The new movie “Greyhound:, starring Tom Hanks was originally scheduled to be released to movie theaters, but due to the Pandemic, it is only available on Apple+ streaming service. Greyhound is a Naval war movie starring Tom Hanks, and his performance reminded me of his incredible performance in “Saving Private Ryan”, released in 1998 – arguably the greatest war movie ever made – and arguably the greatest performance in Tom Hanks impressive career.

The events of this film are fiction, based on the book “The Good Shepherd” by C.S. Forester. The screenplay for this movie was written by both Tom Hanks and C.S Forester. During World War 2, in the battle of the Atlantic, “3500 ships were lost carrying millions of tons of cargo were sunk and 72,200 souls were lost”.

From the start, the commander of a battle ship, Captain Earnest Krause, played by Hanks is in charge of the protection a crowd of freighter ships in the North Atlantic in 1942 from German U-boats. What impressed me the most about the constant danger throughout the start-to-end battle within this story, was the complex maneuvering and the barking of orders from Captain Krause, where one small misstep could cost the lives of everybody on board of the battleship he commands. Krause’s ship is surrounded by submarines, and other German battleships involving excellent special effects within very choppy ocean water. There are at least 3 almost collisions with Krause’s battleship and other ships as Krause tries to avoid the constant attacks by the enemy.

Most unusual about this entire movie is that there is really no story, instead just a series of non stop events in the life of a battleship and its crew during a high point of the Naval battles in the North Atlantic in 1942.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are only about 76% and my rating is more in the 90% range, mostly because of the special effects and Tom Hanks performance. I highly recommend Greyhound as one of the best Naval War movies ever made. See the Greyhound WW2 movie trailer below.

Since the release of Hamilton on the new Disney+ streaming service on July 3, 2020 one would have to guess that there has been a huge increase in subscribers, at least for one month.

Even for those who hate musicals, and I am one of those people, you cannot help but admire the enormous amount of work the creator of Hamilton, Lin Manuel Miranda, put into composing so much music and rhythmic dialogue for a production that is over 2 12 hours long. Then add all the singing and rapping of so many words that the entire cast had to memorize for so many musical numbers in this long production. Years ago, nobody would have guessed that someone could make an entire musical from the life of Alexander Hamilton who lived from January 11, 1755 – July 12, 1804. At its peak, Hamilton was the most attended and popular musicals in the world.

This movie, that is only available on the Disney+ service is a recording of a Broadway performance in June 2016 at the Richard Rogers theater. It plays exactly like you are sitting in the audience, watching a Broadway play. Ever aspect of the production is excellent and I agree with the very high 99% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes. For me the standout performance was the actor who played King George, Jonathan Groff. He was both an excellent singer and very funny during all of his standout musical appearances. The entire rest of the cast, especially Miranda were all outstanding.

Hamilton is a must see, for the high level of acting, music and production.

The new on demand movie “Irresistible” is both written and directed by John Stewart, and my first question is, why is this movie even called Irresistible? This title makes no sense, considering what this movie is about. The story of Irresistible is about the political process in this country, that is all about raising money and back stabbing and bad mouthing the other side. Its about the system being broken and is all about money and not about changing things for the better. The problem here is that the point of this film is lost in Stewart’s attempts to be different and because of this, most of this entire film does not make any sense.

First of all, why would a high level political operative, Gary Zimmer (played by Steve Carell), who works in Washington D.C. ever care about a small town Mayoral race in Wisconsin? This would never happen, so why not make Zimmer more local to Wisconsin?

The movie starts with Zimmer seeing a speech during town hall of a former army Colonel Jack Hastings, played by Chris Cooper and because of this one speech, Zimmer believes he would be a great candidate for mayor of a small conservative town in Wisconsin. What follows are mostly unfunny and disjointed scenes of a political campaign and even a trip to New York City to get funding for this mayoral race, in what turns out to be millions of dollars. Why would rich people in New York City give a great deal of money to fund a mayoral campaign for a small town in Wisconsin? There are several other scenes in this movie that looked like Stewart was trying too hard to be different, including one scene where an injured army veteran was dressed up and talked like a robot, because of his many strokes. I thought this was not only unfunny, but in very bad taste. The campaign manager Faith Brewster for the current mayor, played by Rose Byrne has an ongoing love hate relationship with Zimmer, and most of their scenes also fail pretty badly and are never funny.

The ending included the conclusion of an ongoing scam with the town, that did not work and was completely implausible. The ending is another attempt by Stewart to try something different that also failed. I had the feeling throughout watching this film that any new screenwriter would never get this screenplay made into a movie because it was just not strong enough. Only because of John Stewart’s clout was this movie pushed forward and financed.

My other question is that why are these on demand first run movies so expensive to buy at $19.99? You would think that because the movie has no distribution costs that it would be cheaper to make. Perhaps the producers believe that the only way to recoup enough money is to charge a ridiculously high price for a movie you can see in your home. Given that Irresistible is not a good movie, paying 19.99 is even more annoying for all who will see this film.

I agree with the very low 42% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and recommend this movie should be avoided to save the $19.99. John Stewart is very funny as a talk show host and a talented comedian and it must be hard for him to get all of these bad reviews. Sometimes it is better to not make a bad movie rather than produce something just to try and stay relevant in Hollywood.