The writers of the comedy “Bad Moms” have done something that is very rare in my experience. They have made a life reality, namely the high stress, very often depressing and overwhelming true life of so many women and men in the real world and then tried and succeeded in making this funny. Even more impressive is that the writers of this movie Jon Lucas and Scott Moore are male and the writers of the 3 Hangover movies. One of best lines of this movie is where the main character, played very well by Mila Kunis says, “being a Mom is impossible” and you realize immediately whether or not you have kids or are a mother or father that this is true. It really is impossible, when you consider having to work for a living and all the stress and problems that come with every job, then the time constraints of PTA meetings, soccer practice, driving the kids to and from school, to the doctor, the dentist to a recital and then the potential of divorce along the way. This very funny movie addresses all of these things and does it extremely well. This film also makes some raunchy language and scenes funny which is something I have rarely seen in any comedies lately and most of the great lines in these scenes are delivered by Kathryn Hahn, who has never been funnier in any film I have seen her in.

The villain in this movie is played extremely well by Christina Applegate and she adds a tremendous amount​ of stress as the school bully to every mom in the middle school where she is the head of the PTA. Her presence is most of the time very funny, but her personality is based in reality as we can all think of bad people like this in our lives that make your day by day existence almost unbearable​. One example her bullying include a bake sale where she excludes just about every ingredient off the list of allowable foods. This is an over the top moment and it is an exaggeration,​ but it puts another spotlight on yet another unnecessary stress that is placed on overburdened moms every day by other people judging them in their private lives and on their jobs. Kunis also has another common problem in her part time job, a very annoying boss who expects everything from her even though she is a part-time​ worker who works only 3 days a week.

The point of this movie is that at a certain point a person can “take no more of this” and several moms played by Kunis, Hahn and Kristen Bell start to rebel and declare themselves “Bad Moms” to the ire of Applegate and her two friends played by Jada Pinkett Smith and Ann Mumolo, who seem to delight in terrorising and annoying every mother in the school. One solution is for Kunis’s character to run against Applegate for the head of the PTA which sets up the conclusion of this movie. As is typical​ of Hollywood films but unfortunately not real life, everything turns out fine in the end which for me did not take away anything from this very good comedy movie which I highly recommend.

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The movie “Jason Bourne” is one of the very few movies I can remember seeing where I thought it was going to be great and it wasn’t. This movie is not really even that good and at best it’s a stretch to call this movie even average. The entire film is mostly about one thing. Following Jason Bourne from city to city, building to building, alley to alley to cars, planes and then another new city where the CIA is able to find out his whereabouts using their sophisticated computers, face recognition software and cameras which seem to be everywhere in the world.

The movie opens up during some kind of a riot in a foreign country and Bourne is practicing his fighting skills competing in organized street fights. He then reunites with another CIA agency Nicki Parsons, played once again by Julia Stiles. Then for reasons not really explained they are both chased by other CIA agents trying to kill them and the quality of the night action is murky​ which is hard to follow because of the strange camera angles, darkness​ and too fast movement​ of the chasing of these two people in and out of dark alleys and streets. One can only wonder whether the producers meant to have the film look so bad in this part of the movie on purpose or it was just a very poorly shot action scene. The movie from this point on is just the camera following Bourne, played again by Matt Damon as he walks very quickly​ into and out of dark buildings and streets. The highly sophisticated fight scenes which were so great in all of the previous 3 films with Damon are missing in this version and what remains are shorter and more brutal fights without the high-level​ Karate skill that we all saw in the previous movies.

Alicia Vikander plays a new CIA agent for the first time and is one of the few bright spots in this movie where the lead character had almost no lines and had almost no real understandable or relatable story. Vikander has been in many movies lately, having recently won a Best Supporting Actress win for the “Danish Girl”, which is also reviewed in this blog. She is an up an coming movie star who will have a long and great acting career ahead of her.

This film ends in the city of Las Vegas with a giant series of car crashes on a Las Vegas highway. Even this huge scene had its problems once again because of the darkness​ and the erratically​ moving camera. In the end, Bourne fans will gain some additional information about Bourne’s past including his father and the possibility that maybe he will go back to the CIA in the future, clearly pointing to another movie in this series.

This movie is not that good because of all the reasons I mentioned and for that reason I cannot recommend it.

The movie Captain Fantastic asks the question of whether or not it’s possible to home-school and raise an entire family in the wilderness. At the end of this film, the answer to this question is both yes and no.  Like almost everything in life, no matter what you decide to do, there is an upside and very often an equal downside.  The children in this movie who range in age from 6 to about 18 are all extremely intelligent mainly because their parents brilliantly taught them just about everything. The older boy is so well educated he is able to get into just about all of the best Ivy League schools in the country, but the truth is that if all you know is just in books then you are missing something and you will have a very hard time fitting into the real world.

The idea to move into the woods with their family is because of the father played by Viggo Mortensen thought that he could help his wife with her bipolar mental disorder by getting her out of her law practice and into the wilderness. This seemed to work for a time but at the beginning of this film he finds out that she has committed suicide by slitting her wrists in the mental hospital she is in. Her husband and remaining six children are of course devastated but continue their Spartan life of constant education and exercise which even includes dangerous mountain climbing up the face of a mountain. This is one part of the wilderness life, along with learning how to fight with knives that could be considered child abuse.

When Mortensen’s wife dies he finds out from her father than he is not allowed to attend her funeral but like a true hippie and protester of everything that is considered normal and safe in the world, he decided to take his entire family to her funeral anyway, which causes great conflict between him and his wife’s mother and father. While at the funeral Mortensen’s tells the entire procession that his wife did not want to be buried, but instead she wanted to be cremated and flushed down a toilet! This revelation creates the ending part of the movie where the family intends to kidnap his dead wife’s body and grant her final wishes. After the funeral, his wife’s father played very well by Frank Langella tries to take the children from him, citing child abuse which is another conflict that creates the final act of this movie.

This film was filmed in the Pacific Northwest and some of the scenery that was shot is very impressive. The killing of a deer at the opening of this movie and some male frontal nudity from Mortensen are two rather disturbing scenes to sit through but overall, this movie is pretty average in terms of over the top scenes or dialogue. I do recommend this movie.