As I was sitting through the movie “X-Men Apocalypse” I was thinking about previous Marvel or other action movies I have seen in the past that have both a great story and script and great special effects. The second Spider-Man movie of a number of years ago comes to mind, but not many others. My theory on movies like this remains the same. Because of the huge size, budget and number of people involved with movies like this, it’s probably not possible to do anywhere near everything right and that starts with a great screenplay. The pressure to get things done within a certain period of time does not fit well with the extreme difficulty of coming up with a great story and screenplay. The computer graphics involved with a movie like this is always first and foremost, after that a great story will always be a secondary concern. As a great story idea, why not show why the antagonist in a film like this has the motivation to want to destroy the world, rather than showing him trying to destroy the world.

Jennifer Lawrence is in this X-Men movie and keeping her incredible streak alive of not only winning 2 Academy Awards by age 24 but also making a huge fortune starring in blockbusters like this one and the Hunger Games series and probably getting a percentage of the profits which for this movie will be a great deal of money. She has to be just about the most fortunate actresses at the youngest age of all time. Hugh Jackman also had a very small role in this film without one single line of dialogue as the Wolverine.

This movie is certainly better than the recent Superman Vs Batman movie that came out in April and Captain America Civil War of a few weeks ago and there are times of humor and great action sequences. However, due to the run of the mill nature of this movie that is so much like other X-Men movies with nothing really new, my recommendation is marginal at best.

Me Before You: A Novel (Movie Tie-In)

The trailers for the movie “Love and Friendship” were on TV frequently the last few weeks and considering this is a relatively small movie and one of the first to come out of Amazon Studios, the many advertisements I have seen in the past few weeks was surprising. Even more surprising was how bad I thought this movie was. The story was all over the place, and nothing more than a series of disjointed conversations with many different characters, so many in fact that when they were first introduced there was a caption underneath a still of their face telling their name and their relationships to other characters in the film. This movie was also supposed to be a comedy, but I saw nothing funny in this movie and nobody in the crowded theater I was in laughed, not even once. What is even more surprising here is that most of the reviews of this movie I have seen so far seem to be positive although one I found did admit that you would need a road map to follow the plot.

What is the good of creating a plot and so many characters and a story that is so hard to follow? On top of this, the 1800’s old English fast pace talking is very hard to hear much less understand. For the first time in a long time, I actually left this movie early, because I just could not stand to watch disjointed scene after scene any longer. About the only good line in the movie was from Kate Beckinsale when she responded about marriage lasting forever was “not in her experience”, which seemed like a reference to her latest impending divorce from director Len Wiseman . The rest of this movie is a total mess that is almost impossible to follow and annoying when you try to figure out what people are saying or why they are doing what they are doing, or who are the many new characters being introduced in every scene.

Do yourself a favor and run from this movie.

It’s a 10 Miracle Leave-In Product, 10-Ounce Bottle

There is nothing better than a great movie that is based on a great real life story. In all my years of movie going, I cannot remember a better story than the movie “Erin Brockovich” which came out in the year 2000. The story behind the life of the woman Erin Brockovich , who was a divorced single mother barely hanging on financially is an amazing Rocky – real life story.

The reality of an energy company , Pacific Gas and Electric poisoning the ground water of citizens in Hinkley California, then lying about it and then telling the people in Hinkley that the poison chromium is actually good for you, is an outrage and a crime that is unbelievable in the pursuit of greed and profits in the history of the United States. The resultant litigation and judgment of 333 million dollars was at the time the largest in US history and at the end of this movie, even though it was not disclosed, you just had to hope that every executive in that company went to jail for a very long period of time. I for one wondered while watching this great movie how people could sit in a conference room and care more about their paychecks and company profits than the health of so many people who lived in Hinkley. These people not only did not care, but they then lied to these people for years without any regard to the fact that many of these people and their children would die of any number of cancers and would also suffer birth defects.

Julia Roberts won the Oscar for best actress for this movie and it is by far the best role of her career. This entire movie was very well acted and the story extremely well told. If you have never seen the movie Erin Brockovich, you owe to yourself to see it.

Erin Brockovich – IMDB

The Life We Bury