Category: 2020s

Single forty-something Ed Helms interviews Patti Harrison as a potential surrogate for his unborn child. I almost gave up early on in this film. There’s an awkwardness to the beginning, particularly Harrison’s character whose delivery is very stilted and gawky in somewhat off-putting ways. Helms’s character is played a bit too much as if future Andy Bernard was cast. The intimate moments don’t really feel earned. But there is a sweetness to the story and there’s chemistry between the leads. Despite them making a deal of their age difference, they move like a couple together, even in a platonic way.

I’m a sucker for stories, particularly romances, involving senior citizens. Unfortunately like Poms from two years ago, the story here is super light (essentially Mean Girls set in a senior community) and with a different cast wouldn’t be better than any Lifetime or Hallmark movie. Ellen Burstyn as the main character, an older woman who experiences a house fire and is forced to temporarily move to the community, brings quality to the role, as do James Caan, Jane Curtin, Ann-Margret, and Loretta Devine as her neighbors. Christopher Lloyd is also in the film but sadly under-used in his role as a resident experiencing worsening dementia.

Growing older, it’s a mild worry as to how I’ll experience my own lessening mental facilities. Here the experience is shown from both the perspective of the one with a dementia diagnosis and their significant other. That these two people are played by Stanley Tucci and Colin Firth adds to the quality of the film, as the duo travel on one last road trip across the UK together. It’s not a new story, but it’s filled with beautiful landscapes and there is a real loving sweetness to how the actors portray their relationship.

When I was in college, my roommate introduced me and our mutual friends to both the Mortal Kombat game and the 1995 film. Those two items pair quite well together. I don’t know about later MK games, but this film doesn’t gel with the parts I’m familiar with. There’s too much time spent on a hackneyed story involving superfluous family characters. The music and fight choreography do nothing to adrenalize the viewer. Most of the actors feel rather miscast. There isn’t even a tournament. It does at least include quotes and graphic violence reminiscent of the original game.

Less than a week ago, I had watched Hard Rain and thought how they don’t make films like that anymore. While I still assert that that is generally true, here is a film sitting firmly in that same category. A thriller with a not-quite natural setting, a completely nonsensical plot, and bad guys who are so supernatural that they have to killed them a dozen times before they stop their pursuit, the whole thing is a mess if you spend too long thinking about it. But at the same time, it remains an entertaining way to spend less than two hours. Angelina Jolie is a smokejumper, who after experiencing tragedy the year before, has found herself protecting a young boy being tracked by assassins for reasons. The good guys are helped by other good guys, the bad guys are mobilized by a Tyler Perry cameo.