This is a highly-praised documentary concerning the efforts of Philippe Petit and his high-wire crossing between the twin towers of the World Trade Center in 1974. Lots of interviews, remembrances and so on but it all just adds up to an exercise in boredom. Painfully dull and ultimately uninteresting. A big letdown considering how many good things I'd heard about it prior to watching. 3/10.
Bruno is the 8-year old son of a Nazi concentration camp commandant. Being an innocent, he thinks the camp (which he can see from his window) is a farm. While exploring, he goes up to the camp and meets Shmuel, an 8-year old prisoner in the camp. They strike up a friendship, each not knowing about the situation to be able to fully comprehend what is going on. This is a heartbreaking movie told with a very deft touch. The two young actors (Asa Butterfield and Jack Scanlon) are absolutely brilliant. I'm told this was a book but I have not read it. Anyway, the movie is fantastic and well worth watching. 9/10.
Matthew Broderick plays a guy recovering from a serious concussion still having memory and other issues. Alan Alda is his elderly uncle and has dementia. Both have "diminished capacity", get it? Anyway, Broderick goes to visit the uncle and learns he has a valuable baseball card and they head to Chicago to sell it. Virginia Madsen is a childhood friend who also needs to go to Chicago so she's along for the ride with her kid. This movie never really reaches the level of even "average" but the first 75 minutes aren't terrible. It's gentle, a little funny and there's a certain sad sweetness to it. Then the last 15 minutes goes all to hell as Alan Alda gets ripped off and we end up having a ridiculous brawl and a whole bunch of f-bombs out of nowhere. Completely out-of-place and waaaay innappropriate for this movie. Turns a not good movie into a bad one. 3/10.
This is an absolutely gut-wrenching documentary. It is basically a video "letter" from the filmmaker/narrator to the newborn son of his recently-murdered friend. The kid was born 5 months after his father's murder so he never got to meet him. Complicating things? The killer was the kid's mom. The director learns that there was a major part of his slain friend's life (photography) that he was unaware-of so he decides to drive from California to Newfoundland (where the guy's parents live), interviewing people along the way to learn as much as possible about this friend he'd known for 20+ years. What emerges is that this guy was a great guy. No, a GREAT guy. As in he had something like 7 friends that wanted him to be best man at their weddings. Intermixed with that journey are updates on the case against the mom. The murder took place in the US but she'd fled to Newfoundland with their son. We get updates on the maddeningly-slow extradition process. The guy's parents moved to Newfoundland to be near their grandson and to push for custody. They are saints of the highest order, acting normal around this psycho who killed their son, jumping through all of her hoops, whatever it takes to meet with their grandson. As a movie, all of this works really well. The story is engaging, heartbreaking, and well-told. This is a movie that packs an INCREDIBLE emotional punch and will leave you torn apart, exhausted, and angry. Really, really, really angry. I can't really go into too much more detail here - to do so would be to give away a big chunk of the movie and that wouldn't be fair. Anyway, this is a great movie and highly, highly recommended. Just be ready for it. 9/10.
Nicole Beharie is a single mom busted as a drug dealer by a corrupt DA looking to pad his numbers and general federal funds. Based on a true story of a douchebag DA - who's still in office! - in Texas. Can't say this is anything other than standard fare but it's compelling and well done. And Beharie is smoking hot. 7/10.
