Jefe's Movie Reviews

 My expectations were too high for me to enjoy this movie as much as I wanted to. Don't get me wrong, it's not bad. It's not anywhere NEAR as good as Knives Out. If I had seen this movie all by itself, without having seen Knives Out, I would have enjoyed it quite a bit. But it was a big let down.  Everyone plays their parts well, especially Daniel Craig and Ed Norton. The only slight miscast I think was Kate Hudson, who is still trying to play a hot young thing and is no longer a hot young thing. Everyone else was fine in their roles. The writing was not as snappy as in the first film. The characters all seemed to be trying to be as BIG and FLASHY and annoying as possible. You find out later in the movie why, but it's still annoying. I really didn't like the first 20 or 30 minutes of the movie at all because everyone was TOO MUCH. The middle of the movie is good, where we start finding out WHY these people are acting like this. Especially Janelle Monae, who seems to...

 I was expecting The Menu to be good. And I THOUGHT it was going to be one kind of movie, from the previews. But it turned out to be even better than I was expecting, and not quite the kind of movie I thought it was going to be. Ralph Fiennes just seems to get better with age. He was amazing as the evil Amon Goeth in Schindler's List. He was great in The English Patient and in Forgiven. He played the part of Voldemort in the Harry Potter movies perfectly. And he's exquisite as a kind of Gordon Ramsey on steroids in this film. The movie is VERY smart. It's divided up into sections, based on the menu of foods that the guests are eating. It's beautifully done, and cerebral in places. I can't give you any more details without spoiling it.  I highly recommend it. It's not something you need to see on the big screen, so wait and watch it when you can stream it, or rent it from Redbox. It's rated R for violence and language. It's very disturbing in places, but ...

 I totally didn't see it coming. The big twist at the end of perhaps M. Night Shyamalan's best movie totally took me by surprise. I won't tell you what it is so it doesn't spoil it for you. But wow - it shook me! The movie is so well done. Great acting and writing by all involved. Haley Joel Osment could not have done a better job as the little kid who "sees dead people." BTW that reminds me - what do the movies The Sixth Sense and Titanic have in common? Icy (I see) dead people.  Bruce Willis is in his prime here. Funny, intense, loving, and very believable as the therapist who is trying to help the little boy work past his issues. It's nice to see Willis in a role different from his usual super funny action hero. M. Night Shyamalan wrote and directed this. Too bad his subsequent films weren't as good. I did like The Village and I thought The Happening was MUCH better than it's usually rated by unhappy viewers. But nothing he's done since has ...

 Titanic is a strange movie. It's a historical film, a strange and kind of twisted romance, and a horror story all rolled into one. I really enjoyed the historical journey back in time, even if it was a little "colored" by today's perceptions. I enjoyed reliving the horror of a ship going down and people making life-altering choices. I did not enjoy the twisted romance. It's rated PG13 for "disaster related peril, violence, nudity, sensuality, and brief language". I do recommend watching it for the interesting historical details. James Cameron did a good job recreating what it would have been like to sail on a grand ship in those days, and what the sinking might have been like.

 "You keep using that word. I do not think it means what you think it means." This is one of the most quotable lines from one of the most quotable movies of all time. The Princess Bride is a masterpiece. It's one of the very few times that the movie is actually better than the book. Jaws, Forrest Gump, and Hannibal are three other examples. It's also the second funniest movie of all time, after Monty Python's Holy Grail.  Cary Elwes, Robin Wright, Andre the Giant, Mandy Patinkin, Wallace Shawn, Fred Savage, and Billy Crystal are the biggest names, but the whole cast is amazing. The story is full of love, laughter, fight scenes, sword fights, and quotable lines. It's a must see and a classic. It's rated PG for a little "action violence". I can't recommend it highly enough. Not watching this movie is... inconceivable.

 I saw the new Black Panther tonight. It wasn't great.  I really liked the first one, and I enjoyed the role that Black Panther and Wakanda played in the other Marvel movies. But this one falls pretty flat. It's not the acting. The main character, played by Letitia Wright, is well acted. But the writing was all over the place. It lacks the fun of the previous Wakanda stories. It's a lot of angry women yelling at each other throughout much of the movie. Martin Freeman brings a little depth to his scenes. Julia Louis-Dreyfus seems out of her league here, with a streak of purple in her hair for some unexplained reason.  One of the main reasons it was difficult to take this movie seriously, or to enjoy it that much, is that the "bad guys" in the movie are so silly. I don't want to give too much away, but the main bad guy has little wings on his ankles that allow him to fly. He and his entire crew come across silly and lame throughout the whole movie. The ending wa...

 So I watched the new Jeepers Creepers movie, called "Reborn", and I went in with extremely low expectations. It didn't meet them. But I am happy to report that it crossed the line into the territory of "movies that are so bad they're good." The writing is the only thing that scary about this movie - it's so bad it's terrifying that someone would think it was good enough to be in a movie. The acting is various levels of terrible. There's passable terrible, which thankfully is what the two main protagonists are doing. There's silly and ridiculous terrible, which most of the rest of the cast uses, and then there's "what is this person LITERALLY thinking right now" terrible, which only a couple actors practice in the movie. This one woman is touted as a former miss universe, and the little speech she gives to begin the spookfest cosplay festival is one of the worst things I've ever watched on film. One thing I DID appreciate in...

 I've loved all but one of Quentin Tarantino's movies. (I wasn't fond of Hateful Eight). And Django is one of my favorites by him. I'm rewatching it right now on Tubi, and it's so good. Tarantino likes to take things that we all have strong reactions to, like racism or Nazis, and put a new twist on them. In this movie, the great actor Jamie Foxx plays a black slave trader (or rather, a freed slave who pretends to be a black slave trader in order to find and free his wife from slavery).  The usually very dependable Christoph Waltz is the other main character. And supporting roles by Samuel L Jackson, Don Johnson, and Leo DiCaprio make this a film that goes over the top in entertainment and thought provocation. It's so well written and directed, from the very first scene that draws you in, and the soundtrack (always the case with Tarantino) is a perfect accompaniment to the action. It's rated R for violence, language, and some nudity. I highly recommend it if ...

 I just finished watching See How They Run , and the best word for it is "charming". Watching the movie is VERY MUCH like watching a stage play. In fact, I think it would make a better play than a movie. Sam Rockwell is solid in his role as chief detective. Adrien Brody continues to have a face that makes me want to punch it (I honestly don't know why). But the real winner here is Saoirse Ronan, whom I'd never heard of before watching this movie. But the only times I laughed out loud were on her lines, perfectly delivered. It's what we call a "cozy mystery" in the book business. Several people are killed along the way, always in silly and nongrusome ways. And the movie is about the two slightly bumbling detectives trying to unravel the mystery and unmask the killer.  I only recommend it if you really like cozy mysteries. I found much of it boring and slow. The verbal play between Rockwell and Ronan was the only part that really drew me in. It's rated...

  The Happening is probably M. Night Shyamalan's most controversial film. Some people loved it. Most people hated it. I thought it was a really interesting idea and had some great moments, but kind of fell apart at the end. It stars Mark Wahlberg and Zooey Deschanel, both of whom I like a lot. Shyamalan is usually very adept at creating interesting movies with huge twists in them. And there IS a huge twist in this one. The twist is when we find out exactly... well, what's HAPPENING. If you haven't seen it yet, I'm not going to spoil it for you. I recommend seeing it. Go in with the expectation that the ending is going to be weird and not very well done, and you'll probably enjoy the movie. It's rated R for graphic violence (many people killing themselves in horrific ways) and language.  SPOILER ALERT! Don't keep reading if you haven't seen it and don't want to know the ending. So, I thought the idea that nature was causing people to kill themselves w...

 The Quick and the Dead came out in 1995, and it was good. It was funny, harrowing, full of action and shooting and was a pretty good western for the 90s. It starred Sharon Stone in a rare role, Leo DiCaprio as a kid, Russel Crowe in an early role, and Gene Hackman as the bad guy you love to hate. It also has supporting performances from Gary Sinise, whom you might know as Lt. Dan, and Bruce Campbell from Army of Darknes and The Living Dead.  The entire plot revolves around who the fastest gunslinger is in this little western town. No one can beat Gene Hackman. I won't give away the story by giving up spoilers. But it's got a good ending. It's rated R for "western violence", though I think there's some strong language, too. I recommend it, if you like westerns, or you like the above named actors. It's a fun movie. PS the title is a pun, because "quick" can mean "alive", so the title means "The Living and the Dead". But it also...

 So here's another example of a movie I'd never heard of that I found in Redbox. And this one wasn't terrible. It was boring for like the middle third. The beginning was OK, a little confusing. The middle was more of the beginning so it got boring. And then the end was really good.  The reason I picked it up is because it's got Kevin Bacon, who always puts in a solid performance even if the movie he's in isn't any good. AND! It's got Drea de Matteo, whom I love! She was Adriana in the Sopranos, and nailed that role so hard that I got pretty emotional when... uh, when things happened in the Sopranos that I won't spoil for you. She was also Gina, Joey Tribbiani's sister, in the Friends spinoff called Joey. I always enjoy her performances, and she's good in this, even though she doesn't have a huge role. Unfortunately, the main role is played by Machine Gun Kelly, real name Colson Baker, and he basically just looks like he's in pain for the ...

I saw Prey for the Devil tonight, and I was very pleasantly surprised! It was really good. That's two movies in the past few years about the Catholic Church that were actually well made, respectful of the church, and not terrible off theologically. The other one was The Nun.  The main reason this movie is so good is because Jacqueline Byers does a fantastic job in the main role. She's funny, she's deeply sympathetic, she's torn between wanting to do what the church teaches and wanting to help people in a way the church doesn't necessarily approve of. I want to tell you a lot more about the movie, but I don't want to give you spoilers.  It's very much a movie about exorcism. Most of the movie is about that. And it's got a few scenes that rival the Exorcist in how terrifying they are. The movie is seriously scary in places - with jump scares of course, but with psychological fear and with demonic activity portrayed very convincingly on the screen. There...

 So I'd read that X was well done and scary. It isn't.  I rented it on Redbox and watched it, fast forwarding through the bits that were straight up porn. The premise is that this group of young twenty somethings rents a cabin in the woods so they can shoot an "adult film". The people who rent the place to them do not approve of their activities, and death and mayhem ensue. There's not much to like here. It's not scary. It's just pornographic enough to be really unpleasant. It's just gross and dumb and poorly made and I don't recommend it. It's rated R for all the reasons you can guess, including graphic violence and language.

 I really like Stephen King as a writer, but I really don't trust his endings. He even makes fun of himself for writing notoriously bad endings. But there are two times he wrote brilliant endings, and they were both set in prisons. Shawshank Redemption, and The Green Mile. The Green Mile is a beautiful movie full of good guys, bad guys, and a superhero that no one understands and who ends up being killed because he was misunderstood. Tom Hanks, Michael Clarke Duncan (in the middle above), Sam Rockwell, David Morse (who you might know from 12 Monkeys or Hurt Locker), and Michael Jeter (who you might know from The Fisher King, Jurassic Park III, or Waterworld) bring the story to life.  I highly recommend this movie. It does have strong language and adult themes, some violence, and sex-related material, though no nudity.