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Reviews
No Hard Feelings (2023)
great light fun Jennifer Lawrence is always worth watching
Fun movie,
entirely predictable but very well done
Jennifer Lawrence is wonderful to watch
story is young man has become a nerd by over-protective parents
Jennifer Lawrence is hired to bring him out of his shell before college, she needs the money to save herself from tax collectors,
so they move forward - and then back - and forward - and back
with some funny scenes - and some very sharp critiques of the behaviour and attitudes of many young people today, from very rich to poor,
that gives movie an extra edge that many people may have glossed over, thinking that some such as parents are objects of gentle satire - but not realising that others such as contemporary kids are being strongly criticised.
Jennifer Lawrence alone can keep a movie like this going, but others contribute.
60 Minuten (2024)
great action movie with some plot twists
Central character is a mixed martial arts fighter preparing for big fight but hears that ex-wife will remove access to daughter from him if he doesn't come to her birtthday party which is at same time as fight. He chooses to leave arena, not fully aware that huge crooked money has been placed on this fight which will be lost if he doesn't show up, so as he tries to get to party he is chased by very angry nasty people, that is the movie,
so he doesn't fight in the ring, but in many streets of berlin,
there is an interesting twist to the story,
fast-pace, well acted, wonderful woman fighter as well,
enjoyable, keeps you constantly involved, no drag at all in action, well made,
Leave the World Behind (2023)
odd somewhat futuristic but not sci-fi movie
Movie about 'strange things' happening that may be a hostile cyberattack? Or what?
One of the things that will bother many viewers is the ending, but until then the build up appears to be that a wealthy family rent a beautiful country home, and from very early on a huge oil tanker lands on the sand of a summer resort, and the family run back to the house, where very soon after they find they have no phone contact, later in the evening a man and his daughter turn up, saying they are the owners of the home, and they had to get out of NYC because of 'strange things' there, more and more 'strange things happen' that trouble everyone.
The cast includes Julia Roberts, Ethan Hawke, Kevin Bacon, and is very well acted, but the music is jarring and mostly dreadful and doesn't match what is going on,
there are some important social issues touched on, the renters are white, the owners are black, and there is mutual mistrust, there is a cameo of a white ex-military fundamentalist 'last stand' person, there are disturbances of nature, and of human physiology, those are the 'sweeteners' to make a film about dread and doom a little more palatable. It is not a fun movie, there is virtually no sex, it is meant to make you think - seriously.
Ha'Kha'ver Ha'Sha'men Shelli (2022)
Cute Israeli movie
This is a modern Israeli movie, some of the women are quite tattooed. It is in Hebrew with English subtitles. The two main characters meet in the army on a field task that they have to co-operate on, he hesitatingly suggests the possibility of a date, she says no. They meet again in Tel Aviv from time to time over the next few years. She is an apparently successful young hi-tech worker, he is an idle overweight layabout. She turns down his offers of a date a couple of times, but she clearly has a fondness for him, but she has avoided emotional closeness, though we don't know why. She is very attractive, has no shortage of short term sexual partners, he has very little. It is a romantic comedy with an underlying serious tone about avoidance, so the ending is predictable, the fun is getting there, and each having to overcome a very big personal stumbling block. It is modern day secular Tel Aviv with its bars and night life, there is nothing particularly Jewish in it, the acting is very good, she is wonderful as the beautiful 'cold fish', he excellent as the angry self-defeating apparently funny but really deeply sad loser who tries to attack her character of avoidance which leads her to confront him with his immaturity, and how they both have to radically change if they want to improve.
Maestro (2023)
very disappointing
What a let-down
the movie about a character with such a huge reputation, and it is turned into a boring movie spoiled by the constant non-stop smoking,
just because they all smoked then was there such a lack of imagination that the director bradley cooper and the many producers couldn't have said "we can make this movie without all the smoking"
so Bernstein couldn't restrain his same-sex desires, even in front of his wife, but he could still lie to his oldest child,
interesting that at the end when Bernstein is teaching a young conductor, the young conductor is so much more graceful, non-flamboyant, in touch with the music, than the scenes of Bernstein conducting when he is grossly overdoing it,
it would have been nice to see at least one example of what Bernstein gained national fame for, not the concerts to which only limited audiences came, but the 'teaching' of classical music to the masses.
Cooper is good as an actor, Mulligan only comes alive in the last third, very few others make much of an impression,
the movie may have moved along chronologically but it didn't move as a movie, great disappointment,
Zero Hour (2022)
Fascinating and Very Troubling Israeli series
I came to this series as a part of my efforts to improve my Ivrit, and watched it without the Ivrit words on the screen, so I might have missed much because of the language, although the general outline is obvious.
The two main characters are, a very overweight but quite aggressive young female high school student, and her teacher, a dedicated man with strong principles.
A third character is a destructive young man who befriends the outspoken girl, and manipulates her successfully - but destructively.
The end leaves us hanging. The acting is excellent, the central issue is very provocative.
Sweet Girl (2021)
good enjoyable action movie
It's winter, you want an enjoyable action movie,
no, it's not Shakespeare, but it has different action scenes, it has an interesting twist at the end,
a man is widowed, his wife dying of cancer, a new experimental drug pulled off the market for deeply dishonest reasons, the man is left with a very lively daughter, he is determined to seek revenge by killing the smug CEO of the drug company,
a journalist calls the man telling him he has inside information on the bribery, they meet in what they think are safe annonymous circumstances, but a hired assassin paid to protect those at the highest levels of the corruption kills the journalist.
Apparently that makes the man and his daughter even more determined and those defending the corrupt even more determined to eliminate them,
and the trail of bodies mounts as the chase continues, which necessitates father and daughter running, pursued by both protectors of the corrupt and the law authorities who include a.sympathetic policewoman.
Much more mayhem of killings and bodies occurs, until we come to the finale and its very interesting twist.
Its a simple straightforward killer-police-political corruption movie, that isn't meant to be anything more than action-packed entertainment, and does a good job of that. Enjoy.
Gli infedeli (2020)
amusing at times, even insightful, but troubling
An Italian perspective on betrayal by both husbands and some wives, at times it is sad, at times truly pathetic as when one of the two main characters is at a convention and wants to bed a woman and his behaviour is abonimable, quite appropriately the woman he has behaved badly towards ridicules him the next morning to her friends,
in another sequence though he is able to bribe workers at a hotel to fool his wife who has seen him being fellated in his car by a pick-up, and make her believe that she is mentaly ill and have her hospitalized, the character is nasty, there is nothing funny about him,
his close pal though, is a dishonest rather pathetic man who achieves his relief though a hole in the wall in a brothel, his smart wife realizes his lies and follows him, with the expected twist.
It could be said that this movie shows men at their dishonest worst,and the final scene is intended as their "defence" with one new man essentially saying "I'm not like you, there are some of us who are still decent guys"
My questions include, how do women see the women in this movie? Are the women portrayed as smart, or gullible, is the first woman justified in her rage at her dishonest husband when we see the other side of her?