I was reminded how great a movie “High Fidelity” is the other day on HBO. What is most amazing about this film is that both John Cusack and Jack Black peaked with this movie which came out in 2000 and never hit that high a note again. Jack Black has never been funnier, and Cusack has never been better in any acting role he has done. This movie has everything , top notch humor, romantic story and great drama all in one film. One of the things I liked about the 3 guys in the music store owned by John Cusack’s character was their intense interest, knowledge and devotion to the subject of music. Their condescending attitude towards all others who were not into music as much as they were was very unique and at times very funny. There was an ongoing debate about obscure music trivia between Jack Black who worked at the music store and his co-worker played by Todd Luiso that represent some of the best scenes in this entire movie. Jack Black’s singing at the end of the movie was both funny and great singing at the same time. Perhaps his best singular performance in the movie.

Cusack’s character is at odds with his personal life from the very beginning of this film and at times, he narrates the stories and failures he has had with the women he has been with and talks about the depression, anger, and angst he has experienced during his life all the way back to when he was a teenager. Cusack’s talking about all these bad previous dating experiences is because of his break-up with his current girlfriend played by Iben Hjejle and the movie starts out with her leaving him for another man. All of us can relate to the intense pain of relationships and this movie covers this subject very well and rel​ationship depression and angst is the central theme of the entire movie.

Lisa Bonet is also in this movie and her character has a short-term fling with Cusack’s character. It seems that High Fidelity could be the peak of her movie acting career as she was very believable in her role in this very high-quality film. Regardless, it’s been rare to see Bonet in any movies during the last 30 years.

If you are one of the rare people who have seen the movie “High Fidelity” you owe it to yourself to see it.

The movie “Maggies Plan” is a rare low budget movie with quite a few high-level actors in Hollywood. I often wonder how deals like this come about, perhaps friends get together and make deals for future collaboration, etc. This movie is entirely about relationships and because so many movies about relationships have been made, this one has a new twist: namely; a marriage breaks up because of another relationship but the woman in that marriage realizes that the man is better off with his x-wife so she arranges things so that he will get back with his x-wife. I have to admit I have never seen an idea like this before and this movie seemed like a Woody Allen-type romance movie although not as high quality. Several pretty important actors are in this film, starting with Julianne Moore, who had a rather strange Russian accent in this movie, Ethan Hawke, Bill Hader, Maya Rudolf and Gretta Gerwig who plays Maggie and considering the art house low budget of this film is highly unusual in my experience.

As far as the movie it was entertaining but not extremely so, mainly because it was too long and the story and scenes were never compelling enough to keep your riveted or laughing or entertained enough for the whole film. This movie just gets a mild recommendation.

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At the beginning of “The Conjuring 2” it is announced that this is a true story that happened in the years 1976-1977 in England. Then you sit through over 2 hours of this horror movie in disbelief that this could be a true story mainly because a single mother and 3 young children would never stay in a house that is this haunted when you consider possession, her young daughter talking like a 72-year-old ghost, levitation and objects flying through the air. Any normal adult mother would immediately leave the house to move into a shelter or with any relative under conditions like this but this entire family stays in this house for the entire time frame of this movie, which seems like it was at least 1 year, perhaps more. This reason alone is reason enough not to believe that this is a 100% true story.

I never saw the first Conjuring film, but the advertisements for this sequel were bragging that this new version was even scarier than the first. Apart from a few surprises in this new version, there was nothing that I thought was that scary. Like all horror movies in the last 43 years , there were attempts, mainly as far as possession, to re-use what worked in the Exorcist which was released in 1973 and will always be the gold standard as far as horror movies. Exactly why the Exorcist will always be the scariest movie of all time, should be a major psychological study or at least a book at some point in the future.

As far as some strangeness, this movie had more than its share of strange scenes, but the strangest by far was when Patrick Wilson who plays the lead ghost chaser in this movie along with his wife played by Vera Farmiga decides to do an Elvis impersonation towards the end of the movie. An Elvis impersonation during a horror movie about ghost chasing? That has to be a new high in weird.

Overall, I thought this movie was way too long, perhaps by as much as 30 minutes and was too run of the mill – what we have all seen before to recommend, except for hardcore fans of ghost movies. If your not one of those kinds of people, I would skip this one.

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