171 - The Greatest Showman - 8/10 - A fictionalized biography of PT Barnum with lots of music. It makes a nice spectacle and was very entertaining. Zendaya and Zac Efron were among the supporting cast that did a very nice job.
total of 170 movies for the year including Cars 3 which I missed adding in before.
Last edited by Rusty on Fri Oct 30, 2020 8:33 pm, edited 3 times in total.
1 - Baby Driver - 8/10 - A young man is a phenomenal driver and he has been used as a getaway driver for a while now due to a debt that he owes to a criminal. His debt is almost paid, but he may not be able to get away from the criminal activity even though he wants to. This was pretty entertaining. I had heard good things about it since last summer.
2 - A Midnight Clear - 8/10 - At Christmastime 1944 in the Ardennes Forest during World War II, a group of U.S. soldiers come across a platoon of German soldiers who want to surrender. They have to deal with mutual suspicion to try and come together to make it work. This was a pretty good movie with nice performances by the various actors/soldiers.
3 - Mary, Queen of Scots - 7.5/10 - Mary Stuart is married to the King of France, but when he dies at a young age, she returns to Scotland. She wants to go through England to see her cousin, Queen Elizabeth, but is denied. The movie follows her life with the various intrigues and violence up until her death. It was an interesting historical drama.
4 - The Post - 8/10 - The story of the Washington Post and the Pentagon Papers back in 1971. Meryl Streep stars as Kay Graham, the owner and publisher of the Washington Post while Tom Hanks is Ben Bradlee, the editor in chief. I thought it was pretty entertaining and I'm sure it will get a number of oscar nominations.
5 - Homefront - 7/10 - Jason Statham stars as a former undercover special agent who is now living with his daughter under an assumed name. He runs into trouble with a few of the locals that escalates into deadly violence. It was pretty entertaining.
6 - Kong: Skull Island - 7.5/10 - Really nice visuals and a decent story about a trip to the newly discovered Skull Island in 1973 by a group of scientists, a reporter and a military unit recently removed from Vietnam.
7 - Boss Baby - 7/10 - This movie was entertaining enough. Not great, but not bad. An operative for Baby Corps comes to the world to try and stop Puppy Corps from taking over.
8 - Get Out - 9/10 - A horror movie about a black man who goes with his white girlfriend to visit her family and it starts getting creepy pretty soon after his arrival. The horror is kind of lowkey much of the time, which is good since I'm not a fan of real blood and guts horror films, and the movie is pretty consistently entertaining. Very well done.
9 - Jumanji: Welcome to the Jungle - 7.5/10 - This was a fun sequel/reboot of Jumanji. It had a Breakfast Club vibe at the beginning. The action and humor were good.
10 - The Sands of Iwo Jima - 7.5/10 - John Wayne stars as an army sergeant whose company is based in the Pacific during World War II and is ultimately destined to participate in the Battle of Iwo Jima. It was a fairly typical Wayne war film and was entertaining.
11 - Elizabeth: The Golden Age - 5.5/10 - I liked the first Elizabeth movie, but this sequel is very boring and muddled. It has style, but I wish it had a better story.
12 - Voyage to the Bottom of the Sea - 7/10 - This Irwin Allen film predated the tv series by a few years. Humanity is in danger of being wiped out when the Van Allen Radiation Belt catches fire and causes temperatures on Earth to rise sharply. The only hope is for the brand new submarine Seaview and a missile it carries which may eliminate the problem. I thought it was entertaining enough.
13 - Brubaker - 7.5/10 - Robert Redford stars as the new warden of a prison farm in the south. He arrives undercover as a prisoner and sees the poor food, the cruel treatment and more. Once he reveals who he is and takes charge, he tries to make reforms, but runs into a number of roadblocks. It was a good film and based on a real incident back in the 1960s.
14 - Lady Be Good - 7/10 - A comedy musical with lots of singing and dancing about a composer and his girlfriend who get married after jointly creating a hit song, but later divorce and then remarry and now the wife is seeking another divorce even though she still love him. It was a bit thin on plot, but was okay and the music/dancing were good.
15 - This is the Army - 7.5/10 - Irving Berlin created this movie as a stage show to raise money for the Army Relief. He had also created a similar stage show back during World War I. The movie version of the show includes Ronald Reagan, Joe Louis and a wide variety of soldiers performing musical numbers, dance, fairly impressive acrobatics, and even things like magic tricks and comedy. They also used blackface and a number of scenes with men in drag, but overall it was a decent show. Definitely a product of its time.
16 - Neptune's Daughter - 7.5/10 - Ricardo Montalban, Esther Williams and Red Skelton star in this film about a South American polo player who falls for a top designer of swimsuits with mistaken identities involving her sister and a masseur. Plenty of humor and a pretty entertaining film.
17 - War for the Planet of the Apes - 8.5/10 - Caesar and his colony of apes just want to be left alone in the woods, but a mad colonel has other ideas and sends his men in after them with the assistance of renegade apes who are called donkeys by the soldiers. This leads to a tragedy for Caesar and then an attempt by the apes to break out of the woods and seek a new home. Lots of action and drama in what I think is the best of the three recent Apes movies.
18 - High Society - 7.5/10 - Bing Crosby, Grace Kelly and Frank Sinatra star in a musical comedy/drama about a rich socialite who is about to get married. Sinatra plays a reporter who stops by to get a story on the family. Crosby plays the former husband who hangs around the estate and is still on friendly terms with the family. I thought it was a pretty decent film.
19 - Robin and the Seven Hoods - 7/10 - Frank Sinatra stars as a mob leader who is battling a rival in Prohibition era Chicago. The rival is played by Peter Falk and there are plenty of other familiar faces including Bing Crosby, Dean Martin and Sammy Davis Jr. Sinatra's character is named Robbo and after a large donation to charity, the Robin Hood angle gets played up. There were a few really good scenes, but most of the songs were kind of dull. The movie wasn't too bad overall, though.
20 - The Great Race - 7.5/10 - Tony Curtis stars as The Great Leslie, a daredevil in the early part of the 20th Century. Jack Lemmon plays his rival, Professor Fate, a comical villain along with his sidekick (Peter Falk). The rivals become part of a great car race from New York to Paris along with several other contestants, most of whom meet with 'accidents' early on and have to leave the race. Natalie Wood plays a reporter who enters the race and becomes involved with the two main competitors and all of their drama. There is a lot of slapstick humor here and the movie is a lot of fun. The great pie fight near the end is very entertaining.
