A Dog’s Journey

— Young kids and cute canines. What more needs to be said about this follow-up to “A Dog’s Purpose”? It does what it does well, expertly manipulating viewers hearts and emotions for just a little longer than necessary. It’s fluff but I doubt anyone watching it is looking for more. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2010. 109 min. Directed by Gail Mancuso. Starring Josh Gad, Dennis Quaid, Kathryn Prescott, and Marg Helgenberger.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/a-dogs-journey-2019

Love. Wedding. Repeat.

— A nicely casted, good looking romantic comedy/farce that just doesn’t make the grade. For the viewer, there’s a bit of embarrassment as situations you know are supposed to be worth a guffaw only bring a smirk or a shrug. Add to that one to many penis jokes, and you have something that just falls flat. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2020. 100 min. Directed by Dean Craig. Starring Sam Claflin, Olivia Munn, and Freida Pinto.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/love-wedding-repeat-movie-review-2020

Unorthodox

— What a surprise! I remember when every educational film company was doing some kind of film on orthodox Judaism, probably around the time “Yentl” came out, and I previewed one too many of them. Then, a couple of years ago, the worth-seeing “Menashe” was in theaters. By then I thought I’d seen enough of such things and I shied away from Netflix’s “Unorthodox” thinking it was just another film focused on orthodox Judaism which, in a way, it is, but more importantly, it’s about an incredible act of rebellion. It’s the story of a Jewish girl who flees her arranged marriage to start a new life abroad, a daunting task for someone coming from so Orthodox a background. The production is meticulous and the details are fascinating. More importantly, the story transcends religion to become an heroic, coming of age story. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2020. 213 min., 4 episodes. Created by Anna Winger. Starring Shira Haas, Amit Rahav, and Jeff Wilbusch.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/streaming/netflixs-unorthodox-depicts-a-melancholic-escape

Tiger King

— For all the hubbub, this documentary/crime piece is pretty trashy and put together to trigger the same fascination we have with a 10-car pileup that leaves bodies by the side of the road. It’s a mixed genre series, a mishmash of true crime drama, reality TV, and biopic. I should have stopped during the first episode but, I confess, there is something weirdly fascinating about it and I watched the second episode before throwing in the towel. This really just isn’t worthwhile.[Netflix streaming.]

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[2020. 317 min., 8 episodes. Series directed by Rebecca Chaiklin and Eric Goode. With Joe Exotic, Carole Baskin, John Reinke, Kelci Saffery, John Finlay, Rick Kirkham, and Erik Cowie.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/tiger-king-movie-review-2020

Self Made: Inspired by the Life of Madam C.J. Walker

— Some “mini series” are mini enough that they’re almost a feature film. With a bit of judicious editing, this could easily have dropped the “mini-series” moniker and been a little less scattered. Walker is known as the first female self-made millionaire in the U.S. The story’s fine and its hard to argue about the acting, but it seems like an unwieldy script, as though they worked too hard to make it fun and inspirational, perhaps at the expense of Walker’s historic value. I would have preferred to have eliminated the jazzed-up, fantasy segments that occasionally acted as transitions from one segment to another (they reminded me of the singing and dancing routines in TV’s quirky “Zoey's Extraordinary Playlist”). Even so, it didn’t stop me from watching all four, roughly 45-minute episodes and mostly enjoying them. Episodes 3 and 4, directed by DeMane Davis seemed to run a little less amok than Episodes 1 and 2, directed by Kasi Lemmons. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2020. 189 min. Episodes 1 & 2 directed by Kasi Lemmons; Episodes 3 & 4 directed by DeMane Davis. Starring Octavia Spencer, Tiffany Haddish, and Carmen Ejogo.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/self-made-inspired-by-the-life-of-madam-cj-walker

The Last Thing He Wanted

— Anne Hathaway and Ben Affleck, along with Rosie Perez and Willem Dafoe? Based on Joan Didion’s novel? What could go wrong? Well, although Hathaway’s a good actor, it’s hard to make her look bad and that’s a problem for a reporter in Nicaragua who’s caught up in gunrunners, conspiracy and mayhem. It’s a confusing plot to follow, and just a little too fragmented for motivations to ever be clear. It’s hard to see the truth in most scenes, but maybe that’s half the intrigue. There’s an effort to add some clarity at the end for which I was grateful but, overall, this struck me as a complicated, multi-layered novel that just wasn’t well-suited to becoming a film at the hands of any but the most extraordinary scriptwriters. [Netflix streaming.]

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[2020. 115 min. Directed by Dee Rees. Starring Anne Hathaway, Ben Afflect, Rosie Perez, and Willem Dafoe.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/the-last-thing-he-wanted-movie-review-2020

Spenser Confidential

— When a couple of cops are murdered, ex-cop Spenser (Mark Wahlberg) and an MMA (Winston Duke) fighter try to figure out who the real murderer is. Helping them along the way is gym owner Alan Arkin, doing his usual anxious, befuddled character. Wahlberg is always likeable, but he’s just going through the motions on this one, and Winston Duke may just be miscast. If you’re a fan of ‘40’s fiction or ‘80’s television, you might not even recognize Spenser as having originated in Robert B. Parker's novels or portrayed by Robert Urich in “Spenser: For Hire.” It’s mild entertainment but nothing special. [Netflix streaming.] 

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[2020. 111 min. Directed by Peter Berg. Starring Mark Wahlberg, Winston Duke, and Alan Arkin.]
https://www.rogerebert.com/reviews/spenser-confidential-movie-review-2020

Dick Johnson Is Dead

— “Dick Johnson Is Dead” was shown at the 2020 True/False Film Fest and, for T/F festival films, I’m giving a general reaction to the viewing experience, followed by the film’s description as it appeared on the festival website.
      This is an unexpected blend of fiction and real life, making for a funny journey as father and daughter grapple with the father’s oncoming dementia. It helps that the daughter is the filmmaker and a pretty creative one at that. With humor and poignancy, she manages to get you thinking about the end we’ll all face eventually and the relationships we have. I liked the film a lot and it was recently picked up by Netflix.
      Description from the T/F website: “Every day we get older. We can’t stop time and beat death, but we can change the way we react. In the face of losing her father, Dick, to dementia, Kirsten Johnson takes her dad’s death into her own hands. Through a series of hilarious, heart-wrenching fake fatal accidents, action stunts, and macabre special effects, Johnson and her father collaborate in a grand exercise of cinematic shock therapy in order to confront the end together. Blending fiction (Dick is dead) and nonfiction (death itself), this colorful, wildly inventive follow-up to ‘Cameraperson’ (T/F 2016) plumbs the depths of disbelief and the heartache of grief by insisting on the now. A beautiful, deeply self-reflective film full of questions, anger, vulnerability, and laughter, ‘Dick Johnson is Dead’ will change the way you think about mortality, and bring you closer to the people you love.”

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[2020. 89 min. Directed by Kirsten Johnson.]
https://www.indiewire.com/2020/01/dick-johnson-is-dead-review-sundance-netflix-1202205541/