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Movie Review: The Color Purple

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Regarding decision-making within Hollywood production companies, it is interesting to analyze why some classic movies are remade and others are not or never will be. For the remake of “The Color Purple”, the idea is that this movie will be both a drama and a musical. In terms of the number and quality of the musical numbers in this 2-hour and 21-minute film, there were too many musical numbers, and several were too long. Fortunately, the music was not overwhelming enough to diminish the excellent story and acting performances. One number at the end with Celie played by Fantasia Barrino was powerful enough to be mentioned along with Jennifer Hudson‘s performance in Dream Girls, released in 2006. Barrino just might be nominated for best actress Oscar this year.

The The Color Purple is from the 1982 Novel, written by Alice Walker. This emotional story is about two young sisters Celie and Nettie, in the early 1900s, who are constantly abused by their father, including the rape of Celie. Then Celie has two children from her father who are later given away. For the rest of her life, Celie never knows if her children are living or dead. Celie is forced to marry a real lowlife named Mister played by Colman Domingo. One of the hardest things to sit through in any movie is watching the constant verbal and physical abuse of a human being. Both versions of The Color Purple have extreme examples of abuse of Celie by Mister in many scenes, with this version probably even worse than the original. Mister prevents Celie from ever receiving any letters from her sister Nettie for many years adding to the cruelty of Celie’s disgusting husband throughout this story. Like Whoopie Goldberg in the original movie, the Celie in this movie has her moment of revenge with Mister at a dinner, which was every bit as good as Goldberg’s performance. This is why we go to the movies, to see how we would all like life to work out, with the evil people in this world getting what they deserve in the end.

Other characters in this film include Sofia, played by Danielle Brooks, who plays the role originally played by Oprah Winfrey as a overweight and very tough woman, who when hit by anyone hits back hard. Her impressive performance almost steals this entire movie. Taraji P. Henson plays Shug Avery and has several musical performances that show she can both sing and act extremely well.

I thought the highly emotional ending and reunion with Celie, her sister and her two children was extremely well done, even better than the original, making for a very satisfying ending.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is a very high 87% and I agree with the critics this time around and recommend this film.


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Movie Review: The Boys in the Boat

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The new movie “The Boys in the Boat” is one of those all-time true sports stories that is based on a book, The Boys in the Boat, written by Daniel James Brown. Then a production company bought the rights to this story, producing this movie, directed by George Clooney. I think the main reason for the low Rotten Tomatoes score of only 58% is because of too many scenes of a rowing team competing and practicing, which is not visually interesting enough to create a memorable sports story. 

This is a story of a college rowing team from The University of Washington, that won the gold medal in the 1936 Berlin Olympics. This is the highly significant Olympics where the world’s fastest man Jessie Owens won the gold medal while Hitler looked on, hoping that Germany’s athletes would support his claim of the master race. This is a miracle sports story that involved 8 members of a rowing team who were extremely unlikely winners of any trip to the summer Olympics of 1936. All of the rowers were practically homeless victims of the Great Depression, several living in metal boxes within mud fields.

Due to a lack of clout, The University of Washington had to come up with five thousand dollars to finance the trip to Berlin, otherwise forfeiting their place to the University of Pennsylvania. I thought this was one of the most significant parts of this story, given that the team went on to win the Gold Medal.

The secondary story involving one of the rowers, Joe Rantz falling in love with another college student Joyce Simdars, was very done, but nothing we have all not seen before.

The main known actor in this film is Joel Edgerton who plays Al Ulbrickson, the coach of the rowing team. There are several typical well-done scenes of conflict and coaching in this story, but once again, making a memorable sports story about a rowing team is not an easy task, even considering the historical significance of winning a gold medal in Berlin Germany in front of Adolf Hitler, right before the start World War II.

I do not agree with the low 58% ratings for this film, with my rating a solid 75% and a recommendation, due to the acting and the historical significance of this story.

Movie Review: Ferrari

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The entire world has always known how dangerous sports car racing is. Over the decades the race cars that were used have slowly turned from suicide death traps into cars that have protective roll bars, better tires, fire protection, and parts that break apart to absorb the violent forces of a collision away from the driver. Unfortunately for many years before these common-sense improvements in race car safety, many drivers have died horribly and many accidents also included the deaths of spectators. One would think that given the extreme danger of this sport, especially during the decades of the 1940s-1970s governments would have stepped in and prevented the high speeds or regulated the safety of the cars. The race cars used in this movie were stupidly designed and have absolutely no head protection for the driver. It is hard to believe that anyone would ever drive cars like these at such high speeds.

The new movie “Ferrari” is mostly about car racing, but is more about the personal life of Enzo Ferrari, played by Adam Driver, who was the founder of the Ferrari car company. Enzo was married to Laura Ferrari, played by Penélope Cruz, and throughout most of their relationship Enzo had a mistress Lina Lardi played by Shailene Woodley and they had a son together. Most of this story had too much to do with the soap opera-like arguments between Enzo and Laura due to his cheating and the fact that their company was close to bankruptcy – relying on one big race to save the company.

Despite all of the flaws, the acting is outstanding, especially with Adam Driver and Penelope Cruz, who both deserve Oscar nominations for their acting – making the too-average script that much more disappointing. From the trailers I have seen and the buzz about this film, I was expecting a better movie.

I was not surprised by the low 73% Rotten Tomatoes and 6.7 IMDB ratings for this movie due to the concentration of too much on the soap opera story and not enough about car racing from the 1950s.