The Visit (2015)
Entertaining horror/mystery flick about a brother and sister who go to visit their grandparents in the country. The grandparents, day-by-day, start acting weirder and weirder. Both kids are into filming, with the girl making a film on her "Nana" and "Pop Pop" and the boy filming also, catching some pretty strange things. I really enjoyed this film and thought the woman playing Nana (Deanna Dunagan) especially very effective at portraying
WARNING: spoilers below
madness
madness
. I've seen some of that from someone as a child and she gave me some chills bringing that across, although I never experienced anything that bad. Bad enough, but not like Nana. Things were set up nicely to give us a good ending, especially with the son. Although sometimes it plays like a "found film" movie, it's not, and is much better than most films of that genre.
Private Lives (1931)
Total fun, with a divorced couple (the beautiful Norma Shearer and the handsome Robert Montgomery) arriving at the same hotel with their new husband and wife, and ending up in adjoining suites. Norma and her new husband start bickering as do Robert and his new wife. With adjoining balconies that abut, Norma and Robert see each other, join on one balcony, and reveal that they never stopped loving each other. If this sounds like a romance, it is a bit, but mostly it's an uproarious comedy, with the exes running off together, leaving their new mates in the lurch, with the movie following them on their journey. They travel to Switzerland, prepare to have a wonderful reunion and began quarreling almost immediately. They make up, quarrel, make up, quarrel, etc. etc. If this sounds monotonous, it's not. Every time the arguing gets to be too much, they come up with a funny safe word to stop arguing for at least two minutes. When the two minutes are up, they've usually cooled off and are romantic again. At first. Nothing ever goes as planned. Reginald Denny plays Shearer's new hubby and the great Una Merkel plays Montgomery's new wife. Funny stuff.
The Scorch Trials (2015)
Second in a series of films based on "The Maze Runner" books by James Dashner (I believe there are five in all, with the last two being prequels). The good thing about this is that so far, for YA adaptations, the movies are well-made and the acting good, with lots of action and mystery to overcome any plot holes. If there were any holes, I didn't notice them, probably because I wasn't looking for them. The movie picks right up where the first left off, with the kids who lived in "The Glade" having escaped The Maze that surrounded them, being picked up by a helicopter that flies them to "safety." Well, it's pretty obvious that's not the truth, as Thomas (Dylan O'Brien) has his eyes open the whole time, suspecting and confirming what he fears. The teens are soon forced to escape their haven, only to make it out into a world that is covered with desert and the ruins of a city. Kudos to the movie for answering mysteries set up in the first film, including why the kids where picked in the first place to be in the Maze of the first film, why new arrivals begin to disappear, who's running things, and what the
WARNING: spoilers below
virus talked about in the first film that decimated most of the world does to people. It turns them into crazed zombie-liked people, much like the people with the "Rage" virus in "28 Days Later."
virus talked about in the first film that decimated most of the world does to people. It turns them into crazed zombie-liked people, much like the people with the "Rage" virus in "28 Days Later."
Plus, it's revealed if the rumored safe haven in the mountains beyond the desert is real and who might be there.
As I said before, good acting is part of the appeal here, with the same actors from the first film that escaped coming back, plus new characters played by Giancarlo Esposito, Barry Pepper, Rosa Salazar, Aidan Gillen, Lili Taylor, Nathalie Emmanuel, and Alan Tudyk. Another second installment of a series that actually has me looking forward to the third.