Category Archives: Drama

Movie Review: The Odyssey

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Regardless of anyone’s opinion of director and writer Christopher Nolan or his attempt to make this impossible movie, you have to admire the hard work, planning, and the 375 million dollar budget. For the first time in movie history, this film was shot using an IMAX camera 100% of the time. This required IMAX to make a new, lighter version, which weighed 300 pounds. The machine was so loud that it had to be put into an enclosure to mute the sound it makes. The original IMAX camera could not record sound, so workarounds had to be invented for this additional problem. Each scene had to be shot for three minutes at a time, so the actors had to freeze in place so that the film cartridge could be reloaded. Many of the scenes were filmed on the ocean, making all of the logistical problems even more challenging. For this film, the crew shot two million feet of IMAX film, over 91 days.

The star of this movie, Matt Damon (Odysseus), has said during interviews that this was by far the most difficult acting job he has ever taken. The main reason for this was that the majority of his scenes were about fighting in wars or soaking wet on a boat, constantly being doused with seawater. For someone worth 170 million dollars, going through six months of this level of hardship has to be respected. Other well-known actors in this movie include Robert Pattinson(Antinous), Elliot Page(Sinon), and Anne Hathaway, who plays Odysseus’ wife (Penelope).

This movie is based on “The Odyssey” (Homer), which is over 2700 years old. To try to make a movie based on a book this famous, based on Greek Mythology, Christopher Nolan had to have scenes that included a giant 60-foot Cyclops, an Ocean Whirlpool, a giant Trojan horse, and many scenes of death, almost all due to swordfighting. All of these insane scenes added more challenges to the cast and crew of this film. To create the 60-foot Cyclops, Nolan actually built a giant puppet, because he prefers to use a minimum of CGI in all of his movies.

The acting in this movie is very good throughout, and this film will, of course, be nominated for best picture and best director, with Matt Damon and Anne Hathaway nominated for best actor and best supporting actress. John Leguizamo (Eumaeus) is also likely to get a best supporting nomination for his excellent performance as an almost blind shepherd in this film.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a very high 96%, with my rating a not-as-high 90%, due to the slow and boring parts in this story and the too-long running time of 2 hours and 52 minutes. I give this film a solid recommendation.

Amazon Prime Series: Elle

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The movie “Legally Blonde” (2001) is one of the most popular and iconic movies of all time. Frequently on cable TV, during the entire 25 years since it was released. The original movie starred Reece Witherspoon as Elle Woods, a young woman who was rejected by her cruel and stupid boyfriend and tries to get into Harvard Law School to win him back.

One of the best parts of this very good movie is Elle’s resilience, which at first enabled her to start out badly at Harvard and then fight back to become a top student. Elle was so different than all the other Law students at Harvard, which caused a great deal of resentment from several egomaniac law students, angry that someone like this got into their school. This was yet another challenging problem that Elle had to overcome. Despite all the problems, Elle keeps her extremely positive personality and continues to wear pink, traveling almost everywhere with her tiny Chihuahua, Bruiser, and refusing to try to be like everybody else – just to fit in.

The most surprising thing about the new Amazon Prime Series “Elle” is that it took 25 years to come up with a great idea like this – following Elle’s life in the mid-1990’s while she was still in high school. The first task the producers of this eight-episode series did was casting Lexi Minetree as Elle Woods, as she is outstanding in this role, with her look, personality, and voice matching Reece Witherspoon’s perfectly.

The story has some similarities to the movie, where Elle’s father is forced to move from Los Angeles to Seattle due to a botched nose job within his plastic surgery business, forcing Elle to adapt to a Seattle High School where she is very different from every other student. Like the original movie, Elle has to overcome the hostility of many of the students, especially Kimberly (Chandler Kinney), who is nasty and cruel to Elle at every opportunity. Too much of this nastiness is overkill, especially towards someone as cute as Elle. Once arriving at this Seattle school, several different sub-stories allow Elle to eventually gain several friends, while never losing her own identity – including wearing pink outfits while everybody else wears dark, depressing grunge clothing. Over time, Elle forms new friendships with Liz (Gabrielle Policano), a gay young woman, along with Shannon (Danielle Chand), Miles (Jacob Moskovitz), and Dustin (Zac Looker). These friendships grow stronger as the series progresses, but not without many disagreements and conflicts along the way.

The main sub-story in this series involves the High School Principal(Matt Oberg) and the Dean of the school (James Van Der Beek) stealing money from the high school. Van Der Beek was in his final role during the latter stages of dying from colon cancer, and within the four episodes Van Der Beek appeared, it was difficult to see his extreme weight loss, while admiring his courage to continue working when he had such a short time to live.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this solid series is way too low at 53%, while my rating is 80%, and I strongly recommend this series.

Movie Review: Toy Story 5

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In November 1995, the groundbreaking Toy Story was released by Pixar, and it was the first ever 100% computer animated movie of all time. As the next 3 movies were released in 1999, 2010, and 2019, I have always been very impressed that the production team behind these great movies all realized that no amount of genius computer animation is going to be enough to cover up a bad screenplay. It makes no sense to spend many millions of dollars on top-notch computer animation for a bad story, so the quality of all the Toy Story movies has always been near the top of all animation films ever released.

For the 5th installment of this movie franchise, “Toy Story 5”, the central part of this story is a great one: “kids are no longer playing with toys, they are all on their cell phones or IPADs”. The main character in this story, Bonnie, a 7-year-old child, is having trouble making real friends, mainly due to kids spending too much time in front of screens. Then the gang of original toys, Woody (Tom Hanks), Buzz Lightyear (Tim Allen), and Jessie(Joan Cusack) come to the rescue. The problem with this very solid story idea that started out so well is that what follows is a way too convoluted, overly complicated series of about five parallel stories that no young child is ever going to be able to follow, much less any adult.

This movie looked like another one of those screenplays with too many screenwriters and not enough collaboration to meld all the ideas into a coherent, sequential story. I saw no reason to have so many stories running at once, with so many scenes switching back and forth for the entire two hours. After 31 years, unfortunately, this 5th installment in this important film series is mostly a miss, entirely due to a screenplay that should have been rewritten about ten more times.

One of the better reviews I have read about this film, written by Peter Bradshaw of the Guardian: “Meanwhile, Jessie, through a hugely convoluted plot complication that needs a rogue platoon of upgraded Buzzes to sort out, comes across a great kid called Blaze (Mykal-Michelle Harris), a real horse lover and toy enthusiast who lives on a farm and could make a great best friend for Bonnie.”

I was also surprised that the Jessie character, played by Joan Cusack, dominated this entire movie at about 80%. Woody and Buzz Lightyear do appear in this movie, but far too little, which is another mistake that will disappoint many fans of these original great characters. Once again, we are all reminded of how difficult the art of screenwriting is, even with a film franchise that has created some of the best stories we have ever seen in movie history.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 95% are way too high, with my rating at 80% and a recommendation for the most die-hard Toy Story fans and another recommendation to see any one of the first four movies instead.