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Movie Review: One Life

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The new movie “One Life” starring Anthony Hopkins as Sir Nicholas Winton is another World War II story that I am surprised has not been a major film in the past. Nicholas Winton was a young London broker who visited Prague Czechoslovakia in December 1938 right before the Nazis were about to invade and take over the country.

Winton took it upon himself to rescue hundreds of child refugees in Czechoslovakia from the extreme cold and the oncoming Nazi occupation. His plan was to send all of the children to safety in England, providing them shelter and whenever possible, foster homes. The logistical issues with trying to save the lives of so many Jewish children were overwhelming for Winton and his entire staff and very well depicted in this movie. Despite Winton’s efforts that saved hundreds of lives, he was still haunted by the children he could not save for most of his life.

Some 50 years later, A BBC show, “That’s Life” rescued Winton from his guilt and grief making him a national hero, later knighted by the Queen of England. The “That’s Life” TV show provided an impressive climax to this movie, where Winton stands up and sees an audience filled with the now adults that he saved as children. By saving so many children from the Nazis in 1938, hundreds of thousands of people and their descendants are alive today, only because of what Winton did in 1938. This film will remind everyone of the 1993 movie “Shindler’s List”, directed by Steven Speilberg.

Overall I thought this was a well-done historical movie about an important event during World War II. The acting was outstanding, including Anthony Hopkins, Lena Olin, Helena Bonham Carter, and Matilda Thorpe. My only issue with this movie is that on too many occasions, the film was too slow and boring in telling one of the most important stories of the beginning of World War II.

The second video below is the 60 Minutes story about Winton’s life and also shows the BBC television show, which is the climax of this excellent film.

This time around, I do agree with the high 89% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and do recommend this important historical film

Amazon Prime Movie Review: Road House

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In the entire history of Cable TV, the 1989 movie “Road House” has probably been telecast more than any other movie, despite the fact that the entire movie is not only bad, but ridiciulous. The ending included several scenes of murder by main character James Dalton, played by the late Patrick Swayze, one witnessed by his girlfriend Dr. Elizabeth Clay, played by Kelly Lynch. Then the abrupt ending included Dalton and his doctor girlfriend hugging in a lake. All is forgiven? No police or an arrest? This entire movie, while still bad, has become a major cult film and because of this ongoing popularity, now 35 years later, the remake with the new “Road House” on Amazon Prime has been released.

The good news is that unlike many other remakes of popular movies over the years, this one is probably more different than the original than any other remake I have ever seen. There are only a few scenes that are copied from the original with the main idea, a rich local man trying to take over the Road House bar mostly intact and Dalton has a girlfriend who is also a doctor.

Anyone has to admire the hard work and physical dedication of Jake Gyllenhaal who plays Dalton for getting into such extreme shape for this role along with the many fight scenes, that include several with MMA fighter Conor McGregor, who plays Max. From recent interviews, Gyllenhaal admitted that he and McGregor made full contact during several of the scenes, risking serious injury.

Due to the different and far more involved story of this new version, the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are correctly much higher than the original, 65% to 41%. Like the original version, the entire reason for watching a movie like this is for the fighting action with several fight scenes in this version more impressive than the first movie. As far as the acting, it was good for a movie of this quality with an ending that I thought was too convoluted for an overall movie idea this simple. The best scene in this movie was when Dalton beat up four men easily in the parking lot in front of the Road House bar and then, drove them to the hospital. This was a new and funny idea inside of an action movie like this one.

For fans of the original Road House, this new one is good enough to watch, once again, mostly for the action scenes. I agree with the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65% and recommend this film, for the die hard fans of the original.

Movie Review: Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire

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One would have thought, that the producers and owners of the Ghostbusters franchise that started in 1984 – 40 years ago, would have learned from the low ratings of the last movie “Ghostbusters: Afterlife”, released in late 2021 that it was time to try and save this franchise before it was too late. Unfortunately the latest, and hopefully last installment, “Ghostbusters: Frozen Empire” is even worse than the last film.

What is most tragic is that everybody knows that the first Ghostbusters movie and the second one, released in 1989 were both good movies. Given that the screenwriters and producers had two solid templates to work from, it makes no sense that the last two movies have been so bad. The first problem is that both these films are almost completely devoid of any humor, which is the number one reason why the first two movies worked so well. Bill Murray and Dan Akroyd were very funny in the first two installments, but in these last two sequels, Murray is rarely in either movie and both Akroyd and Murray are never funny. In the case of Akryod and Murray, the obvious solution would be to allow them to create their own lines using improvisation; this alone would have made this latest bad Ghostbusters movie much better.

The other problem is the scene-to-scene jumping without any connections between the last scene or enough explanation to satisfactorily describe why anything is happening. Another problem is that a great deal of these almost 2 hours are very boring and I remember looking at my watch too many times, hoping that this mostly bad experience would soon be over.

The cast includes the same actors from the last sequel, who are the relatives of Dr. Egon Spengler, played by the late Harold Ramis, including Paul Rudd, Carrie Coon, Finn Wolfhard, and Mckenna Grace, with new cast members Kumail Nanjiani and Patton Oswalt. For the second time in a row, the screenwriters and director once again made the normally excellent comedic actor Paul Rudd boring.

Due to the poor reviews in 2021 for the last Ghostbusters movie, I am surprised that they made a second attempt so soon. Most likely the producers thought that because of the guaranteed built in audience, this latest film will still make money, no matter how bad it is. Unfortunately they may be right about this, which is why so many bad sequels are made.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is a too high 46% with my rating only 20% and a big – miss this one and see the first two movies instead recommendation.