When the movie “Juno” was released in 2007 written by a stripper by the name of Diablo Cody who then won an academy award for best original screenplay – anyone who ever had ambitions of being a screenwriter took notice of this, because of the remote possibility of hitting a home run like Juno after writing a first screenplay. Diablo Cody writes real life – extremely well in Juno and now Tully.

The difference between her new movie Tully and Juno is that Juno was more of a comedy and Tully is more of a very serious real life look into – the reality of lower middle class life with 3 kids. Anyone who has ambitions of having a family with 3 or more kids should see this movie to realize that there is no nirvana. No magic bullet. Middle class life with kids and little money is hard, very hard. Middle class life with kids is about not having enough money, never getting enough sleep, never ending problems, weight gain for a long list of reasons, arguments, stress, frustrations and anger. Adding to all the problems facing Marlo, played by Charlize Theron, has is her learning disabled and autistic son ad this movie demonstrates these problems very well. Marlo’s husband is played by actor Ron Livingston who seems barely awake during most of this movie, surviving one day at a time, trying to get some sleep, like way too many people facing the reality of life, a job you hate and never enough money.

I thought Cody took some risks with this screenplay, creating the character of Tully, played by actress Mackenzie Davis who provides an interesting twist at the end of this story that many people might miss if they are not paying attention. I thought the risk with this part of the story was worth it but the payoff was not as satisfying as I would have liked it to be. That fact that its been 11 years since Juno was released and now Tully being Cody’s second very well reviewed mainstream movie – shows anybody who has tried to write a screenplay how difficult it is and how long the odds. You also have to admire the 50 pound weight gain that Theron put on to perform this role and its depressing look into the reality of being a lower middle class mother.

The ratings for Tully on Rotten Tomatoes are a very high 89% and for the most part I agree with this assessment but more in the 75% range. The acting of Theron and Davis is very good and carries most of the story and throughout this entire film, I never noticed anyone acting and the dialogue was as natural and real life in any movie that I can remember.

I thought Tully was very well done and I do recommend it.

One thing I did not know about this movie at first was that this is a 2 part story and the conclusion will be released next summer.

I had to admire the screenwriting involved with this huge movie because a writer or a team of writers had to come up with a story that had to include just about all the Marvel Comic characters from the last 15 years and even some new ones we have not seen before. The entire cast of the “Guardian’s of the Galaxy” are also in this film, adding even more of a challenge to fit everybody into this 2 1/2 hour movie. The story reminded me of many other Marvel movies in the past, somewhat complex and disjointed and the computerized special effects were as good as I have seen in all of the other movies like this. There is a giant battle at the end of this movie that was the most elaborate end of movie battle for a Marvel movie in recent memory and overall this film has all of the action and special effects that just about all fans of this franchise will appreciate. I did not like the ending however, because of the way it leaves the audience completely hanging and I thought that part could have been handled better. This movie left me wondering about the conclusion next year and thinking about the huge amount of money and the number of movies that have been generated all due to Marvel comic book characters. At this point it has to surpass even Star Wars.

I thought this was a good action movie, not a great one and I do recommend it.

With rare exception with some movies like Gladiator in 2000, Joaquin Phoenix has been making low budget art movies throughout his career. Most of this is admirable because its obvious that he is not interested in the money, only the art form of making movies. His new movie “You Were Never Really Here” is another example of one his art movies and this film is unusual in many ways including the story telling and the over the top method of showing flashbacks to explain the action and the main character’s abusive childhood.

Like the recent movie Traffik this film deals with the tragedy of human trafficking. Joaquin portrays a man whose job it is to find young girls who have been abducted and return them to their families. This story is about one abduction that becomes far more involved and violent than others he has done in the past, although the details on the reasons behind why all of this is happening is never explained. In other reviews I have done in this blog in the past, I have said several times that its one thing try something new but if that idea is too off the wall or doesn’t make sense, then this is not a movie I will review positively. You Were Never Really Here is pretty close to going off course but for the most part, the movie made sense and was not too strange to give a negative review.

I give a marginal recommendation to You Were Never Really Here.