Its been very rare in my experience that a movie hits on every single aspect of what a great screenplay and film is all about. The new movie “Wonder” does all of this and challenges the harsh realities of peer pressure, bullying, empathy, compassion, abandonment, betrayal and friendship all in one story. This great movie also hits the marks with excellent acting and remarkably has significant sub stories about the peripheral people around the main character who has a facial deformity; at a level that I cannot remember ever seeing. The sub stories around the main character I found to be profound enough to create completely new movies around them.

The main character of Auggie is played by Jason Tremblay who at only 11 years old has proven himself to be a great actor, previously in the highly acclaimed movie “Room”. This movie is not a true story, but is very loosely based on another child who was born with a very rare DNA combination that causes facial deformity. From the beginning you cannot help to have empathy for this child, not only for what he has already gone through at age 10 but what he will be facing for the rest of this life. People stare, people are cruel, most especially young children in school and for that reason, up to the 5th grade Auggie was home schooled by his mother played by Julia Roberts and his father, played by Owen Wilson.

I was most impressed with the real life depictions of bullying that Auggie faces from his first days at school. There seemed no limit to the rude staring and cruel remarks this young boy had to face from so many of his classmates. A great deal of this kind of cruelty is because of peer pressure and this even happens with the only friend Auggie is able to make that creates a significant moment in this movie. For me, equally as important as Auggie’s plight is the difficult life his older sister, played very well by Izabela Vidovic has to face as her mother seems to completely ignore her, because she is so obsessed with protecting her son. The message here is that with a problem this challenging in the life of a young child, this would also greatly affect the lives of everyone around him.

It takes a special person to step out of themselves despite peer pressure and other fears and befriend a 10 year old boy in school with a facial deformity and this act of courage did happen twice during this story. There are several acts of extreme cruelty, most especially with one young boy who passed several horrible notes in class to Auggie. There are also moments of great transition as people, as they sometimes do, recognize their own evil and realize they have to change to be able to live with themselves.

This movie has all the ingredients of a film that should be nominated for an Academy Award, but perhaps because of the subject matter it might not get a nomination, but in my opinion, it definitely should.

I highly recommend Wonder that is one of the best movies of 2017.

Its very rare in movie history that an very average or below average movie like Daddy’s home makes enough money to give producers confidence to make a sequel. “Daddy’s Home 2” is one of those rare times. On par with the previous version, this new film takes some chances by casting Mel Gibson who 10 years ago, seemed to have no reasonable path back from the career abyss he was in. But since directing the great war movie “Hacksaw Ridge” last year he seems to have done the impossible and is once again accepted as a bankable actor.

As far this movie, it misses the mark of a comedy because in the theater I was in, there were almost no laughs at all. Most of the physical comedy and sight gags all involved Will Farrell, or John Lithgow getting hit with something or falling off of a house or just generally falling down. This can be funny maybe once or twice in a film, but this one does this too many times and its just not that funny.

The premise of this movie is about the same as the first, but this time to two main characters played by Mark Wahlberg and Will Farrell are close friends having gotten over all of their differences from the first film. Farrell is married to Wahlberg’s x-wife and Wahlberg is now remarried with and has a daughter with his new wife. There are many kids involved in this story and for too long of a time, unless you just saw the first version, its not obvious who’s kid belongs to which parent.

Will Farrell is a natural comedic talent and for that matter, so is John Lithgow and there is virtually nothing he has to do to be funny, unlike Wahlberg who is not funny but despite this there is not enough funny moments to recommend this below average comedy.

Sitting through this film was like passing by what you know is going to be the scene of a very bad car accident. As as you roll by and look to your right, you don’t want to look because you know what you might see. You look anyway, because this is life, a possible pathway, perhaps the end of someone’s life and in the back of your mind, you wonder if this might happen to you one day and this scares you, but you keep looking anyway. “There but for the grace of God go I”.

This film plays more like a documentary than a movie and has only one named celebrity as the star, William Defoe who plays the manager of this run down Motel in Florida, ironically named “The Magic Castle Motel”. For 38 dollars a night you can live almost like a caged animal in one room squalor surrounded by lavender and pink paint. The tenants of this massive hell hole are who you would expect; poor people down on their luck, but what you would never expect are happy, dancing and running young children who are oblivious to their reality and are not yet old enough to realize that they have no chance. No future. No hope. No way out. These young children have to go along for the ride only because of who their parents are. For me the happy oblivious young children in this story were ultimately the most depressing part because they just don’t understand about money and what its like to be on the outer fringe of homelessness. As an adult your brain has to rationalize a life like this somehow, because if you can’t, you die. But when you’re a child you are just a child and you don’t know anything other than your bleak existence. In the eyes of a child, a horrendous life like this is normal for you because you just don’t know anything else. For me, this was the saddest part of this story.

This movie has remarkable acting and the best actor of them all is 6-year-old Brooklynn Prince, who plays Moonie and is the only child of her single mother, played by Bria Vinaite, a drug addict hooker and complete disaster of a human being who was stupid enough to give birth to and then keep a child. So many scenes in this movie are very hard to watch, because you know that there are real people like this in this country who live lives like this and like passing a car accident, this is something that none of us want to think about or ever see.

This low-budget movie has received many high reviews on both IMDB and Rottentomatoes and I agree with these high ratings as this movie while being quite depressing is also and outstanding depiction of the harsh reality of being poor in this country. The Florida Project gets my highest recommendation.