By Holly
Couldn't make it through 15 minutes.
Round-Up
By Wendy
Girls Trip. Lots of stupidity, but also a lot of humor, warmth, and good acting. I'm also inclined to like any film with four women leads! At one point, all four women get down on their knees to pray together. I can't think of any "White movie" in which people do that, but it seems usual in "Black movies." Definitely a cultural difference!
Poker Face. Just watched the first episode. Found it intriguing enough to keep watching. Enjoyed Natasha Lyonne a lot, I'm happy to say. In Russian Doll season 2, she was really starting to be a caricature of herself.
Echoes. Exceptionally dumb even for a good twin-evil twin movie, which is saying something.
Behind Her Eyes. (TV show) I don't know how I would rate this strange story of a woman who somehow ends up deeply involved in a couple's life, with each spouse not knowing the other is spending time with her. It takes a lot of left turns, and it's overall weird, but, damn, it has stayed with me and made me think.
As I Am. Cicely Tyson's autobiography. She's impressive, and egotistical, and humble, and not someone to mess with!
Art of the Con. By Anthony A. Amore. I like con artists in fiction, but the real ones are pretty much selfish scum. This book focuses on art-related cons; there are so many, that it becomes less and less possible to be 100% sure a piece of art is authentic.
The Verifiers. By Jane Pek. Entertaining story of a young woman who works for a company that investigates people on online matching services.
A Spool of Blue Thread. By Anne Tyler. Not her best, but she's nearly always worth reading.
Flower Drum Song
By Wendy
What a dumb movie. What a weird, racist, sexist movie. What a lot of pointless, endless choreography. What a ludicrous plot.
What fun!
Not all of it--much is just too dumb, weird, racist, sexist, etc. But there are many talented performers, and Rodgers provides his usual and wonderful gorgeous melodies. Some of the sexism is actually kind of funny. And it's an interesting snapshot of what was considered acceptable, even advanced, by a certain bunch of people at a certain point of time.
Girls Trip, Intolerable Cruelty, The Love Punch
By Holly
Girls Trip
Delightful actresses--Regina Hall, Queen Latifah, Jada Pinkett Smith, Tiffany Haddish--in a story of friendship. I love seeing women supporting women stories. This one got a little too TOO for me, and too long at 2 hours, but I enjoyed enough of it. Regina Hall gave a subtle performance that raised the quality for me.
I'd give it a B-
Intolerable Cruelty
A not-their-best Coen Bros. film, kinda sorta almost a little bit worth seeing just because George Clooney and Catherine Zeta-Jones are so good looking and charming.
C+
Love Punch
Emma Thompson, IMHO, can do very little to no wrong. Pierce Brosnan is (like Clooney and Zeta-Jones above) good looking and charming. This romantic comedy had potential: a businessman and his employees are cheated out of their retirement funds by the new owner of the company. He, along with his ex-wife, decide to work together to get the money back, in the form of a $10,000,000 diamond the new owner bought for his fiance.
Included in the "comedy" in this romcom, Thompson/Brosnan, with the help of their friends Timothy Spall and Celia Imrie, drug and restrain 2 couples who are going to a wedding where the bride will be wearing the diamond. The restraining, complete with duct tape over mouths and hands and feet tied, is just not funny.
Negatives: inconsistencies! Brosnan is afraid of heights when it suits the story, and not afraid of heights at other times.
Brosnan/Thompson have NO MONEY yet manage to pay for hotel rooms, scuba gear, rental cars, etc.
Things that couldn't ever happen, happen.
The wacky physical comedy isn't funny: Watch 4 people in their 50s climb a cliff! Watch Thompson play beach volleyball with women half her age and in perfect shape! Watch Imrie accidentally shoot a gun in a busy restaurant. Watch Thompson/Brosnan climb out a window and walk along a skinny ledge on the side of a building to get to the room with the diamond. Not LOL.
Here comes the "howevers." Nice chemistry between Emma and Pierce. Enjoyable sidekicks in the form of Spall/Imrie who really get into the spirit of the heist, learning things about each other after 35 years of marriage. The France locations are stunning. It's great seeing "older" people get to do things. I just wish they had been give better things to do.
Final grade: C
Big Brown Eyes
By Holly
This is the kind of movie that makes me understand why some people don't like movies from the 1930s.
Although it's always fun to watch Cary Grant and Walter Pidgeon, I didn't like Joan Bennett who I felt was trying to be Carole Lombard. An annoying story (jewel thievery), where the men are annoying (hitting and hitting and hitting on obviously disinterested women), and the heroine is annoying (breaking up with a boyfriend, about whom she leaps to a conclusion that he's in the wrong, and refusing his many heartfelt apologies, when he shouldn't have had to apologize because he did nothing wrong). With me being this annoyed, it's not surprising that I didn't make it through the film.
The Menu
By Holly
I totally enjoyed this movie. An excellent cast and a story that was both Agatha Christie-type familiar yet totally original. It's amazing how people's minds work, and I salute the writer and director. The cast by the way includes Ralph Fiennes, Anya Taylor-Joy, Nicholas Hoult, Hong Chau (who was so good in Watchmen), Janet McTeer, Judith Light, John Leguizamo, and others.
I already look forward to seeing this again!
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