Aubrey Plaza has one of the most unusual names I have seen in many years and her name perfectly suits her effortless comedic personality. Plaza can just make some kind of an absurd comment, or make a face or do something very subtle with her eyes and you cant help but laugh and most of the time its not even obvious that she is trying to be funny, she just is. Her comedic abilities have always seemed effortless and the best comedy is always that way; never anything that you see coming at you that is ever obvious, at times something surprising and always flows without any noticeable effort.

As far as her new unusual movie “Ingrid Goes West”, its all about social media and how it affects normal people or the main character in this film, Ingrid, played by Plaza who is a bit mentally disturbed. Social Media can make shy people not shy and lonely people have many friends, or it can have a reverse effect where a person who has mental problems can manipulate people through social media to create a fake person that doesn’t even exist to trick someone, in this case Elizabeth Olsen who is the somewhat famous person Ingrid tries to trick into being her friend. This movie is funny in some places, pathetic in some other places and ultimately depressing as you feel for Ingrid who is trying to rescue her lonely life and doing everything wrong to achieve her goal.

The ratings for Ingrid Goes West on Rotten Tomatoes are very high and I found this to be very surprising given that I thought that this was just an above average movie that I do recommend.

The movie “The Hitman’s Bodyguard”, does have ton of action, explosions and special effects. What it doesn’t have is anything new, or something unique that has never been done before. The constant cursing dialogue has been done in many movies before, along with the car chases and this movie is mostly about 2 guys being chased around by criminals, with accompanying explosions and gunfire. So none of this new.

In the theater I was in, the director Patrick Hughes was in an opening segment, thanking the audience for paying to see his movie and then ratting off amazing statistics about 1200 people who were employed to make this film, in about 3 countries for about 9 months. I was amazed to learn that it takes 1200 people to make a movie like this, but not too amazed about the story of this film, or the fact that we have all seen this kind of movie too many times before. In order to make a hit in movies today, you have to create something innovative, otherwise the film is considered run of the mill, as the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and D- rating from Richard Roper for this movie prove (see Richard Roper’s review below).

The Hitman’s Bodyguard stars Ryan Reynolds, Samuel L. Jackson and Selma Hayek and Gary Oldman and is so typical and run of the mill that I cannot recommend it, but I do not agree that the movie is as bad as Roper’s review below.

The movie “Good Time” is about people who are barely alive in this world and wondering how they will survive or avoid winding up in prison or dead. Its about two brothers, one a criminal and the other mentally disabled, then a bank robbery, then the mentally disabled brother winding up in prison and from there an insane ride into oblivion that proves that as low as you may be in life, you can always go lower. I wonder of the title Good Time is being sarcastic because no one watching this movie can consider one minute of this story a good time.

Good Time is a low budget movie starring Robert Pattinson who it seems has decided to make mostly low budget movies ever since he hit it big with the “Twilight Saga” a few years ago. Pattinson’s acting in this film is impressive, perhaps even impressive enough to receive an Academy Award nomination, despite the fact that this movie is very small and low budget. Good Time is directed by the Benny and Josh Safdie hwo have collaborated on several movies over the years and this is the first one of their films I have seen. The most impressive directing achievement with this movie was capturing the gritty and desperate environment that Pattinson’s character and his brother live in, with no chance, purely by accident of birth to ever break out of their miserable depressing existence. This movie also stars Jennifer Jason Leigh, who has a very small part and Bennie Sadfie who plays Pattinson’s mentally disabled brother.

This movie captures a desperate world of running from the police and barely surviving in the streets of New York City, has very good acting and do recommend it.