Movie Review: The Iron Claw


The first thing to admire about the new movie “The Iron Claw” is the months of working out and diet suppliments necessary for the two lead actors in this film Zac Efron who plays Kevin Von Erich and Jeremy Allen White who plays Kerry Von Erich to get into such massive physical shape. Hopefully none of this muscular growth was achieved using steriods.

As an in-demand actor, very often there is a good deal of hardship to endure including months of shooting in a bad location and physical endurance to make the movie. The problem with achieving extreme body change to act in a film is that once the movie is over, you have to get back to normal physical shape. If you have to gain or lose a great deal of weight, very often this can mean long-term damage to the body. Extreme examples of this include Robert De Niro in “Raging Bull”, 1980, and Christian Bale in “The Machinist”, 2004 – arguably the most extreme body transformation in movie history.

This movie is about the ridiculous sport of professional wrestling, which is popular only in certain parts of thie United States – even though everything that happens in the ring, is so obviously fake. The professional wrestling moves where one wrestler hits another wrestler in the head while stomping his foot, the throwing the other wrestler to the other end of the ring into the ropes have all been done for decades, and yet this continues to be an entertainment that makes money.

The subject of this movie is the Von Erich family who is one of the most popular wrestling families in history. This family traveled around the middle parts of the United States to small wrestling arenas for decades, trying to earn a living within an insane sport, that is all about fakery.

This is a depressing movie in every way, starting with the main reason why this entire family was cursed, the father of the four brothers Fritz Von Erich, played by Holt McCallany. Fritz was a cruel and abusive father to all of his sons, forcing them into the horrendous profession of wrestling. Fritz frequently pitted one son against the other, causing physical and psychological damage to all four of them. Along with the injuries during the wrestling matches, several suicides added to the belief that this family was cursed.

This movie also stars Maura Tierney as Doris Von Erich, the long suffereing wife of Fritz Von Erich, who had to endure years of tragedies and funerals all because of an abusive husband and an idiotic sport. Lily James is also a standout as Pam, Kevin Von Erich’s wife.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is too high 87%, with my rating around 75%, and a recommendation mainly for the acting and the hard work it took for the 2 lead actors to play these roles.

Movie Review: Anyone But You


The good news about the new movie “Anyone But You” is that it covers an important area of relationships that I have rarely seen addressed in any film. From the beginning this story is about the fear of getting hurt, previous relationship dissapointment and painful breakups. What human beings do to avoid getting hurt to save their ego and most importantly, how relationship misunderstandings (that are very often easily fixed) can ruin a rare chance in our lifetimes, in finding true love.

Anyone But You stars Sydney Sweeney as Bea and Glen Powell as Ben, who meet at a Starbucks and almost immediately find out that they are extremely attracted to each other. Unfortunately after a one night stand, life steps in, as it often does, and things to do not progress as it should have – due to the fear that Bea experiences due to a previous breakup and subsequent misunderstandings that could have been avoided. How often in life is something as great as true love destroyed due to something that is overheard, or misunderstood that prevents two people from finding love in their lifetimes.

The rest of this story is more about a typical romantic comedy where too many of the comedic events and dialogue fall flat. Through a series of unlikely coincidences, Ben and Bea find themselves attending a wedding in Austrailia with common friend. While in Austrailia a series of crazy events start, and Ben and Bea try to fool all their friends and family members trying to convince them that they are in fact a couple, when they are at odds with each other. They do this to try and stop their friends from interfering in their lives. Most of this fails to be funny or even entertaining too much of the time.

What does work is the chemistry between Ben and Bea with Sydney Sweeney stealing this movie with her rare and exceptional movie star looks that might just make her a major and in demand movie actress in the future.

There is a scene that involves a spider and nudity with Glen Powell’s character that was an all too obvious attempt at bringing in more movie goers with a gratutious nude scene, and an attempt at crude humor that fails miserably. This spider scene was all about saving the box office that is most likely to be a failure with the main reason being once again, the bad screenplay. The idea with this scene is to add it to the movie trailer to “trick the wrong people” into attending a movie that could have been much better had a good screenplay been written.

I also thought that the ending was rather ridiculous, invoving a helicopter to try and avoid anything that might have been thought of as “seen this before”. Understandably for all of these obvious reasons, the Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is a low 58% with my rating at 70% and a recommendation, only because of Sydney Sweeny who just might have found her inroad into becomming a significant movie actress.

Movie Review: Maestro


The new movie “Maestro” is one of those end-of-year movies that you know as soon as the film starts will have a great chance to win the best picture Oscar. For this movie, the quality of the cinematography and especially the amazing makeup making actor Bradley Cooper look exactly like the subject of this good biography – Leonard Bernstein are both huge standouts. The first half of this movie is in black and white and looks a great deal like movies that were made in the 1930s and 40s. The second half of this film is in color, and this reminded me of the famous movie “The Wizard of Oz”, which was released in 1939, that also started out in black and white and finished in color.

The acting is also outstanding throughout, including Bradley Cooper who both co-wrote and directed this movie as well as starring Leonard Bernstein and Carey Mulligan who plays Bernstein’s long-suffering wife Felicia Montealegre. Throughout the relationship between Montealegre and Bernstein, Bernstein was constantly cheating on her with numerous other men. Over a long period and so many affairs, this story does a good job of showing how much all of this cheating was affecting Felicia. Standup comedian Sarah Silverman has a short but very good cameo as Bernstein’s sister Shirley Bernstein.

The only problem with this film is that there is really no sequential story, just a series of scenes, some connected but most not connected. This lack of a sequential story might have been by design, along with the black and white then color idea, but for any film to hit a home run, there always must be a contiguous story. Otherwise, for some important reasons, the story becomes more of a documentary than a movie biography of Leonard Bernstein. I also thought there should have been many more scenes of Bernstein’s musical genius and conducting and less of the soap opera aspects of Bernstein’s life.

I agree with the only good rating of 81% on Rotten Tomatoes, mainly due to the screenplay and the lack of a sequential story that ultimately might prevent this film from winning the Best Picture Oscar. I do recommend this movie, mainly for the outstanding acting and the great makeup work on Bradley Cooper, which has to be a 100% guarantee for an Oscar.