In the last few days as the new movie “Battle of the Sexes” was about to be released, it was suggested that Bobby Riggs threw his game against Billy Jean King because he owed money to mobsters due to his gambling. Now, after seeing this movie, I am more interested to figure out how a 55 year old Riggs beat the #1 woman in the world, Margaret Court, 6-2 6-1 before he lost to Billy Jean, just a short time after Court beat Billy Jean King almost as easily. Many things don’t make sense here, but perhaps Riggs paid off Court to lose to him easily, by promising her a piece of his winnings when he pulled off the Billy Jean King match. As the great promoter that Riggs was, he knew that he needed to have the tennis watching audience get interested first by beating the #1 woman player and then create all the hype and ridiculousness necessary to pull off one of the greatest spectacles in American History.

It is very clear that Bobby Riggs never meant any of the stupid male chauvinist things he said, he was just trying to generate huge interest to make the event become the big money maker it was, and ultimately it all worked. I would have liked to have learned more about the back story to this almost documentary like film about this famous match that happened in 1973 and even how much both Riggs and King were paid, but this was unfortunately never mentioned. The acting of Steve Carrel who played Riggs and Emma Stone who played King was very good, the story was slow at times but in the end the screenwriter and director did an effective job of remembering all that happened in the battle of the sexes, 44 years ago, so I do recommend this movie.

Despite the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes about the new movie American Assassin, I thought this was an effective movie about Terrorism and the people who try to eliminate Terrorism from the world. The story plays like movies we have seen before, even a little like the Karate Kid, but because of the action and the story, I thought it was an effective spy movie. The special effects, especially at the end I thought were very well done and the acting from Micheal Keaton and newcomer Dylan O’Brien was very believable.

Overall, I thought this was a good spy movie and I do recommend it.

If I could summarize this brilliant movie “Brad’s Status” about the doubts we all have about our lives it would be in one sentence: “Never compare yourself to other people”. The reasons for this are obvious when you really think about it. Its never fair to compare the lives of two different people. Circumstance, parents, DNA, money, luck, the right job at the right time, health, finding love, never finding love, kids, no kids and so many other factors, many of which are out of our hands. When we compare ourselves to other people we have to do this by making assumptions. These assumptions may be accurate, but very often they are not accurate because most of us would have no idea what is the real truth of someone else’s life. What we think someone else’s life is all about, may or may not be true. What may seem to be a charmed life may not be that charmed at all. But sometimes we all make ourselves feel bad, thinking that time is running out and that just maybe we chose the wrong path because we are not as wealthy or happy as our friends or people we have known because we decided on a profession that doesn’t pay as much as some other profession and we think our friends from college or high school are doing so much better than we are. But, are they really? What are the true parameters of success and happiness? Does anybody ever know the answer to this one simple question?

Throughout this movie, there is a voice over narration by the main character Brad Sloan, played very well by Ben Stiller in serious role where Brad is talking to himself as he tries to figure out his life at age 47. He wonders why he was not invited to a friends wedding with this 3 other friends from college and thinks that its probably because his friends think of him as a loser because he is not wealthy and decided to help people with a non profit organization he runs instead of making money. This is another part of the problem, caring so much about what we think – other people might think about us. Brad is very proud of his musical prodigy son who has decided he wants to go to Harvard, but wonders how he could ever pay for his son to go to a college this expensive. One significant scene was when Brad and his son, played very well by actor Austin Abrams meet up with two very attractive female Harvard musicians, one of whom is as idealistic about helping other people as Brad was when he was her age. What follows is some great dialogue about life and work and the reasons why we all exist in the world in the first place. You can also see the disappointment in the eyes of this young woman and she is so dismayed when Brad says that “if he had to do it all over again, he would have gone for the money”.

Realization and transition happens in all great movies and this one is no different as Brad slowly realizes what is really important about his life and that just maybe what he thought was true about his reality and the lives of people he was jealous of might not be what he thought in the first place. Throughout this entire brilliantly written story, I was thinking the same thing. “Never compare yourself to anybody else, ever”.

Brad’s Status is an extremely well made movie that I highly recommend and I think the screenplay, written by Mike White is one of the best I have seen since Manchester by the Sea.