Jefe's Movie Reviews

 So this is a first! I'm reviewing a movie before actually finishing it. I'm currently watching Coherence, which came out in 2013 and totally flew under my radar. I actually had an Uber passenger recommend this to me, and it's REALLY interesting. The premise is that a comet is passing close to earth, and these eight friends are having a dinner party the night that it happens. VERY STRANGE things start happening, involving all kinds of physics concepts like Schrödinger's cat and multiple dimensions. They start seeing other versions of themselves. That's all I'll say, and I'll follow up in a day or two with another post telling you know if it ends well. My only complaint is that these are really unpleasant people. They are really mad and argumentative and nasty all the time. One positive attribute is that Xander from Buffy the Vampire Slayer is in this. I mean, that actor who played him. So far, I DO recommend this. It's thought provoking and you feel like...

 So I saw Don't Worry, Darling this week and it exceeded my expectations. I expected it to be really good. Florence Pugh deserves lots of awards for her performance. Harry Styles was OK. Chris Pine was great. Olivia Wilde and Gemma Chan were both perfect (almost a little TOO perfect) in their roles.  If you've seen the trailer, you know the idea. These people are living in a perfect 1950s neighborhood and the husbands are going off each day to make the world a better place. But Florence Pugh's character (and I LOVED her as Black Widow's little sister) starts to realize that everything is not quite what it appears. It turns out that absolutely NOTHING is as it appears. But I can't tell you more without spoilers. I DO HIGHLY RECOMMEND this movie. My only caveat is get ready to look away or press fast forward if you can when Harry Styles comes home and throws Florence Pugh onto the dinner table amorously. There isn't any nudity, but the scene goes on FAR too long a...

 So I saw two great movies this week. Last night I saw Don't Worry, Darling. And tonight I saw Barbarian. I decided to write my review on Barbarian while it's still fresh in my mind, and then do Don't Worry Darling tomorrow night. Barbarian is one of the best scary movies I've seen in a long time. I wouldn't call it a masterpiece like I felt that the original Scream was, or that Blair Witch Project was. But there are few scary movies that actually scare me, and Barbarian was one of them. If you don't recognize Bill Skarsgaard in the picture above, he played the clown in It. Georgina Campbell is the protagonist and she was in Black Mirror, among other things. And Justin Long plays a character that you will alternately love and hate throughout the film. I won't tell you which emotion you'll end on. This is a seriously freaky movie. The premise starts simple: two people rent the same house on Air BnB. They decide to both stay in the house, since it's in...

 I watched a show on Amazon Prime today that was thoroughly delightful. The Outfit is one of those slow build films where you start to realize that everything means more than what you originally think. The main character, a "cutter" (which he is careful to tell you is above a mere "tailor") played perfectly by Mark Rylance, is very smart and very calculating. I can't tell you more than that without some serious spoilers.  But I HIGHLY recommend this one. It's very well done, very smart, and makes you care deeply about the main characters. A little strong language and a little gun violence, most of it implied. A little gore when a wound is stitched up.

 "Pull the other one!" That's the second line of dialog in the funniest movie ever made. And the first twenty times I saw this movie, I didn't understand what he said or how hilarious it was.  That is the genius of the holy grail. And you don't have to take my word for it. It IS the funniest movie of all time. See, the internet set up all of the funny movies ever made in a bracket system, like for sports. And people voted on each movie. Tons of movies were eliminated, and it came down to just two contenders. The Princess Bride, and The Holy Grail. And the Grail won. But back to the genius. To me, the funniest humor is the subtle joke. The pun or clever phrase that is spoken so dead-pan that you don't realize it's a joke at first. My friends in college and I called these joke bombs. You toss your joke into a group of people and wait for them to react.  I DO HIGHLY recommend this movie. But you should understand it does have a little objectionable material. ...

 Last night I talked about Pulp Fiction and what an amazing work of art it is. Tonight I go to the other end of the Tarantino spectrum and bring you the worst movie he produced. It's appropriate to me that it's called hateful because I hated it. It's got a great cast! Samuel L Jackson, Kurt Russell, Jennifer Jason Leigh, Walton Goggins (from Justified), Channing Tatum, and Tim Roth. The acting wasn't terrible. The scenery was nice, and I really like the way that Tarantino brings back the long pans and slow builds.  But the writing in this movie was easily the worst of his films. I'll be doing reviews of the Kill Bills, Inglorious Basterds, and Django Unchained. They all had great writing. But the writing in H8 is so bad. There's one scene where two characters are literally saying, "You have a letter?" "Yes." "You have a letter." "Yes." "On you." "Yes."  It's like a junior high kid wrote it. The plot...

"Say what again!" is one of my favorite lines from any movie. Pulp Fiction is a work of art, and is chock full of great lines. On one hand, I love this movie. I've watched it dozens of times and plan to watch it dozens more. Tarantino knows how to do dialog. It's witty, snappy, funny, and even educational.  It is NOT kid friendly. There are MANY elements of this movie that are not appropriate for children or for those easily offended. The language is very strong. The violence is graphic. There's a lot of blood. There are some extremely adult situations.  But don't misunderstand. This isn't a "guilty pleasure" movie. This movie says some profound things. When Jules (played to perfection by Samuel L Jackson) says his little monologue about the shepherd and the tyranny of evil men at the end of the movie, it's one of the most inspirational things I've ever heard. It makes me want to be a better person. I DO highly recommend this movie, but w...

 So let me start by saying that Les Miserables, the movie with Liam Neeson, Uma Thurman, and Claire Daines in 1998 was very, very good. And the broadway musical is really good, too. But the book is better than both by far. It's one of my five favorite books of all time. Adventure, romance, redemption, history, life lessons - it's got everything. Beautifully written by Victor Hugo. I had high hopes for the movie with Russell Crowe, Hugh Jackman, Anne Hathaway, and Helena Bonham Carter that came out in 2012 (that was ten years ago??) but it was a HUGE disappointment. I know many people loved it, so I'm not going to lay into it. I'm just going to mention the few things I didn't like. First, Russell Crowe can't sing, and that became abundantly clear during the movie, which for some reason (that I didn't like) was trying hard to be a musical. I REALLY hated the melodramatic way he glared at everyone in the factory while he was looking for Jean Valjean. But the ma...

 Everything Everywhere All at Once was a bit too much. That's both a pun and my actual assessment of the movie. There are some things I loved about the movie. There are some things I very much didn't like. Overall, it does a couple fun things, does a bunch of obnoxious things, and makes a point or two that have been made elsewhere. The premise is that the main characters are able to jump from universe to universe by doing absurd things. It starts harmless - a man eats his chapstick. This is sufficiently unlike his "self" in this universe that it causes him to "jump" to another dimension. The things that the characters do in order to jump get stranger and more disturbing as the film continues. The "strange" dimensions that they jump to range from delightful (like the universe where they're just rocks talking to each other, or the dimension where instead of Ratatouille, they've got a real life Racacoonie with Raccoons sitting on their heads c...

 Until this week, I had been intentionally avoiding (ignoring) the hoopla surrounding this book and film. I didn't like the title. I thought the premise sounded cheesy. Everyone who loved it (until just recently) gave reasons for liking it that were not reasons I generally like books and movies.  But about a week ago, two of my friends messaged me to say that I needed to see this, and it was the best movie they've seen in years. I get why they felt that way, now that I've seen it. I finished watching it a few hours ago and thought about what I watched.  The positive aspects of the book and film are that they actually SAY something. So few movies say anything anymore - they just rehash the same old tropes. Free Guy (with Ryan Reynolds) actually SAID something. I recently reviewed The Matrix, and it said something. Movies like Raiders of the Lost Ark or Die Hard are REALLY entertaining and I love them. But they don't really say anything. Where the Crawdads Sing says somet...

 "O Captain, my Captain!" is one of my all time fav lines from movie history. And it comes from a movie that you can watch over and over and over and it never gets old.  Robin Williams stars in maybe the best role of his life. He's a teacher at an all boys school, and he teaches his students what life is for. He challenges his boys to suck the marrow of life - to live a life that they won't look back on and regret.  Due to his powerful influence, the boys form a "Dead Poets Society" where they gather and drink wine and read poetry to one another, learning that jobs are important to make a living, but poetry and music and beauty are what life is lived FOR. Besides Robin Williams, this is Ethan Hawke's big breakout film. And also Robert Sean Leonard, who went on to many other great roles including Houses's doctor on the TV show House. This movie has inspired so many teachers to make their roles in the lives of their students more than just the one who ...

 Moonfall was almost not that bad. But it was bad. It featured John Bradley. And until just ten seconds ago, I thought he was someone else. The entire time I saw the previews and then watched the actual movie, I totally thought he was the heavy friend from Sean of the Dead and Hot Fuzz. That actor's name is Nick Frost. And if you put up their pics side by side, you'll see why I got them confused. Anyway, it also features Halle Barry, Patrick Wilson (whose name I didn't exactly recognize but he's the guy in the Conjuring, in that scene where the demon leans out from behind him and scares the crap out of you), Michael Pena (who is always funny), and Donald Sutherland. It also features decent science fiction theory - that the moon is hollow, and it's hollow for a reason. But the writing is very bad. The plot is silly, the physics throughout the movie make zero sense. With a better, funnier, cast that made us really care about them, it might have been almost not that ba...

 I used to love Bruce Willis. He was one of the funniest guys in Hollywood, and no one quipped more wittily than his David Addison on Moonlighting. He was fantastic in 80s movies like Look Who's Talking and even in the action thriller Die Hard. That movie shifted him into more action hero roles, but even in the actionest and heroest, he was still funny. Something happened in the last ten or so years, and he started making terrible movies. One after another. Most straight to DVD. You wouldn't even hear about them, they'd just show up in the Redbox.  Apex is the pinnacle of these terrible movies. (See what I did there?) This is, I'm pretty sure, THE WORST movie Bruce Willis made. Which both surprised and disappointed me because the premise is decent (Most Dangerous Game) and the other actor has been in really good stuff! Neal McDonough was the bad guy in Justified with Timothy Olyphant, and he was great. He was in Band of Brothers, and he was in Minority Report, and Yello...

 So Disney saw what a huge success Pirates of the Caribbean was, a movie based on a ride at Disneyland (and Disneyworld, I presume), so they tried it again with jungle cruise! And it was not as good. BUT! I did enjoy it pretty much EXACTLY as much as I thought I would. Now, let's just say right up front that I feel like this movie would have been unwatchable without Dewayne Johnson. The rest of the cast is just silly, cheesy, little kid show humor, sight gags, and slapstick. The plot is super thin. The jokes are silly and goofy. If it weren't for the just downright likeableness of the Rock, I wouldn't have enjoyed it at all. But The Rock delivers. He's fun, he's adventuresome, and he delivers some jokes midway through the movie that are a range from terrible to actually really funny, but you enjoy all of them because he is just so darn likable. It's clean. I don't even think there are any strong words in it. So if you like Dewayne Johnson, I recommend you se...

 This is one of my ten favorite movies. It's iconic. It's an instant classic. Everything about this movie is perfect. The acting, by Keanu Reeves, Lawrence Fishburne, Hugo Weaving, and Carrie-Anne Moss couldn't be better. The fight scenes are intense and so well choreographed. The sci-fi is mind blowing. The special effects did things that had literally never been done before. The soundtrack is amazing. AND, on top of all of that, it actually SAYS SOMETHING that is really interesting and worth thinking about. But all of that pales, in my opinion, in comparison to what it does to you, the viewer, as you watch. When I saw Indiana Jones for the first time, I came out of the theater whipping everything and wanting to be an archeologist. When I saw Star Wars for the first time, I couldn't wait to get my hands on a real lightsaber and to use the force (I still try to get things across the room to "jump" to me by using the force sometimes). And when I saw The Matrix ...

Even though I'm not a huge Beatles fan, I really liked this movie. Jim Sturgess carries the film wonderfully in the lead role. And the cameos by Bono, Salma Hayek, and Eddie Izzard make it a delight. I went in with an open mind since I don't adore Beatles music. I don't HATE Beatles music, I just don't love it. They've got a few decent ones in my opinion, and I admit they were gifted songwriters. I'm just not a huge fan. I listen to their songs if they come on the radio, but I'd never buy an album. And man, this is a gorgeous movie. It's a work of art. I imagine it's probably super trippy to watch it while you're stoned, which I feel like is an appropriate assumption for the times in which they wrote. But even without drugs, I loved the colors, the scenery, and the way the music becomes part of the landscape. If you love the Beatles, I HIGHLY recommend this movie. If you like them OK, then I suggest you see it.  It's rated PG-13, and I saw it...

Donnie Darko is a good movie. And I like it. It's not one of my all time favorite because even though I feel like it's pretty genius, it feels a little like it's gratuitously strange sometimes. I don't mean "gratuitous" in the way that most people use it today: unnecessary sex or nudity. I just mean that even though the writing is very smart, and it's extremely insightful ("Why are you wearing that ridiculous human suit?"), it feels a little like it's weird just to be weird sometimes.  Jake Gyllenhaal is fantastic in the main role. The creepy smily face he makes throughout much of the movie conveys so much - that he's kind of sleepwalking, that he's not sure what's happening, and that we can't necessarily trust what we're seeing.  I do recommend it. It's been so long since I've seen it that I can't remember if it has nudity or strong language or violence. It DOES have a big twist at the end, and I'm not goi...

 "If you build it, he will come" is one of the all time best movie quotes in history. And Field of Dreams is easily one of my favorite movies. It's fun. It's funny. It's inspirational. And it hints at the way that God talks to us. It's Kevin Costner in his hay day. Maybe his best film, though the Untouchables was pretty good, too. But Field of Dreams has a family at its center, and the movie makes you love both THAT family and your own family, a little more.  How does God speak to us? In whispers from a corn field? Strangers things have happened. I highly recommend this one. Don't take it too seriously. It's a wonderful performance by Costner, as well as James Earl Jones, Ray Liotta, and Burt Lancaster.  There is very little strong language, no sex or nudity, and no violence. Fun for the whole family. 

 Heathers is one of my favorite movies. If you think Christian Slater is funny, you'll LOVE this movie. It's Slater, Winona Ryder, and Shannon Doherty in a film about high school that is so very. (That's a Heathers joke). It's VERY DARK. Like, one of the main characters turns out to be a psycho who starts killing the other kids. I don't want to spoil it for you, and that prevents me from naming some of my favorite quotes from the movie.  Whether or not I recommend this movie to you depends entirely on whether you like Christian Slater. I've liked him in pretty much everything he's done, so I loved this one too. If you like him, then I HIGHLY RECOMMEND the movie. It's funny. It's dark. It's quotable. It's VERY late 80s early 90s.  It does have strong language, but no nudity or sex, and the violence isn't the scary kind. 

 Shawshank Redemption is one of my ten favorite movies of all time. It's a beautiful story, very well written and acted out perfectly by such amazing actors as Tim Robbins and Morgan Freeman. It tells the story of a man wrongfully imprisoned and the friends he makes while incarcerated.  But the entire movie teaches us a huge lesson. That hope is crucial for life to be worth living. And that hope can be a fragile thing. It can be plucked from us like feathers from a bird, until we're unable to fly anymore. There is a bird in the movie, and the man who feeds and loves it loses that hope. But at the end of this wonderful film, Morgan Freeman teaches us what hope does. He leaves prison, and goes looking for his friend Andy, played by Tim Robbins. These are the last lines of the movie: "I hope to see my friend and shake his hand. I hope the Pacific is as blue as it has been in my dreams. I hope." The movie does have strong language, some stylized violence, and I don't ...

  The Shining is a great movie, and it's a great book. But those are two very different things. The ending is so different that it would be better to say that the film was INSPIRED by the book rather than an actual adaptation. The book focuses on the little boy, who is called "Doc" throughout most of it. He is the one with The Shining, which is the name of the book after all. The shining is his ability to talk to people telepathically and to kind of "know" what's going to happen next. The book is very well written and a little scary, but not one of the scarier books I've read. The ending in the book is VERY different than the ending in the movie. I highly recommend reading the book, and then read the sequel Dr. Sleep, which was the best book I read the year it came out.  The movie is a work of art. It's beautiful, it's terrifying, and the acting is superb. Jack Nicholson is at his unhinged finest. Shelly Duvall actually suffered greatly during th...

 "I dunno, I'm making this up as I go," is one of my favorite lines from one of my all time favorite movies. Man, when I was about ten years old I wanted to BE Indiana Jones. I'm pretty sure most kids my age did. That was such a cool movie! You can't beat Harrison Ford as iconic lead. And it had a very early role from Alfred Molina, who went on to play Doc Oc in Spiderman, and John Ryes-Davies, who went on to play Gimli in LOTR. Karen Allen was adorable as Miriam, Indy's love interest.  And I mean, the bad guys were LITERALLY NAZIS. How can you go wrong with that set up? You can't. And of course, John Williams provided the soundtrack which really made the whole movie the timeless classic that it is. They tried really hard to make a good sequel, and to be fair, Temple of Doom has some good moments. I loved it at the time. But looking back it was kinda weird and a little too dark. Then they totally redeemed the franchise with The Last Crusade. Sean Connery w...

 First of all, this is one of my favorite movies. Second, I haven't watched it in probably 20 years so I'm not sure how it stands the test of time. Third, the MAIN reason this movie is so good is because of all the quotable lines. This movie is VERY Pauly Shore. If you think he's funny, you'll LOVE this movie. If you don't, do not watch it. But it's also got a very young Brendan Frasier and a very young Sean Astin.  Don't take the premise too seriously. Don't take the plot too seriously. Don't take anything about the movie seriously. Just enjoy it. And don't tax their gig so hard core, crusty weasel. No sex or nudity, mild language, and no violence.

 So first I want to talk about the Lord of the Rings series. It was wonderful. Due to the hard work of all of the great actors, including (but not at ALL limited to) Sean Astin, Elijah Wood, Viggo Mortensen, Ian McKellen, Orlando Bloom, Liv Tyler, Andy Serkis, Sean Bean, Cate Blanchett, John Rhys-Davies, Christopher Lee, Ian Holm, and Hugo Weaving... and the amazing directing by Peter Jackson, this is a beautiful work of art that became an instant classic and totally stands the test of time. It's worth watching over and over. It's one of the very VERY few movies that seems to never end. I felt like it was ending about six times, and then it kept going. Indiana Jones felt that way, too, but with only like three endings. But man, I can't recommend the original trilogy highly enough. WATCH IT. No nudity, I don't believe there's even any strong language, and only stylized violence.  The following movies, made up of the Hobbit stretched a little too thin over a cracker i...

 "You can't handle the truth!" is the immortal line uttered by Jack Nicholson in this fantastic movie. And, I have to make another embarrassing confession. Remember when I said that we had Top Gun on repeat in my dorm for a couple weeks when I was in college? Well, shortly after that, we had A Few Good Men on repeat. You'd think we had a serious Tom Cruise fan in our midst, but none of us really liked him that much. We just loved those two movies. And MAN is A Few Good Men a good movie. What a cast! Tom Cruise and Jack Nicholson, of course. But it also has Kevin Bacon, Kiefer Sutherland, Demi Moore, Kevin Pollack, and Cuba Gooding Jr in it! It's chock full of fantastic lines. "She has no point. She frequently has no point. It's part of her charm!" And "I don't like boats." "You're in the Nazy for crying out loud!" "Nobody likes her very much." "Yes sir!" And you can't ever forget Tom Cruise doing hi...

 Last night, I talked about two movies, Wyatt Earp and Tombstone, and how one outshone the other. Tonight we're going to talk about the same thing. The original Aladdin was AMAZING. One of my all time favorite movies. And, like Tombstone, it would have been a good movie without the one actor who stole the show. All of the other characters are solid. Even Gilbert Gottfried as the parrot was spot on.  And of course Robin Williams put on a performance that I'm pretty sure could not be topped. His ad libbing, his impersonations, his songs - all were perfect. The movie is SO GOOD because Robin took it to the next level. He made it a spectacle in the absolute best way. I you haven't seen the original Aladdin, go watch it now. I can't recommend it highly enough. The live action remake tried really hard, and it mostly succeeded. Everyone in the film was good, even Will Smith as the genie. He inserted his own humor and style into the character. And if he wasn't following in ...

Sometimes one movie will overshadow another. And other times, a supporting actor will be SO AMAZING in a role that he or she steals the show. Both of those things happened with Tombstone. See, back in 1993 there were two movies being made. Wyatt Earp, starring Kevin Costner and with supporting stars Gene Hackman, Mark Harmon, Bill Pullman, Dennis Quaid, and Michael Madsen. It was, according to many, a very faithful retelling of the life of Wyatt Earp, with Kevin Costner portraying him. The other movie was Tombstone. Tombstone would have been a good movie (probably better than Wyatt Earp) with just Kurt Russell, Sam Elliot, Powers Booth, and Bill Paxton. But that's where the second thing comes in. The actor that stole the show. You would be hard pressed to find a better portrayal of any historical figure, especially in its entertainment value, than Val Kilmer as Doc Holliday. Every scene, every line, every eye flicker and smallest gesture, is perfect. ALL of his lines are quotable. ...