It’s shocking and very depressing to realize that in this country in the year 2015 that some 38,000 people were killed in traffic accidents. People lose their parents, their children, close friends and relatives every day in accidents that are in most cases completely avoidable. In many of these cases, people are able to somehow move on with their lives but what if your one of the many who can’t move on? What if you are not able to ever recover from the death of your wife or your husband or the loss of your parents? What then? What do you do? How do you cope with an unrecoverable loss that can ruin your entire life because of a random car accident?

The aftermath of a tragic car accident where a wife is killed, leaving her badly injured husband and young daughter is what this movie is mostly about. This is a very difficult story that is rarely a story line of any movies over the years and this film does it so well that it should be nominated for an academy award. This film also has the extreme contrasts of human traits and emotions: namely the strong bond and love between a father and daughter trying desperately to overcome the loss of her mother and his wife which increased their bond, along with the other extremes of selfishness and cruelty of his wife’s sister and husband who try to take his daughter away from him. The custody battle causes Crowe’s character extreme financial hardship and even more angst and stress after his wife’s death. Aside from Crowe’s overwhelming grief over his wife dying he also sustained some major medical problems after the car accident that killed his wife, including violent seizures which caused him to have to leave his daughter with his wife’s sister and husband so he could seek treatment for 7 months. One telling scene was a call from his lawyer requesting a 25,000 dollar retainer fee so Crowe could keep his own daughter from being taken away from him which was another injustice Crowes character had to endure. The cruelty and injustice of life are consistently and depressingly depicted in this movie throughout, reminding us all of life’s many pitfalls. What was worse is that fact that Crowe’s character is a struggling novelist who is running out of money due to bad recent book sales and is another additional reason why his relatives are trying to take his daughter away from him.

In my many years of seeing many movies, I cannot remember seeing an out of the mainstream, low budget movie release with this many A-list actors. “Fathers and Daughters” has 3 academy award winning actors: Russel Crowe, Jane Fonda and Octavia Spencer. Amanda Seyfried plays Russel Crowe’s daughter in one of her best ever performances. Aaron Paul does an outstanding job in playing Seyfried’s boyfriend and Diane Krueger is excellent playing the bereaved sister of Crowe’s wife and Bruce Greenwood as her husband. This movie has seven A list actors and was still not released as a mainstream movie which is something I have never seen before. Perhaps it was because they didn’t find room to release this movie because of all the summer blockbusters. This movie was also made in 2015 so maybe it didn’t test well enough to be considered for a December 2015 release. In my opinion, this movie is as good as any drama I have seen in quite some time and is worthy of an Academy Award nomination for the acting performances and a very well told story.

Russel Crowe has is as good as I have ever seen him as the lead actor in this film and his young daughter played so well by Kyle Rogers that some of the emotional father and daughter moments of grief were very hard to watch because the scenes between the two of them were so believable. Kyle also starred in the movie Miracles from Heaven which is also reviewed in this blog. Amanda Seyfried was outstanding as Crowe’s daughter in her adult years and the side story was that because of her grief she was unable to have any kind of a normal adult relationship because of her fear of losing another person she loved. She also was a psychologist specializing in helping children which was another outlet during her life for her extreme grief and love of her father.

This movie is outstanding and a must see for anyone who appreciates great acting and a great story.

This is a movie about an unknown but important person in history who lived during the Civil War, Newton Knight. The story behind this film right from the start reminds all of us who live in this country how horrible the Civil War was and how difficult it was after the Civil War for this country to get past those horrible years where Americans killed other Americans.

The opening scene of “The Free State of Jones” depicts a Civil War battle and demonstrates the stupidity of how they use to fight in the 1800’s, which was essentially a line of young men marching slowly into oncoming gunfire and cannon explosions to their death. There were tactical reasons for fighting like this in those days, starting with the inaccuracy of weapons in the 1800’s, but watching battles like this that are so stupid and barbaric can at times be extremely hard to watch. The good news is that after this initial scene there are not too many battle scenes like this in the rest of the film, although there is a scene in a field hospital and the cutting off of limbs and a great deal of blood. All movies about the Civil War have to include scenes like this because to exclude the reality of a horrible war disrespects the many tens of thousands of young men who gave their lives during the worst period in this countries history.

“Free State of Jones” was the name for a group of freed slaves and deserters that were started by Newton Knight that over time grew to a great number of people who defended themselves against a Confederate army that was trying to arrest them and hang them for desertion. Eventually, this organization took the name Jones which was the county in Mississippi where the organization started. At one time The Free State of Jones was considered a county with no country as both the Confederate and Union armies refused to recognize them. This movie also includes a back-story 85 years in the future where a great-grandson of Newton was fighting to have the state not prosecute him for marrying a white woman because he contained a small percentage of black blood due to Newton Knights union with a black woman many years earlier. It’s always disheartening to see in any movie about the history of this country, the extreme bigotry in the backward attitudes most especially in the south towards black people and interracial relationships.

Matthew McConaughey does an excellent job playing Newton Knight in this film and he might get an academy award nomination for this important Civil War story that most people never knew about. I highly recommend this film.

The movie “The Legend of Tarzan” violates a fundamental rule of action adventure movies. It was boring, very boring. This film has many flashbacks to different parts of the life of Tarzan as a boy, when he met Jane, where he became a member of a tribe of gorilla’s and other than this, the entire movie was about Jane played by Margot Robbie getting kidnapped by some wealthy gold smuggler​ played by Christoph​ Waltz and Tarzan played by Alexander Skarsgard and his friend, played by Samuel L. Jackson chasing after them. This is not a story or really a movie, it was a waste of 2 hours and special effects mostly involving the Gorilla’s. Anybody who sees this movie would agree that there should be much more to this movie and the viewer would have that opinion going in, mainly because of the trailers which make the film seem far more interesting. But it was not. This film was just plain boring and too long and should be missed.