Movies
Saturday, April 4, 2026
Avengers Infinity War (2018)
Avengers Endgame (2019)
1917 (2019)
Contagion (2011)
I rewatched "Contagion" after seeing it in the theater when it came out in 2011.
I have never seen a more prophetic movie in my entire life. At least 80% of the film seems applicable to the current COVID-19 pandemic. The biggest difference is the deadliness of the disease, which instead of being about 1% for known cases is around 25%. But detail after detail comes up that I only recently learned about during the COVID crisis.
The movie has an 85% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, although not all the critics were equally enthusiastic. The audience score is only 63%, so I suspect that the subject matter might have turned off some people. Rotten Tomatoes describes it as, "Tense, tightly plotted, and bolstered by a stellar cast. Contagion is an exceptionally smart -- and scary -- disaster movie." I agree. It tells a fantastic story. My favorite movie critic, Richard Roeper, gives it 5 out of 5 stating, "Contagion" is a brilliantly executed disease outbreak movie."
Rating: A+.
Friday, April 3, 2026
The Fault in Our Stars (2014)
The emotion in this movie hit me like a freight train. This is a film that knows how to grab your heart and never let go. It is the kind of film that is willing to be honest and intelligent about cancer, but wraps all that in a sweet romance. In the beginning, the movie claims that it is not going to be artificial or upbeat, but the film tries to be as upbeat that its sad little story will allow it to be.
It is one of the best movies of the year.
Rating: A
Cloud Atlas (2012)
Cloud Atlas follows 6 very different stories, each taking place in a different time period, but with the same actors playing different roles, races and even genders in each time period. Most of the stories are in the past, but a couple are in the distant future. Watching this film is like watching 3 different episodes of LOST all at the same time. The movie switches between stories somewhat seamlessly with the idea that they are all connected, as are the characters who seem to have reincarnated from one time period to the next.
The movie's philosophical bent seems to be one of reincarnation and karma.
The themes of this movie include karma, love, oppression/slavery, violence/murder, rebellion and hope. The central idea is that we are all connected and events that happened long before we were born affect our lives and our lives will affect others long after we are gone.
The stories of Cloud Atlas are as follows:
Year 1849: Adam Ewing (Jim Sturgess) is a lawyer crossing the Pacific in a ship who is involved a a business deal involving slavery. He befriends an escaped slave (Keith David) while a greedy doctor (Tom Hanks) tries to poison him. He is saved by the escaped slave and is able to return to his wife (Bae Doona) and confront his father in law (Hugo Weaving) over the issue of slavery.
Year 1936: Robert Frobisher (Ben Whishaw) is a bisexual musician who goes to work for a famous but aging composer Vyvyan Ayrs (Jim Broadbent) and then develops an affair with the man's younger wife (Halle Berry). Vyvyan tries to blackmail Robert, so Robert shoots him and then is on the run from the law. He hides in a hotel where he is then blackmailed by the owner (Tom Hanks). After barely finishing his musical masterpiece, Cloud Atlas, Robert kills himself.
Year 1973: Luisa Rey (Halle Berry) is a journalist investigating an unsafe nuclear power plant run by a corrupt oil company. (No agenda there.) She is befriended by an engineer (Tom Hanks) and a security guard (Keith David). She is then pursued by a hit man named Bill Smoke (Hugo Weaving) hired by an oil executive (Hugh Grant). Along the way she hears the music Cloud Atlas for the first time but somehow recognizes it.
Year 2012: Timothy Cavendish (Jim Broadbent) is a publisher who has a windfall when his gangster author (Tom Hanks) commits murder at a party. Other gangsters come after him so he flees to his antagonistic brother (Hugh Grant) who tricks him into permanently checking into a retirement home where he is abused by a sadistic female nurse (Hugo Weaving). From there he plots his escape with other retirees. This is the only humorous sequence in the film.
Year 2144: In a dystopian future, Sonmi-451 (Bae Doona), is an artificially created slave clone who simply waits tables when one of her fellow clones fights against being abused, but as a consequence is executed. She is then recruited by a rebellion officer (Jim Sturgess), who she falls in love with, and a rebellion general (Keith David) who want to use her to broadcast a message of truth to the whole world. Once the rebellion is crushed, she is interrogated by a not so friendly Asian inquisitor (Hugo Weaving).
Year 2321: 106 years after the fall of Earth, Zachry (Tom Hanks) is a primitive tribesman living on the Hawaiian islands. His tribe is often attacked by cannibals, and Zachry often has visions of the Devil (Hugo Weaving) taunting him. His people believe that the Devil lives on top of a mountain. These people also have a myth about Sonmi-451 being a goddess. The island is visited by Meronym (Halle Berry) who belongs to a small group of people who still have technology. She tells Zachary that the Earth is dying and that they must travel to the top of the mountain, where there is a giant transmitter, so that they can send a request for help to humans on another world.
This last sequence uses a degraded form of English that is full of odd expressions like "true true." It makes the speech harder to follow but I was able to keep up. When the movie comes out on DVD on 2013-02-05, I suggest turning on subtitles so as to better follow the dialogue.
The end credits show pictures of all the different roles that each actor plays, many of which come as surprise. Sometimes the makeup is so heavy that you cannot easily recognize the actors. This would be a fun movie to watch repeatedly so as to pick up on the different actors.
I highly recommend watching the eye popping trailer. This is a film where the ideas are slightly better than the execution of the story. I give this movie a great deal of credit for being different, daring and innovative. In terms of acting and cinematography, the movie is a triumph. The fact that a movie of this scale was independently made is astonishing. This movie only has a 64% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, but I think that the complexity of the movie lost some people. I wager that over time the movie will gain more acceptance and be considered a great film.
Roger Ebert said that this is one of the most ambitious films ever made
The movie is rated R for many brief moments of intense violence, along with some nudity, sexual situations and language.
One of the greatest trailers ever is for Star Wars Episode I: The Phantom Menace. Star Wars fans had to wait 16 years for a fourth movie, so any glimpse into a new Star Wars movie was bound to generate wonderful excitement. Although I think that movie is very good, it doesn't appeal to everyone, and some people hate it. For me, after getting so excited for the trailer, the opening sequence was a bit of a let down, but the film made up for this later. Some people hate the movie for the character Jar Jar Binks, but I like the character and I think that he is a necessary comic relief in an otherwise serious movie. With a 57% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, I think that the movie is vastly underappreciated.
I think that the greatest trailer I have ever seen is the Cloud Atlas Extended Trailer. My previous anticipation and enthusiasm for this film made me wonder if I had lavished too much praise on the movie in my review of the film. I had this nagging feeling that I needed to see the movie again because maybe the film didn't quite live up to the trailer. Although slightly true, a second viewing of the movie has reassured me that this is indeed a pretty amazing movie.
Cloud Atlas is a long movie. It is almost 3 hours. The first 38 minutes proceeds at a leisurely pace. Emotionally the movie doesn't really connect with the audience until about 38 minutes into it. From there the rest of the movie is a wild ride.
I have to give great praise to the editing that seamlessly switches between 6 different stories. Had the movie been told in chronological order, it wouldn't have been as interesting and it wouldn't have conveyed the sense that all these different time periods are connected. Individually the 6 stories aren't enough to carry the movie, but switching between the stories makes the film more interesting.
Cloud Atlas has its own philosophy that is some sort of new age mysticism. Some people are likely to think that this is pretty hokey, but with any movie you have to have a certain amount of suspension of disbelief just long enough to appreciate the movie for what it is. It doesn't mean that you have to buy into its ideals. Also, the length and complexity of the movie might turn off some viewers. With a 66% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, this is another film that I think is greatly underappreciated.
After a second and third viewing, I am astonished at the film. This is perhaps the best movie I have seen in the last decade, but I am thinking that not everyone will like it as much as I did. It is a long, complex and somewhat hard to follow movie with a weird philosophy, but it is probably the most unique and ambitious film in years.
When you watch the movie, be sure to watch for a minute into the end credits where there is a little bonus that shows all the different characters each actor played.
Alien (1979)
The Lion King (1994 and 2019)
The 1994 hand-drawn animated version of The Lion King is nearly perfect. The animation is beautiful, with most of it having a 3D look. The characters are great and the voice acting by Matthew Broadrick, James Earl Jones, Jeremy Irons, Nathan Lane, Ernie Sabella, Whoopi Goldberg, and Cheech Marin all give those characters a very distinctive sound. The music, which effectively pulls at our emotions, is so wonderful that it is like another character in the movie.
The only part of the original film that I did not like as much is the musical number "I just can't wait to become King." This sequence is drawn in a 2D style like a classic Saturday morning cartoon. Although it isn't a particularly bad sequence, its target audience seems to be just for kids.
The 2019 remake has many of the qualities that made the original good, but it also is lacking in many areas. The insistence that everything be photorealistic means that the movie is absolutely gorgeous to look at, but it also means that the characters are far less expressive than their hand-drawn counterparts. For example, the character of Scar had charisma in the original, but in the remake he just comes across as mean. I don't think that the voices are as stylish either, although Seth Rogan does a good job as Pumbaa. Why they didn't use the original cast? Only Jame Earl Jones reprises his role.
The music had a powerful impact on the original. It is strangely more subdued in the remake. The star of the new movie, and by far the best reason to see it, is the computer animation. It is a sight to behold.
Hand-drawn animation is expensive, so the original at 88 minutes feels slightly too short. It is a very compact movie with scenes and dialog taking no more time than they need to in order to convey the story. The remake is 30 minutes longer, with extra and more mature dialog everywhere. Many of the scenes are longer. Some of this is nice, but parts of it also feel unnecessary. The final confrontation with Scar is too long and gives the impression of being more violent.
There are little things done in the original that weren't done in the remake, like Pumba picking up Simba with his horns, or Pumba getting stuck under a tree root while being chased by Nala. I found myself wondering if this was just a technological limitation of the computer animation?
Should you see the 2019 remake of the Lion King? Absolutely. It is a wonderful movie to look at. At times I felt like I was watching a beautiful nature show that just happens to be The Lion King. However, the original is a better overall experience.
Rating:
The Lion King (1994): A.
The Lion King (2019): B.
The Lion King (2019) has just a 55% rating on Rotten Tomatoes. My favorite movie critic, Richard Roeper, gives the movie 3.5 out of 4 stars.
The Impossible (2012)
Attack the Block (2011)
American Sniper (2014)
Eye in the Sky (2015)
A military operation uses a Predator UAV to track a group of highly wanted terrorists to a house in Kenya where a couple of suicide bombings are being prepared. Since the Predator is equipped with a couple of Hellfire missiles, and there is an imminent threat, the logical thing to do is to blow up the house from the air.
However, there is a problem. A little girl from the same neighborhood starts selling loaves of bread baked by her mother just outside the house with the terrorists inside. The conflict of the film is what to do about the little girl? This is a decision that goes up and down the command chain and gets debated hotly as a moral conundrum.
The movie also uses a couple of micro-drones disguised as animals that may not really exist. We don't know for sure what secret technology the military may have.
Is this an anti-war film? Maybe. But it also debates the morality of fighting a war with drones from thousands of miles away where the participants are safe from the consequences.
The tension in this movie is fantastic. It also shows how competing political interests might fight over life and death decisions. Although this is a work of fiction, it is easy to imagine that scenarios like this have played out for real.
Rating: A.
Fury (2014)
Fury follows a five-man tank crew as the Allies made the final push into Germany. The tank is commanded by a battled hardened staff sergeant, Don "Wardaddy" Collier, played brilliantly by Brad Pitt. Much of the movie centers around the relationship between Wardaddy and a very green new recruit, Norman, who isn't quite ready yet to face the horrors of war.
It seems to me that the movie has a political agenda where it portrays American soldiers in an unfavorable light. Few in this film have any regard for morality, even as they quote scripture and talk about salvation. In two scenes, soldiers execute an unarmed prisoner. Maybe one of the prisoners had it coming. The other soldiers regard these murders as amusing. They also take sadistic delight in seeing the enemy burn alive. In another scene, Wardaddy and Norman break into an apartment where two young German ladies are living. Wardaddy gives the girls some food and they share a meal together, but there is an obvious tension in the room: There is the implied expectation that one of the girls will have to have sex, willing or not. The younger of the two ladies falls for Norman and they walk off to the bedroom together. Everything is casual and amicable until the rest of the tank crew barge in. The remaining crew are boorish, frighten the ladies and ruin the most peaceful moment of the movie. Some critics called this the best part of the movie, perhaps because they also have a negative impression of American soldiers, but this particular moment in the film I found grating.
This negative portrayal of American soldiers I don't think is realistic. There may be a few bad apples, but American soldiers are well disciplined and professional. Most have a strong sense of morality, if not compassion.
On my second viewing of Fury, everything made sense. The bad behavior seems insignificant against the backdrop of mass human slaughter that the movie presents to us. I felt like I was watching history, accurate or not. At the very least the movie is an interesting history lesson about tank warfare.
Brad Pitt's performance as Wardaddy, as I said, is brilliant, but also very macho. I think that this is why some people weren't happy with the film.
In the 1940's war movie Sahara, a tank crew decides to make a stand against impossible odds. The same thing happens in Fury. I don't think that the crew would have made this decision knowing that they certainly would be killed. As Tank veteran Bill Batts points out, it is unrealistic to think that they could hold out against a Battalion of Waffen SS troops. However, it made for a great final act.
In the final shot of Cool Hand Luke, an aerial view of a cross-shaped intersection is shown as a way of letting the audience know that someone died. The final shot of Fury copies this technique.
Did I mention that watching the movie is a deeply visceral experience? The young green recruit, Norman, is so affected by the horrors of war that he becomes a very different person in just a couple of days. The audience feels this change and identifies with it.
Rating: A
If you can get past the unpleasant subject matter, this is a very brilliant movie. Fury has a 77% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Ender's Game (2013)
It took me at least an hour after I saw the movie to realize that Ender's sister is played by Abigail Breslin. It bugs me that I missed this at first. The pretty little girl from The Ultimate Gift, Zombie Land, and Little Miss Sunshine has grown into a pretty teenager.
Star Trek (2008)
The Right Stuff (1983)
Children of Men (2006)
Michael Caine has a strong supporting role as an old hippie, which is counter to his usual roles, but completely believable.
The movie does a great job of exploring post 9-11 themes, as well as religious themes. The pregnant woman is essentially the mother of the entire future human race.
I had to turn on closed captioning to understand some of the British accents. The movie never slows down to explain anything, but assumes that you are smart enough to follow along. I paused the film in places to read some of the billboards, many of which give interesting insights into this future world.
Rating: A
The movie is rated R for violence, language, and brief nudity.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes (2014)
After the fall of humanity due to a man-made virus designed to cure Alzheimer's Disease, the apes made intelligent by the virus have settled into the forest area north of San Francisco. The apes believe that the humans have died out, but a few surviving humans have a small community in San Francisco. When a couple of humans accidentally encounter the apes, they become frightened and shoot one of the apes, which leads to escalating tensions. Hotheads on both sides push the two groups toward war. A few individuals on both sides want to broker a peace, but the hotheads prevail.
The computer generated apes are amazing to look at. My only complaint is that the apes facial expressions seem a little too human.
It seems obvious that the movie is an analogy for any human conflict. The conflict started because the humans wanted to restart a hydroelectric dam, i.e. the war starts over energy, or more generally, over resources. The movie shows how conflict develops from fear of "the other" or "outsiders". The fact that the two groups are so different is what helps drive them to war. This gives the movie a certain noble message that stays with you for a long time. It feels like an anti-war film that delivers its message better and more subtly than any human versus human conflict could.
This is filmmaking, science fiction and special effects at its best.
Dawn of the Planet of the Apes has a 90% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.
Richard Roeper gives the movie an "A".
Rating: A















