When you win an Academy award, as the two main stars in the new movie “Love Hurts” have, what normally follows are money-making opportunities as a result of your Oscar. Unfortunately, Ke Huy Quan, who plays Marvin Gable – a real estate agent and former hitman, and Ariana DeBose, who plays another criminal, Rose Carlisle chose a weak script that is nothing more than a series of scenes that are excuses to show elaborate Karate action.
There is no visible and understandable storyline in this film, and having impressive and violent action scenes is not enough to cover all that is wrong with a film like this. This film also has x-NFL running back Marshawn Lynch in another movie-acting role and overall he looks like he has a future in the movie business. Marshawn plays King who is another hitman working for a criminal organization who has many violent fighting scenes mostly with Marvin – but not much else in terms of real acting in a movie.
The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this forgettable-seen-this-too-many times already is a correct and very low 23% and I agree with this rating and do not recommend this movie.
Standup comedian, actor, screenwriter, and director Amy Schumer has worked in the movie industry for many years. In her book, The Girl with the Lower Back Tattoo”, Schumer describes the incredible dues she has paid trying to be a stand-up comedian. Schumer’s dues are similar to the dues paid by Kevin Hart, described in his book “I Can’t Make This Up: Life Lessons” . Very few people would have the staying power to attempt to be a stand-up comedian in the United States, considering so many years of extreme hardship. The traveling, the low pay, the bombing, rude crowds, and ultimately the years when nothing happens – always close to being either very poor or homeless.
For the few who hit it big, like Kevin Hart and Amy Schumer, the rewards, fame, and money can be amazing, with Amy Schumer worth 45 million and Kevin Hart, 450 million. In recent years Schumer has been concentrating on her HULU Series “Life and Beth”, which was a very good series rated 89% on Rotten Tomatoes and less on her stand-up career.
Schumer has now written 4 movies, with the outstanding “Trainwreck”, (2015), “Snatched” (2017), and “I Feel Pretty” (2018), which were not nearly as funny as Trainwreck with a few laugh-out-loud moments. It has been seven years since Schumer has written another comedy screenplay, with her latest movie “Kinda Pregnant”. This time this new movie is only released on Netflix.
I thought Kinda Pregnant was not as good as Trainwreck, but had many very funny moments, with a premise about a jilted woman lying to the world about being pregnant, a rather far-fetched and risky but funny idea. The ridiculously low 17% Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is just about the most incorrect I have ever seen for a comedy movie, almost as if the critics have no idea what a funny movie is, or perhaps have a problem with Amy Schumer. Despite Schumer’s success, one can only imagine the shock that she experienced after reading the bad reviews on Rotten Tomatoes, considering the time and effort spent to create what is in fact a funny comedy movie.
This movie stars Schumer as Lainy Newton and Will Forte as Josh Lewis, who Lainy becomes involved with later in the story after her long-term boyfriend Dave played by Damon Wayans admits he would rather have a threesome, than ask her to marry him – setting up the entire premise of this story.
I thought this film was a high 85% and had many very funny moments, so rare in too many comedy movies in recent years. In this case, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes have never been more wrong and I give Kinda Pregnant a solid recommendation.
The new movie “Companion” is unusual because it is good at surprising the audience within the entire first third of the film. The surprise is a spoiler alert, any reader of this blog might want to stop reading now.
The two main characters of this movie are Josh, played by Jack Quaid (the son of Meg Ryan and Dennis Quaid), and Iris, played by Sophie Thatcher. It turns out that the relationship between these two people is not real because Iris is a Robot with impressive AI abilities and intelligence, making her as real as any human woman. There is a company that manufactures robots for lonely people, including a portable control panel that controls every aspect of the Robot’s behavior.
Iris and Josh are invited to the mansion of a wealthy friend, who might be a Russian criminal. Then this story mutates into a murder, chase scenes, gory and violent scenes all about the worst parts of humanity that all of us possess. All of the technology and action scenes are done very well, making what would have been a run-of-the-mill horror action movie into one that is memorable.
The Rotten Tomatoes average rating is a too high 95%, with my rating 80% and a solid recommendation.
A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies. 