Category: Reviews

One of my favorite movies is The Magic of Belle Isle. It’s one of those movies that I find comforting and easy to settle into when I’m not in the mood for something overly exciting. It’s just a simple down-to-earth story, about life that we recognize.

Morgan Freeman plays Monte Wildhorn, a man in a wheelchair who appears to have full use of only one of his arms. He’s also a drunk and a famed novelist who has not written anything since his wife died years ago.

Monte moves into a small house for the summer. He’s bitter, he complains, and he’s often drunk.

In the house next door, there’s Charlotte, who is going through a divorce. Charlotte lives with her three daughters, Finnegan, Willow and Flora.

When Don,  one of the neighbors, dies, Monte is invited to the memorial that Al, another neighbor, is having at his house. Monte reluctantly shows up for the memorial. There, Monte meets Finnegan, who is nine and a half years old and allowed to carry her own pocket knife. When Finnegan learns that Monte is a writer, she decides that she wants to learn how to write and Monte agrees to teach her.

Monte gets to know the rest of Finnegan’s family and other neighbors. He becomes a friend to some and helps them in their times of need, and they teach him something in turn.

My favorite quote from the movie came when Monte read Al’s speech to the people at Don’s memorial. That quote is “He took beer very seriously. It had to be Pabst Blue Ribbon. If it couldn’t be Pabst, it at least had to be cold.”

The Missing. Yeah, an impressive movie. If you haven’t seen it, it’s one I recommend. It stars Tommy Lee Jones and Cate Blanchett.

Set in New Mexico, 1885. Blanchett plays Maggie , a doctor, rancher and mother. Tommy Lee Jones plays Maggie’s father, Samuel.

Samuel had run off when Maggie was young and Maggie does not wish to reconnect with him. But he turns up at her home because he needs a doctor. Maggie tends to him, and then runs him off her land.

Later, Brake, the man Maggie loves (I don’t think they were married) and her two daughters, Lilly and Dot, leave for the fair. Maggie stays home, until she sees one of the ranch’s horses that Brake and her daughters had taken with them. The horse is riderless and appears to be frightened.

Maggie figures out that something had happened to Brake and her daughters. She rides off to find them. She arrives at the place where they had camped and finds Brake dead. And then she sees Dot who had hidden. Dot informs Maggie that men had taken Lilly.

Maggie sets off to find Lilly, enlisting the help of Samuel. Along the way they encounter Chiricahua Apaches who Samuel had lived with and who agree to help rescue Lilly and other girls who were taken.

I first watched this movie a couple years ago. A few weeks ago, I watched it again with my friend Kathy who is a citizen of the Seminole Nation of Oklahoma and has ancestors from various tribes. She’s very involved in Native American culture, i.e., she knows stuff. Her dad is a famed Native artist who once served as chief of his tribe. So, I think she knows what she’s talking about.

Kathy felt that the people who made this movie did a very good job in holding true to Native culture and beliefs. I guess there are a lot of movies that did not get it right, but this one did.

Hats off to Ron Howard and everyone involved in the making of this movie.

A friend and I like to watch movies together, though we live a thousand miles from each other. We just pick something off Netflix and chat on Facebook. I know it sounds corny, but I guess neither has much going on, so this is something to do.

Last night we watched Black or White.

Kevin Costner plays Elliot. This is the second movie I’ve seen where Kevin Costner plays Elliot. Can you guess the other movie he plays Elliot in? Anyway, in Black or White, Elliot is a successful lawyer and an alcoholic. At the very beginning of the movie, we learn that Elliot had just lost his wife in a car wreck.

But what’s more, Elliot has a granddaughter named Eloise (Jillian Estell) who was left in the care of him and his wife when his daughter died giving birth. Now that Elliot’s wife has also died, he is Eloise’s sole guardian.

Or is he?

Eloise’s paternal grandmother, Rowena (Octavia Spencer), wants custody of the girl. Rowena believes Eloise would be better off raised by her. Elliot objects to this, mostly because of Reggie (Andre Holland), who is Rowena’s son and Eloise’s father. Reggie has a criminal and drug history and Elliot does not want him around Eloise.

And so there’s a legal battle over who gets custody of Eloise.

My friend and I agree that this is a beautiful movie.

Another great movie is Life of a King, starring Cuba Gooding Jr. Gooding plays Eugene Brown, a man just released from prison after serving a seventeen year sentence for armed robbery. After failed attempts to find honest work, he lands a job as a janitor at the local high school.

So, while Eugene is doing janitorial work, in a classroom the detention monitor, Ms. Gadbaw,  is scared away by Cliff, a large teenager, and she does not return. The principal, Ms. King,  needs to find somebody else to monitor the detention room. While searching for a replacement, she happens by Eugene working in the hallway. She asks him if he can keep an eye on the kids in detention while she continues her hunt for someone more official to monitor the detention room.

The moment Ms. King leaves the detention room, the kids are out of their seats and acting up. Eugene tells them several times to sit down. They ignore him each time. But then Cliff said to him “Or what? You some kind of tough guy?”

Eugene stepped into the challenge. He came around the desk and walked right up to Cliff. I mean, man, a dude who just got out of prison after seventeen years is probably someone you don’t want to pick a fight with. Eugene and Cliff stare at each for a minute, and then Cliff turns away, goes back to his desk and sits down. The rest of the kids soon sit down as well.

They realized Eugene was not a pushover and they had better respect him.

The next day Ms. King comes across Eugene in the hallway and expresses how impressed she was with how he handled the detention kids.  She then tells Eugene that Ms. Gadbaw is not coming back and it turns out Ms. King had not been able to find another detention monitor. She gives the job to Eugene.

Eugene sees this as an opportunity to teach the kids Chess, which he had learned in prison. He believes Chess is more than just a game, that Chess can be useful in all life events, because it teaches you how to think before you act.

Later, when his prison history comes to light, Eugene is fired. But he soon buys a house and turns it into a Chess club called Big Chair Chess Club.

Life of a King is based on a true story. Eugene Brown is a real person who did start Big Chair Chess Club as a means “to teach inner-city children a lesson of life he learned the hard way.”

Cuba Gooding Jr. plays Ben Carson in Gifted Hands. Ben Carson is the famed surgeon known for separating conjoined twins in a way that allows for both to survive. The movie tells us about his life from childhood to his great success as a surgeon. We learn of his family troubles, his struggles in school and medical school. Eventually he is recognized as a genius and performs amazing deeds in the operating room.

As always, Gooding put on an outstanding performance. The movie was convincing and enjoyable. All of the actors and actresses did fantastic jobs. It’s definitely a movie worth watching.

3 Days to Kill is another one of those “My dad is a badass” action thrillers that seem to be common these days, but this time it’s Kevin Costner’s turn to be the badass dad. Costner is Ethan Renner, a badass CIA… um… hitman? A mission goes wrong and there’s a whole crapload of shooting, with Ethan Renner making some pretty awesome moves while dealing with a medical condition that puts him on the ground like he’s having a heart attack.

Afterward, Ethan returns to his home in Paris, France, where he attempts to reconnect with his teenage daughter, who is angry with him because he wasn’t around for years. Eventually Ethan takes on the real fatherly role and bails his daughter out of bad situations in totally badassery ways.

If you like badass thrillers, you would probably like 3 Days to Kill.

If you haven’t seen Hardball yet, I’m probably going to spoil it for you. There’s just a bit that I want to say about this movie. I watched it for the first time the other day and watched it again the next day. I was very touched by the movie. It’s another one of those kids’ sports movies, but then not exactly. It kind of makes you think of the original Bad News Bears, but with a harsher tone. Rated PG-13. Probably does have the go to be classified as a kids movie, but at the same time I’d say it’s a movie for adults.

Keanu Reeves is the star. He plays Conor, a gambler who is deep in debt. In order to help payoff his debt, a friend offers Conor a job coaching a kids’ baseball team.

What really caught my interest is the baseball team and the field they play in is at the old Chicago Public Housing Project known as the Henry Horner Homes, nicknamed the Hornet, because the buildings resembled hornet nests. The Henry Horner Homes were demolished in 2008, but the movie is from 2001, so the buildings were still there at the time. Though that was the year the demolishing began.

I first heard about the Henry Horner Homes from the book There Are No Children Here: The Story of Two Boys Growing Up in the Other America, by Alex Kotlowitz, which I read in high school. It was a non-fiction book and the story really stuck with me. The Hornet was a terrible place to live and kids who grew up there saw so much hell that many did not expect to reach adulthood.

So that was what really hit home for me in Hardball. The movie didn’t sugarcoat the life. It showed the fear the kids felt, how they were desperate to get home before it got dark and what living conditions were like inside the buildings. Toward the end, two brothers trying to get home were caught in the middle of a gang fight. The younger of the brothers was hit by a stray bullet and died in the older brother’s arms. That was life at the Henry Horner Homes.

So, while the movie has much comedy, it has a harsh side to it too. It’ll leave you thinking about those living in ghettos across the United States. I’m glad the Hornet is gone and I hope the people who once lived there have found better lives.