In 1993 a very good movie called “Point of No Return” was released starring Bridget Fonda, who has dropped out of the movie business in 2002, an unfortunate fact because she was a very good actress. The new movie “Red Sparrow” follows the exact same idea of Point of No Return. “A down and out woman is recruited to be an operative or a spy for their country and she is trained by her country using cruel tactics to turn her into a killer”. Unfortunately Red Sparrow is a very bad movie starring Jennifer Lawrence that has a mixed up disaster of a story that is impossible to follow. Rather than having a down and out woman recruited to be an operative, Lawrence plays a Russian Ballerina who breaks her leg, which in itself makes no sense because wouldn’t she have too much fame in Russia to be a Russian spy? It seemed to me as I suffered through this 2 plus hours of an insane plot that they hired 14 screenwriters to write this mess, threw the script on the floor and then slapped the pages back together, hoping that maybe when they cut the film it might somehow miraculously become a movie. No such luck.

I believe that the producers knew for sure that this movie would be a bomb while they were making it so they came up with an idea and with probably another few million dollars convinced Lawrence to do a nude scene, which is something she swore she would never do. There are also several sexual situations even during the training the operatives go through, which was another failed attempt by the producers help the box office. Then with every appearance on every talk show, they made sure that she mentioned the nude scene, in the hopes of saving this movie. Considering the low ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and how bad this movie is, I cannot believe that one nude scene will be enough to save this disastrous mess of screenwriting.

Do yourself a favor and skip this mess and see Point of No Return instead. That was a very good movie.

The reason why I admired this movie was because it was successful at creating something new, namely a farce that for the most part was funny enough and worked for most of the film, which in my experience is very rare. The story of this film I have never seen before. Four couples meet for normal game night and the following night one of their friends come up with a new game that involves someone being kidnapped and the couples have to find their location. Unfortunately, something very dangerous and real happens and for a while they all think they are playing a game never realizing they are in grave danger. All this comes off very well, with some amusing but not laugh out loud dialogue and physical comedy.

Game Night stars Rachel McAdams and Jason Bateman, and they are both funny and effective in their roles. This movie is both unusual and entertaining and I do recommend it.

Common sense is a fundamental “must have” within any screenplay. Common sense is the glue that holds a scene and ultimately an entire 100 page movie script together. Things have to make sense and people have to do what they would normally do within a situation, otherwise the entire story falls apart very quickly. Given all of this, where is the common sense in the movie “Annihilation”? There is an area within a swamp, somewhere in the United States where something they all call a “shimmer” has appeared. Over months and perhaps years scientists and soldiers have gone into the shimmer to find out what is happening inside and almost none of them have returned. If this is the case, then why did the government decide to send in 5 women to figure out the shimmer, rather than tanks and an army of 500 soldiers? For me, this is when the movie ended, because in real life a decision like this would never have been made. In another scene, after one of the women in Natalie Portman’s party is killed by some kind of alien bear, she goes off by herself to find out if she has really been killed and might somehow still be alive. No way something this stupid happens in real life. Another woman was just killed by a giant alien bear and now Portman’s character goes off by herself, not taking her 3 armed friends with her to see what happened? This is of course ridiculous.

The acting in this movie starring Natalie Portman and Jennifer Jason Leigh was good enough and the special effects were OK, despite the dark rainy environment. For me the scene at the end involving Portman’s husband did not add up, considering the story up to that point. Due to all of these problems, I cannot recommend this movie .