Monthly Archives: December 2021

Movie Review: A Journal For Jordan

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For the far too few of us who include empathy as one of their most valued traits – this review is for you.

I have often wondered how any actor, director and especially a screenwriter must feel when they toil for weeks, months or even years on a project – then complete it – then wait for the day when the movie is released so desperate with hope that the movie they spent years of their lives working on gets reviewed positively. Then their hard work gets trashed by a few critics who have no clue what they are writing about. How must that feel? How hard is something like that to recover from?

For the new movie “A Journal For Jordan”, directed by none other than Denzel Washington and starring Michael B. Jordan and relative newcomer Chanté Adams, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a downright stupid 40%. This rating ranks as one of the worst out of proportion opinions I have ever even heard about.

Obviously, this is one of those films that going on you already know will be a tear-jerker from the start. This is a true a story about a young couple’s early relationship told mostly with flashbacks. Dana, played by Adams and is a writer for the NY Times, Charles, played by Jordan, is a soldier who winds up going to Iraq soon after the 2001 Terrorist attacks. We all see tragedy coming a mile down the road, but this does not take away from this very well produced and acted real life story. This story is based on a Novel by Dana Canedy A Journal for Jordan (Movie Tie-In): A Story of Love and Honor that some years ago was a best seller and important enough to catch the eye of Denzel Washington to produce and create this movie.

I thought this story was very well told with a very emotional ending that worked extremely well. What the hell the critics are thinking this time around, I have no idea. 94% for a bad recent Spiderman movie with an idiotic premise and this real life story about true love, life and death gets 40%. None of this makes any sense. Making movies is in fact a brutal field to choose as a career. This movie definitely proves that.

My rating is a solid 80% and I highly recommend this movie.

Netflix Movie Review: Don’t Look Up

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What is most unusual about the movie “Don’t Look Up” is the large number of #1 stars who appear in this film and its rapid decent from theaters despite this star power. As of today Don’t Look Up is on Netflix and I can only guess at its early popularity. Directed by Adam McKay and starring Merrill Streep, Leonardo DiCaprio, Cate Blanchett, Jennifer Lawrence, Timothée Chalamet, Tyler Perry, Jonah Hill, Ron Perlman and Ariana Grande.

This story is a parody of Global Warming in the form of a huge asteroid that is discovered to destroy the Earth in 6 months. What follows is two scientists played by DiCaprio and Lawrence who make the rounds to the President, the press and even morning talk shows about the immanent end of the world, only to be laughed at, disbelieved and ridiculed in the press. Just like the early days of The Global Warming warnings that started decades ago.

Adam McKay, who also wrote this screenplay does a great job at tying the ironies of Global Warming to the ironies and stupidity within this story and how even when facing the end of the human race a few billionaires come up with a plan to crash land the comet on the planet in pieces because it is comprised of valuable earth metals needed for cell phones and other electronics. We can make trillions of dollars against the total end of all humanity. Where this movie fails as a parody is that most of the attempted humor fails – probably accounting for the low 56% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. I thought the acting was good, especially within a few scenes where DiCaprio goes off the deep end due to his frustration with all the insane people around him, who “just don’t seem to get it’.

I rank this movie a solid 75% for the star power and acting and the very unusual idea behind all of this. This is also one of those movies (and I personally hate this) that is not over when you think its supposed to be over – well into the end of the credits. Why is this a new trend in movies? Who wants to sit through credits just in case there is something extra at the very very end? Also for those who may have heard that Merrill Streep has a nude scene at the end, I read that this is a body double. Despite this, I thought this nude scene idea was too over the top.

Movie Review: Matrix Resurrections

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One can only imagine the chatter and comments from people leaving the theater after seeing the new “Matrix Resurrections”. “What did I just see”, “What was that about”, “Does anyone understand the plot of this mess?”, “Why did they make this 4th Matrix movie”, “No wonder Laurence Fishburne did not agree to make this film”, “Way to ruin a franchise”.

Anyone could easily argue that the Matrix movies represent the greatest science fiction idea in the history of movies. Released in 1999, the Matrix was ground breaking in many ways, with the action sequences, bullets that show their trajectory in slow motion. The machine and human world where human’s can plug into a software program and virtually live in an alternate universe, while in the real world they are used as batteries to power the machines. The 2nd and third Matrix movies were both released in 2003 and were solid sequels that should have ended this franchise for good. So why did they make this bad movie, that probably ruined this entire series? A stupid question – Because of the Money..

I have no idea what the plot or the reason for this movie was all about. Even the action scenes were low grade and nowhere near as good as the first 3 movies. You would think for long term profitability the producers would come up with an idea and a script that would not be this bad, just so they could keep the ball rolling a few more times. The whole 2 hour ride made no sense and in the theater I was in, most seats were empty, so word must have gotten out. Finally, trying to replace Laurence Fishburne with another actor that kind of looked like him, was the final bad mistake in this very bad film.

I agree with all the low ratings for this movie and recommend that it should be avoided.