Goodbye Columbus

Actors: Richard Benjamin, Ali MacGraw, Jack Klugman, Nan Martin, Michael Meyers, Lori Shelle, Royce Wallace

Rating: 7 out of 10, A reach back to the late 1960s for a movie that fascinated a young version of myself when it first came out. It didn’t hurt that it featured Ali McGraw. I don’t think there’s a single guy my age that didn’t fall in love with Ms. MacGraw in the late 1960s. We all wished we were the ones sitting next to her at the dinner table in this movie, for a number of reasons. She plays a pampered Radcliff college girl and poster child for Jewish American Princesses everywhere who’s dabbling in romance with an unacceptable suitor to defy her doting parents. It’s more about class as the suitor comes from the old neighborhood before the girl’s parents successfully moved to the suburbs as nouveau riche. It was also reminiscent of the sexual politics facing the onslaught of the 1960s as good girls were expected to save themselves for marriage. There are some very funny moments as the guy deals with a hostile mother, a latent homosexual brother lost reliving his college athletic prowess, and the little sister from hell.  While some of the movie hasn’t aged well, like the heavy handed caricatures of life in the well to do suburbs, Ms. MacGraw is still luminescent

MVP: Ali MacGraw as the object of adolescent love Brenda

Blade Runner 2049

Actors: Ryan Gosling, Harrison Ford, Ana de Armas, Sylvia Hoeks, Robin Wright, Mackenzie Davis, Carla Juri, Lennie James, Dave Bautista, Jared Leto

Rating: 9 out of 10, The future does not look promising in Blade Runner 2049, a movie I was really “jonesing” to see. I finally got to the cinema to check it out and was definitely not disappointed. While the filmmakers were genuine to the original classic this sequel was told in a huge and sweeping fashion versus the crowded original. Deckard’s story is picked up thirty years later as the blade runners are now replicants themselves hunting down older versions of themselves. Ryan Gosling is fantastic as the dedicated blade runner being played by at least three competing groups. I was most struck by the photography depicting a vast and dying world which is genuinely complimented by a sneakily good musical score. The movie centers of the people (and replicants) though and repeats the earlier film’s premise of questioning what true “humanity” is. I loved it.

MVP: Gosling as the replicant blade runner

Wind River

Actors: Jeremy Renner, Elizabeth Olsen, Gil Birmingham, Jon Bernthal, Julia Jones, Kelsey Chow, Graham Greene

Rating: 9 out of 10, This is a very stark outing with the desolate, but spectacular, winter landscape of Wyoming playing a major supporting character and reflecting the barren lives of the main characters. Jeremy Renner continues to evolve as an actor and exudes gravitas as a taciturn hero with the weight of the world on his shoulders but still in hot, if understated, pursuit of justice for a murdered Indian girl. His Avenger co-star Red Witch more than holds her own in the talented cast in the crucial role of the sole FBI agent also trying to track down the killer. There are several startling shootouts in the cleverly crafted tale. Gil Birmingham, in an all too small part, once again steals every scene he’s in as a grieving father. This reminded me in a lot of ways of CJ Box’s outstanding novels set in generally the same area. I can’t recommend this movie highly enough. I think Renner is going to be something very special as he reaches middle age and settles into the parts Tommy Lee Jones has outgrown.

MVP: Jeremy Renner as Cory Lambert

It

Actors: Jaeden Lieberher, Bill Skarsgård, Jeremy Ray Taylor, Sophia Lillis, Finn Wolfhard, Wyatt Oleff, Chosen Jacobs, Jack Dylan Grazer, Nicholas Hamilton, Jackson Robert Scott Rating: 9 out of 10, I always liked the TV version shot a couple decades ago and went into this with the resultant chip on my shoulder. The film won me over by the sheer talent of the young actors portraying the doughty Loser’s Club battling Pennywise the Dancing Clown, the ancient evil haunting Derry, Maine. Especially the actors portraying Bill and Beverley who capture the awkward adolescent romance in the midst of fighting ultimate evil. The plot centers on the immense bravery of the Losers and the seeping evil of Derry that’s central to King’s work. I thought they’d be in way over their heads trying to take this on but it was great. And scared the bejesus out of me.

MVP: Bill Skarsgård as the very scary Pennywise the Dancing Clown

Collateral Beauty

Actors: Will Smith, Edward Norton, Keira Knightley, Michael Peña, Naomie Harris, Jacob Latimore, Kate Winslet, Helen Mirren

Rating: 8 out of 10, I know this is getting absolutely scoured by the critics. I don’t understand the vitriol since this movie is worth seeing simply for the assembly of actors if nothing else. A lot of the critics seem to think it’s too “sappy” and since I’m a sucker for a sentimental story maybe my opinion is explainable. Will Smith is a tower of pain as a father who lost his daughter and his once promising life is spiraling into disaster. His friends/co-workers come up with a hair brained scheme to jolt him back into reality after reading letters he composed to time, love, and death. There were two very distinct and well set up twists that I’m going to have to re-watch for missed clues. I really liked the movie and its message of hope in the even the most desperate lives.

MVP: Smith as the long suffering father Howard

Abraxas, Guardian of the Universe

Actors: Jesse Ventura, Sven Ole-Thorsen, Damian Lee, Jerry Levitan, Marjorie Bransfield, Jim Belushi

Rating: 1 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films was Jesse the Body Ventura’s obvious attempt to emulate the success of the Governator in 1980s action films and he fails spectacularly. He even brought along Arnold’s designated bad guy, Ole-Thorsen, who acted circles around Ventura which is very, very telling. They both play galactic cops with interest in a young child back on earth. Ventura looked every bit the 10,000 years his character purports to be and gets his ass handed to him in every single fight. I really didn’t understand that technique. Jim Belushi appears as a completely inept high school principal for no discernible reason. I’m trying to imagine a reason to recommend this but am failing almost as badly as The Body.

MVP: Sven Ole-Thorsen as Secundus

Death Machines

Actors: Ron Marchini, Mari Honjo, Ron Ackerman, Edward Blair, Michael Chong, Joshua Johnson, John Lowe

Rating: 0 out of 10, The latest in my journey through 100 bad sci fi films was a very poorly staged kung fu flick which might have been funded by the Equal Opportunity Commission. A Japanese gal wearing possibly the worst tall hair wig in movie history creates a team of invincible assassins, one each black, white and Asian. She sends them after a porn-stached bad guy with limited results. The “heroes” who fight back are uniformly idiotic or unprepared. The fights are so amateurishly staged that Mr. Bruce Lee must have turned over in his premature grave. This is the type of film that killed the promising kung fu trend it tried to take advantage of.

MVP: No one