The Giver

I approached seeing The Giver with some trepidation. I had heard it was ‘dark’ and controversial. This I’m sure is because the book had been banned from schools and it had taken Jeff Bridges 18 years to bring it to the screen. However long it took him, it was worth it. This is a movie which leaves you ‘thinking’. The theme is people living in a ‘perfect’ community, without emotion. Having no differences or choices and at the age of graduation the young are placed in a ‘job’ chosen for them. One boy, Jonas is placed with an elderly man The Giver, to learn about true pain and pleasure of the ‘real’ world.

Then the fun begins as Jonas, played adeptly by Brenton Thwaites wants to share what he is learning with his friends, mostly with Fiona played by Odeya Rush and Aser, played by Cameron Monahan. Jeff Bridges plays the older man The Giver, while Meryl Streep is Chief Elder, Alexander Skarsgard plays Jonas’s Dad, while Katie Holmes, his mother.

As mentioned this movie is worth seeing only for the conversation about society, and whether not being controlled is better than having all our feelings/emotions. Is it worth having to obey whatever is said by a governing body or not. The story is really about how Jonas is ‘freed’ and thereby ‘frees’ everyone. The result of that freeing we do not know. Is it good news how everything can go from black and white to ‘color’ when emotions are released.  Or is it better to live in ignorance in a black and white world.  The Giver is a movie which asks this question.  An important one.  It does make you think about our society and how many of us live.

4 out of 5.

R.I.P.D. movie review

I'm not sure if it was the planets were not aligned right, or if it was the mood I was in, but I did not really enjoy R.I.P.D. I have mentioned before I find my humor is situational, not slapstick, not put down, and definitely not embarrassing, and by rights I 'should' have enjoyed this movie.  I attended with a friend, who I noticed did not laugh a lot either, but said at the end she enjoyed it. I laughed twice. When I spoke with my usual movie going friend Trish, she said she laughed all he way through it. Humor is so directed to people's taste.  If you have Trish's taste, you will enjoy this movie, if you have my taste, give it a miss.  Now onto the movie itself.

Ryan Reynolds a recently deceased cop is teamed up with Jeff Bridges an older lawman. In the earth vibration these dead cops, look like a gorgeous blonde female (Bridges) and an older Asian gentlemen (Reynolds). Mary Louise Parker, is there controller, who has some interesting verbal by play with Bridges. The real bad guy of the movie is Kevin Bacon. The plot was unusual, paying penance by being a cop and rounding up escaped dead bad guys.

As you follow them tracking down aliens who look normal, but when shot with a special gun, turn into all sorts of strange, usually large bulging, peoples. As they go on their rounds, looking and tracking down these escaped dead bad guys, they discover a plot, which will basically destroy the world as we know it by reversing the going up into the afterlife, but having all of them coming back onto earth.  Luckily, the heroes of the day succeed in achieving the end result of defeating the bad guys.  And everything turns back to normal.

Obviously by the 1st paragraph I did not particularly like this movie.  To me its a 2 1/2. To my friend Trish is a 3 1/2.  Go see it and see where your humor button is.

PS. Mary Louise Parker had two movies come out at the same time. She is also in Red 2, which I'm going to write about next - now that one I enjoyed.

True Grit

Just got home from seeing True Grit.  I thoroughly enjoyed it. I vaguely remember John Wayne and Kim Darby in the original. This version was hilarious in places. It was watching the credits at the end that I realized the Cohan Bros wrote produced and directed it. No wonder it was funny. The seem to get better and better. The only problem I had with it was I had to listen really hard due to the accents they were using. Jeff Bridges is phenomenal in this role, (perhaps another Oscar nomination) the young girl was great....she really pulled the role off (but off the top of my head I can't remember her name - age, I worked to remember it off the screen too). Matt Damon I'm not sure of, but he is Matt Damon, I think other kinds of roles suit him better. Josh Brolin was great as the villain (although there were many villains).  Yes, go see this movie, it is definitely worth seeing, for the laughter. If you have a strange sense of humor like I do, you will laugh often even when no one else is. I give this movie 4 out of 5.