Lion

So I went to this movie without knowing much about it.  I like doing that, it is better than seeing a bunch of previews that show you the entire movie so then you are not surprised by the movie.  It is not a new experience.  All I knew was that Dev Patel's character was an orphan and looks for his family after he's adopted.  I watched the movie innocently not knowing the film makers intention.  It was near the end that it finally dawned on me the evil intent of the film was to make me cry.  The bastards.  There I am minding my own business watching this movie then bam I'm crying because this lost boy finally finds his mommy.  Egads.  It was a pretty interesting movie and they did a good job of explaining why people adopt kids.  Making a better world by easing a little suffering instead of introducing another random primate into the world, taking care of one that is already here that is lost and/or abandoned seems like a cool idea.  Also every once and a while I think India is an up and coming nation but then a movie like this reminds you why it is such a fucked country.  But I guess kids get lost in the US too, maybe just how selfish we all are and how helpless kids are.  Nicole Kidman is pretty amazing as the adopting mother.  

Concussion

I really did not want to see this movie, but my wife did, and I am glad that I saw it.  I had previously seen the Frontline documentary on this subject and felt that was probably enough, that was why I did not have a desire to see a dramatization.  The thing I liked about this movie was that it was so riddled with bullshit that it made me revisit the documentary and the interview of Dr. Omalu.

I have been so beaten over the head by movies that should not be love stories turned into love stories that I am inventing a name that will make a good acronym like the great Dr. Omalu did with CTE.  Let's see, retarded love story, RLS?  Hmmmm.  Maybe, but don't want to offend people with that retard word.  Maybe repetitive meaningless lovestory injury, RMLI.  Too long.  Well, I'll keep thinking about it.  This story did not need a love story.  And also a completely fictional love story at that in a movie based on a true story, so many falsehoods.  A miscarriage that did not happen.  Do they even know how terrible it is to have a miscarriage, of course they do, they want us to have feelings for these characters, instead of learning something real about concussions and the game of football.  Ugh.  

The FBI going after Dr. Omalu?  Really?  Because of a concussion medical theory concerning NFL players?  Going after Dr. Wecht because of this theory?  And Dr. Omalu not giving testimony against his mentor when Omalu did, and he sought Wecht's job and left for a better job offer in California.  Just a terrible disservice to reality. 

 A real Doctor with ambitions, a great immigrant story and they turned it into some strange paranoid thing where this great man is not rewarded for his hard work, until a weird end when the NFL starts listening.  And it is obvious that the NFL is not really listening in the real world when players are suffering concussions still, this season an offensive lineman for the Chargers suffered a concussion on Wednesday during practice, then played in the game on Sunday and suffered the worst concussion of his life to date.  The NFL concussion protocol is a joke.  But Dr. Omalu's work is not.  

Hollywood bullshit.  Hey, maybe that is the acronym, HBS?  Hmmm.  Or HBSS?  Hollywood bullshit syndrome?  No, that does not work.  Yet another reason why Dr. Omalu is amazing, coming up with a great memorable name to help market this disease, CTE, a disease that Dr. Omalu says over 90% of NFL players have some degree of, yet in the movie they say 28%.  Why did they even make a movie about this subject?  I am glad that I watched it because it forced me to revisit that reality of this subject and look over it again.  I have much less respect for Will Smith, et al and much more respect for the real Dr. Omalu and other doctors like him.  

Joy

Unfortunately, most of the good stuff in this one was in the preview.  It all seemed a little too tightly edited.  Maybe too much narration was the problem.  But for a movie about a shopping channel success story, I guess you should not expect too much.  Maybe it should've been made for TV, maybe put it on the Lifetime channel.  Maybe straight to DVD and sell it on the shopping network?  There definitely were some good performances though, but it all seemed too slick to me.  Joy is this amazingly smart heroine, her grandmother says that she is supposed to save the family, she seems to help everyone in the family all the time and does not take care of herself.   She lives with her ex husband, her mother, her father, which means that Joy's mother is also living with her ex-husband.  She has to work hard, is taken advantage of, but then prevails and sells her inventions on the television.  Yeah!

Sisters

We saw this on Christmas Eve.  It was a very funny movie.  Tina Fey and Amy Poehler do an amazingly good job making me laugh.  Two sisters that are about to lose their childhood home when their parents decide to cash out and move to a smaller condo.  It is something many people can relate to.  I especially enjoyed the over drugging of the fat guy character, he did some very funny stuff.  Lequizamo was very funny too.  I think they did a good job too with the daughter depending on Amy Poehler's character and Tina Fey's character being hurt by this.  The family dynamic was very interesting.  

Star Wars: The Force Awakens

I was genuinely excited to see this new iteration of Star Wars.  This version did not disappoint.  It was like all the old movies mushed into one film with many interesting new characters with a few enough of the old sprinkled in.  Of course, I do not remember any of the new characters' names, so, when new Darth Vader killed old Han Solo, I was pretty surprised, but it fit with the badness of the new Darth.  My only problem with that is that these movies are heavily marketed to kids, and the only death I remember from the old movies was when Obi Wan Kenobi is cut down by Darth, it was done in such a way that you are not really sure what happened.  There is no wondering about this son killing his father face to face.  Pretty harsh if you ask me.  Of course in the old movies, Skywaker has his arm cut off, and that is pretty scary for a kid to see.  I guess this is the new Disney:  face to face killings.  But overrall, for me, I enjoyed the movie and look forward to more.

In The Heart of The Sea

I was worried when I first saw the trailer for this that it was going to be some type of romantic drama, but it ended up being a pretty decent action movie.  This was about the story that inspired Melville to write Moby Dick.  It starts with Melville interviewing old Thor about his experience.  Very interesting story, similar to Life of Pi, a surviving lost at sea movie.  It just lets you know how alone you are out there in the ocean and that it is easy to get lost.  It also reminded me of the Jaws sequels, where Jaws is actually trying to kill people, and even the movie Orca where a mad killer whale is also trying to kill people, now that I think of it, I think there were sequels made from that Orca movie too.  The other crazy part of this movie, is the canibalism.  I guess that is what you would have to do to survive in such a situation.

The Hunger Games: Mockingjay Part 2

Sometimes you just get trapped watching one of these serial type movies.  Like an episode of Underdog, or say an old black and white Flash Gordon movie where one week they leave Flash stuck on a cliff, and then start the next movie with Flash getting out of the problem, The Hunger Games is that old black and white cliff hanger type of movie, that just kind of leaves you hanging.  Fortunately, this is the last one, at least for right now it is.  It is no wonder Philip Seymour Hoffman was taking so many drugs after he realized he was stuck in this series of films that go on and on and on.  I actually didn't go to the Divergent movies, or any of those Maze Runner movies, because I didn't want to get stuck going again and again to some movie that doesn't really resolve anything, and not in that cool way to teach us that life doesn't really resolve itself, but in that way that they want us to keep spending money on their decisions.

I really enjoyed the first couple of Hunger Games movies, because the contest was kind of an interesting idea and they did a good job with it, but the last two were just a bit too much.