Movie Review: Christy


The new movie “Christy,” starring Sydney Sweeney, is one of the very few movies about women and the sport of boxing. This story is about the boxing career of Christy Martin, who practically started the sport of women’s boxing in 1989. Martin’s career spanned 1989 to 2012 with a record of 49 wins, 7 losses and 3 draws. Martin fought in the undercard of the Mike Tyson undercard (Tyson vs. Bruno II), where her boxing match was the first women’s shown on a major pay-per-view.

Considering the physical challenges of making a boxing movie, including gaining 30 pounds and then having to lose all that weight, I was surprised that someone as relevant in the movie industry as Sweeney would take this role, considering that this is not a widely released big-budget movie.

Christy Martin’s maiden name is Christy Salters, and despite being gay she made the huge mistake of marrying her manager, James Martin, for all the wrong reasons, including worries about the press knowing that she was gay. Worse was that her marriage to her manager was extremely abusive, including a climactic incident where Christy was almost killed and somehow managed to survive multiple stab wounds and even being shot. After watching this scene in this movie, it is a miracle that Christy Martin is alive today.

The boxing scenes were mostly impressive, giving credit to the trainers and the hard work Sydney Sweeney put into making this film. The fight that happened between Martin and Laila Ali, when Martin was knocked out in the 4th round, appeared to be a fight that never should have been sanctioned by the boxing commission due to the 30-pound weight advantage that Ali had over Martin.

The low 66% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes are understandable because this movie comes off as too run-of-the-mill, seen this before, even though this is about a true story. For the hard work and good acting in this film, I give it a 72% rating and a marginal recommendation.

Apple TV Movie Review: Echo Valley


The new Apple TV movie “Echo Valley” is one of the few movies I have ever seen that explores the lengths a parent will go to protect and save their child. Echo Valley stars Sydney Sweeney as Claire Garretson and Julianne Moore as Kate Garretson in a story where Kate is desperately trying to save the life of Claire, who has fallen into drug use and is associating with dangerous criminals.

There are several well-played scenes of intense, high-emotion acting where Claire is begging Kate for money and lying about her reasons for needing the money, which is obviously to buy more drugs. Kate is divorced, lives on a horse farm, and has big money problems, even asking her ex-husband for money to fix the roof on her barn before it collapses.

The casting of two extreme criminal lowlifes for the parts of Jackie and Claire’s boyfriend Ryan was very well done, as these two actors both played and looked their parts perfectly. There is the standard movie trickery and sleight of hand in this story, which should be considered too outlandish to believe could ever happen. Far too often, it seems to be more important to fool the audience rather than come up with an original and coherent idea. I did like the ending, because it reminded me of one of the reasons we all go to the movies, because real life rarely has a satisfying ending where the evil people get what they deserve.

Due to reviews like this one on Rotten Tomatoes: “Strong performances are squandered on a sub-par script and characters who are too grating to feel a modicum of connection to.”, Dana Han-Klein, the average rating is only 51%. I am giving this film a mild recommendation with a 70% rating only because of the strong acting by both Sydney Sweeney and Julianne Moore.

Movie Review: Anyone But You


The good news about the new movie “Anyone But You” is that it covers an important area of relationships that I have rarely seen addressed in any film. From the beginning this story is about the fear of getting hurt, previous relationship dissapointment and painful breakups. What human beings do to avoid getting hurt to save their ego and most importantly, how relationship misunderstandings (that are very often easily fixed) can ruin a rare chance in our lifetimes, in finding true love.

Anyone But You stars Sydney Sweeney as Bea and Glen Powell as Ben, who meet at a Starbucks and almost immediately find out that they are extremely attracted to each other. Unfortunately after a one night stand, life steps in, as it often does, and things to do not progress as it should have – due to the fear that Bea experiences due to a previous breakup and subsequent misunderstandings that could have been avoided. How often in life is something as great as true love destroyed due to something that is overheard, or misunderstood that prevents two people from finding love in their lifetimes.

The rest of this story is more about a typical romantic comedy where too many of the comedic events and dialogue fall flat. Through a series of unlikely coincidences, Ben and Bea find themselves attending a wedding in Austrailia with common friend. While in Austrailia a series of crazy events start, and Ben and Bea try to fool all their friends and family members trying to convince them that they are in fact a couple, when they are at odds with each other. They do this to try and stop their friends from interfering in their lives. Most of this fails to be funny or even entertaining too much of the time.

What does work is the chemistry between Ben and Bea with Sydney Sweeney stealing this movie with her rare and exceptional movie star looks that might just make her a major and in demand movie actress in the future.

There is a scene that involves a spider and nudity with Glen Powell’s character that was an all too obvious attempt at bringing in more movie goers with a gratutious nude scene, and an attempt at crude humor that fails miserably. This spider scene was all about saving the box office that is most likely to be a failure with the main reason being once again, the bad screenplay. The idea with this scene is to add it to the movie trailer to “trick the wrong people” into attending a movie that could have been much better had a good screenplay been written.

I also thought that the ending was rather ridiculous, invoving a helicopter to try and avoid anything that might have been thought of as “seen this before”. Understandably for all of these obvious reasons, the Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is a low 58% with my rating at 70% and a recommendation, only because of Sydney Sweeny who just might have found her inroad into becomming a significant movie actress.