Gideon58's Reviews

You Hurt My Feelings
There's a terrific cast led by 11-time Emmy winner Julia Louis-Dreyfus, but the 2023 indie comedy drama You Hurt My Feelings does try to cover a little too much territory as the original focus of the story gets muddier as the film progresses.

Beth Mitchell is a writer who has been married forever to a therapist named Don and they have a 23 year old son named Eliot who works in a pot shop. Beth had middling success with her first book and is working like a dog on her next one, but is slightly discouraged when her publisher suggests she take another run at it. Beth gets a symbolic punch in the stomach though when she overhears her husband telling her brother-in-law that her new book is terrible.

Director and screenwriter Nicole Holofcener (Can You Ever Forgive Me?) has mounted a story that initially looks like it's going to be a look at the delicate egos of artists and how they hate to think anything they do isn't brilliant. We are initially amused when the script gets flipped on Don and it is revealed that he might not be the greatest therapist in the world either. We are also subjected other subplots including Eliot's anger about being coddled by his parents, Beth's mother, who is in complete denial about what appears to be Alzheimers, and her brother-in-law's frustration over his sporadic acting career.

The scenes with Don's patients are actually very funny...I especially loved the couple who feel Don hasn't helped them in three years and are therefore demanding a refund on the $33,000 they have spent on therapy. Beth's battle with her mother over some leftover potato salad and the brother-in-law's disappointment when someone who recognized him from a movie he made years ago, politely explains that he doesn't want a selfie are also fun. Eliot's bitching and moaning about his parents turned him into a loser gets old very quickly though and helps the film seem a bit longer than it is.

As scattered as the stories might be, the film remains watchable thanks to some wonderful performances. Louis-Dreyfus and Tobias Menzies, who won an Emmy for playing Prince Phillip on The Crown are lovely as the Mitchells and Michaela Watkins garners several laughs as Beth's sister as does Arian Moayed as her husband. Fans of the HBO series Succession might recognize Moayed as Stewey on that show. Jeanne Berlin, another Succession cast member, makes the most of her scenes as Beth's senile mother. It's not a home run, but Julia Louis-Dreyfus is always worth watching.

Love & Mercy
Eight years after he burst onto the Hollywood scene in 2006 Best Picture nominee Little Miss Sunshine, Paul Dano turned in another Oscar-worthy performance in a practically unnoticed 2014 biopic called Love & Mercy, which was a slightly melodramatic, but cringe-worthy look at the inner demons that tormented legendary singer and composer Brian Wilson of The Beach Boys.

As the film begins, we meet a present day Brian, played by John Cusack, who is trying to buy a new car and is instantly attracted to the pretty saleswoman, Melinda (Elizabeth Banks) and despite interference from his doctor, Gene Landy (Paul Giamatti), begins a relationship with her. The film then flashes back to an earlier time at the height of the Beach Boys popularity where Brian is now being played by Paul Dano. Our initial introduction to Brian reveals a serious fear of flying, but Brian's issues go far beyond a fear of flying when it is revealed that Brian has suffered serious emotional scars through his damaged relationship with his father and the evil Dr. Landy, who apparently is after Brian's money and is using Brian's mental health issues to do it.

If it weren't for a You Tube video regarding the reasons Paul Dano has never received an Oscar nomination, I never would have known anything about this movie and that would have been a crime because Dano's performance anchors this movie and pushes anything that is wrong with it to the back burner. Wilson himself is credited as one of the screenwriters, so the weight of the facts presented here should be pretty accurate. I loved the way Brian's story is presented to the viewer with a degree of subtlety...the sequence of him freaking out on the plane and then telling the group that he doesn't want to fly anymore is designed to make us think that this is where his problems initially originate, but his fear of flying is just the springboard for a lot of issues for this talented musician that aren't anything groundbreaking really, but thanks to the back and forth between present and past Brian, Bill Pohlad's detailed and imaginative direction and the performances of Cusack and Dano, this movie is riveting right through the to the closing credits.

Especially loved the scenes revolving around Brian's creative process, writing and arranging the music for some of the group's biggest hits. There's a terrific scene where we actually see Dano's Brian sitting at a piano creating a Beach Boys classic right before our eyes. Dano doesn't do all of Brian's singing in the movie, but he does in this scene and it totally works...and he is definitely playing the keyboard. Also loved watching Dano in the scenes where Brian does his first orchestra rehearsals for "California Girls and Good Vibrations. And just when we're getting comfortable with this talented musician, we want to cry when he's in his pool with the group and insists that they must have the meeting at the deep end of the pool, or the scene where Landy screams at him for taking a hamburger out of Melinda's hands, our heart sinks.

I'm still blown away that this is the first I'm hearing of this movie because I found it riveting from start to finish, primarily thanks to the genius of Paul Dano, once again ignored by the Academy and the less showy, but equally effective work from Cusack as present day Brian. Banks does one of her strongest turns as Melinda and Giamatti does the strongest work I've seen from him since Sideways. It gets a little melodramatic in the final act, but Paul Dano's powerhouse performance makes this worth watching. I have to admit I don't understand the title, but a minor quibble.

You should read my review thread I reviewed this when the movie first came out. Here's my review
https://www.movieforums.com/communit...50#post1390150

Just read your review and yeah, Giamatti might have been a little over the top, but it fit the melodramatic tone of the movie. And I will admit it was confusing why Banks' Melinda stuck by Brian with the evil doctor breathing down her neck. I still really enjoyed it and Dano was SO good that everything wrong with the movie fell by the wayside.

I like Paul Dano as an actor, Giamatti too of course.

Louis C K at the Dolby
Louis C K does it again in his 10th standup special, 2023's Louis C K, Live at the Dolby, which provides some of Louis' edgiest and most dangerous humor.

The special is shot from the Dolby Theater in Los Angeles, which has almost exclusively been the setting for the Academy Awards since 2001. First let me get one teeny complaint out of the way. Having never seen any other special do this, I was totally thrown as the show began in the middle of a routine by another comic named Greg Hahn, who was Louis' opening act and didn't make me laugh at all during the ten minutes of screentime Louis provided for me. It was nice of Louis to do this, but it really confused me to the point where I turned off the tape because I thought I had pulled up the wrong concert. Don't do it again, Louis...the guy wasn't that funny.

Now I can get down to business. There was something about the general theme of Louis' humor in this special that I don't recall in previous specials. It doesn't matter what subject he's talking about, every time Louis broaches a topic here, he takes things all the way to the edge of the cliff of complete offensiveness where you want to turn off the tape and then he pulls you back from the cliff just before you get so mad at him that you don't want to listen to anything else he says.

Fortunately, with the possible exception of Eddie Murphy in Delirious, I don't think any other comic has come so close to offending me as Louis does here. Oddly, just as the moment where he starts to piss me off occurs, he somehow manages to save the story in a way that I want to keep listening and keep laughing. He does a long tirade on the homeless that pretty much had me on the floor, but I'm pretty sure someone homeless would be completely offended by some of the things he said. Loved the observation that never occurred to me before that you never see homeless at the airport.

As he did in the last special I watched, Eddie broached the subject of abortion and, again, seems to work hard at offending but never quite does it. He really scores when he actually pulls out a Bible and offers his own personal interpretation of several stories in the Bible, with the story of Jesus killing a fig tree. Also loved his impression of Jesus carrying his cross to his crucifixion, which comes very close to crossing over into the land of bad taste, but instead had this reviewer on the floor. Louis treads some very dangerous comic waters here, but he manages to stay afloat for over 90 minutes.

The Bridges of Madison County
Clint Eastwood's meticulous direction and another luminous and lovely performance from the one and only Meryl Streep anchor 1995's The Bridges of Madison County, a sweeping and emotionally charged blend of romance and character study that slowly draws the viewer in with an irresistible and unabashedly reality that begs for a happy ending that we just know will never happen.

Based on the 1992 runaway best selling novel by Robert James Waller, tells the story of Francesca Johnson, the Italian immigrant wife of an Iowa farmer who thinks she's content in her life on a farm with her husband and two children until the three of them take off four days to attend the Illinois State Fair in the summer of 1965. The morning after her family leaves, Francesca's is awakened emotionally when Robert Kincaid, a photojournalist for National Geographic, pulls into her driveway asking for directions to a bridge he wants to photograph. She offers to show him the bridge personally, which kicks off the most incredible four days of Francesca's life, even if she doesn't initially see it.

Full disclosure, this was my first time watching this film in its entirety after two previous attempts where I turned it off about twenty-five minutes in. I found it too slow and couldn't stay with it. I had heard a lot of discussion about Streep's performance though and decided to give it another chance. Yes, patience is required, but boy does this movie pay off said patience. This is a beautiful blend of romance and character study where we meet two very lonely people who are lonely in completely different ways, though neither are aware of exactly how lonely they are. These are two people trapped in existences that they both need to escape from. These are two people brought together by loneliness that eventual turns to sexual heat and passion before we even realize it. Was also impressed with the hook with which we are brought into the story. Francesca has passed at the beginning of the film, revealing the entire story to be a flashback, presented in the form of a detailed book she wrote for her son and daughter to read, which he son initially can't deal with, but it helps her children understand Francesca's final wishes.

What I really loved about this movie is the way Eastwood chooses to tell so much of the story without the use of dialogue, instead allowing his camera to tell large portions of the story. Streep offers a master class in the art of movie body language here. Watch how in the opening scenes with Eastwood she can't look him directly in the eye or that crucial and carefully crafted moment in the car where he reaches for the glove compartment and his arm brushes against her leg. Watch when he leaves the house after the first night and she runs to the door trying to figure out what to say to get him to stay but can't think of anything. Also loved the layer given to Robert's character when he witnesses the way the town tramp is treated and gives Francesca every opportunity to walk away from him and protect her reputation. The scene where Francesca receives the box from Robert after her husband died definitely had me wondering how that scene would have played if she had received that box while her husband was still alive.

Streep's beautifully realized Francesca is the heartbeat of this movie, keeping us completely riveted to the slightly overlong story, that earned Streep her 10th Oscar nomination, though I would have nominated Eastwood's direction as well, so delicate and focused on what seems to be bringing emotions from the book that are so rarely transferred to the screen when a book makes this journey. A lovely motion picture that I suspect has some genuine re-watch appeal.

Tom Hanks: The Nomad
Any regular followers of my review thread know that I love celebrity documentaries and it breaks my heart to report that 2023's Tom Hanks: The Nomad is one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen centered around one of the industry's most beloved actors.

The film follows the typical documentary route tracing the actor from childhood to his latest work in the Wes Anderson film Asteroid City, but the presentation of the material is often nonsensical and bizarre, with the wooden narration by Josie Ellis being the tip of the iceberg.

Truthfully, Hanks' childhood and his journey to Hollywood bears more than a passing resemblance to dozens of other actors and it was important to bring something different to the presentation to make this documentary viable entertainment. Director Jake Hickman attempts to bring some stylish elements to the direction by offering us a lot of cinematic symbolism regarding Hanks' story rather than presenting the story we came to see in a logical yet entertaining way. For 95% of this documentary, the onscreen images have absolutely nothing to do with the narration. During the section of the film talking about Hanks' first marriage to a Samantha Lewis (news to me BTW) and mother of most of Hanks' children, all we got onscreen was a lot of stock footage of Tom and Rita Wilson that we've seen a million times. If they couldn't find any pictures of Samantha Lewis, that's fine, but why barrage us with images of Hanks and Wilson that we've seen a million times?

The film has no overall narrative going on, as we never get any footage of Tom Hanks in 2023 talking about his life and career, which would have been fascinating and exactly what this reviewer was looking for. Instead, we get interviews with Hanks that occurred during the period of life that is being discussed, over a half a dozen different interviews are utilized. It would have been so much more interesting to talk to Tom Hanks today about career and personal peaks and valleys rather than weeks or months after they happened. The presentation of Hanks here implies that director Hickman approached Hanks about doing this and for some reason, Hanks refused or was unavailable and Hicks decided to go ahead and do it anyway, haphazardly copying and pasting pieces of Hanks career together in rather lazy fashion.

There are no interviews with actors and directors who have worked with Hanks, nor with anyone in his family, including Rita Wilson. It's an antiseptic look at a Hollywood icon that puts him on a pedestal as a Hollywood God who has done no wrong. The narration even politely glosses over Hanks bombs like The Bonfire of the Vanities and The Terminal like they didn't exist. Tom Hanks is a Hollywood icon who deserves better than this and I pray that someday a documentary is done that is worthy of him. I don't know if the Razzies have a category for documentaries, but if they do, this is a dead lock for the award. The best thing about this movie is that it runs less than an hour.

Kansas City Bomber
The late Raquel Welch served as star and executive producer of 1972's Kansas City Bomber, a silly, estrogen-charged sports drama that, for this reviewer, produced not much more than stifled yawns and the occasional unintentional giggle.

Raquel plays Diane "KC" Carr, a roller derby queen for a Kansas City team who gets disgraced and must leave town and gets signed almost immediately by a team in Portland, Oregon, where she must deal with lecherous team owner who just wants to get in her pants, a mentally challenged male teammate crushing on her, and a female teammate who wants to run her out of Portland the way she was run out of Kansas.

Right off, you should you know this review who never knew anything about or understood this sport, which here comes off something akin to the WWE on roller skates. The sport has pretty much gone the way of telephone booths and encyclopedias, but I've never understood the point of the game and also noticed it's the only professional sport that features male and female teammates and that teammates seem to beat up on each other as well as opposing teams, which I've never understood, though not sure that a more solid knowledge of this sport would have helped in my enjoyment of this film.

Can't believe it took three writers to come up with the convoluted, cliche-ridden screenplay that tries to turn this KC Carr into a three dimensional human being by making her the guilt-ridden mother of two small children who live with their grandmother and never see KC. KC has two scenes with her children and these scenes are so underdeveloped and such an afterthought that the children and the grandmother are wearing the exact same clothing in both scenes.

The direction is pedestrian and a lot of the camera work is headache-inducing. Welch's one-note performance is hard to gauge with her greasy hair in her face for the majority of the film and she has no chemistry with Kevin McCarthy, who plays the greasy team manager. Norman Alden has some not sure if they're supposed to be funny moments as the mentally challenged teammate and Helena Kallianiotes actually received a Golden Globe nomination for her performance as the explosive Jackie Burdette. Jeanne Cooper can also be glimpsed in a supporting role, a couple of years before she became Katherine Chancellor on The Young and the Restless. Hardcore Welch fans might find this interesting, but this reviewer found this dated and dumb. And yes, that is future Oscar-winner Jodie Foster playing KC's daughter.

Paint
An artist named Carl Nargle from Vermont hosted his own television show on PBS for 22 years and reruns are still airing to this day. Nargle is the subject of a 2023 film called Paint, a dull and confusing look at this bizarre artist that purports to be a biopic, but comes off more like a fictional story centered around a non-fiction character.

In this film, we watch Nargle, as one of PBS' most respected stars, develop a small but devoted following that keeps him on the air until he starts getting serious competition from a female artist named Ambrosia, while luring just about every female crew member on his show into sexual relationships.

Full disclosure, I knew little or nothing about Carl Nargle or his show before viewing this movie. I have run into his TV show channel surfing but have never watched more than 15-20 seconds of it, because I found the guy to be the most boring human being I've ever seen to have his own television show, so my thoughts about this guy were clearly clouded going into this film. I just found it hard to swallow that this guy was some sort of sexual Svengali who drew all these women under his spell. What did all these women see in this pipe smoking, bushy-haired artist who drove a brightly colored van equipped with a sofa bed and a police radio? I don't know how this guy actually stayed on the air for 22 years and his reruns are still being broadcast. This film never made me care about who this guy was.

Director and screenwriter Brit McAdams has provided us with a really confusing screenplay that never really makes it clear at what time this film is taking place. Costumes and music imply the 1970's, but in one scene, we hear a woman tell Carl that her favorite TV show is Dancing with the Stars, which didn't premiere until 2005. We do get definite flashbacks to the first time Carl had sex with several women in the show, but we're told they're 20 years ago, but the settings and costumes don't look 1950's.

I also found it really annoying the way star Owen Wilson whispered almost all of his dialogue. I had this same problem with Wilson in last year's Marry Me, but it seems deliberate here. I guess it's supposed to illustrate Nargle's indifference to other people or his inability to express anger, but this reviewer loses interest pretty quickly when he has strain to hear what is being said.

There were two scenes that made me sit up...the scene where Carl's greasy boss, played by Stephen Root, fires him and the scene in the final reel where he defaces his paintings, but they were hardly enough to recommend this hot mess of a movie. For hardcore fans of Nargle or Wilson only.

The Best Years of Our Lives
Hollywood spent a good deal of the 1940's supporting the war effort and how it affected those directly involved. One of the best of these films was the 1946 instant classic The Best Year of Our Lives, a sweeping melodramatic epic that captivated moviegoers and won seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture of the Years.

This is the story of three men returning home after serving in different branches of the military and trying to adjust to life now that they're home, something that turns out to be more complex than they imagined. Al Stephenson is an army officer trying to reconnect with his loving wife, Milly and his kids, Peggy and Rob; Fred Derry was in the Air Force and is returning to his unhappy marriage to ex-chorus girl, Marie but finds himself drawn to Al's daughter Peggy; Homer Parrish is a sweet-natured sailor who lost his hands overseas and is afraid that longtime sweetheart Wilma is not going to be able to handle the man he is now and instantly begins pushing her away.

Robert E Sherwood's Oscar winning screenplay, based on a novel by MacKinley Kantor, is a seamless blend of the friendship between these three soldiers and three other stories that develop through the friendship that these guys promise to keep going now that they're home and, in a refreshing change of pace, actually do it. As a matter of fact, less than 24 hours after they have reunited with their loved ones, the three do actually run into each other at a bar, where we learn about Homer's fears about Wilma, and, in addition to his troubled marriage, former soda jerk Fred must return to the job he had before the war, reporting to the guy who used to be his assistant before the war.

The story efficiently touches upon a lot of issues regarding the military coming home, especially the difficulty in securing employment and the mixed feelings of the citizens they swore to protect and how not everyone is on board with what they did. At one point, Fred makes a supreme sacrifice to support Homer and what they did during the war. Equally impressive was the star-crossed romance between Fred and Peggy where when it is revealed that Fred is married and Peggy is aware of it, she proudly announces that she plans to break the marriage up.

William Wyler won an Oscar for his sparkling direction of this emotionally charged story that had this reviewer fighting tears for the majority of the running time. Once again, Fredric March proves that few actors commanded the screen the way he did in a blazing performance that won him his second Best Actor Oscar. Watch his two drunk scenes because there were few actors back in the day who played drunk scenes better than March did. And watch a beautifully realized throwaway scene when March's character wakes up with a hangover...the scene utilizes no dialogue but March employs so much detail into it, that you can't help but chuckle.

Even though she received top billing, Myrna Loy made the most of her supporting role as Al's wife and Dana Andrews has rarely been better as Fred, making major sparks with Theresa Wright, giving a performance that rivals her work in The Little Foxes and Shadow of a Doubt. LOVED Virginia Mayo's vivacious turn as Marie too. And can we talk about Harold Russell? A real life disabled veteran who is heartbreaking throughout, especially in that scene where Homer takes Wilma to his room to show her what he goes through to go to bed every night. Russell won a richly deserved Oscar for Best Supporting Actor and an Honorary Oscar for inspiring real life veterans and I can't let this go without mentioning a small but memorable performance by the fabulous Gladys George as Fred's mother. Film editing and music also took home the gold. After the crap I've watched the last few days, a true classic that restored my passion for the art of filmmaking.

Yeah, it's pretty incredible.

Just to clarify, Nargle is not a real guy, that's just the character. The character is based on Bob Ross, but as far as I'm aware all the scandalous stuff in this movie is made up/done for laughs. More Walk Hard than actual biopic.

Personally I loved Bob Ross and he gained a cult following on the Internet thanks to a marathon stream on Twitch a few years back that introduced him to a new generation. Not the kind of thing you can watch for a few minutes and appreciate, but something that grows on you. A welcome balm compared to the hectic mish-mash we see on basically every modern show. But to each their own on that front.

About My Father
Movies like Meet the Parents, Wedding Crashers, and Nothing in Common flashed through my head while watching About My Father, an unimaginative 2023 comedy that takes a minute to get going, but eventually provides consistent entertainment, thanks to a lovely father/son relationship at its heart.

Actor, producer, and standup Sebastian Maniscalco plays a fictionalized version of himself, a Chicago working class schlub who falls in love with a struggling artist and wealthy trust fund baby named Ellie (Leslie Bibb). Sebastian wants to propose to Ellie but wants to do it with his deceased mother's ring, which is in the tight grip of Sebastian's immigrant hairdresser father, Salvo (Robert De Niro). Salvo only agrees to give Sebastian the ring if he can meet Ellie's parents first. This leads to Sebastian and Salvo being asked to spend the 4th of July weekend with Ellie and her parents (Kim Cattrall, David Rasche) and her brothers.

In addition to being the star of the film, Maniscolco was also co-screenwriter for this film, a story that spends close to ten minutes on backstory, explaining in detail Sebastian's relationship with his father and his courtship of Ellie which was totally unnecessary. Another inordinate amount of time is spent watching Sebastian trying to convince his dad to spend the weekend with Ellie's family. Once this is finally over and Sebastian and Salvo arrive at the family mansion, the laughs do begin to kick in, thanks to some clever character interaction and some outrageous physical comedy.

Standout scenes included the introduction of Ellie's older brother, Lucky, and the doubles tennis game where match point is shot exclusively in slow motion. It was also sweet that no matter how mad they got each other, Sebastian and Salvo seemed to forget everything that was wrong between them when they would do their "night spritz." Loved the scene where Salvo gave Ellie's mom a new haircut, which she instantly hates. Major laughs were also provided from Ellie's younger brother, Doug, who seemed to be a not-so-subtle variation on the Todd character in Wedding Crashers.

Director Laura Terruso (Hello My Name is Doris could have provided the film with a little more forward motion which made the movie move like a tortoise despite its running time being under 90 minutes. Two time Oscar winner Robert De Niro makes the most of every moment he has onscreen as the effervescent Salvo and he works quite well with Maniscolco, creating a believable father/son onscreen relationship. David Rasche and Kim Cattral are very funny as Ellie's parents, as are Anders Holm and Brett Dier as her brothers, but the story takes way too long to get where it's going, making it hard to stay invested at times.

Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken
Documentary filmmaker Morgan Spurlock, who turned the art of documentary making on its ear with his 2004 Oscar-nominated film Super Size Me, takes a slightly different tack with his 2017 sequel Super Size Me 2: Holy Chicken, that offers another laid bare look at another facet of the fast food industry that doesn't provide the terror the first film did, but shows more of Spurlock's style as a filmmaker and as the ultimate Flim Flam Man.

For those who didn't see the first film, Spurlock wanted to blow the lid off the fast food industry by showing how unhealthy it is by eating nothing but McDonald's for a month, doing frightening and serious damage to his health. In this film, Spurlock stays safe personally while blowing the lid off the fast food chicken industry where, instead of eating it for a month, he decides to see what exactly goes into the business by actually opening up his own fast food restaurant, which was eventually named Holy Chicken.

Spurlock provides an eye-opening look into this industry, starting from the ground up by purchasing a chicken farm in order to breed his won chickens for his business. As in the first film, Spurlock finds roadblocks to getting what he wants through the National Chicken Council, who are similar to Big Pharma and Big Tobacco, afraid of what Spurlock might learn. His scenes with other chicken farmers who help him obtain his first farm are engaging as we watch the whole process, from the baby chicks hatching to them being fattened up for slaughter. Some of them get so big they don't even get to the slaughterhouse. Some chickens are unable to support the weight they achieve that they actually die of heart attacks.

In addition to some staggering statistics about the industry, the other thing I loved about this movie is that Spurlock put a lot more attention into the look of the film and the style in which the information is presented. The use of the animated chicken to show what the chickens go through was extremely effective and this animated chicken actually becomes the official logo for the restaurant, a la Ronald McDonald. Spurlock also puts a lot of attention into the music behind a lot of the scenes. The film also features Oscar worthy editing from Pierre Takal.

Was also impressed with the way the film busted a lot of myths and broke down a lot of phrases used when marketing fast food chicken that really don't possess the meanings we thought they had. An efficient breakdown of phrases like "free range" and "humanely raised" is provided and brought home with on the street interviews with average Joes who pretend to know what these phrases mean but they really don't.

The final third of the film brings Spurlock full circle as the ultimate Harold Hill, selling people something they really don't want, just marketing it properly so they don't know. LOVED the reveal that those grill marks we see on grilled chicken sandwiches are just painted on like makeup. The opening of the restaurant (converted from an old Wendy's) was a lot of fun as we watch Spurlock's attempt to provide some truth in advertising cover up the fact that people think they're getting something different but they really aren't. Research revealed that there are now 34 Holy Chicken stores all over the country. Spurlock knocks it out of the park here. I actually think this film is slightly better than the first one.

A Good Person
The performances by Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman in the leading roles are strong, but the 2023 drama A Good Person eventually suffers from a meandering screenplay that makes an already long movie seem even longer.

Pugh plays Allison, a young woman engaged to be married and on top of the world until she is behind the wheel in a tragic car accident that kills her future sister-in-law and her husband. A year later, Allison has lost her fiancee and has become addicted to pills but sees a possible way out with the father of her former fiancee, a recovering alcoholic.

Zach Braff (Scrubs) wrote and directed this somber story that starts out very effectively because we're not sure what it's going to be about until the first 20 minutes of the movie are spent showing us how happy Allison is with her fiancee, so we suspect that they are going to be torn apart somehow, but Braff's method of doing it isn't what we expect. As a matter of fact, we're about halfway through the film before we learn exactly what happened between Allison and her fiancee, Nathan. This part of the film is quite riveting and has the viewer completely invested in Allison's pain.

Unfortunately, the film does start to become muddled when Allison starts attending AA meetings but is apparently just going through the motions. The relationship between Allison and Freeman's character comes off as forced and gets even more complicated when Allison comes face to face with Ryan, the daughter of the woman who was killed in the accident. Their first meeting is quite powerful, but a few minutes later, the two are BFF's bonding at a club and trying to help Freeman accept her new boyfriend. The scene of Allison and Daniel (Freeman) bonding over model trains goes on way too long and did we really need a scene of Allison accidentally running into Nathan and his new girlfriend. There's so much going on in the second half of the film, we end up wishing the story had stayed focused on Allison's grieving and recovery process. This movie ran slightly over two hours and I swear I thought it would never end.

Despite the muddled second half of the film, Florence Pugh and Morgan Freeman are completely enchanting in their roles and make the viewer want to stick around and see what happens. Molly Shannon is quite good as Allison's mother as are Chinaza Uchu as Nathan, Zoe Lister-Jones as Allison's AA sponsor and Alex Wolff as Mark, a guy who went to high school with Allison who is reunited with her in a bar in a powerful scene early on. Braff has a good basic idea here, but he lets it get away from him.

The Family Way (1966)
Disney princess Hayley Mills was growing up even though most of her fan base was in denial about it. As she was now entering her 20's, Mills decided that her career should reflect that and began seeking out more mature roles and found a real eye opener in a 1966 comedy drama called The Family Way.

Set in contemporary working class London, Mills plays Jenny Packer, a young working girl who has just gotten married to Arthur Fitton and moved into his parents' home with them. Wedding night jitters and perhaps the fact that Arthur's parents were sleeping down the hall might have something to do with the Fittons being unable to consummate their marriage. Unfortunately, something else seems to be going on as we learn that ten weeks of marriage have gone by without anything happening in the bedroom at night.

Bill Naughton, who wrote the screenplay for both versions of Alfie, teamed with co-director Roy Boulting to adapt this screenplay from a play by Jeffrey Dell that takes a surprisingly intimate look at marriage that probably shocked 1960's movie audiences and to have Disney sweetheart Hayley Mills right in the middle of it all didn't help because her fans definitely didn't want to see Mills this way and the film bombed at the box office. That's a shame because this is a story that blends equal parts of pain, passion, and romance, lifting the veil on a subject that hadn't been broached in too many movies before this. Loved that the screenplay kept us in the loop of what was happening, using the word "sex" only once during the entire running time, and you know watching Hayley Mills utter the word had to send shock waves through movie audiences. The story also sends a solid message about gossip and how it can destroy lives, as news of what is happening with Jenny and Arthur gets around town pretty quickly.

The story features a couple of interesting subplots that seem like filler, but do serve the story at hand. Not long into the story we learn that Arthur's brother, Jeffreyt, is nuts about Jenny and would gladly take her off his brother's hands if the opportunity should rise. And in a delicious plot twist I definitely didn't see coming, while the kids' parents are meeting to discuss what's going on, it's revealed that Arthur's father took his best friend, Bill, with him on his honeymoon. I had an immediate flashback to Maggie, Brick and Skipper in Cat on a Hot Tin Roof.

Co-directors John and Roy Boulting provide a definite intimacy and sensitivity to the proceedings and work wonders with a cast completely invested in what they're doing. Mills is quite lovely in her first real adult role and creates a viable chemistry with Hywell Bennett as the sensitive hothead Arthur. Murray Head, who came between Peter Finch and Glenda Jackson in Sunday Bloody Sunday, made an impressive film debut as Jeffrey, but it's John Mills', father of the star, who would win an Oscar five years later for Ryan's Daughter, who steals the show as Arthur's father. Loved that he played Arthur's father and not his real life daughter's father. A lovely cinematic curio that fans of films like The Trouble with Angels and Pollyanna should definitely check out. Not long after this film wrapped production, Mills stunned the world when she married co-director Roy Boulting, thirty years her senior.

Wanda Sykes: I'm an Entertainer
Wanda Sykes returns to the stand up mic with her 2023 Netflix comedy special, Wanda Sykes: I'm an Entertainer.

Shot in a front of standing room only crowd in Philadelphia, Wanda strolls onstage in a black shirt, jeans, and a gorgeous multi-colored jacket and offers various tirades that aren't all stemmed from her very strong political conscience.

Like all comics returning to the mic in 2023, Wanda offers her views regarding the Pandemic and what it was like for her when she caught it and just when she was getting over it, her wife, Alex caught it. And speaking of Alex, I have to admit that some of the funniest things about Sykes' comedy are stories centered around Alex and it's not necessarily the story itself, but it's the way Sykes imitates her wife. According to Sykes' impression of her spouse, she is kind of a space cadet and is always smoking. It's amazing Sykes and Alex are still together because, if the truth be told, the impression is a little insulting and if I were Alex, I would be insulted by it. I loved when she concluded one story about Alex with "She was so shocked that she lost her accent and dropped her cigarette." Sykes talks about her kids too and was especially funny telling us why she wouldn't give Lucas a snake and why she's glad her kids are white.

As expected, Sykes' politics take center stage and she offers heated opinions about George Floyd and the events of January 6th, serious opinions from which she was able to garner major laughs. She even talks about the drag queens that were forbidden reading in the library, an event that happened to occur in my hometown and, for some reason, suddenly made me feel very close to Wanda. She also garners major laughs when her complaints about menopause trigger a hysterically funny routine about a certain product made for men that she doesn't feel is nearly as important as finding something that will help women deal with menopause.

An entertaining, if still slightly safe evening of comedy that was a huge improvement over her 2019 special Not Normal. And I have to admit that when I saw the title of this special, I thought it was a little pretentious, but then in the context of which it's used here, I had to take it back.

Moving (1988)
Fans of the Tom Hanks comedy The Money Pit will have a head start with 1988's Moving, a silly and ridiculously over the top comedy that provides sporadic laughs thanks to the late Richard Pryor and a supporting cast of familiar faces.

Pryor plays Arlo Pear, an engineer who lives in New Jersey with his wife, teenage daughter, and his twin sons. Arlo is unceremoniously fired from his job after 15 years and is then offered a dream job that would require him to move to Boise, Idaho and all the problems the move involves.

Screenwriter Andy Breckman (Rat Race) has provided a story that starts off in a pretty realistic vein, but as the story progresses gets sillier and harder to believe, thanks to some hard to believe coincidences and a whole bunch of "Aw, come on" moments that make it hard to stay completely invested and just when we're tempted to check out, there is a major laugh that keeps us hanging there, hoping that the story will make a 180 back to the somewhat realistic story we began with.

The subplot of Arlo's daughter going to some unbelievable lengths to stay in New Jersey are sometimes hard to swallow as well as how her parents try to put her in her place. The scenes of his twin sons who seem to have learned long ago the advantages of being twins were amusing, even if they had nothing to do with the plot at hand. On the other hand, the crooked moving company that bullied Arlo into hiring them and the joke of what happened to the house that they bought in Boise were a little hard to believe.

Director Alan Metter (Back To School) does manage to keep things moving so that we don't have too much time to mull over several plot contrivances that really aggravate if you actually think about them. The supporting cast is full of familiar faces including Randy Quaid, Dave Thomas, Dana Carvey, Gordon Jump, Allen Oppenheimer and Bibi Osterwald. Ji-Tu Cumbuka and Robert La Sardo are very funny as the crooked movers, as is Metter's Back to School star, Rodney Dangerfield, in a hilarious cameo as a bank loan officer. Oh, and that is Stacey Dash playing Pryor's daughter, who found her 15 minutes playing Dionne in the movie Clueless. Pryor's definitely done stronger work, but there are enough laughs to keep the viewer awake and caring about what's going on.

Shotgun Wedding
Jennifer Lopez adds another credit to her less than remarkable film career with an over the top romantic adventure called Shotgun Wedding, a big budget mishmash that provides sporadic laughs, but is just another enigma in the film career of Jennifer Lopez.

Lopez plays Darcy Rivera a woman planning to marry her fiancee, Tom (Josh Duhamel) in the Phillippines. Not long after their family and friends have gathered for the occasion, the entire wedding party is captured and held ransom by a group of pirates, but somehow they manage to let the bride and groom slip through their hands, so it is up to them to save their loved ones.

Mark Hammer's inexperience as a screenwriter really shows here, with a lot of silly and predictable material that we've seen in a million other action comedies that just falls flat here. One aspect of the screenplay that was refreshing was that it was the groom, not the bride, who was obsessed with making sure this wedding was absolutely perfect and the scene where the bride is offering her body to him to try and get him stop decorating pineapples was kind of funny. Everything that happened between Darcy's divorced parents was also unbelievably "been there done that."

Director Jason Moore, who directed the Pitch Perfect franchise, was afforded a big budget here and does take advantage of it, but what fun there is here is provided by an all-star cast that seems to be having a lot more fun than the viewer. Lopez' performance is no different than a half dozen other characters she's played and Duhamel just looks confused through most of it. Jennifer Coolidge is very funny as Duhamel's mother and Cheech Marin and Sonia Braga make the most of their predictably written roles as Darcy's divorced parents. Singer Lenny Kravitz is also effective as Darcy's ex, but like most Jennifer Lopez movies, watchable, but nothing memorable.