Tag Archives: Florence Pugh

Movie Review: Thunderbolts

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There have been more than a few bad Marvel movies released in the last few years, most recently “Captain America: Brave New World” (2025) and “The Marvels” (2023). The release of the new Marvel movie “Thunderbolts” was an opportunity to greatly improve the quality of this franchise. Unfortunately, mainly due to the crazy and mostly boring screenplay, this movie cannot be considered a step in the right direction.

The story starts with the main Marvel characters Yelena Belova, played by Florence Pugh, Bucky Barnes played by Sebastian Stan, John Walker played by Wyatt Russell, Ava Starr played by Hannah John-Kamen and a new superhere they call “Bob”, played by Lewis Pullman all trapped in a warehouse, for the first 10-15% of this film. There is no real way to make scenes where several people are trapped in a large series of rooms – interesting, especially in a film that is supposed to be a superhero action movie.

We later find out that Bob has superpowers that greatly exceed the powers of all the other superheroes, and later Bob turns to the dark side and has evil forces that can send people into some other dimension. All this does create several scenes of extreme special effects, but not enough to cover what I thought was a surprisingly bad screenplay.

There are some good father-daughter scenes between Velena and her father, Alexiei Shostakov, played by David Harbour, but not enough to fix what could have been a far better screenplay.

I was surprised that Julia Louis-Dreyfus took the part of politician Valentina Allegra de Fontaine, after reading this script. She seems completely miscast in this role, regardless of the mostly ridiculous story.

I have no idea why the Rotten Tomatoes ratings are on average 88%, with the most accurate review from critic Jeffrey Harris:

“The film exemplifies how The Multiverse Saga constantly stumbles and fails to find its footing, with the entire narrative amounting to little more than a groan-inducing, bait-and-switch joke.”

Due to the many flaws, and mostly bad screenplay I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: We Live in Time

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The new movie “We Live in Time” can be seen as a tearjerker from a mile away. Like almost all movie tearjerkers, the story once again involves Cancer – in this case, stage 3 Ovarian Cancer. The difference with this film is how the story is told, through a series of “revolving flashbacks” in one of the most unusual ways I have ever seen a story unfold.

We Live in Time stars Andrew Garfield as Tobias and Florence Pugh as Almut, a married couple dealing with trying to have a child and Almut’s diagnosis of Cancer. They meet after Almut accidentally hits Tobias with her car while he is retrieving a pen so he can sign his divorce papers, definitely a new idea where two people meet for the first time. This story also includes Almut and Tobias’ attempts to conceive a child, which include trying IVF and their arguments that include Tobias wanting a child and Almut’s doubts that she ever wants to be a parent. The decision about Almut’s treatment is made by the couple early on to choose to live with quality rather than quantity to prolong Almut’s life despite her terminal Cancer diagnosis and months of chemotherapy treatment.

The secondary story involves Almut, who is a professional Chef, entering a Chef competition with her work partner which seemed to have more to do with making this film lasting a full two hours than any other reason.

The world is sick of hearing about Cancer, the scourge of humanity for many decades, and the only solutions being chemo therapy and removing body parts. Considering the money generated from Cancer treatment in the world, the odds are high that the medical profession does not want to cure cancer, for fear of losing trillions of dollars of revenue. This movie is another tear-jerker, but it was produced well enough to recommend.

I mostly agree with the 79% ratings for this film on Rotten Tomatoes and do recommend this movie due to the well told story and solid acting performances from Garfield and Pugh.

Movie Review: A Good Person

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One of the most remarkable things about the great new drama “A Good Person” is those movies that are of this high quality, normally come out at the end of the year, due to Academy Award consideration.

A Good Person, both written and directed by Zach Braff – in a normal movie world – that we are clearly not living in – is good enough to win the Academy Award this year for best picture with best actress for Florence Pugh, Best Actor for Morgan Freeman and best supporting actress for Molly Shannon. This is one of the best screenplays, stories, and acting that I have seen in a long time.

A Good Person is mostly about one thing – the accepted dark part of life that can happen to anyone alive. With some exceptions, most adults have to drive. They have jobs, errands, appointments, obligations, and in most of this country, with the exception of major cities, getting from point a to point b requires taking the risk of getting in your car and then on a highway or some smaller road and expecting that there will be no mishap during your trip. However, how many people die on this country’s roads every year? You can be the best driver in the world, with the best reflexes and someone is drunk, or texting, or falling asleep – and your life, or the life of someone else can be over in an instant. This is the way it is, something that we all accept as part of life, part of our reality. The entire story of A Good Person is about one such car accident tragedy, where the driver just looked away for an instant to look at the GPS on her phone, and due to a giant tractor shovel that went into her lane, she swerved and two of the passengers in her car were killed. The horrible truth is that this kind of nightmarish tragedy happens every day in this country.

There are some people who have the type of brain where they can rationalize that because the accident was really not their fault, they can move on, and get back to their normal life. For most of the rest of us, the replaying of the accident and the guilt over being the driver of the car where two of your passengers died, might drive you insane, for the rest of your life. The only solution for too many of us is to escape from reality, to run away, to numb ourselves with alcohol and opioids so we feel nothing. This is the main part of the story of this very good movie.

The opioid crisis in this country has been going on for many years, mainly because of the greed of the companies who create the drugs like Purdue Pharmaceutical (the subject of the great Hulu Series Dopesick) reviewed in this blog. People who are injured and in pain eventually become addicted to drugs like OxyContin, long after their pain is gone because they can no longer live without the drug and face their lives without chemical help.

The low Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 58% could just be the stupidest one yet. This movie is a solid 95%, with my highest recommendation.