. I almost took the DVD out of the player and drove it back to Redbox after the first few scenes. It was, in a word, insufferable--worse than the typical faith-based movies periodically cranked out to give us born-again Christians something that won't offend our sensibilities. Once the actress who played the girl who died was no longer on the screen, the acting seemed at least passably authentic, and the story became a bit more engaging. The shame of it all is that I would like to love films like this one, but they so often are artistic train wrecks.

An American Carol is a hilarious satire that skewers many of the sacred cows of the Left. It has all of the subtlety one has come to expect from the makers of Airplane and the Naked Gun series: none, to be exact. It pokes fun at the jackassery the pretentious and supercilious Left expects us to treat reverently, and it does so with biting humor. If I had to choose a favorite production number, it would be the song and dance presented by the typical college faculty. The single word in the screenplay that brought down the house in the theater in which I first watched this movie: "Episcopal." If the critics hate this movie, it is not because of its quality. It's because of their wacko-Left political orientation.

I grew up before Sesame Street and Mister Rogers, and so I lack the nostalgic ties to Fred Rogers that other moviegoers may possess. Ponderous and hagiographical, the movie details the career of what can most accurately be described as a very unusual man who just happened to find a noncompetitive niche for his talents in the nascent public TV medium. The biographical elements that might have made the movie much more interesting to people who were acquainted with Fred Rogers primarily through Eddie Murphy and Johnny Carson's parodies of him--where did he grow up, what were his parents like, what were his experiences growing up in school, how did he meet and court his wife, what did his kids have to endure as a result of having such an unusual father, what drew him to focus his work on preschoolers--are conspicuously absent from this biographical documentary. Moviegoers leave the theater having viewed a worshipful account of the adult professional life of an apparently virtuous but--frankly--downright weird character whose most salient characteristic was being so consistently strange that other people found him disarming.

I tried to watch this movie all the way to the end, but I got sick of hearing the f-word while waiting in vain for something to be funny. I finally hit stop and eject and set it aside to be returned to Redbox the following morning. The fact that the critics seem to think this piece of garbage is worthy of anyone's time proves once again that they have little in common with normal people.

As I watched this weird, lumbering tale about eccentric, unlikeable characters inflicting on each other their psychological pathologies, I fell asleep twice and had to rewind for quite a while to find the last scene that looked as though I had watched it before. I dutifully endured the seemingly interminable story of a sick romance between an insufferable twit who dresses up overprivileged but undistinguished women for a living and a ruthlessly manipulative former waitress who manages the herculean task of manifesting even more character flaws than the dressmaker whose life and career she threatens to destroy. All the while, I was thinking, "The critics are going to swoon over this self-consciously artsy-fartsy filmmaking bilge." The story features fictional people almost as personally dysfunctional as many film critics are in real life, and the movie has all of the pretentious high-art characteristics that fascinate filmmaking students in art colleges but are lost on normal moviegoers who are simply seeking an evening of pleasant entertainment. "Phantom Thread" evokes from viewers the same obligatory reaction a premiere performance of a commissioned work draws from a classical music audience on which it is inflicted: sufficient applause to avoid accusations of cretinism for failing to appreciate the finer things of life, accompanied by internal thanksgiving that it's over and that the long suffering audience will never have to experience it again.

Many movies with Christian themes are plagued with less-than-credible screenplays, marginal acting, poor production values, and a fatal overdose of sentimentality. They entertain and preach to the converted, but they generally become targets of ridicule because they are just plain bad art. "The Case for Christ" avoids the pitfalls that diminish the potential audiences for most Christian movies by having a screenplay--based on real-life events--which is well-acted and produced. Christians and non-Christians can watch the film without cringing because it is terminally hokey. Part of the story of Lee Strobel's two-year-long investigation of the veracity of the resurrection--the traveling from place to place interviewing scientists--was admittedly difficult to keep fast-paced and exciting; and dramatizing a person's conversion is fraught with challenges. But "The Case for Christ" is an eminently watchable movie

“****” is an extraordinary movie. It should be multiple-Oscar worthy, but it will be interesting to see if its subject matter prevents it from getting the recognition it deserves. There were attempts to prevent its production and release, and it apparently is receiving only limited distribution, given that I had to drive thirty minutes just to see it. I wouldn’t say the movie was sympathetic to or condemnatory of Ted Kennedy. It told a story I vaguely remember from my childhood. What it did illustrate--replete with excellent acting, authentic depictions of the zeitgeist of the late 60s, a realistic recreation of the crash site and accident, and some scenes obviously recreated or surmised rather than historically documented--is what most thinking people already know: 1) Lady Justice peaks under her blindfold when adjudicating the wealthy and powerful, especially when they are in their home towns. 2) If you are going to mess up royally, it’s best to do so in a place in which all of the local movers and shakers have known you so long they’re almost family. 3) Having a generally sympathetic media and public is worth its weight in small fines, suspended sentences, and community services. 4) Average Americans “should not try this at home,” or the full weight of the rule of law will descend on them like the proverbial ton of bricks and crush them. 5) Political dynasties based on family names and “mystique” (Kennedy, Bush, Clinton) are invariably corrupt and should be reserved for banana republics rather than the greatest nation in the world. The 5:00 Saturday show in an affluent Philadelphia suburb was filled close to capacity, so I suspect “****” will succeed even if has taken almost 50 years to be made, when movies with much less interesting storylines (“All the President’s Men”) were produced as quickly as Hollywood could slap together a screenplay.

Ferdinand is a kids' movie, and I am not a kid. Nevertheless, I found the movie entertaining and the voice work particularly good. I was put off by the use of the word "****" several times in a movie ostensibly for children, and there were the obligatory multiple references to butts, which become predictable and tiresome after a while. The movie did, for the most part, manage to avoid references to excretory functions, which seem to be the source of much of what passes for humor in kids' movies these days. Ferdinand is a very pleasant movie for younger children to see.

Jumangi was a pleasant diversion for an early evening: lots of silliness with a quasi-heart-warming ending. I have no familiarity with video games, and so some of the characters and events were no doubt lost on me. All four of the principal characters are stereotypes of personalities one can encounter among high school kids, and it was an interesting idea for each of them, once **** into the game, to be stuck in a body drastically different from the bodies in which they had grown up. Dwayne Johnson attempted to play the role of a scrawny geek suddenly endowed with an immense, powerful physique; but his acting chops were not sufficient to pull it off. (Johnson, in every movie of his I have seen, basically plays himself.) So the movie was by no means great art, but it was lots of fast-paced improbable fun.

I was not expecting high art when I rented it, and so I was not disappointed to discover that it was just a goofy, pleasant diversion. The plot is ridiculous, the jokes often are crude, but the singing and choreography were energetic and polished. I saw the sequel first in a movie theater and the original on the computer a few days later. My original purpose for watching the movies was to learn more about the a cappella pop singing phenomenon that seemed to be sweeping through middle schools, high schools, and colleges. (I'm a classically trained choral conductor.) I can't say I learned a huge amount about the creative process that underlies the arranging of pop songs--especially the mash-ups--but I was very entertained by the movies. Pitch Perfect apparently is going to be the last of the sequels, and it was a worthy finale to the trilogy.

When I was trained to be a public school teacher, I occasionally was reminded that, for some of my students, their time at school comprised the best hours of their day. School, in comparison to their home lives, was an orderly, safe, predictable environment in which adults could be counted on to act responsibly and even protectively. School was a refuge from the chaos encompassing their homes and neighborhoods. The children depicted in The Florida Project find joy and adventure while growing up in an environment in which they see and hear things that are age-inappropriate to the extreme. The innocence of their childhoods is continually polluted by the dysfunction of the adults who are supposed to be raising them. The movie tells a disturbing, compelling story of an underclass of people who live day-to-day in budget motels raising the rent to stay in their rooms by whatever means necessary. Although the story could be quite depressing, the movie maintains a certain energy and optimism by focusing primarily on the children, who find ways to entertain themselves and enjoy their lives despite the chaos surrounding them. The movie is honest. It does not sugarcoat. It reveals and teaches, but it does not preach. It does not presume to prescribe solutions. It does not have a plot in the traditional sense of the word. It has a bit of a "Adventures of Huckleberry Finn" vibe to it. Kids having fun interacting with each other, with their environment, and with the adults they often annoy in the process. The cast contained only one "big name" actor. Several actors--including 6-year-old Brooklyn--had no previous experience whatsoever. The acting nevertheless was top notch. The film seemed well produced and directed. The Florida Project tells an ugly story in a beautiful and entertaining manner.

I had little interest in the Harding/Kerrigan incident when it actually occurred, and so I was surprised that I genuinely enjoyed this movie and was motivated by it subsequently to watch online a recent ABC documentary about the affair. The movie is compelling, to some extent, the way a train wreck is: so many of the principals in the drama--including Tonya herself--were dysfunctional, low-rent ne'er-do-wells living lives of chaotic desperation and inflicting their pathologies on each other like the norovirus. All of the actors do a remarkable job of bringing to the screen the real-life qualities of their characters, although the young woman playing Tonya arguably is a bit too classically beautiful to be mistaken for Tonya, who, on a good day, might be charitably described as "cute." The people tasked with creating the ice skating scenes did an extraordinary job with their special effects. It is a relief, at the end of the film, to learn that most of the loony tunes who had sullied Olympic history ultimately grew up and achieved some stability and productivity later in life, although the obese possuer who had appointed himself Tonya's bodyguard croaked at the age of 40.

Disgraceful, dark movie full of filthy language, disrespect, violence, inappropriate sexual relationships, and characters too cartoonishly vile to be believable. Only a few characters--probably not coincidentally African-American--seemed to be imbued with any modicum of decency in an otherwise totally dystopian community. I suspect the writer of this sordid swill is some pseudo-intellectual snot who decided to reveal in his screenplay his despicable prejudice against and contempt for what he thinks rural white Americans are like. I have been alive for quite a few years, and I have yet to come across any people so irremediably repulsive as the characters in this film are. The movie is a slog through a sewer. Nothing more.

Coco was a pleasant enough movie based on a Mexican holiday of dubious religious origin called The Day of the Dead. It was very self-consciously multicultural and preachy, but it told an interesting story that had a couple of clever twists. I would not put it on the level of Zootopia or The Incredibles, but it was better than the overrated Moana.

Plodding, ponderous, dreary account of a career FBI agent who took it upon himself to feed information to the press about a relatively inconsequential political dirty trick blown up into a national scandal by the Nixon White House's attempts to cover it up. Over the course of the movie, I found myself caring less and less about the hero of the story, his wife, his daughter, or any of the political operatives with whom he interacted. I guess it is difficult to make high drama about an emotionally stunted bureaucrat periodically slipping into phone booths to leak information to willing recipients who proceed to publish it. The production values--intended, I suppose, to create an atmosphere of clandestine underhanded dealings and suspense--just became an annoyance that contributed to the film's general monotony. I am a political junkie fascinated by intrigue and scandal, but this movie was a huge turnoff.

I enjoyed this movie immensely, and I left the theater deeply moved. Now, I certainly can understand why a movie critic would hate “15:17 to Paris.” It makes normal Americans feel extremely proud. The hero of the story is a big, strong military man, as is one of his two buddies. The heroic trio, as boys, loved to play war games with guns. And the worst parts: all three were raised in Christian homes, and the one who jumped and subdued the Muslim terrorist later asked the wounded man to whose artery he was applying direct pressure if he wanted to pray. (He did normal Christian stuff, and he looked really admirable while he did it.) The leg-crossing pencil-necks said the long buildup to the climactic showdown on the train was boring and it was a mistake to let the three heroes play themselves rather than hire professional actors. I was not in the least bit bored by the depictions of events that had shaped the men's characters and of the activities that led up to the fateful day, and I came to like all three men very much. They drink, swear, and go places I wouldn’t go; but they are the embodiment of what sets Americans apart. So remember that critics live in a bubble and break into a rash at the sight of perspiration, and go see this wonderful inspiring film. I suspect that word-of-mouth will turn this film into a blockbuster.

"Thank You for Your Service" is a very disturbing movie to watch, primarily because it accurately depicts the obstacles veterans must overcome in order to get the medical and psychological help they need after they return to the United States injured in body, mind, or both. The acting performances are strong, and the script is compelling. The viewer leaves the theater hoping that promised reforms in the corrupt and inefficient Veterans Administration are finally implemented after decades of broken promises from our government.

"12 Strong" is a perfectly respectable work of its genre. It dramatizes and helps Americans to understand the actual conditions under which 21st Century soldiers must operate in the brutal terrain of Afghanistan and the peculiar juxtaposition of the modern and the ancient that pervades every encounter with both combatants and innocent citizens. It is full of f-bombs. Apparently military people of all ranks and backgrounds routinely punctuate their sentences with mindless obscenities, even when they are nowhere near the heat of battle. I suspect critics, who tend to be mincing metrosexuals who would struggle to pass the physical to get into the military, tend to devalue such movies because seeing "12 Strong" might actually evoke feelings of patriotism or pride among audience members. The movie is well worth seeing, if only for its historical value.

"The Beguiled" suffers from artsy-fartsy filmmaking techniques that may impress critics but simply distract and annoy normal audience members. Apparently, the director likes to use natural light. I spent the entire film struggling to see the actors' faces, which made it pretty challenging for them to convey much in the way of emotion while playing their parts. The movie plodded along until it mercifully ended. There were a few moments of high dramatic tension; but, because there really were no characters in the movie about whom I cared enough to be concerned about what might happen to them, even those moments fell flat. The fascination about this movie and so many others is how out of tune the critics' evaluations are with those of normal movie-goers. I'm getting to the point at which I am reluctant to see a movie the critics have praised.

"Victoria and Abdul" told an interesting historical story in an entertaining way. The actress who played the queen did a splendid job, and the actor who played the young servant from India gave a respectable performance. Costumes and scenery represented the Victorian time period well. I wish this movie had received greater distribution among movie theaters, which seem preoccupied with devoting screen time primarily to films that are mediocre at best.

"Logan Lucky" did not cause me to do so much as crack a smile during its long, lumbering, unfocused, and downright dumb two hours. I kept waiting for it to exhibit some of the positive qualities the critics seemed to find in it. I waited in vain. The characters were unappealing caricatures of white rural Americans, no doubt created by mincing Hollywood metrosexuals who get the vapors at the sight of perspiration, dirt, or pickup trucks. Even the little girl was treated with contempt. The veteran who lost his hand in Iraq was reduced to a rambling moron. Only the bomb maker seemed to have any degree of sophistication, competence, or other redeeming qualities. I'm glad I paid only $1.59 at Redbox to see it. I would have been furious if I had paid full freight for such a bomb.

I watched "Leap" on DVD and enjoyed it despite its anachronisms, its somewhat predictable plot, and its obligatory slapstick humor. It's a movie for kids. I enjoyed the fact that its pace is not quite so visually frenetic as other animated movies I have seen recently. It is a pleasant diversion.

The movie is nothing more than a cheap piece of crap-art, littered with F-bombs, gross-out violence, ridiculous special effects, a remarkably crude sex scene, and an asinine story line whose whole raison d'etre was to provide opportunities for the film makers to demonstrate their artistic vacuousness.

I have seen this movie three times: first in a theater and twice on DVD. I have enjoyed it immensely each time. Clint Eastwood and Amy Adams bring to the screen excellent acting chops, which make a somewhat formulaic plot about a reconciliation between an emotionally distant aging father and his emotionally vulnerable young adult daughter engaging and entertaining. I do not know enough about the intricacies of baseball scouting to be able to assess how realistically the film portrayed the environment in which professional baseball teams search for and evaluate new talent, but I enjoyed the story line a great deal. The professional movie critics seemed to acknowledge the film's many positive qualities while giving it mediocre ratings, which suggests to me that the critics may be grinding their political axes against Obama critic Eastwood rather than providing an objective assessment of the movie.

Critics who complain "Gifted" is formulaic and predictable fail to take into account that typical movie audience members see far fewer films than they do and therefore are not quite so easily bored. The movie is engaging and compelling: it is primarily a drama, but it incorporates occasional humor. The actors, especially the young Mckenna Grace, perform their roles very believably. The sometimes intrusive and inexplicable use of songs in the soundtrack seems contrived, and the story takes a couple of improbable twists and turns. I nevertheless felt invested in the characters and I enjoyed "Gifted" immensely.

"Their Finest" plods along, often hampered greatly by the fact that so much of the dialogue is lost because of either British accents or inarticulate delivery by the actors. I learned more about the plot from reading movie reviews than I did from watching the movie itself. Even without being able to understand many of the lines in the screenplay, I was able to predict rather early on in the movie that the initially cranky scriptwriter would eventually fall in love with the female colleague he initially rejected. Once again, I am mystified by the evaluations of this movie made by professional movie critics. Many seemed to regard this movie as a triumph. I regarded this movie as a mildly interesting period piece that began to seem interminable as it lumbered on toward its conclusion.

"The Zookeeper's Wife" tells a compelling story of compassion, bravery, determination to survive, and triumph of the human spirit manifested during one of the darkest periods in human history. The acting is compelling, and the movie depicts effectively the moral depravity and brutality of the ****. The critics, who were so enamored of the incoherent and mind numbing "La La Land," apparently did not find this movie sufficiently gritty and dramatic. "The Zookeeper's Wife" was more than sufficiently evocative of the horrors of that period to hold my interest from its beginning to its end. One of the finest movies I have seen recently.