The new movie “Jojo Rabbit” will be a mystery to most people. Why it was made? What is the point? How can anyone think that anything to do with Hitler or Hitler youth could ever be considered a farce or even remotely funny? Why is Scarlett Johansson or Sam Rockwell in this horrendous mess? Most importantly, why are the critical ratings as high as 79%? None of this makes any sense and for me as an avid moviegoer, I could not wait for this horrible waste of 2 hours to finally be over. Sitting through this disaster was hard to do, and for much of the 2 hours it was very hard to not leave early.
My theory about the positive critical reviews is that this movie is very different than any other movie, with a young German boy being followed around by a muse who looks like Hitler, with a teenage Jewish girl living in a closet in his house. What is interesting about this story or even remotely entertaining? This entire idea is different bad and never different good.
Despite the positive reviews of Jojo Rabbit this movie should be avoided at all costs and my rating is only 10%. Run from this mess of 2 hours.
The new movie “Midway” by director Roland Emmerich is not a remake of the original “Midway”, released in 1976, that starred Henry Fonda and Charlton Heston. This film provides a new perspective of arguably one of the most complex and significant war battles in human history. After the Japanese attacked Pearl Harbor in December 7, 1941, the Japanese had 9 Air Craft Carriers to our 3. The Japanese had many more and higher quality planes and battleships that the United States had. After Pearl Harbor, the Japanese had a huge Naval advantage over the United States and only because of Army intelligence, right decisions of a few people and luck, the United States was able to win Midway and ultimately the war in the Pacific.
At the center of this story about a great moment in history, was Army intelligence led by Rear Admiral Edwin Layton, played by Patrick Wilson. Only due Layton’s and collaboration with a brilliant code breaker, Joseph Rochefort, the United States was able to outwit and out guess the Japanese.
As with the 1976 version of Midway and and “Tora Tora Tora”, released in 1970, this new version does a very good job of explaining the complex chess game of strategy that both sides faced from June 4-7, 1942. The logistics of being able to arm planes with torpedo’s to bomb the enemy Air Craft Carriers and Battleships, or stay nearby the carrier to defend from enemy bombers became a complex game of chicken and for Midway, the United States made more correct decisions and was more lucky than the Japanese, who lost 4 Carriers to our one, “The Yorktown”. The Japanese also lost 3057 men and the US casualties were 307.
I thought the special effects of showing the aerial battles and most importantly the dive bombing was outstanding. One can only wonder how any human being flying an airplane built in the 1940’s can aim this machine at a 75 degree angle straight into enemy fire and land a torpedo on the deck of an Air Craft Carrier and then pull away is hard to believe was even possible. Considering the number of guns aimed right at the pilot and co-pilot, it is a miracle that any of the planes that made such courageous dives into certain death ever made it through to drop the payload.
I thought the acting was very good throughout this film that included several known actors, including: Aaron Eckhart, Nick Jonas, Dennis Quaid, Woody Harrelson and Mandy Moore. As far as the low 36% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes, the special effects alone, should give this film at least a 75% rating with another 10% for great story telling about an extremely important moment in world history. Once again, the critics are wrong, and I highly recommend Midway.
What is more interesting than the new film, “Motherless Brooklyn”, directed by Edward Norton, is the 20 year timeline on how this film was finally made.
This story all started in 1999 when Edward Norton purchased the rights to Jonathan Lethem’s novel Motherless Brooklyn. It was first decided to change the time of the film from 1999 to the 1950’s. Then 13 years went by until Edward Norton finally completed the writing of the script. Then another 2 years until 2014 until Norton decided to direct the movie himself. It then took another 4 years to finally start shooting this movie in February 2018 and within weeks on March 22, 2018 a fire broke out in one of the buildings used for production and a firefighter Michael R. Davidson of Engine 69 was killed in the fire. Production finally resumed over a week later, but there are outstanding lawsuits suing Norton’s production company that are still pending.
The point of all this is to remember that the road from idea to shooting, to end of production and then release of any movie can very often take many years, many millions of dollars and after all of this, the end result can be a movie like this one, that is both too long and too boring. Why so much time and effort was spent to make this film, that does not have enough of an interesting story, escapes me. This also escapes the critics who are giving this movie a very anemic 65% rating on Rotten Tomatoes, a number that I unfortunately agree with.
This story is about political corruption in Brooklyn in the 1950’s and one of the most impressive things about this film is the attention to detail, with every parked car on every road filmed a car from the 1940’s or 1950’s, then add the period clothing and then set design and the budget for this film that looks like it might barely break even must have been very high. Another tell tale sign of a movie that will no do well, is the small number of theaters in my area that show this movie.
I thought the acting in this movie was good, regardless of the problems. Starring Edward Norton as a private investigator who has a severe case of Tourette’s Syndrome, Bruce Willis who has a small part in the beginning, and Alec Baldwin who has some very good scenes at the end of this film. It seemed to me that introducing Tourette’s, was not only unnecessary but perhaps an idea to make a long and mostly boring movie more interesting. For me, this did not work, and neither do the 25 or so episodes of Tourette’s by Norton’s character. I can only wonder how Edward Norton feels after spending so many years trying to get this movie to theaters only to have below average ratings after so much effort for so long. That is the movie business in a nutshell, perhaps the most difficult and most risky business in the world.
Due to the mostly boring and too long story, I agree with the critics this time and do not recommend this movie.
