The Welcome Mat

129 - The Hanging Tree - 7/10 - A mysterious doctor comes to a western town filled with people searching for gold in the 1870s. He helps a young would be thief and a young woman who was injured in a stagecoach robbery. It wasn't bad.


130 - The Time, the Place and the Girl - 7/10 - Two men try to put on a show in spite of the opposition of a well known opera star and her family. They decide to recruit her and her father to their cause. Pretty good music, though a somewhat bland story. Overall, it was okay.

131 - Rasputin and the Empress - 6.5/10 - Rasputin is called in to help Prince Alexei, who suffers from hemophilia. Rasputin gains control over Alexei through hypnotism and proceeds to increase his influence in the palace. He is later killed by one of the princes. After his death, the revolution and execution of the royal family takes place. All three Barrymore siblings star in the film, but it is very dated.

132 - The American President - 8/10 - Still one that I enjoy and it reminds me of some of the things we are going through now.

133 - Shoplifters - 8.5/10 - A poor group of people live together as a family - a husband and wife, an old woman and her granddaughter and a young boy they found years before. The family survives on the pension grandma pulls in, the money the adults earn at their low paying jobs and what they can shoplift from stores. This is an excellent film, though I think the first hour or so is better than the ending.

134 - Capernaum - 9/10 - Zain is a young boy in Beirut who is probably about 12 years old, but doesn't know for sure because his parents couldn't afford a birth certificate and aren't sure of his birthdate. Their poverty hasn't stopped them from having many other children, all of whom they treat fairly poorly. Zain runs away after an incident involving one of his siblings and befriends an immigrant woman from Africa and her young son. When Zain later ends up in jail, he decides to sue his parents for making him be born. This is an excellent movie and well worth seeing.

135 - If Beale Street Could Talk - 7/10 - A young woman and her fiance have plans to marry that are interrupted when he is arrested for a crime that he did not commit. She is pregnant and he is in jail awaiting trial. I thought the acting was good, but the pacing was way too slow.


136 - Mary Queen of Scots - 7/10 - The life of Mary Stuart from the time of her return to Scotland after the death of her first husband through her abdication and escape to England is told here. There is also a bit from her execution decades later. It was a decent movie and seems to be mostly historically accurate.


137 - The Wife - 7.5/10 - An elderly couple receives a late night phone call informing them that the husband has won the Nobel Prize for Literature and they are invited to Stockholm for the ceremony. His wife has always been in the background, but is she the real power behind the throne? I thought this was a pretty good movie.


138 - Mid90s - 7.5/10 - A young teen who is bullied by his older brother and doesn't really fit in with his classmates starts hanging around with a group of skateboarders at a skate shop. This lead him to drinking, smoking and other activity as he models himself after the other skateboarders. This was a pretty decent film in the directorial debut of Jonah Hill.

139 - Crazy Rich Asians - 8/10 - Rachel Chu is an economics professor at NYU. Her boyfriend is returning to his home in Singapore for his best friend's wedding and he invites her along. He hasn't told her that he is the heir to an incredibly wealthy family and she has some trouble fitting in. I thought that this was a pretty entertaining romantic comedy.

140 - The House with a Clock in it Walls - 7/10 - I thought this was a fun movie. In 1955, Lewis moves in with his uncle in a strange house in Michigan and discovers that magic is real. There is a threat from a deceased warlock and a strange clock hidden somewhere in the house.

141 - A Star is Born (2018) - 8/10 - Bradley Cooper and Lady Gaga do a very nice job in this remake of the 1937 film. Good music and a good story.


142 - Nancy Drew and the Hidden Staircase - 7.5/10 - An updated take on an early Nancy Drew story. I thought they did a decent job.

143 - Loveless - 8/10 - A 12 year old Russian boy vanishes after overhearing an argument between his parents. The parents are getting a divorce and neither parent loves or wants the son. The search begins with the aid of a group of volunteers as they canvas buildings, forests and other places. The movie was sad, but well done.


144 - The Grinch - 7/10 - I thought it was pretty entertaining.


145 - Peppermint - 7/10 - A decent action thriller about a woman whose husband and daughter are killed in front of her by gang members. She is put in a coma from the same attack. She testifies against the three who did the deed, but charges are dismissed. She falls off the grid and returns five years later to get revenge.

146 - The Hate U GIve - 8.5/10 - I thought this was a pretty powerful movie. Starr has grown up in a poor neighborhood with her family. She attends a private school that has mostly wealthy white students and she code switches her personality between the two situations. She is with her best friend when he is shot and killed during a traffic stop and it upends her world.

147 - Mirai - 7/10 - Kun's life changes when his parents bring home his baby sister. He is no longer the center of attention and feels like he is ignored and he is not happy. Through a sort of magic, he starts interacting with his sister as a teen from the future, his dog in human form, his mother as a girl and other family members from different stages in life. This helps Kun alter his views of his family. The movie was okay, but seemed to be lacking a bit of spark.

148 - Fantastic Beasts: The Crimes of Grindelwald - 7/10 - Part of it were good, but much of it was rather dull.


149 - Ocean's 8 - 6.5/10 - I thought this would be good, but it was rather lackluster.

150 - Spider-Man: Into the Spider-verse - 9/10 - This was a lot of fun. I hope they make more.


151 - Uncle Drew - 6.5/10 - Predictable and not all that great.


152 - The Lego Movie 2: The Second Part - 7.5/10 - It took me a while to get into this sequel, but eventually it got more interesting and I enjoyed it.

153 - Smallfoot - 7.5/10 - A community of yeti live high up in the HImalayas in a village hidden by clouds from the mythical smallfoot who live below until one yeti ventures down the mountain in search of smallfoot. I thought it was fun.