The new movie “Puzzle” is a low budget movie about the decisions we make in our 20’s that may cause us, because of money, obligations and family – to not realize our full potential or ever have the chance to figure out who we really are. For many of us, there is not enough money or time to find ourselves by going to a college that fewer can afford and some find themselves later in life unhappy about the choices they made in their youth. In the case of this story, Agnes is a wife in her early 40’s of a mechanic with 20 sons about to go to college, who finds herself trapped in a lonely boring life familiar to far too many married women. Through a random gift of a 1000 piece jigsaw puzzle, Agnes finds that she is not only good at putting jigsaw puzzles together, but in is fact a rare genius at pattern recognition. As random as the shape of the puzzle pieces, Agnes buys another puzzle in New York City and through a flier at the store, becomes partners with another puzzle expert and their collaboration blooms into Jigsaw puzzle contests – who even knew there was such a thing?

Puzzle is a high quality low budget movie that has a great message and symbolism, and was engrossing throughout the entire 2 hours. One of the great speeches in the movie was by Agnes puzzle partner Robert, played very well by Irrfan Khan. He says, “Life is random and most of the time completely out of our control. With Puzzles, we are completely in control and when the puzzle is completed, we know we made all the right choices”. Anyone who sees this movie may have a strong desire to buy a 1000 piece puzzle and try to put it together, and this has always been a fun hobby for many people.

I strongly recommend Puzzle for its message, symbolism and quality of acting.

First and foremost, the new movie “Crazy Rich Asians” is all about money. Its about super rich Asians who live in Singapore who after many years of being super rich, have forgotten or never knew what it is like to have little or no money, or a bad job sitting in a cubicle or doing what you don’t want to do, because you do don’t have enough money to walk away. The story is about a young couple in love, about to get married but the woman is not from a wealthy family, she is the product of a single mother who struggled for many years to make enough to survive. Unfortunately in many, but not all cases, people who have a great deal of money let it all go to their head and look down on people who are not rich, as if they are not good enough to associate with and definitely not to marry their son – basically the plot of this movie. The mother of the young Asian man does not approve of his girlfriend and some of the scenes between his girlfriend and his mother I thought were extremely well done.

I thought this movie dragged on in a number of places, was somewhat funny in others and was too much like a soap opera for my liking. The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Crazy Rich Asians is a very high 92% and I do recommend it for the message – but not so much for the overall story.

In terms of a great legal drama, in my opinion “The Verdict”, released in 1982 is the best ever. A brilliant screenplay by David Mamet and a story about the real life world of bad people and money against working class hard working people and a pregnant woman who was the victim of medical malpractice. In 1982 the critics were calling this great movie a Rocky story for the legal profession. I consider this one comment the best summary about what this movie is all about. Doctors who worked for a church owned hospital in the Boston area made a series of egregious errors when a pregnant woman was admitted and she went into a coma and was irreparably brain damaged. Through lies, payoffs and legal cheating, the rich law firm hired to defend the doctors cared less about the woman in a coma, only about the reputation of the hospital and the amount of money they would be paid.

This movie stars Paul Newman and without a doubt it was his best performance in a career where he won only one Oscar for “The Color of Money” and was nominated 7 times. Why he did not win for this outstanding performance as Frank Galvin, a down on his luck alcoholic lawyer is a travesty. The lead lawyer of the law firm defending the hospital is James Mason in an outstanding performance as the rich head of a law firm who would do anything to win a case, regardless of the circumstances. The direction of this film by Sidney Lumet is also great and one scene that stands out is a key turning point in the film was told wordlessly in an overhead shot where Galvin just backed up on a street looking at his friend in disbelief over what he just heard him say about his girlfriend. This is genius screenwriting and film making because so much more can be said by just actions and no dialogue.

The Verdict is an outstanding film that should seen by everyone.