Netflix Movie Review: Hillbilly Elegy

Posted on November 24, 2020 by jjcwn • Posted in Elegy, Uncategorized • Tagged Amy Adams, Glenn Close, Hillbilly Elegy • Leave a comment

The new Netflix movie “Hillbilly Elegy” is based on the best selling book that was released several years ago, about a man who made it out of extreme poverty and being raised by a single mother who was a drug addict.

Despite a horrific start in life, the main character in this film J.D. Vance, played by Gabriel Basso became a lawyer and even attended Yale Law school after joining the Army. This is an amazing feat, considering how his life began, and his abusive childhood progressed.

This film has two well known actresses: Glenn Close who plays J.D.s grandmother and Amy Adams as J.D.’s mother and one of the best directors, Ron Howard. Despite all of this, including what I thought was outstanding acting throughout, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are giving this very strong movie only a 26% rating. In all my years of comparing the opinions of critics, this has to be the all time champion in regards to a group of critics who have no understanding of the the quality and significance of a film. The only good news is that the audience rating on Rotten Tomatoes is a very high 89% – in line with the quality of the screenwriting and acting. A rating of only 26% makes no sense, expecially considering the critical opinions are so completely different than the audience opinion.

Anyone who has a background of poverty or near poverty will appreciate what it is like to live in a situation where there is no hope, no future and no chance. Perhaps the critics who reviewed this film cannot relate to the stark and depressing reality of many millions of people who in so many cases, need miracles to survive. With this story, the poverty also comes with extreme levels of drug addition, with many depressing scenes where J.D.s mother is either shooting heroin, taking pills or overdosing. All of this was well done and well acted.

I agree with the audience rating for Hillbilly Elegy of 89% and highly recommend this movie.

On Demand Movie Review: The Secret: Dare to Dream

Posted on November 19, 2020 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Leave a comment

About 10 years ago, a video was released called “The Secret”. This video became so popular it even made it to the Oprah Winfrey Show. The message in this video was very simple, “if you think about something that you want so badly often enough and strongly enough, then the universe will give it to you”. It would be great if something like this were true, and the popularity of this message was mostly caused by so many millions of people wanting it to be true, rather than it being actually true. The fervor of the video and this message eventually died down, only a few short years later. Since then, I have not seen any sign of the The Secret, not until the new movie “The Secret: Dare to Dream”, starring Josh Lucas and Katie Holmes was released through On Demand some days ago.

I agree with most of the critics who have said that this story is too much like a small Nicolas Sparks book. While the story is rather simple and “Nicolas Sparks” like, I thought that overall, the story and message was good enough to give this film marginal recommendation.

The main character Miranda Wells is played by Katie Holmes. She is raising 3 kids as a single mother, ever since her husband died 5 years earlier. Her life is all about having no money and being in huge debt, with both a car and house that is falling apart. Then enters Bray, played by Josh Lucas who is a professor of Mechanical Engineering from Vanderbilt University. Through a series of coincidences that all start with a minor car accident, Bray starts to help Miranda and her 3 children with some of their money problems – the worst problem is fixing up their house after a Hurricane. I thought that the story did take too long to wind down, as Bray is carrying a huge secret from Miranda, all the way down to the last minutes of this movie. Other than that, the story was well told and the acting was well done.

The 28% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are absurd – with the audience ratings of 76% far more accurate. My rating is 70% and I do give this movie a marginal recommendation.

Amazon Prime Series Review: Wayne

Posted on November 15, 2020 by jjcwn • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged Foul Language, Road Trip, Violence, Wayne • 1 Comment

The trend for several years within the challenging art of screenwriting is coming up with something that has never been done before. Unfortunately I have seen way too many different bad movies over the years, where the screenwriter tried so hard to break new ground and produce something that has never been done before, resulting in a very-different bad movie. A film still has to be good more than it has to be different.

The new Amazon prime 10-part series “Wayne” is very different from anything I have seen before but more importantly its also different-good, not different bad or average. There are no famous actors in this series, only few character actors we have all seen before. The story is about a 16 year old kid in high school, Wayne, played by Mark McKenna who has a life in shambles. His mother left the family and his father is dying and he lives in a rundown section of Brockton Massachusetts – the home town of Boxer Marvin Hagler. His daily life is all about violence, with him either getting beaten up or beating someone else up, any way he can. Wayne has a personality disorder where he feels he has to right any wrong he sees, which is why he is always getting into fights. The language in this movie is one for the record books because it probably has more F-words and S-words than any production ever made. This is now people talk on the hard streets Boston and the screenwriter made sure that this is made very clear in every scene in this series.

As the story progresses, Wayne leaves Boston and heads south to get back his father’s car his mother now has in Florida. His companion during this road trip to Florida is Del, his girlfriend and unfortunate daughter of a lowlife family of 2 stupid brothers and a violent loud-mouth father who hate Wayne and follow Del and Wayne to Florida. Del is played by actress Ciara Bravo, who just about steals this entire series with her completely natural acting ability.

The foul language and violence in this 10 part series are insane and frequent, mixed with crazy humor along the way.

The critics on Rotten Tomatoes are giving this series 100%, IMDB is a very high 8.4. If you can get used to the constant foul language and violence, this movie is a must see, but definitely not for children. I highly recommend this 10 part series on Amazon prime.