Movie Monday - 11/11/2019

The season is in high gear. I'm trying to keep up.

I knew nothing about The Lighthouse before I saw it, other than Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson were in the movie. I figured it couldn't be bad. I figured wrong. It's set on a remote island during the 1890s. The two men spend the movie tending to the lighthouse while trying not to go insane. Things started happening that weren't possible in the real world. I guess it is a bit of a horror movie. It's not a genre that I watch on purpose. I kept waiting for things to make sense or for at least a the point to it all. The point was never revealed. It was just weird.

Midway is set in the Pacific of the 1940s, and begins basically with the attack on Pearl Harbor. It continues to the battle of Midway between Japan and America. I'm not a fan of action-filled war movies, but this film was thrilling without being gory. The cast was full of good actors, including Woody Harrelson, Dennis Quaid, Patrick Wilson, Ed Skrein, Luke Evans and Aaron Eckhart. It was good.

Ed Norton wrote, directed, produced and starred in Motherless Brooklyn. It's based on a novel by the same name. Norton plays a detective with Tourette's Syndrome who is left to solve the murder of his supervisor and mentor, played by Bruce Willis. Bobby Cannavale, Alec Baldwin and Willem Dafoe are among the awesome cast of this film. I think it's the best movie I've seen in a while. I'm looking for Ed Norton to garner a Best Actor Oscar nomination. Best .Director is within his reach too. It was so good.

MK out.

Movie Monday - 11/4/2019

Meryl Streep, Gary Oldman and Antonia Banderas are among the actors who star in The Laundromat. Inspired by true events, Streep plays a recently widowed woman who, while trying to collect insurance money, discovers a whole network of shady enterprises that have one thing in common. They are all connected to a law firm in Panama. If you remember reading about the Panama Papers a few years ago, when a whistleblower leaked private information of over two hundred thousand offshore entities that were engaged in illegal activities, these are the true events. It was quirky and good.

Renée Zellweger does a fabulous job portraying Judy Garland in Judy. The film mostly deals with the last year of Garland's life, when she spends several weeks performing in England on The Talk on the Town. Flashbacks are used to explain how Garland ended up where she did. It was sad watching how a phenomenally talented individual was bested by her demons. It was very good.

I was finally able to see At Eternity's Gate. Willem Dafoe portrays Vincent Van Gogh in his later years. There's a controversial theory that Van Gogh did not commit suicide, but died from an accidental bullet wound. This film tells that story. It was good.

MK out.