At first glance I was rather surprised at the relatively low ratings for the new docudrama LBJ, directed by Rob Reiner, only 5.8 on IMDB and 51% on Rotten Tomatoes. I thought this was a very solid and well done history lesson about the political life of Lyndon Baines Johnson, with some of the story told using flashbacks. Much of what happens in this movie is well known but just as much is not known including how difficult Johnson’s life as Vice President to John F. Kennedy was, due to the Kennedy brothers disrespecting and shutting him out of the important decisions of the Kennedy administration. From the perspective of Bobby and John Kennedy, Johnson was an outsider from the South who was made Vice President for political reasons to get Kennedy elected in 1960. On top of this, as was made very clear in this story, Bobby Kennedy was in some ways using Johnson for his own Presidential ambitions for the election of 1968.

To this day its amazing how long it took this country to pass basic human rights legislation, including the Civil Rights act of 1964 that was started by Kennedy and finalized by Johnson after Kennedy was assassinated. What were we thinking for so many years in this country, suppressing the basic rights of millions of people for so many years? So much of this backward thinking was because too many of the wrong people were in charge, including a major character in this movie Senator Richard Russell, played very well by actor Richard Jenkins, who was both a very powerful Senator as well as a bigot who did everything in his power to prevent the Civil Rights act because of his racism and stupidity.

I was impressed with this movie for several reasons, starting with the acting of Woody Harrelson as LBJ, in one of the best roles of his career and Jennifer Jason Leigh who was unrecognizable as Lady Bird Johnson. The makeup and the sets in this movie were all outstanding and I thought Rob Reiner’s direction was also outstanding.

Despite the average ratings for this movie, I thought it was very good and I recommend it.

I found the definition of Ragnarock on Wikipedia and before seeing the new movie “Thor: Ragnarock” today I never heard of the word Ragnarock before. The reviews for this movie are quite high, 93% on rottentomatoes and 8.2 on IMDB and I agree with the high ratings for the special effects that are very impressive, but not for the story which is all over the place, at times hard to follow and is lacking in continuity. This story jumps from one scene to another scene and more than a few times during these 2 hours you have no idea what is happening or who a new character is; case in point the character played by Idris Elba. I wondered if the producers of this movie assumed that the audience read the comic book before seeing this movie.

This movie stars Chris Hemsworth as Thor for the 3rd time in this franchise, not including the Avenger series. Cate Blanchette plays Thor’s sister and Jeff Goldblum as the leader of this strange planet that looks like a garbage dump for the universe. There are very good special effects and some fights including even the HULK character played once again by Mark Ruffalo. The most impressive performance in this movie was by Tessa Thompson who just may have had her breakthrough role with this movie.

Unfortunately, there is not much more to say about this film that I thought was average, at times boring and offered nothing that we have not seen many times before.

The message of “A Bad Moms Christmas” is as good as was the message for the original “Bad Moms”, that was released in July 2016. Being a mother is very stressful and at times can be quite overwhelming and depressing but when its Christmas, it all can get much worse. Then the screenwriters of this sequel added the arrival for Christmas of the mothers of the 3 main characters, played by Mila Kunis, Christine Bell and Kathryn Hahn and the result is a movie that is funny at times, at other times too raunchy and in the end not as good as the original Bad Moms which I thought was a very good comedy movie.

The standout actor in this comedy is Christine Baransky, who plays Mila Kunis mother as the exact same character she plays on the Big Bang Theory. She is outstanding as the mother who always makes nasty stupid comments that constantly belittle and puts down her daughter. Of course all of this because this movie is a comedy is played to the extreme and I did laugh out-loud in a number of spots during this film. This movie does make you wonder why some mothers just have to knock down their child and always try to undermine everything their child tries to do. Its a typical phenomenon of some parents and over a many years of this kind of a abuse during a childhood and adulthood can cause many relationship problems, some of which are brought out during some of the funny moments in this story.

There is a very small appearance by Christina Applegate who was also in the first Bad Moms and I thought it was unfortunate that her part was so small. Susan Sarandon and Cheryl Hines play the other 2 mothers in this story and I thought they were both good in their roles, but for some reason the screenwriters thought that giving Sarandon’s character the name Isis would be funny and I disagree that a name like this can ever be funny.

This movie was just OK, and unfortunately not as good as the original Bad Moms.