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Movie Review: Young Woman and the Sea

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The new movie Young Woman and the Sea is another great historical movie about an important person and event that most people have never heard about.

Trudy Ederle was the first woman to swim across the English Channel, on August 6, 1926 – an extreme athletic achievement that over the last 100 years has killed 10 people. The distance between France and England is 21 miles, with an ocean that has severe waves, jellyfish, sharks, and in some areas unexploded mines from previous wars that were never removed. There are ocean shallows that are near the England coast where boats cannot follow the swimmer and in the case of this story, the swimmer can get lost very easily and drown. This dangerous problem of the ocean shallows near the coast of England provides an impressive emotional ending to this very good story.

This film stars Daisy Ridley as Trudy and follows her very unlikely life as the daughter of a butcher from Manhattan. Trudy’s interest in swimming came after a horrific boat accident in New York Harbor that burned and sank. 847 people died, most of them because they never learned how to swim. As Trudy’s interest in swimming grew she had to endure years of resistance from her father, and chauvinism because she was a female who wanted to swim in competition.

At age 19, in the 1924 Summer Olympics in Paris, Ederle won a gold medal as one of the members of 4×100 meter freestyle relay. Soon after she announced to her family that she wanted to swim the English Channel and unfortunately her coach for her first attempt sabotaged her swim, by giving her tea that made her sleep. Why he was not prosecuted for this, was never explained in this movie.

At the end of this film, it was mentioned – in the history of ticker tape parades in New York City, the one thrown for Ederle in 1926 still stands as the largest in history after she swam the English Channel.

Overall the acting in this film was outstanding, and like the recent “Nyad” starring Annette Benning – anyone seeing this movie has to admire what it took these actors to swim in the ocean to film these two impressive real-life stories.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this film is a high 84% with my rating 90% and a solid recommendation.

Movie Review: Ezra

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The story of the new movie “Ezra” about two separated parents trying to raise their Autistic child reminds everyone that raising a child with Autism requires extreme levels of patience and tolerance for loud screaming, erratic and sometimes dangerous behavior. The parents of Ezra, played by William A. Fitzgerald are played by real live couple Rose Byrne as Jenna and Bobby Cannavale as Max with
Robert De Niro playing Max’s father Stan.

The unusual part of this story is that Max is trying to make a living as a standup comedian in New York City, which is one of the reasons for the divorce of Max and Jenna, as well as their many disagreements about how to raise Ezra. I was surprised that most of the scenes of Max doing standup did not have enough funny moments to make him convincing as a standup comedian.

After a huge disagreement with a doctor over his prescribing drugs for Ezra, Max assaults the doctor in his office and he is arrested and jailed. Unfortunately the rest of the story is mostly about a road trip with Max taking taking Ezra across the country to escape the doctor’s diagnosis and then to Los Angeles and a surprise invitation to be on the Jimmy Kimmel show. It is this long road-show story that is where this screenplay mostly fails as it mutates into a series of sub stories as Max and Ezra encounter different situations during their trip. Max’s father Stan and his ex-wife Jenna drive across the country, trying to stop Max even putting out an Amber alert. There is an emotional scene between Stan and Max that is very well acted, but there are not nearly enough scenes like this to rescue what could have been a much better story about raising an Autistic child.

Actor Tony Goldwyn has a small part in this movie as Jenna’s boyfriend and also directed this movie. Whoopi Goldberg plays Jayne, Max’s agent in a surprisingly small part.

This film is another example of how difficult it is to write a great screenplay when you consider this could have been a great movie, but went down an incorrect path which is why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a low 69%. This story missed the mark in two many areas, and I do not recommend it, agreeing with the low critics reviews.

Netflix Movie Review: Atlas

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When does the desire to remain relevant in Hollywood start to be a bad idea after a defined number of bad movies made – mostly on Netflix over x number of years? It seems that Jennifer Lopez’s career is more about volume and less about quality and over time, this will eventually ruin anyone’s potential to make any new movie.

The latest Netflix release, “Atlas” is a robot-AI movie that is mostly about the main character named Atlas, played by Lopez, sitting in a robot transport similar to the ones used for the movie “Avatar”. Her character has conversations with the robot computer voice named Smith and fights other robots, for reasons that are not defined well enough.

The critics are in agreement about how bad this film is, giving it a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 17%, with one of the better reviews from Susan Granger of the SSG Syndicate: “What was Jennifer Lopez thinking when she agreed to star in this absurdly formulaic sci-fi action adventure? Did she even bother to read the cliched, derivative script?” Not bothering to read the script seems to be a new trend in Hollywood, with the other trend being, “better to make something bad, rather than nothing at all”. If you’re as wealthy as Lopez, then why make all of these bad streaming movies? Why not wait for something great or hire a great screenwriter to write something specifically for you, and then make a good movie instead?

Volume should never be respected more than quality, in any profession. The well-known phrase, “overstaying your welcome” has a great deal of meaning in this situation. A good example of an actress who never makes a bad movie, and waits for a quality production is actress Michelle Williams, who has been nominated for 5 Oscars, all of them for outstanding movies.

I was also surprised to see the great actor Sterling K. Brown in this bad movie, once again going for the money and not waiting for quality. Simu Liu is also in this film, playing an android robot.

I agree with the very low Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 17% and rate this movie a big pass.