Movies

[Rusty]

106 - Manchester by the Sea - 8.5/10 - Casey Affleck stars as a Massachusetts man named Lee whose brother dies and leaves him as guardian for his 16 year old nephew. Lee moved away from Manchester years before after a tragedy left him seriously messed up emotionally. Since then, he is unable to connect with people in a normal manner. He returns to Manchester to care for his nephew and his pain is pretty evident as he reconnects and gets to know his nephew again. A very good movie with excellent performance by Affleck and by Lucas Hedges.


107 - Moonlight - 8/10 - This movie is about a boy growing up in a tough situation who eventually has to come to terms with himself and who he is. It starts when Chiron is a boy living with his drug addict mother and picked on by a number of other boys. A drug dealer name Juan becomes friends with Chiron and looks out for him. The second part of the film jumps ahead a few years to when Chiron is in high school. Not much has changed about him and he is continually bullied by a few boys. He shows some feelings toward another boy named Kevin that he has been friends with for a long time, but is soon attacked. His life changes when he decides to retaliate. The final part of the film jumps ahead in time again to where Chiron is living in Atlanta selling drugs and he gets a call out of the blue from Kevin who is now a chef in Miami. The film is kind of sparse in its storytelling, but a lot gets left unsaid, but can be felt in the atmosphere and in the performances of the actors.


108 - Three Colors: White - 8/10 - The middle film in the Three Colors trilogy focuses on Karol, a Polish hairdresser married to a frenchwoman whose divorce is getting annulled by his wife because he was unable to consummate the marriage. Within a short span of time, he loses his wife, his money, his job and his home, leaving him to beg for money in the subway with only his suitcase for company. A fellow Pole notices him one day and helps him return home where he starts working on a plan to get money so that he can enact his revenge. It was a pretty good movie, though I still prefer Red, the final film in the trilogy.

[Rusty]

109 - Three Colors: Blue - 8/10 - The first part of the Three Colors trilogy starts with a car accident that kills a famous composer and his daughter, leaving behind a wife to deal with her grief for surviving the accident. The wife was secretly the composer or at least collaborator for the music, but now wants to dissociate herself from her former life, but eventually finds herself drawn back in. I'd place this movie between Red and White in terms of how much I liked it. It was very good.


110 - The Man Who Knew Infinity - 7.5/10 - This movie is a biography of Indian mathematician Srinivasa Ramanujan, who grew up in poverty in India, but eventually came to the attention of English mathematician G.H. Hardy and moved to England for several years. Unfortunately, he suffered from health problems and died at an early age. It was an interesting movie.

[Rusty]

111 - The Edge of Seventeen - 8/10 - Hailee Steinfeld plays a high school junior named Nadine who has been insecure her entire life, unlike her outgoing and popular twin brother. Nadine has had only one friend since 2nd grade, a girl named Krista, but Nadine's world gets shaken up even further when Krista starts dating Nadine's brother. The movie is a mess of insecurities from Nadine and also from her mother. There are also a number of scenes where Nadine spends her lunchtime venting to her history teacher, who doesn't often seem very sympathetic. The movie is pretty funny at time, but also painful at times and the actors did a very nice job. Woody Harrelson is funny as the history teacher.

[Rusty]

112 - Arrival - 9/10 - Aliens land in a dozen places around the world and the US Government brings in a linguist and scientist and other experts to try and figure out how to communicate with the aliens. Louise is the linguist that they choose and she slowly makes progress in learning the alien language. Some of the other sites start making progress as well and the interpretation of the alien's message leads to increased tension and the threat of war, but Louise thinks that they are not understanding the message properly. The movie does not have tons of action or humor, but I found it captivating and very entertaining.

[Rusty]

113 - Jack Reacher: Never Go Back - 7/10 - The sequel wasn't quite as good as the original, but it was still pretty entertaining with lots of fights and so on. Jack discovers that he may have a daughter who is in danger from unknown attackers who are also after some of Jack's friends.


114 - Inferno - 7/10 - This one was about on par with Angels and Demons, much less interesting than The Da Vinci Code. Langdon wakes up in a hospital with a head wound and no memory of the last two days. He gets caught up in an adventure relating to Dante and a man made virus that could wipe out at least half of the world's population.


115 - Middle School: The Worst Years of My Life - 7/10 - Rafe transfers to a new school after having gotten kicked out of two earlier schools. This is his last chance, but he soon finds that the principal is overly rigid with the rule book and is mainly concerned about having his students finish #1 in the standardized testing. I thought the movie was kind of predictable, but it was also a lot of fun. The principal does something not very nice to Rafe and Rafe gets his revenge through a series of creative pranks.

[Rusty]

116 - Funny Face - 7/10 - Audrey Hepburn stars as a woman who runs a book store and finds her life turned upside down when a fashion magazine editor takes over her shop for a photo shoot and leaves the place a mess. The photographer stays to try and help her put the place back together and sees potential in her as a model. She is eventually talked into modeling for an event/photo shoot in Paris. Plenty of singing and dancing in the film, but I didn't think it all quite came together. Fred Astaire stars as the photographer and while both leads did a decent job, the story was far fetched and rather thin.

[Rusty]

117 - Autumn Sonata - 8/10 - I was sure that I'd watched this movie before, but did not have it on my list so I watched it again. I realized as I was watching it that I had watched it before. A woman deals with the visit of her estranged mother, a world class pianist, and years of pent up feelings emerge as she informs her mother of how difficult the mother made her childhood. Ingrid Bergman and Liv Ullman starred.

[Rusty]

118 - Lion - 8.5/10 - In 1986, five year old Saroo is separated from his family in a remote Indian village and ends up trapped on a train that carries him over 1000 kilometers away to Calcutta. He is eventually adopted by an Australian family and 25 years later tracked down his village using Google Earth. The first half of the movie features young Saroo and the boy who played him was excellent. Dev Patel plays the adult Saroo and does a nice job, though I think the child Saroo was more compelling.



119 - Jackie - 6/10 - This movie focuses on Jackie Kennedy during the time between the assassination of her husband and his state funeral with flashbacks to earlier periods and a later framing sequence. The movie was rather tedious and boring much of the time. It was very slow going.

[Rusty]

120 - The Accountant - 8/10 - Ben Affleck stars as an accountant who does work with various crime cartels as well as more normal clients, is very secretive and also is deadly with a gun and in hand to hand combat. He is targeted by a group of thugs after he uncovers irregularities in the finances of a big company that is about to go public. The movie was pretty entertaining and features a number of flashbacks that show how he initially was trained as a boy. He also suffers from autism and has trouble socializing.

[Rusty]

121 - Allied - 7/10 - Brad Pitt and Marion Cotillard star as World War II spies/agents who fall in love, marry and move to England. Then it turns out that she may actually be a German spy rather than French and he has to find the truth. It got better in the second half but was a bit dull at times.

[Rusty]

122 - Nocturnal Animals - 8/10 - Amy Adams stars as a successful businesswoman who receives a manuscript from her ex-husband that contains an intense story about a man whose wife and daughter are raped and killed while the family is traveling along a remote Texas highway. The movie switches back and forth between the woman and her life (including an unfaithful second husband) and the action in the novel. I thought it was pretty good. Jake Gyllenhaal plays the ex-husband and also the father in the novel sections.


123 - Hacksaw Ridge - 8.5/10 - The story of Desmond Doss is told here. Doss was a conscientious objector during World War II who nevertheless signed up so that he could serve as a combat medic. He refused to carry a gun, but saved many lives during the battle for Okinawa, carrying at least 75 people to safety while under heavy fire. The movie is entertaining, but also very graphic with the violence from the battles.

[Rusty]

124 - Elle - 8/10 - A woman who runs a video game company is attacked and raped by a masked attacker in her home. Instead of reporting the rape to the police, she carries on with her life. She has a distrust for the police in the way she was treated as a 10 year old child when her father committed a number of murders and she was treated almost as an accomplice. The attacks continue infrequently, and even though she finds out who the attacker is, she still does not report the rapes. This was an interesting French thriller.


125 - Loving - 7.5/10 - The story of Richard and Mildred Loving who were married in Washington, D.C. in 1958, but lived in Virginia. The problem was that he was white and she was black and interracial marriages were against the law in Virginia. They were arrested and forced to leave the state or spend time in prison. The ACLU eventually took up their case and it reached the Supreme Court where interracial marriage became legal in every state. It was a good movie, though somewhat low key.

[Rusty]

126 - Guardians of the Galaxy Vol.2 - 8/10 - Another romp with Starlord, Gamora and the rest. Plenty of laughs, music and action as Peter Quill finds out who his father is. Very entertaining.


127 - Fences - 7.5/10 - A middle aged black man who collects garbage during the mid 1950s takes out his bitterness at life and at not getting a chance in the major leagues because of his age on his teenage son who is being recruited for a football scholarship. The movie definitely has a stage feel to it and is a decent movie nonetheless.

[Rusty]

128 - La La Land - 8.5/10 - Struggling actress and struggling jazz musician start encountering each other in a number of places and end up dating. Success seems elusive, but opportunities may await. The music was good and some of the dance numbers were pretty good. I especially liked the opening number.


129 - Imperium - 7/10 - Daniel Radcliffe stars as a young FBI agent who goes undercover in the white supremacist society to try and uncover a terrorist plot before it comes to fruition. I thought Radcliffe did a nice job, though the movie itself was only okay.

[Rusty]

130 - Moana - 8.5/10 - i enjoyed this quite a bit. The interplay between Moana and Maui was pretty funny. The story and songs were both good and the movie was very entertaining.