For those of us who think that being a movie actor is some easy job where you can work a few months, make far more than 99% of most people and then take the rest of the year off – part of this is true. When this is not true is when you hear about the hardships of making the new movie “Adrift”, which is the true story of a young couple who decide to take a long trip on a yacht and then get hit with one of the worst hurricanes ever recorded – Hurricane Raymond in September 1983.

The problem with this movie is that many of the scenes of survival and being adrift in the ocean have been seen way too many times. To get around this, the story is told in well positioned flashbacks and some movie trickery that caught me by surprise. The special effects of the huge ocean waves hitting the boat were extremely well done, but after a while, despite all the well done flashbacks, what remains can be pretty boring over a 2 hour period.

Shailene Woodley is the star and producer of Adrift which is about a true story of a young couple and her characters 41 days at sea trying to survive. Considering the incredible ordeal facing Woodley in making this movie, I am surprised she took on the part considering the months of nausea for not only her, but everyone in the movie crew. There is nothing easy about filming anything in water and because of realism this movie was shot in the middle of the ocean.

Despite the good parts of this movie, I can give it only a marginal recommendation.

I may be wrong, but I think in the history of the entertainment industry there has probably never been a bigger deal than Disney buying the rights to the Star Wars franchise (Lucasfilm) for 4 billion dollars. When you pay 4 billion dollars for a popular movie franchise, you want your money back and so far this has been the problem with all the Star Wars films that have come out in recent years – at a rate of one a year. In all the previous Star Wars movies that have been released since the Lucas deal the problem has always been the story and the screenplay because this is the part that takes the longest and is the most difficult to create. The cost of special effects is so high that it seems that the producers and directors create a story to support the finished special effects that were based on nothing more than a story board. This is the backwards, Michael Bay method of making a movie and ultimately the biggest problem in almost all of the new Star Wars movies. Another issue is overexposure with too many Star Wars movies coming out – anything gets old when you see it too many times.

The new movie Solo is the story of Hans Solo – the part played in 4 Star Wars movies by Harrison Ford, plays like a chase-caper, with nothing special or interesting other than some revelations about the life of Hans Solo and his partner Chewbacca. This film is also too long, well over 2 hours – another problem because the story is boring within too many areas. I thought all of the acting was good, including Emilia Clarke, Woody Harrelson, Donald Glover and newcomer Alden Ehrenreich, but unfortunately this entire movie was special effects over good content, all the more disappointing considering the director is Ron Howard.

I recommend this movie only for very hard core Star Wars fanatics. For the rest of us who would rather see a compelling and interesting story, this one should be missed.

Someone should do a study to determine what was the worst book that made the most money and then spawned 2 more books and 3 movies. I would be very surprised if the 50 Shades of Grey series is not the all time winner for inept writing and movie making that made the most money in the history of the world. What now is even stranger is that the new movie “Book Club” might spark even more interest on this very bad book and movie franchise – making even more money for both the books and the movies. Even during the movie Book Club the 4 main characters in the film, played by Jane Fonda, Mark Steenburgen, Candice Bergen and Diane Keaton comment not only on how bad the book is, but that they were embarrassed even to hold it.

Considering that the first book in the series “50 Shades of Grey” was released in May 2011 and incredibly sold 125 million copies by June 2015 – its rather strange that a movie like this has come out now after so many years. One can only guess at the outrage and disbelief of so many talented authors in the world, who just could not believe that a book this bad could sell so many copies and make so much money. Go figure.

As far as the new movie Book Club, it is very similar to the format of so many multi-story Gary Marshall movies in the past, where one movie has several stories and all of them have a beginning, middle and end. The problem is, just about all of the stories are mundane and boring and none of the 4 stories contained any new idea. While watching this movie that starred 4 very viable but older female stars my guess is that all of them took their parts only to stay active in the very difficult field of acting, despite the very weak screenplay. We all know how difficult it is to get a movie role after a certain age, but in terms of quality this movie is at the low end of the scale – so I would have rejected this part just to save my reputation.

The movie Book Club should be skipped along with the 3 50 Shades Books and 3 very bad movies.