“Do you like puzzles?” This is the central question throughout this movie based on the complex story and while watching this 2-hour film you realize within the first 30 minutes that you are going to have to wait until the end of the movie before all the pieces of this story are fully resolved.

The movie “The Accountant” has a rather complex screenplay written by Bill Dubuque who also wrote the screenplay for the recent movie “The Judge”. The story of this film is told in unusual ways, mostly through flashbacks that span over a 30-year timeline that explain the life story of Christian Wolf (The Accountant), played by Ben Affleck who has Autism with a very high IQ. Because of the physical training his father put him and his brother through, due to his fears that his Autistic son would be abused in life, the Accountant develops outstanding karate skills as well as great ability with all kinds of firearms. He is also extremely gifted with numbers which leads to not only his profession as an accountant, but also to his eventual business of laundering money for criminal organizations. How he gets into this part of his professional life is not fully explained as are some other aspects of this story and most of the loose ends are tied up at the end of the movie – but not all of them, which creates a sense that you are missing something when the movie ends. I found this part of the storytelling a little bit frustrating because I still had some questions at the end.

In order to fully appreciate this movie, you have to buy into the fact that an extremely Autistic man is able to not only overcome this handicap; but also has incredible martial arts and skills with firearms as he kills about 15 people in this movie. Some of this is difficult to buy into but at least this movie is unique in that no action star in movie history has ever been Autistic. This is really the first physical action movie that Ben Affleck has ever starred in during this 20-year career in movies, unlike his best friend Matt Damon who has made several action movies, including the Bourne franchise and I thought he did a very convincing job with this role. In some ways, this film reminded me of Good Will Hunting which was the breakthrough film for both Affleck and Damon in 1997. The main similarity I noticed were when some of the scenes of extreme intelligence of Christian Wolf are demonstrated. In this movie, there are a series of scenes where Christian Wolf performs a massive forensic accounting investigation over a 15 year period for a Robotics company, whose CEO is played by John Lithgow. The fact that he does this in one day and is able to find several small complex random errors is extremely impressive and is just one demonstration of his very high IQ. This is the part of the film where Wolf befriends an employee of the Robotics company named Dana Cummings, played very well by Anna Kendrick and this collaboration leads to some violent conflict which is resolved at the end of the movie. The very end of this movie includes a scene which ties up the biggest question of the entire film, which is who is the computer voice that directs The Accountant through his accounting and violent confrontations? The answer to this was rather hard to believe although I did not consider it to be a deal-breaker type of flaw in the story. The Accountant is a very solid dramatic movie and I do recommend it.

Kevin Hart has always understood that great stand-up comedy is about rhythm and timing more than anything else. During his stand-up performance in the new movie “Kevin Hart: What Now” Hart demonstrates his deep understanding of comedy rhythm and also has a great rapport with his audience. Hart also understands that jokes have never really been that funny, what is funny are stories and situations that people can strongly relate to and Kevin Hart is the master of this kind of comedy.

Hart’s stand-up act which is the subject of this movie was filmed at a football stadium in Philadelphia in front of the largest audience in the history of stand-up comedy. Before the performance part of the movie started, there was a James Bond-like mini-movie with actress Hallie Berry that I thought was a good idea that mostly worked. The actor Don Cheadle also made an appearance in this part of the film as well and was pretty funny with his argument with Hart. There were several new ideas during the stand-up act that I thought also worked for the most part, including showing scenery on a giant screen behind Kevin Hart and displaying visual aids that even included phone texting messages that complimented what Hart was talking about during his act.

It is clear to me that Hart is more successful with this type of a movie more than some of the other movies he has made in the past, which for the most part have been pretty average. Overall this movie was good, but not great and not too much different than Hart’s four previous concert movies. For fans of Kevin Hart and fans of quality stand-up comedy, this movie is a must see event. There were several moments of solid laughs during Hart’s stand-up act but not too many that are laugh out loud funny. This concert film was a solid addition to Hart’s other comedy movies and I do recommend it.

For me, movies always remind me of what was happening in the world or my personal life at the time I first saw the movie. For the movie Castaway, it came out in late December 2000 and as for anyone who ever invested in the stock market, the year 2000 was a total disaster, except those who were only invested in bonds. For me, I will always be reminded of the horrible bear market that started in March 2000 and ended in October 2002 whenever I see the movie Castaway.

Over the years there have been actors who have sacrificed their health by either gaining or losing a great deal of weight for a movie. The most recent example of this was “Dallas Buyers Club”, where both Matthew McConaughey and Jared Leto lost a tremendous amount of weight to play their characters who were both dying of AIDS. On the one hand, I have always greatly admired the ability of anyone to starve themselves for so long just for a movie. As far as both of these actors, they deservedly won Academy Awards for their extreme sacrifice for the film, but I always wondered how anyone could justify perhaps permanently ruining their health or losing their life for a movie role? What if you get sick because you are so dangerously thin, especially in the case of McConaughey. Probably the first actor to do this was Robert Deniro in 1980 to make Raging Bull and he also won best actor for this role. Deniro gained a total of 60 pounds after being in perfect shape to play the boxer Jake Lamotta and I have heard during interviews that he was feeling very bad during the months of overeating. One has to wonder what is more damaging to your health; starving yourself or gaining a great deal of weight in a short period of time?

Tom Hanks is another example of an actor who first gained weight and then starved himself for the movie role for the movie Castaway, that came out in 2000. For a role like this, obviously, there is no workaround to look like a person who has been living alone on an island for years so Hanks had to starve himself for a long period of time to get ready for this part. Hanks was nominated for an Academy Award for this role and I felt he should have won, mainly because he carried the entire movie himself and then because of the extreme physical sacrifice he made for this movie. If you have not seen the movie Castaway, I highly recommend it.