While sitting through this bad movie, hoping it would end soon, I could not help wondering what “Suburbicon” was really all about. A black comedy satire about murdering your wife for insurance money or a commentary on bigotry within an all white Suburban community in the 1950’s where a young black family moves into an all white neighborhood and is terrorized by all of the white residents? When it was all finally over, I still didn’t know the answer to this question.

A movie that is trying to be a black comedy, a satire, and a commentary on race relations all at the same time is a very bad idea. Even more surprising was that the screenplay for this film was written by Joel and Ethan Coen, two of the best screenwriters of all time. I thought it was surprising that both Matt Damon and George Clooney read the script for this movie and still decided to make it. My guess is that Clooney and Damon just thought that because the Coen brothers wrote this bad script then it must be good. Very bad decision.

The ratings on Rottentomatoes for this movie are very low, only 26% and for IMDB only 4.7. These numbers are very low and this movie deserves these low ratings. This film is yet another very bad attempt to be very different with a screenplay and movie idea and in the end the most important thing is lost – actually entertaining the audience.

I thought this was a pretty bad movie and it should not be seen by anyone.

Once again, a Hollywood movie has been released that correlates to recent real life events. This movie is similar to Geostorm that is about curing extreme weather events that we have seen in this country during the last few months and “Only the Brave” is about wildfires and there have been huge deadly wildfires in Northern California in recent weeks. As I watched this movie, I wondered like most people, why anyone would ever want to risk their life doing this job to make a living. As was made very clear within this story many times, putting out forest fires is one of the most dangerous jobs in the entire world. Wild fires that occur in so many areas of this country move extremely quickly, change direction instantly and can kill someone is several different ways including burns, carbon dioxide poisoning, smoke inhalation and even suffocation.

“Only the Brave” is a real life story about the “Granite Mountain Hotshots” where 19 firefighters were killed when they were surrounded by a wildfire. Josh Brolin plays the administrator of the group and Jennifer Connely plays his wife. There are also very good side stories in this movie including a drug addict played by Miles Teller, who is invited to join the group, despite his addiction. I thought the acting and screenplay for this movie were outstanding.

I highly recommend Only the Brave.

Mark Felt: The Man Who Brought Down the White House is the story of Mark Felt, one of the leaders of the FBI in the 1960’s and 70’s, who was passed over to be director of the FBI and turned out to be the legendary “deep throat”, who along with the Washington Post and Woodward and Bernstein brought down the presidency of Richard Nixon.

What was very good about this movie was showing what Mark Felt went through, including some threats against his only daughter, the effect of being the main informant for the Watergate scandal and what that meant to his career in the FBI. Unfortunately this film was mostly too boring and too long to recommend. The cast, starring Liam Neeson and several other recognizable actors including Diane Lane who plays Felt’s wife was good, but not very memorable. Unfortunately I cannot recommend this film because of these reasons.