Movie Review: Mickey 17


The Oscar winner for Best Picture 2019 was “Parasite”, a win that had more to do with something new, in this case having a movie made in South Korea and a South Korean director, Bong Joon Ho win two major awards. In 2019, two better films were passed over for best picture, “A Marriage Story”, and “The Irishman”.

Once a famous director wins an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, they have the power to write their own ticket to receive funding to produce any movie they want for years into the future. Too often, having the clout to fund and produce a new movie results in a horrible film. A great recent example of this is Francis Ford Coppola’s movie from last year “Megalopolis”, when Coppola spent 124 million dollars of his own money to produce one of the worst movies ever made.

While the new movie “Mikey 17” is not as bad as Megalopolis, it is bad enough to make any top ten list for one of the worst movies ever released. Starting with the insane logline: “In a futuristic world on another planet, an expendable worker on a colonization mission, dies many times and then is recreated using a 3D printing machine that can create clones of any human being”. What is the point of the main character Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, dying 17 times in a row, and then being recreated is never really explained in this story. There is another character in this film who appears several times dressed as a giant rooster – also never explained, even for those in the audience who have not fallen into a coma.

The entire film is about following Mickey Barnes as he falls victim and dies in one accident after another, and then winds up back again in the human cloning machine. The screenplay is nonsensical, disjoined, and largely makes no sense. Inside of 30 minutes, anyone watching this mess is looking at their watch, hoping for a quick end to this torture, which unfortunately is way too long at 2 hours and 17 minutes.

Other actors in this bad movie include Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette and I can only conclude that these well-known actors agreed to act in this movie for an opportunity to work with an Academy Award-winning director – Bong Joon Ho – and then forgot to read the screenplay he wrote.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are an insanely high 79%, that is all about the new trend in Hollywood where something never seen before, is more important than quality. My rating, only for some of the special effects is 20%, and a recommendation to run from this disaster of 2 hours.

Movie Review: Mafia Mamma


The problem with the new movie “Mafia Mamma” is that there is a very involved attempt to make a movie about a woman from the United States who has been appointed the head of a Mafia family in Italy funny, and almost all of these attempts fail miserably. There is nothing worse than sitting through 2 hours of a mostly bad movie, waiting for something to be funny and it never happens.

The respected actress Toni Collette, plays Kristen, an ordinary housewife who is sending her son off to college and is about to get divorced from her cheating husband who works at a local Starbucks. She gets a call from a woman in Italy and finds out that not only has her grandfather just died, but for some unknown (and this makes no sense) reason, he wants her to take over his Mafia business. Some of these ideas are good, unfortunately, any attempts at making this idea funny, almost always fail- the cardinal sin for any comedy movie – is that it is not funny.

Other problems with this film are some way too gross fight scenes where someones eye is removed with a high heel. This is way over the top for a violent action movie and has no place in any movie trying to be a comedy.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for Mafia Mamma is a very low 23%, with my rating around 35% and a solid pass on this one.

Movie Review: Dream Horse


Once again, the best movies are always based on true stories. The new movie “Dream Horse” starring Toni Collette and Damian Lewis is based on true story about the horse “Dream Alliance”, who was purchased by a group of ordinary people who lived in Wales some 20 years ago. Trained from birth by an alliance led by Jan Vokes (played by Collette) Dream Alliance eventually became a miracle horse. The movie Dream Horse is not quite at the level of two other great horse movies “Secretariat”, released in 2010 and Seabiscuit, released in 2003 – but it is still a very good horse movie.

What is good about this film is how it shows the ups and downs of the business of horse racing, always a very risky financial endeavor. In the country of Wales – the location of this story – horse racing is all about horses racing but also leaping over hurdles. In just about every race shown in this movie, a horse falls after jumping over a hurdle. My question was, why race horses like this, when the odds of injury and even death are so much higher than for normal horse racing? What does it prove to have a horse race with hurdles, rather than just a straight up race with no hurdles – especially considering the risk to the horses. The cost of the insurance of each horse is also much higher for the owners considering the dangers of jumping over so many dangerous obstacles. Considering the purchasing of the horse, paying the trainers and handlers in horse racing, turning a profit must be a very precarious business at best.

I thought the acting in this movie for both Collette and Lewis was very strong, with Jan Vokes, played by Collette an ordinary person working as a cashier with a very boring and depressing job, and Howard Davies, played by Damian Lewis, as down on his luck tax accountant. Just about everybody can relate to these two characters who are living average lives, but dream of so much more. I thought this aspect of the story, works the best in this film.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Dream Horse are a very high 89%, and I both agree with this rating and recommend this movie.