Quartet of Christmas Movies

I've been watching some Christmas movies on Netflix, so I thought I would share my thoughts about them. Spoilers ahoy (if you really care that much!)

A Christmas Prince (2017) - If you have Netflix, you are probably familiar with this because they've been promoting it hardcore. It was okay, but nothing great. It stars Rose McIver as a journalist named Amber who is suppose to travel to the fictional country of Andovia to get a story on Prince Richard. When I heard "Andovia", I thought for sure they had stolen the country from The Princess Diaries, but I guess that's Genovia. They sound exactly alike except for the first syllable! The King has recently died and Prince Richard, his oldest son, is suppose to be taking the throne and the crown on his coronation, which is Christmas Eve. He has a reputation with the press for being a play boy and is never around to take questions from them. To worm herself into the Palace, Amber pretends to be the tutor for Princess Emily, the little sister of Richard. They were expecting a tutor from Minnesota, but thought she wouldn't be arriving until AFTER the New Year. Amber just tells them she's the tutor without having to show any proof of ID and they believe her. Lucky for her, they don't seem to know what a Minnesotan accent is suppose to sound like! At first Princess Emily is a little snot to Amber and doesn't like her, but that only lasts one scene and in the next scene they have become friends. Emily also has found out that Amber isn't really a tutor (I'm sure she figured out that really fast because it was obvious she had no idea what she was doing when she was trying to teach Emily calculus) and finds out she's a journalist. She makes a deal with Amber, saying she won't say who she really is as long as Amber writes "the truth" about her brother. Apparently, Prince Richard is very kind-hearted and generous, giving to charities and playing with the homeless children. I'm not sure why the press says he's a playboy if there's no evidence of him ever being one. As you can guess, Amber starts to fall for the Prince. Of course we can't have a movie without having a couple of villains. This includes Simon, the cousin of Richard and Emily who is second in line to the throne, and Sophia, Richard's ex, who was only dating him in hopes of becoming the Queen someday.

There is this scene that is totally stolen from Beauty and the Beast (animated or live action, take your pick) where Amber is horseback riding by herself (she's following the Prince) and gets thrown from the horse while in the woods. A wolf growls at her and comes towards her and all she can do is just sit against a tree. Guess who comes by and saves her? Yep, the Prince. He shoots his gun to scare away the wolf. I thought it was going to be revealed the wolf was a family pet and it was going to start licking her face and being all cute, but nope.

Amber happens to stumble across some documents that reveal Richard is actually adopted (but Emily is still their own child) and therefore he wouldn't be able to take the throne. She tells her newspaper co-workers/friends back home in New York and they tell her she has a great story, but she doesn't want to betray the Prince like that. Like a moron, she leaves the papers out in the open in her bedroom, so while she's gone, Sophia and Simon start snooping around in there cuz they know something is up with her. They find the papers and at Richard's coronation, just before it is asked if anyone has any objections to him being the King (does it really work that way?), Simon brings out the adoption papers and the Queen admits it's true. Richard cannot be King, thus making Simon the rightful owner of the crown and throne. He marries Sophia the next day, Christmas, and demands to be made the King right that moment.

Meanwhile, Richard is angry at Amber because it is revealed she found the papers. She's on her way back home and calls her dad at the airport who tells her something that makes her think of something. In a previous scene when the Royal Family was decorating the tree, the Queen tells her about an acorn ornament her husband loved and Amber thinks there is a clue inside of it. She is right and there is a message from the King before he died saying he wants his son, even though he was adopted, to inherit the throne. Amber makes it just in time right before Simon is knighted and Richard becomes the rightful King! Yay!

The end scene was so bad. Amber is now back in New York at her dad's diner. It's about ten minutes to midnight on New Year's and guess who happens to be in town? Yep, the Prince, er King. And he asks Amber to marry him, telling her, "There can't be a King without his Queen." And even though they only knew each other for a month, Amber says "yes." But then she tells him she can't leave her dad and he's like, "Bring him along too! We'll build a diner in Andovia." It is sooo ridiculous.


Get Santa (2014) - This was my favorite of the ones I'm reviewing. It's a cute family British movie about a young boy, Tom, and his dad, Steve, who are trying to get Santa out of prison. Steve has been in prison for the last couple of years because he was the getaway driver in a burglary, but, as his parole officer pointed out, he was not able to get away. It's the day before Christmas when Steve is released and he gets a call from Tom, telling him that Santa (Jim Broadbent) is in their garden shed and needs help finding his sled. It's the middle of the night when Steve gets this call, so of course he's very concerned that his son is alone with a man claiming he's Santa and tells him to get his mother, but Tom refuses to wake her up. Steve comes over and dismisses the man's claims saying he's the real Santa and tells him to leave.

Santa is arrested when he's trying to get his reindeer out of the animal pound. It was a big story in London that a few days earlier a bunch of reindeer were wandering around the city. The news reporter joked that if these were Santa's reindeer, then a lot of kids were going to be disappointed on Christmas Day. If she only knew! Santa being arrested makes the news and on their first day together since Steve's released from prison, Tom wants him to take him to see Santa. Although when his son told him that, he just assumed he wanted to see Santa at the mall, but, no, his son wants to go to prison (the same one where Steve was held) to visit the man from the night before. Santa, now dressed in prison garb, tells them he wants them to save Christmas and he needs them to find his reindeer, who can communicate and they'll know what to do. I think it's Dasher who's the head reindeer and will be able to help them. Steve is still not buying any of this. There is a funny moment where he calls the old man "Nick" and he tells him that he sometimes go by that name and how did he know that?

To humor his son, they drive around until they find the reindeer. They don't talk, but they start farting and Tom is convinced this is the way they communicate. He asks a question and they all start farting. Yeah, it's pretty juvenile, but it made me laugh. I don't know what it is about farting reindeer. This was also a reoccurring theme in The Santa Clause movies. They find Santa's sled and this is around the time Steve thinks that this actually COULD be the real Santa. He accidentally dumps out all the magic powder, but Santa tells him on the phone that he keeps a manual in his glove compartment (which is an oversized mitten, haha). There's a map to a tower that will help them. Meanwhile, Steve has already missed his parole meeting, has trespassed on the grounds where the reindeer were, and has knocked out a police officer (although it was the reindeer that did that), so the police are after him. While all this is going on, I'm thinking, Wouldn't it be kinda crazy if this were like The Game (don't read ahead if you don't want to be spoiled by that movie!), that David Fincher movie where all of this crazy stuff is set up to make Steve believe it's all real, but in reality, EVERYBODY is in on it? That would have been so cool! They need to make a Christmas themed The Game movie! But I knew that wasn't what was going on because a) this is a kid's movie, and b), the next scene completely demolished any notions of that because Steve and his son find a magical slide that takes them to the North Pole (aka Lapland). I don't think there's any way you could explain that! When they arrive, they meet Santa's elves who tells them they can't ride in the sleigh because if they go more than a thousand feet in the air, they'll explode! With only one reindeer (poor reindeer!) to fly the sleigh, the elves instruct Steve how to control it. It's pretty cool how they get started because they start on a huge platform with a giant slide and go down it to gain momentum. There's also a loop-de-loop which I don't understand, but it's all part of the fun and charm, I guess. They're on their way to prison to get Santa. There's a really funny moment where Santa, with the help of  Sully, a littler person (Warwick Davis) escapes and they find a hole that Sully had dug through. There's a poster of a woman in a bathing suit and it's ripped to reveal the hole ala The Shawshank Redemption. Very clever movie, very clever. Of course they are able to get Santa back to his sleigh and save Christmas. This is a very cute movie and I just happened to stumble across it because it was the first movie that popped up when I looked for Christmas movies!

The Christmas Project (2016) - This is a movie that you could tell wanted to be A Christmas Story because there a lot of moments that totally reminded me of that film, but misses the mark. It was a fine movie, but I wouldn't go out of my way to recommend it or anything. It's about a group of four brothers, the Buckley's, who are bullied by the Hagbart kids. There's three girls and one boy and they're really only bullied by the boy, Finn. The two older sisters aren't very nice, but they don't beat anyone up or do any mean pranks like their brother and the little sister is pretty harmless.

Mrs. Buckley, who is pregnant with her fifth child (who, to her delight, will be a daughter), wants them to "Elf" the Hagbart family this year. To Elf someone is to leave gifts like candy and mittens on someone's porch, ring the bell, and then hide to watch their expressions. It's clear that the Hagbart family is poor and their mother left them a long time ago. I thought we were going to find out that the father is abusive, but that wasn't the case. He just works a lot so he's never home. In fact, even though we hear about him, we never see him in the movie. Whenever they Elf the Hagbart family, they see the happy expressions on their faces and it makes them feel good, but Finn keeps on being a bully to all of them, especially Matthew, the kid in his grade and the one narrating the story as an adult (another reason this reminded me of A Christmas Story). Finn is a pretty sh*tty kid. He beats up Matthew's older brother, he steals cookies from his younger brother, he pins Matthew's underwear to a map so the class sees it when the teacher pulls the map down and it says "Buckley's bloomers" and he steals and takes credit for the project Matthew made for the egg drop challenge (you know, when you build something to protect an egg when you drop it from a certain height. I never had to do it in school, but this seems to be in a lot of movies and TV shows). However, we're supposed to feel bad for Finn because he's poor and has no mother or something like that. Yeah, he and Matthew become friends at the end, or at least he stops tormenting Matthew all the time, but gimme a break! This kid was a little twerp and never got in trouble for what he did. Everyone (like the teacher and Mrs. Buckley) felt sorry for him.

That was the main storyline, but there were also little subplots such as the Buckleys' getting new neighbors and Matthew and his older brother falling for one of the daughters, Juniper, who looks like Blake Lively's not-as-pretty younger sister. Her older sister bakes them cookies and they are nasty because there's no sugar in them and very hard when they bite into them. It was a really weird scene because when Matthew's older brother was eating the cookie, the girl was standing really close to him, watching him intently as he eats it. Like, who does that? Later in the movie, Matthew tricks Finn by making cookies that have toothpaste in the middle so when Finn steals them and gives them to his teacher, she'll get mad at him. However, why didn't they use these gross cookies the older sister made? That's where I thought the movie was going with that, but nope. There were some little vignettes peppered in, like one where one of the brothers becomes attached to a chicken (they have chickens for some reason) and his dad accidentally kills it and serves it for dinner because he couldn't tell that one apart from the other ones. And there's an ongoing storyline about "the Christmas catalogue" and if it came in the mail yet and who has it.

It wasn't a terrible movie, but it was clear it was trying too hard to A Christmas Story.
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Christmas in the City (2013) - This had to have come from Lifetime or the Hallmark channel. It was a very paint by numbers Christmas movie. It's about a young single woman, Wendy, and her six-year-old daughter, Grace, who move to the city after her dad's candy store is going under foreclosure. It's about three weeks until Christmas, so she decides if she gets a job at a department store (where her friend from the city, Angie, works) then she can make enough money to send home to her mother so she can keep the store running. I thought the city in question was New York, but it was Los Angeles. I was wondering why there was no snow until I realized this. When you think of Christmas city settings, you think of New York or London or Chicago. You don't think of L.A.! But I'm guessing it was set there because it was filmed there, so therefore it was easiest to do that. The only person in this movie who I was familiar with was Ashanti (and even then, even though I know she's a singer, I couldn't tell you the name of any of her songs) who plays this really bitchy woman who has been brought on by the head of the department store to fix things so they can achieve higher sales. Nobody likes her because she's a real hard-ass and everyone calls her Cruella DeVil because she wears a lot of furs. Her ideas to fix the store is to get rid of all the Christmas-y stuff like the decorations, the piano, the carolers, even Santa! She then proceeds to put up more sexy decorations like posters of buff, shirtless guys wearing Santa hats and she has models in slinky dresses serving hors d'oeuvres on platters. This is a little weird, but whatever, sex sells, right? But what's really weird is that she puts the posters of shirtless buff guys and has shirtless buff male models walking around in the TOY department (the department where Wendy starts because that's where Angie works). WTF? No kid would care about that, unless they're trying to get the attention of the mothers? It's so weird. Everyone is mad at all these changes, but nobody will do anything to stop Ashanti (I don't remember her character's name), so they pretty much let her get away with making the toy department a male stripper show. Wendy falls for the son of the guy who is the head of the Department Store (whose name I've also forgotten) and of course, they fall in love. The little girl is pretty cute (and a good little ice skater, I'm guessing that's why she was cast because that's a little subplot of the movie), but she would whore her mother out to any single dude they came across. This includes the son of Department Store Guy and her bus driver. She would just tell the guy, "Isn't she prrrreeettttyyy?" Wendy's mother ends up selling the candy store, but guess what, Wendy's new boyfriend buys them out and wants to set up their own candy store at the department store where he wants Wendy to be the manager of, so she ends moving back to L.A. so she can live her happy life. Blah. And Ashanti was fired, in case you were wondering. But we all knew that was coming. Terrible movie, but kinda fun to watch because it was so bad. 

Boston Strong

Patriots Day

Director: Peter Berg

Cast: Mark Wahlberg, Kevin Bacon, John Goodman, Michelle Monaghan, J.K. Simmons, Melissa Benoist

Released: December 21, 2016

This movie is based on the April 2013 Boston Marathon bombings, which I'm sure everyone remembers as it only happened a mere four years ago. I thought I remembered everything about this incident, but apparently not because there were things in the movie that I found myself going, "Wait, I thought it happened this way!" or "Wait, I don't remember that happening!" But I'll get to those later. Mark Wahlberg (a native Bostonian as you all know) does not play a real person, but his police officer character, Sergeant Tommy Sanders, is suppose to represent the everyman Boston police officer during this tragic event.

Everyone else, to my knowledge portray real-life people. Before the day of the Marathon we are shown the home lives of a few different characters. Even though they tell us the last name of the family/person we're viewing, I didn't know who any of these people were. I didn't remember the names of the terrorist brothers, but once I saw the title card say, "Tsarnaev residence", I knew it was them because I remember them being Russian and sure enough we see them along with the older brother's wife (played by Melissa Benoist...who I did not recognize until the interrogation scene because she wears a hijab and that was the first time the camera lingers on her. I guess I forgot that the wife was American). We see a young married couple and a young Chinese man who's attending MIT and showing his parents his new car via his phone. I had no idea who these people were and thought maybe they were victims of the bombing. Well, they were victims, but they weren't the ones who were killed by the bomb like I had thought. I had to remind myself who died because I only remembered the police officer, who wasn't killed by the bomb, but who was killed the following night by one of the brothers, and an eight year old boy died from the blast. Two other young women also died from the blast. Except for the police officer, there is no mention of the deceased by name and they don't have anyone playing them which I thought was a smart choice. The only mention of the deceased is when the young boy who died is covered by a table cloth from a restaurant and they are unable to remove him until they are sure there isn't any bomb residue on him. I'm sure this happened in real life (otherwise why would it be in the movie?) and I can't imagine being the parents of that boy who took him to see the Boston Marathon, but weren't able to take him home because two low-lifes (one who has a young daughter!) took his life.

For two bombs going off, it is very fortunate that not more lives were lost that day. The majority of the devastation came from injuries, the severest being lost of limbs. The couple that is shown the night before the Marathon are actors playing a real life couple who both run the race every year and had to have their legs amputated. Saunders is near the finish line when both bombs go off (which were only 13 seconds apart...a fact I did not know) and his wife is also there because she had come down to bring him something. He will feel very guilty for putting her in harm's way, but she tells him it wasn't his fault. During all the commotion, the race is (surprisingly) still going on and runners are running into the confusion and they have to block the area.

John Goodman plays Boston Police Commissioner Ed Davis and Kevin Bacon plays Richard DesLauriers, special agent in the Boston field and both head the investigation to find out what happened. You get a glimpse of what happened behind the scenes. It seemed to happen really fast because the bombing happened on a Monday and by Friday the older brother was killed and the younger one was caught. But we see the process of trying to find out who set off the bombs is painstakingly slow as several people are scouring over security footage (and they used real footage) of every angle from where the bomb went off. Someone alerts the two men in charge when he sees footage of a young man in a white hat looking away from the camera (as though he knows a bomb is about to go off) a second before everyone else does. They try to find other angles where they can see "White Hat" and Saunders tells them which business security camera to look up and they find a few more angles of him as well as him standing next to someone wearing sunglasses and a black hat and holding a backpack (the older brother) who they assume are together and are the bombers. Even though they have clear photos, they can't find them in the criminal database as they have no records. Now what I didn't know is that the FBI agent did NOT want to release the photos of the suspects because if they were wrong and they weren't involved, they would be raked over the coals by the public. He wanted more evidence that these were the bombers. They just wanted a little more time to figure out, but then it turned out FOX News (of course it was FOX!) got a hold of the photos and were going to release them in a few hours, so they decided they would go ahead and release them before the media did so they could get them out there their way.

The only person shown being killed is Officer Sean Collier. Like the other characters the day before the bomb happened, we also get a glimpse into his life. I remember a police officer being killed by the suspected bombers, but I guess I thought it was from a shoot out. I didn't remember that he was sitting in his car in front of MIT and the younger brother came up to his car and motioned for him to roll down his window and when he did, he shot him and stole his gun. That's scary. The thing that shocked me the most from watching this was what happened next because I did not remember this AT ALL. In fact, I don't think I even knew about this until I watched the movie. This is when the young Chinese student comes into play. We see him in an earlier scene having dinner with a new friend and he's telling her what it's like living in a new country. I was wondering what he had to do with this story and this is when we find out. He's sitting in his car, looking at his phone, when the older brother comes up to his window and motions for him to roll it down. Both brothers hijack the car with their new gun and make Dun Meng, the young Chinese man drive them. This seems like a big part of the story, was it even in the news? How could I not know this happened? They make him get out of the driver's seat and into the passenger seat so the older brother can drive. As they're driving, they tell him that they bombed the Marathon and are planning to go to Manhattan and bomb Times Square. They also talked about 9/11 being an inside job by the government (now I love a good conspiracy theory as much as the next person...I am all about the JFK and TWA 800 conspiracies....but the 9/11 one, I never got that one).

Speaking of 9/11, we get a comment from a news reporter saying that the bombing is the worst act of terrorism in the U.S. since 9/11 and I'm thinking, "What?" Because it seems like that's a pretty big gap between 2001 and 2013, but then I realized all the 40 million shootings in those years weren't linked to terrorism groups...we just have a bunch of idiots who live in this country. Before the race begins, there is a moment of silence for the victims of the Newtown, CT school shooting and I had to remind myself that had only happened four months prior and in just a few short hours they would have their own tragedy. I've seen the Boston Marathon bombing be compared to 9/11 on a few occasions and aside from the terrorism aspect and when they shut down the city of Boston that day (like when they shut down all the airports), I've never really understood that. I was reminded more of the Oklahoma City bombing. I am always amazed at the amount of people who refer to 9/11 as a "bombing". There were no bombs involved in 9/11! Let me tell you a true story....the week after 9/11 happened, my school had a banner saying something along the lines to donate blood or money for the victims of the 9/11 bombing. And I see it and I'm thinking, Huh...I don't remember any bombs being reported. Anyway, I'm getting way off topic...

The brothers stop at gas station for snacks and this is when Dun Meng makes his escape. He has already pleaded to be let go and they can have his money and car and he promises he won't tell anyone, but the brothers refuse. You know that since they have already told him who they are and what they plan to do, that they have no plans to keep him alive once they don't need him anymore and you know he knows this. While the younger brother is getting snacks, the older brother has the gun in the side pocket of the car and is looking out the window. We see Dung Meng getting ready to escape. Now I just thought he had to open the door and that was it, but he also had his seatbelt on, so that gave the bomber notice that his abductee was getting ready to leave, but luckily Meng manages to escape and runs to a gas station across the street and screams at the manager to call the police. When the police arrive, Meng tells them he was abducted by the two brothers who were involved in the Boston Marathon bombing and his phone is still in the car an they are able to track them down. Saunders tells Meng that he was very brave to do what he did and I have to agree...if I had done that, I would have over thought it and would end up dead. Meng was just sitting in his car playing with his phone when he was hijacked and I told myself that I would NEVER just sit alone in my car while on my phone. Well, just a couple days after I saw this, I found myself in a parking lot with my phone trying to locate a place I was looking for. Now it was broad daylight, but I still locked my car! So starting now I will NEVER sit in my car, night or day, and look at my phone!

When  the police locate the bothers, they have a big shootout and many bombs are involved so right there the police knew that they had plans to bomb other places. This is when the older brother is killed, which I remembered. What I don't remember is that the younger brother ran over him with the car! He was aiming at the police who had gotten a hold of the older brother, but jumped out of the way when the car came towards them. He gets away and the next day is devoted to looking for him which I remember, especially since I watched it on TV when they had located him in the boat. That would be so scary to be the guy who owns the boat and find the one person everybody in the city is looking for is hiding in your boat! In the film, the owner of the boat notices something wrong with his boat and calls the police, but I watched a documentary about this whole ordeal and they interviewed the guy and he said that he actually went up to his boat and saw the kid (I think he was sleeping?) and then called the police, but in the movie, it's Saunders who discovers him.

We all know how the story ends and the perpetrator is caught. The movie ends with the real footage of David Ortiz giving his speech at the April 20, 2013 Red Sox game against the Royals and we see the Mayor of Boston, Ed Davis, and other people who helped make Boston safe. Then we see clips of the real life couple who lost their legs talking as well as a father and son who were separated (who were also featured in the movie). I really didn't think it was necessary to have these talking heads in there because it felt like I was watching a documentary and an entire new movie was starting. This should have been in the special features portion of the DVD. And believe me, there are TONS of documentaries on the Boston Marathon bombing to watch if you want to find out the many stories that come from it. I think having the baseball speech was the perfect place to end it, as well as have the in memoriam photos of the four people who lost their lives. 

Fallen Star

O.J.: Made in America
Director: Ezra Edelman
Released: May 20, 2016

Oscar nominations:

Best Documentary (won)

At a running length of seven hours and forty-seven minutes, this is the longest film to ever win an Oscar. I was surprised it was even up for an Oscar since it watches more as a miniseries than as a film. It was first shown as a five part miniseries on ESPN, but it also got a theatrical release which made it eligible for the Oscar. When it was shown at Sundance, there was only one intermission! What kind of bs is that? A nearly eight hour movie and only one intermission? At least there were two intermissions at other places it was shown theatrically. I watched it on Hulu and it took me about a week to get through it.

This movie chronicles the life of O.J. Simpson. Now when I think of O.J. Simpson, the first thing that comes to my mind is the Trial of the Century and that part of his life was a huge chunk of the film, but they also discuss his early life as a football player who became a beloved national symbol and then a superstar athlete and celebrity. I was in middle school when the murders occurred and a high school freshman when the not guilty verdict was read. I'm trying to remember if I even knew who O.J. Simpson was before all this occurred or if this was my first introduction to him because I honestly don't remember. It's possible I had heard of the name because I believe at that point he was a commentator for one of the big networks during football games so I probably heard it when my dad was watching football games and I was doing something else. By this time he would have played Nordberg in the three Naked Gun movies, but I honestly don't remember when I saw those and I'm sure I wouldn't have remembered him from them even if I had seen them before the trial. I'm pretty sure I was familiar with the name, but didn't know much about his life until the trial.

I would rank the O.J. Simpson Murder Trial as one of the most significant cultural events that ever happened during my lifetime. If you are old enough to remember this, then you remember what a big deal it was. And if you were too young/weren't born yet, this documentary is a great way to find out about it. In fact, there were many things I had forgotten or didn't even realize while watching it. (And some things I was reminded about earlier when I had watched the FX series The People vs. OJ Simpson).

They interview everybody and anybody who was involved in Simpson's life, whether it was his football career, personal life, or his trial. The only person they didn't get to interview was Simpson himself.

The first part of the documentary began with his college and professional football career, the part of his life I was the least familiar with. He played for the Buffalo Bills in the '70s and the documentary reiterates what an icon he became and how everybody loved him. Apparently he did some pretty impressive things during his football career, but I don't know anything about football. Being so well loved by everybody made it easy for him to transition into Hollywood. He was in a handful of films, but I've only seen/heard of The Towering Inferno and the Naked Gun movies. (And I'm pretty sure he was the one who started the fire in The Towering Inferno! (And yes, I made that joke when I reviewed that film.)) He was the spokesman for Hertz and I feel like I remember the networks showing these commercials over and over again because I know I've seen them, but they were first aired before my time. They interviewed the director or someone who was involved in the commercials and he said that since a black man was the star of the commercials, they had to make sure everyone else in it was white. This was in the late '70s - a different time for all!

There were lots of things I didn't know about Simpson that I learned in this documentary. I knew he was married before he met Nicole Brown, but I didn't know he had a daughter who drowned right before she turned two. I also didn't know his father was gay. And while I knew Nicole was younger than him, I guess I hadn't realized how large the age gap was, especially when they met. He is twelve years older than her and they met when she was 18, so he was 30 when he was going after an eighteen year old. Ewww. They interview a few of his friends from childhood and high school and they tell stories about how charming he was and how he could talk his way out of any situation.

Race plays an important part in this documentary as it did with the trial. They take the time to rehash the Rodney King beating and how that played a vital role in the trial. At the time, I was way too young to understand how it was connected, but in this documentary it makes perfect sense. If you don't know, Rodney King was a young black man who was beaten by police and it was caught on video. This happened in 1991 Los Angeles. The police were not held responsible and this incited outrage among the black community. I can't blame them; that was pretty infuriating. One juror member on the O.J. trial was interviewed and admitted her not guilty vote for Simpson was payback for that. His lawyers (especially Johnny Cochran) did a great job of making race the number one priority in a murder trial that I remember thinking at one point during the whole ordeal, Wait, weren't two people brutally murdered? It was really unfortunate for the prosecution that Mark Fuhram was the first cop to be on the scene and he had a history of saying some terrible, racist things. The defense team aka The Dream Team used that to their full advantage and ran with it. And it certainly paid off as we all know. The prosecution also made some very dumb mistakes, most notably the gloves. (Sidenote: I've recently just finished the first season of This is Us and every time I see Sterling K. Brown in a scene, I just shake my head and think, Oh, Charles Darden, why did you have O.J. try on the gloves?) Having him try on the gloves was so stupid! Of course they're not going to fit! Do you know how easy it is to try on a glove and make sure it doesn't fit? All you have to do is stiffen your hand. I've also heard he stopped taking his arthritis medication and that made his hand swell up. At least that moment gave us the great line, "If it doesn't fit, you must acquit!"

Even with that bone head move, I still puzzle over how Simpson was acquitted. Everyone and their grandmothers knows that he did it. I'm sorry, but you have to be stupid or in complete denial if you think he is innocent. Because if he didn't kill his ex-wife and Ron Goldman who was at the wrong place at the wrong time, then who did? The details of their gruesome murders are explained while very, very graphic photos are shown. Nicole was nearly decapitated because her throat was slashed so viciously. And let's not forget that Simpson had a record for domestic abuse and even spied on his ex once when she was with another man. Everyone interviewed in the documentary say they believe he did it or if they don't flat out say that he did it, they insinuate that they believe he did. EVERYONE. His (former) friends. His former manager. People from the defense team. The jurors.

The last part of the documentary goes into detail about how Simpson ended up in jail. Ironically, he got away with murder but he didn't get away with a robbery! This is schadenfreude at its finest. In 2008, he was sentenced to 33 years in jail for breaking and entering into a Las Vegas hotel room of a man who had a bunch of Simpson memorabilia from his football days. Simpson claims that all this stuff was stolen and wanted it back. (Is it considered a robbery if you're taking back stuff that was yours in the first place? Hmmm. Although he did take other stuff that wasn't previously his). They interview the guy who had the memorabilia and he said he went to the front desk and asked for security because he was "robbed by O.J. Simpson" and that everyone started laughing at him. To be honest, I would probably have had the same reaction. I would also probably have said an off-color joke like, "Well, at least he didn't kill you!"

Let's just pretend we're living in an alternate universe where Brown and Goldman were never murdered and O.J. Simpson was best known as being one of football's greats and the Trial of the Century never existed. If the Las Vegas robbery still happened in this timeline, no way in hell he is sentenced to 33 years in jail. He would have only had a slap on a wrist and probably would have to pay a fine. Even though a gun was involved, nobody was hurt and the whole thing was told as a dumb heist with a bunch of idiots.

But we don't live in an alternative universe and he wasn't sentenced to 33 years in prison for breaking and entering or robbing a man or having a gun, no he was sentenced to 33 years for murdering two people. How stupid do you have to be? He literally got away with murder (TWO murders!) and goes and does something stupid. Here's a lesson for you: if you get away with murder, don't do stupid stuff!

This was a very compelling documentary and I highly recommend it. You can find it on Hulu. Take a week and watch an hour every day. I learned a lot of things about Simpson's past and football days that I never knew. I also learned a lot about the Trial that I wasn't aware of or just forgot. There's so much in the documentary (obviously, it's nearly eight hours long!) that I only just scratched the surface with this review.

Animal Kingdom

Zootopia

Directors: Bryon Howard, Rich Moore, and Jared Bush

Voice Talent: Ginnifer Goodwin, Jason Bateman, Idris Elba, Jenny Slate, Octavia Spencer, J.K. Simmons, Alan Tudyk, Shakira

Released: March 4, 2016

 

Oscar nominations:

Best Animated Feature (won)

After this movie won the Oscar for Best Animated Feature, I wanted to check it out, especially since I knew it had been released on Netflix. If you had asked me to place a bet on which movie would win Best Animated movie, I would have put all my money on Moana. That just seemed like the more Oscar-ish movie to me. Even after watching Zootopia, I still think that. Don't get me wrong...I really enjoyed Zootopia, but I'm still surprised Moana didn't win. I didn't know too much about Zootopia going into it, the only thing I knew was that it was about animals who lived together, both predators and prey, living in peaceful harmony. We get a little narrative at the beginning explaining how this came to happen.

Judy Hopps (voiced by Ginnifer Goodwin) is a bunny who wants to make the world a better place. Her goal is to move from the country where she lives with her parents and her 275 brothers and sisters to Zootopia, the big city, where she wants to be a police officer. Not just any police officer, but the first bunny police officer. She trains with animals that are much bigger than her: bulls, lions, tigers, polar bears, elephants, rhinos; but with a lot of dedication and hard work and cleverness she manages to complete her training and joins the team. She eagerly awaits her first duty as a police officer, but is disappointed when her cape buffalo boss, Chief Bogo (voiced by Idris Elba) gives her parking ticket duty. Judy is determined to write so many tickets in an allotted amount of time and because of her tenacity, she manages to do it. I did love every time she heard the little click of a meter going off, she lifted one of her ears.

The interesting thing about Zootopia, despite it having both prey and predator and despite it having the biggest animals from elephants to the smallest of mice, it only has mammals. There are no reptiles, insects, birds, fish. Look, I understand there are millions of species of animals and not all of them can be represented in this movie, so I'm fine with it being only mammals, but I am a little confused that there were no primates. No monkeys, apes, gorillas, etc. Those are some of the most popular animals at zoos and you would think in a place called ZOOtopia, they would make sure to have a couple. If there were any, they certainly weren't in the foreground and didn't have any lines. Why not throw in a capuchin monkey named Marcel? I don't know; I just thought it was weird that in a city full of a variety of animals, there were no primates. Maybe in the sequel, perhaps? You just know there's going to be a sequel because this is a world full of so many possibilities. Not to mention it made a bucketload of money at the box office! And it did win an Oscar, let's not forget that! 

Judy sees a fox with his young son enter an ice cream parlor run by elephants. One of the elephants is scooping out the ice cream with his trunk...oh, ew! Judy is suspicious because she has always learned never to trust foxes especially since she was always bullied by one when she was younger. The fox wants a jumbo pop for his son's birthday, but the elephant refuses to serve him one and tells him to go to an establishment that caters to his own kind. Judy steps in and tells the elephant she's going to write him up for having one of his employees scooping up ice cream without the proper sanitation. I laughed when she said "Are your customers aware they're getting snot and mucus with their ice cream?" and one of the customers overhears her and sprays ice cream into his mate's face. To avoid the citation, the elephant agrees to let the fox buy a jumbo pop for his son, but he doesn't have enough money. Judy feels bad and buys it for the little guy. She learns the fox's name is Nick (voiced by Jason Bateman). She also learns, later that day, that Nick is a con artist and the fennec fox (never heard of a fennec fox, I got this info from Wikipedia!) is not his son, but his partner. She follows the two of them and sees they are making the large elephant jumbo pop into several tiny pops that they sell to hamsters (gerbils?) during their work break. They then collect all the tiny popsicle sticks which have been dyed red from the popsicle and sell it as "redwood". Judy is angry when she sees this and confronts Nick, but he doesn't have any remorse for conning other animals.

Judy later blackmails Nick into helping her when she has promised Mrs. Otterton (voiced by Octavia Spencer) that she will find her missing husband without Chief Bogo's permission. He tells her if she is unable to find him within 48 hours, she will be fired from the Academy. She tells Nick she needs his help or she will report him for never turning in his taxes. Their first stop is a nudist colony owned by a yak (voiced by Tommy Chong). Judy has no idea it's a nudist colony until the yak comes out from behind the front desk and she sees he's wearing no pants and she freaks out. In Zootopia, animals wear clothes and it's weird for them to be naked. The yak takes them outside where an array of animals are doing all kinds of inappropriate things (you know, for being nude). A giraffe is doing a weird yoga pose with its feet in the air. Funny stuff. They get information about Emmitt, the missing otter, and have to go to the DMV (Department of Mammal Vehicles) to check out a license plate number. The scene at the DMV was one of the funniest things I've seen in a long time and I was laughing so much. First of all, I loved that all the employees were sloths and thought was that was absolutely brilliant. Of course the slowest of animals would work at the DMV! Like everybody else in the world, I hate going to the DMV. Not just because of the slow and long lines, but I swear, this has happened to me at least three times: I always check to make sure I have everything, but yet when I get there I'm missing one thing or another so either I have to go home and retrieve it or step aside and lose my place in line to make a phone call to retrieve the information I'm missing. It's so annoying! I hate the DMV! And I think I have to go this year to get my driver's license renewed, ugh! Well, I can just imagine this scene from Zootopia and have a good laugh. Judy and Nick are helped by a sloth named Flash (we later find out he gets his name because he likes to drive fast in his sports car, heh) and he asks him what can he do for them today, with about a three second pause between each word. Judy tries to tell him what she needs before he's completed his sentence, but he doesn't let her until he's said every word he needs to. When she gives him the plate number they need to look up, it's so funny how he's typing each number and letter so slowly and methodically one at a time. Right before he's about to enter the last digit, Nick asks him if he wants to hear a joke, driving Judy absolutely crazy and frustrated. His joke is, "What do you call a three-humped camel?" (The answer: pregnant). It's even funny how Flash reacts to the joke because it takes him awhile to get it, then he starts laughing, very slowly. He then has to tell the female sloth next to him the joke and poor Judy is just beside herself with frustration. When they finally get the info they need, they walk outside and it's dark when it was light when they first walked in. My brother and I showed this scene to our parents on YouTube because we loved that scene so much.

Emmit is not the only citizen of Zootopia to be missing; there is also a handful of other animals that are to be counted for. The other animals are all predators and Judy and Nick come upon them in a lab. They discover that something has happened to make them return to the more primitive, wild side. They overhear Mayor Lionheart (voiced by J.K. Simmons) telling one of the lab technicians he doesn't want the public to know that these predators have gone back to being dangerous, especially since he is a lion and he wants to know why these animals are behaving the way they are. However, he is arrested in suspicion of the missing animals and his assistant, a sheep named Bellweather (voiced by Jenny Slate) becomes the new mayor. Judy goes on ZNN to talk about what happened (and one of the reporters is a porcupine with a quill pen!) and that it is possible for predators to be revolving back to their primitive ways. This upsets Nick greatly because he was bullied by the non-predator kids from his school because they said that foxes can't be trusted and that's why he cons other animals to this day because he knew nobody would ever trust a fox anyway. 

The two of them stop being friends and Judy returns to her hometown of Bunnyburrow where she sells carrots and other vegetables with her parents (and 275 siblings!) It isn't until Gideon Grey, the fox who bullied her as a child comes by and gives her the clue that the substance that is making the predators crazy is a flower called a night howler. She returns to Zootopia and gets Nick back on her side and the two of them start investigating some more. There's a funny scene where they're in a lab and a sheep in a yellow hazmat suit is making an elixir out of the flower. He's talking on the phone to someone and there's a knock on the door and he says, "Walter and Jesse are here with the lattes, I'll call you back." Now Breaking Bad is my favorite show of all time so of course I absolutely loved that. I was a little disappointed that it was a sheep and, you know, not a badger! 

I totally called it that Bellweather was in charge before it was revealed she was behind the whole turning the prey against the predators. She traps Judy and Nick and shoots Nick with what is the dangerous flower serum so he will revert to his natural ways and kill Judy but what she doesn't know is that Judy and Nick have put blueberries in her dart gun so they get one over on her. Bellweather is caught because Judy has recorded her confessing that this was her idea. She thought that 90% of the population, which is prey, could be united agains the 10% that is predator. (Is that really how it adds up in the real world? Ninety percent of animals are prey? I guess I never really thought of it). 

The movie ends with Bellweather in jail and the rest of Zootopia dancing to pop star Gazelle's (voiced by Shakira) new hit song, "Try Everything". She is an angel with horns as one character put it. I felt sorry for the animals who were behind giraffes! 

A very fun and cute movie with beautiful animation. I highly recommend it. Go watch it now if you have Netflix. 

Me Before You

Me Before You

Director: Thea Sharrock

Cast: Emilia Clarke, Sam Clafin, Janet McTeer, Charles Dance, Matthew Lewis

Released: June 3, 2016

Spoilers ahoy! 

Valentine's Day may be over, but I'm continuing my trend of romance movies through the rest of the month of February (and maybe into March, depending on how fast I can roll these out!) This movie is based on a book I had never heard of by an author I'm not familiar with, Jojo Moyes. It stars Emilia Clarke (aka Khalessi (yes, I had to look that up to make sure I spelled that right!) from Game of Thrones) as Louisa "Lou" Clark. Emilia Clarke, Louisa Clark; is it me or do those names sound really similar? While she doesn't come from a poor background, her family is struggling with money and she needs to get a job after she lost her job as a barista because the place just closed for some reason...or maybe she was fired? I'm not exactly sure what happened there, but the movie clearly wants us to move on and she goes to a job agency where they hook her up as a caretaker for a man who is paralyzed. She is hired even though she has no experience with this sort of thing.

When fandoms collide

She is interviewed by the matron of the estate (oh, yeah, this is a rich family she's working for; they even own a freaking castle!), Camilla Traynor (Janet McTeer). Lou has just assumed the man she will be tending to is her husband, but is shocked when Mrs. Traynor tells her it's her son, Will (Sam Clafin), who is only a few years older than Louisa. I'm sure Game of Throne fans went giddy when they saw that Mr. Traynor was played by Charles Dance and saw Tywin Lanister and Daenerys Targaryen in the same scenes together (did they even have any scenes together in GoT? I honestly don't remember). But wait! It gets even more fandom-y crazy! Lou has a boyfriend, Patrick, and he is played by Matthew Lewis who is best known for playing Neville Longbottom in the Harry Potter movies. When I first saw them in a scene together, I was like, "Wait a minute...is that...yes, that's Neville!" So Khalessi and Neville Longbottom are a couple....sure, I could buy it!

But don't get too attached to these two as a couple, because she's going to end up falling for Will. Will was in an accident two years ago where he was hit by a motorcycle. Before the accident, he seemed to be a complete douche: the rich, good-looking guy who did everything right and was handed everything on a golden platter. And let's be honest, pre-accident Will would have never given Louisa, a pretty, but quirky and talkative girl with an eccentric taste for fashion, a second glance. You know I'm right! He's also a douche post-accident, but I guess you can't really blame the guy because he's only 31 and will be bound to a wheelchair for the rest of his life and has a lot of physical pain. He is very rude to Lou when they first meet and doesn't want her to talk to him. She tries everyday to try to get him to open up to her, but he won't budge, so finally she just tells him he's acting like a jerk and the only reason she's there is because she needs the money. Another reason he's also so sour is because his ex-girlfriend and best friend have fallen in love and are getting married. Now, before you accuse his ex of leaving him after he got into the accident, that was not the case; instead he shoved her away and wouldn't talk to her. 

However, after about a month, they start talking and start to connect and soon a strong bond is formed between the two. When she tells him she doesn't do much besides wake up, go to work, then come home and sleep, he tells her she should live her life fully. The two attend the wedding of Will's best friend and ex-girlfriend (so awkward!) and also attend a concert together. Louisa sits on his lap as he moves around in circles in his motorized wheelchair as they "dance" to Ed Sheeran's "Thinking Out Loud" (which, remember, the first lyric of that line is "When your legs don't work like they used to before") and it's very cute.

There's another scene where Lou invites Will to her birthday dinner with her parents, sister, and boyfriend. When Patrick sees how close his girlfriend had gotten close to her client, he is clearly jealous. When she is opening her presents, they clearly stole that scene from one of the new episode of Fuller House, haha! Okay, remember that episode- (What am I saying? Of course nobody remembers this because nobody watches the Full House revival!) So there's this episode where it's DJ's birthday and Matt, her boyfriend, and Steve, her high school boyfriend who is still in love with her, each give her a present. Matt gives her a really lame present and Steve gives her a very meaningful present. This is exactly what happens in this scene! Patrick gives her a gift...it's a necklace with a heart pendant that says "Patrick" inside of it. So lame. Will gives her a pair of black and yellow tight aka "bumble bee" tights. Lou had told him she had a pair of these when she was a little kid and loved them so much, but she couldn't find made for a grown woman. She freaks out and gets all giddy when she opens her gift from him and gives him a huge hug.

Although they've been spending a lot of time together, Lou finds out that Will is looking into assisted suicide at a place in Switzerland. He wanted to do it six months ago, but told his parents he would wait another six months before he made his final decision. His parents, especially his mother, are both hoping he will change his mind now that he has Lou in his life. They go on a romantic vacation to Mauritius (also there is Will's physical therapist, so it's not exactly just the two of them) where they share their first kiss. (If I remember right). However, Will tells her he still plans on ending his life because he can't live with the physical pain anymore and he misses his own life. Did anyone find this to be a slap in the face to Lou? Oh, you did all these things to make me see that life is worth living and you took care of me for the last six months and showed me you loved me, but that's not enough...I'm still going to kill myself!

Lou is crying and won't talk to Will for the rest of the trip and on the plane ride back home. (Good thing he didn't tell her until the last day of their vacation!) When Will's parents are there to greet them at the airport, they can clearly see from Lou's expression that their son hasn't changed his mind about the assisted suicide. She tells them they don't need to pay her and gets on a bus to take her home. She does have a change of heart and flies out to Switzerland to see Will before he dies. There's a lot of tears and he leaves her a note with instructions to visit Paris, which was one of his favorite places to visit and she does, wearing her bumble bee tights. She also learns he left her with a bunch of money. Bet she's not crying anymore!

And what's up with the title? Is the "Me" referring to Lou and the "You" referring to Will or is it the other way around? Because I'm not quite sure...

City of Stars

La La Land

Director: Damien Chazelle

Cast: Emma Stone, Ryan Gosling, John Legend, Rosemarie DeWitt, J.K. Simmons

Released: December 9, 2016

Viewed in theaters: January 11, 2017

Oscar nominations:
Best Picture (lost to Moonlight)
Best Director - Damien Chazelle (won)
Best Actor - Ryan Gosling (lost to Casey Affleck for Manchester By the Sea)
Best Actress - Emma Stone (won)
Best Original Screenplay - Damien Chazelle (lost to Kenneth Lonergan for Manchester By the Sea)
Best Cinematography (won)
Best Film Editing (lost to Hacksaw Ridge)
Best Production Design (won)
Best Costume Design (lost to Fantastic Beasts and Where to Find Them)
Best Original Score - Justin Hurwitz (won)
Best Original Song - "Audition (The Fools Who Dream")
Best Original Song - "City of Stars" (won)
Best Sound Mixing (lost to Hacksaw Ridge)
Best Sound Editing (lost to Arrival)

Okay, confession: if I had to pay to see this movie, I probably would have just waited to see it on DVD. But since I saw this with my parents and wouldn't have to pay to see it, I was more than happy to check it out and actually liked it more than I thought I would. For the most part, I do like musicals, but I was horribly scarred by the last one I saw in the theaters (at least, I think it was the last one I saw in theaters!): the horribly never ending and dreadfully boring, Les Miserables. Oh. My. God! I HATED, no, LOATHED that movie so much! So much so that it turned me off of musicals for quite awhile. One of the (many, many!) reasons I hated that movie so much is that EVERY SINGLE LINE is sung in that movie and it's like, AUGH! SHUT UP!! Luckily, La La Land is not like that. At all. In fact, I've heard a criticism that there aren't enough songs in it. I can kind of understand because sometimes it feels it goes awhile without any songs and while I think a couple more songs would have been fine, I'm glad it's not all singing because that would get really old, really fast. I like the musicals where there are a handful of songs, but the characters don't sing every single line in the movie. There are homages to other musicals in this one. If you didn't catch the Singin' in the Rain one, well, that's just sad because that one was pretty blatant! I got a Moulin Rouge vibe from the dance scene at the planetarium. (Although it was much more toned down in this movie!)

The movie definitely reels you in from the beginning with its first song called "Another Day of Sun". It's not sung by any of the stars of the movie, but rather just by L.A. commuters (I mean, obviously they were trained dancers and singers!). The premise is a big traffic jam on a freeway in L.A. and everyone gets out of their car and starts singing and dancing. I was really impressed that this impossible scene was filmed and I thought how irritated people must have been that they shut that stretch of freeway down for who knows how long. Okay. I just checked Wikipedia. It was closed for two days. It's a pretty impressive scene and if memory serves right, it's all taken in one long shot.

This is the third time Emma Stone and Ryan Gosling have starred in a movie together as romantic partners. If you're like me, you remember they were in Crazy, Stupid Love, but probably forgot they were in Gangster Squad. Actually, I've never seen that movie, so they could play siblings in that one for all I know! In La La Land, they play Mia and Sebastien, who both live in Los Angeles and are trying to pursue their dreams. Mia wants to be an actress and we see many scenes of her auditioning for some kind of role or another. She lives with three other roommates and works at a coffee house. She's originally from Nevada and we learn she wants to be an actress because she grew up watching old movies. We see her at many auditions throughout the movie and I just wanted to scream in frustration for her. I would hope that casting agents aren't this blase (pretend there's an accent mark over the e) in real life, but who knows. When we first see her auditioning for a role (wearing a coat because a customer spilled coffee on her shirt and she didn't have time to change), it appears to be a dramatic role where she's speaking on the phone to someone and it's obviously a serious scene because she starts crying, but during all this, the casting agents are talking and someone walks in to interrupt. She keeps going though, and is quite good, but doesn't get the part. We also see her try out for cop and medical dramas. (God knows there's enough of them on TV!) Her big break almost comes when she gets a call back for a show that she says is Dangerous Minds meets The O.C., haha. How would that work anyway? Is it a show about inner city rich kids? Or a show about a teacher at a rowdy prep school? The whole premise was ridiculous and Mia was trying out for the teacher role and there were some pretty funny lines during her audition like, "No, Jamal, you be trippin'" or "Two options: you either follow my rules or follow my rules. Capiche?"

Sebastien is passionate about jazz and wants to own his own jazz club to keep that genre of music alive because he fears it's a lost art. In the meantime, to make money, he plays a piano at a restaurant but is fired when he forgoes the Christmas songs he's suppose to play in order to pay a piece he wrote himself. His boss (played by J.K. Simmons, who was in Whiplash, which Chazelle also directed) fires him on the spot and Sebastien storms out. Mia had heard the music and came into the restaurant to listen to him play and is about to compliment him, but he just brushes abruptly past her. The movie is divided into seasons (much like the Gilmore Girls Netflix revival!) and they (of course) meet up a few months later.

They soon start dating and encourage the other to follow their dreams. Mia feels maybe she isn't good enough because no matter how many auditions she goes on or how many callbacks she gets, there is always someone who is prettier or more talented than her that ends up getting the job. That's just one reason why I would never want to be an actor (you know, other than the fact that I can't act!): it would just be so frustrating to get rejected all the time because you know that 99.9% of people who go out to Hollywood to make it big never get their big break. At least maybe they can get a small role on one of the thousands of TV shows that are out there! Sebastien tells Mia instead of auditioning, she should just have someone come to her and write her own play, so she does that. Only a handful of people come to her one-woman play (I've never had any desire to see those kinds of plays...luckily I don't have any friends who are involved in the theater!) including her three roommates. To her dismay, Sebastien isn't there and she hears people talking badly about the play when she's in her dressing room.

Mia is excited for Sebastien to start his own jazz club which he wants to call Chicken on a Stick (horrible name!), but Mia tells him she should call it Seb's with a saxophone for the apostrophe. (Much better name!) Even though Mia doesn't like jazz when she first meets Sebastien, she soon comes to appreciate it through his appreciation and admiration for it. Me? I'm not a jazz fan, as I find it to be screechy to the ear, but I could also almost be turned into a fan through Sebastien's passion for it. If you've ever listened to the podcast called Extra Hot Great, you may be familiar with their "Is This Worse Than Jazz?" section. I would say La La Land is NOT worse than jazz. Sebastien puts his dreams on hold to be a keyboardist in his friend's, Keith's (John Legend) jazz band. He begins to forget about his dream once he starts making money and Mia is angry with him and this leads to one of many fights they will have.

I am about to get into spoiler territory so continue on at your own risk! Seriously, I am about to spoil things in the movie so don't read any more if you have not seen La La Land yet and DO NOT WANT TO BE SPOILED!! You have been warned!

Okay, so of all the coincidences in the world, a casting agent happens to be one of the seven people who saw Mia's play and wants to audition her for a movie. By this time, Mia, after having a fight with Sebastien and thinking acting is not for her, has moved in with her parents in Nevada. Sebastien has gotten the call from the casting agent and convinces Mia to go back to Los Angeles to audition which she does and ends up landing the job which is in Paris. We get a "Five Years Later" time stamp and see that Mia has become the famous actress she has always longed to be. Mia has always had to serve coffee to the movie stars and now she gets to be the movie star who is being served the coffee. Sebastien has finally achieved his dream of opening his own jazz club. And thankfully he went with Mia's idea of calling it Seb's and not Chicken on a Stick! However, we get a gut punch when we see Mia walk into her home, greet her toddler daughter, then kiss her husband...who is NOT Sebastien! Uh, what! He is played by Tom Everett Scott and I guess Chazelle asked him to be in the movie because he was a fan of That Thing You Do! (I get the feeling Chazelle is a fan of the jazz, haha!)

Mia and her husband take a stroll and decide to check out this new, popular club which Mia immediately realizes is Sebastien's jazz club. There's a scene where we see what would have happened if they had stayed together. My mom thought it was Mia's daydream, but I thought it was Sebastien's because in this daydreams, he kisses her at the restaurant the night he lost his job instead of shunning her. Who knows? Maybe they were both imagining the same thing at the same time. Because they are that connected.

I predict this movie will win the Oscar for Best Picture.

C'mon, Ride That Train

The Girl on the Train

Director: Tate Taylor

Cast: Emily Blunt, Rebecca Ferguson, Haley Bennett, Justin Theroux, Luke Evans, Alison Janney, Laura Prepon, Edgar Ramirez, Lisa Kudrow

Released: October 7, 2016

Viewed in theaters: October 12, 2016

I read the book this movie is based on a month ago and I figured out who the person was behind the mystery pretty early on, even before there's a small clue given. I don't want to brag, but whenever I watched an episode of CSI, nine times out of ten, I would always guess the murderer right. It's just this gift I have, you could say! Don't worry, I will give a huge spoiler warning before I get to that part. The book and this movie definitely had a Gone Girl vibe to them, though it didn't quite live up to that one. Both are mysteries and both involve highly unlikeable characters. I am glad I read the book just so I would be prepared to hate all the characters! The book revolves around three female characters who take turns narrating the story. There's the titular Girl on the Train, Rachel Watson (Emily Blunt). She is at the lowest of the low. Her husband left her for a woman he was having an affair with about two years ago and she lost her job due to her excessive drinking. All she does all day is drink and sit on benches and look at statues. In the book, she really lets her looks go and gained a bunch of weight since her husband left her. There are scenes in the movie where she looks pretty terrible, but I never got the impression she got as bad as she did in the book, appearance wise. Some male characters pull a Donald Trump and say some pretty nasty things about her looks, but that's not in the movie. She lives with a friend, Cathy, (Laura Prepon) who has let her stay for two years even though Rachel said she would only be there for a couple weeks. In the book, Cathy does kick her out, but that never happens in the movie. She has more of a bigger role in the book.

The woman Rachel's ex-husband, Tom (Justin Theroux) left her for is Anna (Rebecca Ferguson), a beautiful blond. Now in the book, she was a complete conceited bitch. While she still comes over as pretty unlikeable in the movie, I think they made her a little more sympathetic in the movie than she is in the book. Tom and Anna now live in the house with their one year old daughter, Evie. It's the same house that Tom and Rachel used to live in when they were married and Rachel passes by it every day on her commute into the city and it makes her livid to see her ex having a new life with another woman, especially since they have a child and Tom and Rachel wanted to have a baby, but she was never able to conceive and that caused her to start drinking which therefore started their fighting and Tom cheating on her. Rachel's drinking got so bad that she was quite violent and we see flashbacks of her smashing a mirror and threatening to cut her husband with one of the broken pieces. We also see that her husband lost his job because she threw a plate of deviled eggs across the wall at a party his boss was having at his house

The third woman is Megan Hipwell (Haley Bennett). She and her husband, Scott (Luke Evans) moved into the house a few doors down from Rachel's old house after she moved out. Rachel doesn't know them, but she often sees them on their balcony during her ride trains. She imagines them as this perfect couple and is jealous of what they have. What Rachel doesn't know is that for a short time, Megan was a nanny for Evie. She also doesn't know that Megan and Scott don't have the perfect life she thinks they have because Megan is seeing a therapist (Edgar Ramirez) who she tries to sleep with. (How cliche, I know). One day, Rachel sees Megan kissing a man who is clearly not her husband and is very upset by this since she knows what it's like being cheated on. She gets plastered and goes on a drunken tirade about how she would like to smash Megan's head in for what she did to her husband (and while she does this, her phone is recording it)! When she's riding on the train, she decides to get off on the stop where Megan lives and when she sees Megan (or thinks she sees Megan), she goes after her, ready to confront her. She is very disoriented and confused and stumbles and something (or someone) clocks her. She wakes up the next day on her bed (not quite sure how she got home because they never tell us!), bloodied and dirty. She has no idea what's happened.

Megan has gone missing and the police (the main one is played by Alison Janney; the male officer in the book had a much bigger role in the book) come to question Rachel about Megan's disappearance. They think Rachel may have something to do with it since they know she's often harassing her ex and his new wife. They think since Anna and Rachel both bare a similar resemblance and are around the same age, Rachel may have attacked Megan, thinking she was Anna. Rachel denies this, but they tell her that Tom and Anna saw her. That's when Rachel tells them about the man Megan had been kissing which makes her sound insane since she told them she didn't know Megan and had never met her before, but yet she saw her with another man. Because of her excessive drinking problem, they don't take any of her claims seriously and Rachel decides to pay Scott a visit and tell him about his wife's infidelity. She tells him that she was a friend of Megan's, that she knew her from the art gallery she worked at. 

Okay, just to be on the safe side, I'm going to issue my spoiler warning now. If you've read the book, but haven't seen the movie, feel free to read ahead because nothing major is changed. But for those of you who haven't read the book/seen the movie, then be warned that THERE ARE SPOILERS AFTER THIS POINT!!!

After Rachel tells him about the other man, it takes five seconds for Scott to pull up a picture of Megan's therapist from his website and Rachel confirms it was him she saw. The whole thing seemed a little too easy. The movie glosses over the part where he's questioned and is let go from suspicion. They are now looking at the husband, but Rachel knows Scott couldn't have done it. That is, until Scott finds out that she was lying about knowing Megan and becomes suspicion of her and assaults her. It's actually way worse in the book what he does to her. Rachel goes to the police station to report him and tell them that Scott is obviously the murderer, (did I tell you they find Megan's body in the woods? So she's dead...for real) but Janney tells her that they know she's been getting cozy with Scott and they know she often visits him and that they know Scott didn't do it because they have surveillance of him at a sports bar the night Megan disappeared.

I knew they were trying to trick me and everyone else with thinking it was Megan's husband or her therapist, but I knew all along that it was Rachel's ex-husband, the man she was still in love with. You never go with the obvious and Megan's husband and therapist were just that. It would have been a really great twist if Anna was the murderer...like maybe she found out she was now the Rachel in this situation and Tom was cheating on her with Megan, who was now the new Anna (which she does find out he was having an affair with the nanny....this book/movie is so full of cliches, I tell you!) and killed Megan. But no, it was Tom who was the killer. He killed her because he was having an affair with her and when Megan confronted him and told him she was pregnant, he told her to get rid of it, but she said no, and he said he didn't want another kid and pushes her and she falls and hits her head on a large rock. Since she's already down, he just decides to finish the job. In the book, she thinks about just not telling him and going on her way, which is sad because she could have lived and just started a new life.

After learning that Scott couldn't have been the killer, Rachel runs into the wife of Tom's ex boss (Lisa Kudrow) and she apologizes to her about her behavior that day at the party a couple years ago. The boss's wife is confused and tells her she didn't make a scene and she only took a nap. This is when Rachel realizes that Tom has been lying to her all these times and she suddenly gets her memory back and remembers everything she thought she did that was wrong and horrible (like threatening to attack Tom with a broken piece of glass) was actually Tom acting that way. She also remembers that night Megan disappeared and while she thought she saw Anna get in a car with Tom, it was actually Megan. I guess I shouldn't be so proud of myself that I guessed who the murderer was early on, as it seems pretty obvious now!

Another reason not to like Anna is that after learning that her husband had an affair and quite possible killed the woman, she was going to stay with him! WTF, lady? She does come to her senses after Tom attacks Rachel and she fights back by thrusting a corkscrew in his neck. Anna makes sure to finish the job by twisting the corkscrew into his neck.

Remember that video I mentioned of Rachel ranting about how she wanted to kill Megan for cheating on her husband. It never comes back in play! And this wasn't even in the book, so I'm not sure why they had it in the movie, especially when they didn't use it. Weird. Also, am I right about how unlikeable all the characters are? This movie is no Gone Girl, but it's an enjoyable thriller to see on a weekday afternoon...which is when I saw it! 

Stranger Things

Instead of reviewing a movie, I thought I would do something different and talk about the 8-part big hit series that came from Netflix this summer called Stranger Things. If you have Netflix Instant, this probably popped up on your screen whenever you logged onto the site to get your Netflix Fix. (I feel like the F in "fix" should be capitalized for that!) I didn't check it out until I kept hearing about it through people I knew and podcasts that were talking about it. Since there are only eight episodes; each about 45 minutes (give or take), it took me less than a week to devour them all.

There will be slight spoilers in this review, but nothing that will give anything major away. But even if you are wary of spoilers, you may want to read this until after you've seen the show. And I highly recommend it.

As I was watching it, I couldn't help but get a Super 8 vibe from it. That movie was set in 1979 and had a cast of eleven/twelve/thirteen year olds. Mostly boys, but there was one girl. They are trying to figure out a mystery involving a monster. This show was set in 1983 (1979, 1983, same thing! At least to me!) It also has a group of eleven/twelve/thirteen year olds. Again, mostly boys, but there was also one girl in this. They are also trying out to figure out a mystery involving a monster, but most of all, their mystery involves trying to figure out what happened to their missing friend. Which involves the monster...obviously!

I was listening to a podcast about this show and someone described it as something that would be created if Steven Spielberg and Stephen King collaborated together. I've heard a lot of comparisons of this show to those two and I can see it. There are definitely elements of Close Encounters of the Third Kind, E.T., The Goonies, Stand By Me (or "The Body" if you want to go with the original short story title), and It. Although I have never read or seen It because I don't need to be any more scared of clowns than I already am, thank you very much, but I trust those people who say this reminded them of that. But there are no clowns in this show. Thank God! However, there are plenty of jump scares and I probably shouldn't have watched this at night...there were some creepy moments!

The show starts with a very short prologue of a scientist running away from something we don't see. He runs to the elevator and hits the button several times frantically. Of course then when it finally opens, he has to hit the button again several times to close it. It finally does close and it looks like he's escaped from the monster, except the monster is a lot smarter than he thought because...oops...he's on top of the elevator and snatches the man.

In the next scene, we first meet our young characters. They are four middle-school aged boys who are playing Dungeons and Dragons in Mike's basement. Out of the kids, Mike is the main character. At first, I couldn't decide if he was an odd-looking kid or super cute, but in the end, he won me over and I have opted for the latter choice. The actor who plays him, Finn Wolfhard, has a very distinct bone structure to his face and pair that with his very early '80s haircut (and the very early '80s wardrobe!) it makes him look a bit odd, but it is perfect as he is suppose to be a huge dork and isn't suppose to be with the in crowd at school. This kid is absolutely adorable and if I were a twelve year old girl right now, I would have a crush on him. He's soooo cute! Mike's closest friend and next door neighbor is Lucas (Caleb McLaughlin), the only black kid in town. (Well, they do live in a small town in Indiana called Hawkins.) He and Mike have known each other the longest out of the four friends and often communicate with each other through Walkie Talkies which reminded me of the two young friends and next door neighbors in Big. Dustin (Gaten Matarazzo) is the brains of the group, which is saying something since they're all dorky kids! But he's the one who always comes up with the ideas. He's also the fat kid of the group, although I would describe him more as husky than fat...cuz that kid ain't fat! The smallest kid of the group and the one with the least amount of screen time is Will Byers (Noah Schnapp). He's the kid who goes missing hence the limited screen time. This kid has so little screen time he's not even credited in the opening titles! Poor kid! He does show up in flashback scenes in later episodes, but compared to the other kids (and not to mention the other people in the cast), he's not in the series that much.

Will is riding his bike home at night after playing Dungeons and Dragons with his friends when he rides past the laboratory we saw earlier where the scientist was. Something pops up in front of him and startles him and he skids off the road. He ditches his bike and runs home the rest of the way. (They do live in a small town, so it must not have been very far). He enters his house where his dog is barking and calls for his mom and brother, but doesn't get an answer from them...we later find out his brother got home late that night because he was working, but I'm not sure if his mom was there or not. She must not have been. He looks out the window and sees a slow-moving figure from a distance slowly advancing towards the house and it is definitely not human. Very creepy. He gets on the phone to call 911, but he just gets static and a weird sound. When the chain to the door becomes undone, Will runs out the back and into the shed where he gets a shotgun and aims it towards the door. We see Will see the monster, which has snuck up behind him, but we don't see the monster close up. In the next shot, Will has vanished. Where has he gone? Seriously, where is he?

During the course of the show, we follow three groups of characters who take different paths to find Will. In one path, we have Will's mother, Joyce. She is played by Winona Ryder. Yes, a name you finally recognize! She was really good in this and it was nice seeing in her something. I can't even remember the last recent thing she had done. She is a single mother of two who works long hours (so therefore she probably wasn't home that night Will vanished). She tells the local sheriff, Jim Hopper aka Hop (David Harbour) who tells her that Lonnie, her ex-husband, probably has something to do with this because "99 times out of 100 the missing kid is with a parent or a relative." Joyce asks him what about the other time, what happens then, and he tells her that the worst thing that has ever happened in their small town was when an owl attacked someone's head because it thought the hair was a nest. (Ouch!)

Weird things start happening at their home. Joyce gets a phone call with just static on the other line, but she very faintly hears Will's voice, but the wires in the phone burn. Will's favorite song, "Should I Stay or Should I Go" by the Clash plays off and on to get Joyce's attention. The lights flicker on and off as if somebody is trying to communicate with her and in a funny scene at the store she works at, Joyce buys all the Christmas lights. At least this was set in November, so she could just say she was getting ready for Christmas! She finds she is able to communicate with Will by having him answer yes and no questions with flicking the lights once or twice. I kept waiting for her to set up an alphabet system and sure enough she paints the alphabet on her wall so Will can spell things out for her. Of course, everyone thinks she's crazy, including Hopper and Mike's mom who comes over to offer her support and comfort for the grieving mother. But mostly, Lonnie, her douche bag ex-husband who left her for a younger woman and never spends time with his sons.

Then there's Jonathan (Charlie Heaton), Will's older brother, who does help his mom and sheriff search for Will. But he soon takes a different path with Mike's older sister, Nancy (Natalia Dyer). She is a straight-A student, the goody two shoes daughter. She used to be deemed "cool" by Mike's friends until she started dating the super cool dreamboat Steve Harrington (Joe Keery) who has the most perfect and amazing hair ever known to mankind. Can you the blame the girl for falling for him? I can't! If I were a high school girl in the '80s, I would have a crush on him, although he is a bit of a douche bag, but then he ends up not being one. Nancy becomes involved with the monster mystery when her friend, Barb, also goes missing under mysterious circumstances. They were at Steve's pool party and Barb was by herself while Nancy was giving it up to Steve in his bedroom. Jonathan, a photographer, decides to be a creep when he's lurking in the woods near Steve's house at the time of the party and takes photos of Nancy without her shirt on through the window. He also takes photos of Barb sitting on the diving board, nursing a cut she got on her hand from slicing a beer can sideways with a knife, but it cut her. I'm not sure exactly what they were doing either because this is a party thing and I'm not cool enough to have attended any parties in my day (well, plus, I hate parties!) or if this is an early '80s things and I was a toddler during this time, so therefore I wasn't drinking beer! The photos prove to be helpful as there is an odd figure behind Barb and they believe it to be the monster.

Then there are Will's three friends who meet a strange girl named Eleven (Millie Bobby Brown...maybe her parents were fans of My Prerogative?) They find her, hair shorn and wearing a hospital gown in the same spot where Will went missing. They ask her who she is, but she doesn't seem to talk except for one word syllables like "yes and "no", though over the course of the show she does talk more, but still very limited. She has 011 tattooed on her forearm, thus her name. Mike says they can call her "El" for shore. Me thinks it's a shout out to Elle Fanning who was in Super 8. Maybe that's a stretch! The boys take her back to Mike's basement where he gives her some dry clothes and she starts to take off her shirt and the boys, especially Dustin, start freaking out and tell her to change in the bathroom. I was cracking up over that.

Mike has an idea to have Eleven go to the front door and tell his mom she's lost so she can call someone, but Eleven, clearly scared, tells him no, so he lets him stay in his basement where he has a little fort she sleeps in and sneaks her down food. She really takes a liking to Eggos. The boys soon find out Eleven is very special as she has telekinetic powers (like Carrie, another Stephen King shoutout!) I was just waiting for when she was going to use her powers on the two bullies, Troy and some other kid whose name I don't remember. They relentlessly pick on Mike, Lucas, and Dustin. They call Dustin Toothless because he is missing his two front teeth and has a lisp. Eleven uses her powers to humiliate them and humiliate she does. So much in fact that the bullies come back for retaliation. Troy is clearly a sociopath as he tells Mike to jump off a cliff into the lake that is high enough that it will kill anyone who will jump off from there. In fact, we had a scene in an earlier episode where Hopper tells someone that if someone jumped from this cliff, their bones would shatter when they hit the water. Troy tells Mike that if he doesn't jump, then he will cut out Dustin's remaining teeth with the pocket knife he has. Even the other bully tells Troy that this is wrong, but Troy doesn't seem to care and decides he wants to be a murderer at age 12. Good going there, kid. They encountered the bullies when they were looking for Eleven, who had run away. Mike had to know she was close by or else he wouldn't have jumped, right? Surely he knew that jump would kill him! Because he does jump, but she manages to save him with her powers, and also breaks Troy's arms which was awesome. Because he totally deserved it.

As you may have guessed, the three different paths cross and everyone is working together to figure out the mystery. I don't want to give anything away, but I will say the end is left open for a second season. If you love anything about the '80s, the fashion, the music, synthesizers (which play a big part in the score), and movies from that era, you will enjoy this immensely.

I read that the show was pitched to about 15 different networks before finally it was taken to Netflix because nobody would take it. I bet all those networks are kicking themselves now. But I prefer it being on Netflix. Much easier to access and you have all the episodes at your disposal and you can watch whenever you want to; you're not bounded by a schedule. It's no wonder I've been with Netflix for over ten years now, wow!

The young cast was on Jimmy Fallon and they did a hilarious skit where Jimmy played cool guy Steve and then "Barb" showed up. OMG, I was laughing so hard. If you missed it, you should defintely check it out on YouTube...I'm sure you can find it there. There are major spoilers, though!