Tag Archives: Michael Keaton

Movie Review: Goodrich

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , • Leave a comment

There is a well-known screenwriting paradigm known as the Three-Act Structure, which states that a screenplay has three acts. The first act sets up the characters and the main part of the story. The second act creates a major conflict peak, which is resolved in the third and final act.

The new movie “Goodrich” starring Michael Keaton is one of the few films I have seen that violates this well-known screenwriting paradigm. The main character Andy Goodrich, played by Keaton, who owns an art gallery, wakes up to find out that his wife is in rehab and wants a divorce. The remainder of this story is about a long series of bad luck events, and problems with Andy’s 2 children including his daughter Grace with his previous wife, played by Mila Kunis. Then the Goodrich art gallery is failing and about to go bankrupt.

This major departure from what most would expect from a story like this is ultimately what is best about this movie. This story is about real life, not a movie where there might be a happy ending. This is not about the nice person who has been getting the worst of things and who finally triumphs over major obstacles. We want movies to work the happy way because the conflict resolution and the nice guy winning in the end is why so many millions of people go to the movies in the first place. All of us also know that this is not how real life works. Just because someone is nice and deserving does not mean things will ultimately work out for them. Life is a long series of conflicts and attempted resolutions with no guarantees of success. This one unique drama/comedy movie does a great job of showing a real-life story, not a generic Hollywood happy ending. This one fact and the excellent acting and story make this film a standout.

Other actors in this film are all very good in their roles, including Kevin Pollak who works in the art gallery, Andie MacDowell as Goodrich’s x-wife and Carmen Ejogo who plays the daughter of a famous late artist who betrays Andy. Hallie Meyers-Shyer, wrote and directed this film and produced a real-life, believable story.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Goodrich are way too low 68% with my rating a 85% rating and a solid recommendation.

Movie Review: Beetlejuice Beetlejuice

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

One small sign of imagination of the new movie “Beetlejuice Beetlejuice” is naming the sequel this way, which is also a reference to the fact that saying “Beetlejuice” three times, causes this living-dead-zombie creature played by Michael Keaton to appear. Hopefully, there will never be a third movie where they have this name repeated 3 times in the title – because what would happen then, the end of the world?

There is no sign of a movie here, just a series of disconnected scenes, showing dismembered dead bodies and a low number of appearances of the main character played by Keaton in any scenes, except for the end. There is nothing funny or entertaining and it is hard to understand why so many people like to see dead and dismembered zombies and think it’s funny or interesting. Disgusting is never funny. Never will be.

This film stars Catherine O’Hara as Delia, Jenna Ortega as Astrid, Willem Dafoe as Wolf, and Monica Bellucci as Delores, with actors Alec Baldwin and Geena Davis not appearing in this bad sequel, perhaps because they actually read this non-existent and very bad script.

Given that the original Beetlejuice came out in early 1989, it is impossible to believe that after so many years and ongoing discussions of a new film, that a screenplay this bad was written and then greenlighted. At the end of this very bad movie, there is an extremely weird and stupid musical number in a church performed by all of the main characters. This last scene made no sense, but nothing makes sense in this movie, starting with why they decided to produce it in the first place.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 77% for this mess is once again crazy and dead wrong, with my rating 10% only for some of the special effects. This movie would be better suited for training aspiring makeup artists. This level of horrible movie making should be skipped by everyone.

Movie Review: The Flash

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , , , • Leave a comment

All science fiction/action movies that involve time travel take the risk of creating a timeline and/or a storyline that has a high chance of becoming ridiculous very quickly. The case of the new Marvel movie “The Flash” is about a Marvel character who can move at the speed of light and can also run faster than the speed of light (not possible within any natural law of Physics). The Flash got his incredible speed from a combination of being struck by lightning while being drenched in toxic chemicals. An off the wall crazy idea that I thought should have come from a better explanation.

When the Flash, played by actor Ezra Miller, runs faster than the speed of light, he has the ability to go back in time. This is the part of this story that does not work because the time travel is way overdone and mostly makes no sense. The time travel within this story brings back superheroes from other times in history, including Christopher Reeve, and George Reeves as Superman, using archive footage, and even Ben Affleck, Michael Keaton (the original Batman from 1989), and Adam West, the original Television Batman from the 1960s. The main message within this movie about time travel and superheroes are that if you make even one tiny change in what has happened in the past, the entire universe can come to an end, with possibly no way of fixing this corruption of time. In this story, due to a tiny event involving a can of tomato sauce, Barry “The Flash’s” mother is killed and his father is falsely arrested for her murder. Undoing this injustice is the majority of the plot of this film.

This movie includes the addition of a new movie Super Girl, played by newcomer Sasha Calle, who makes her first appearance about 75% into this story. As with all Marvel action movies like this one, the special effects are once again spectacular with the same idea of CGI first, story refinement is always less important.

Overall the acting is good and there are some genuine moments of humor, but not quite enough to save this film for a recommendation. I agree with the low 66% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend The Flash.