Get Hard stars Will Ferrell as James King, a Bernie Madoff-type swindling investor, headed to jail. He hires Darnell (Kevin Hart) to teach him how to survive on the inside, since he assumes Darnell will have been to jail at some point because he’s black. Sounds like a funny premise right? Unfortunately the movie is about as unfunny as a comedy can get, and even legends Ferrell and Hart can’t elicit enough laughs to save this one. You will chuckle some, but that’s the most you can hope for.
The Second Best Exotic Marigold Hotel is cute in a geriatric sort of way. I didn’t even know it was a sequel until I sat down to write this, guess the first one totally flew under the radar even for me. But it is ok, if not exactly breaking new ground. Sonny runs a popular hotel in India, whose residents are all older, rich, retired types, who live there permanently. He is now looking to open a second hotel, on the eve of his wedding, and when his investors send an inspector to see how the first hotel is run before putting money in, Sonny tries to balance it all. All of the retirees have drama surrounding their lives as well. The jokes are of the sort which my parents would laugh very hard at, but even for the “younger” under 50 crowd, there is still enough to enjoy. Has a great cast, including Dev Patel, Maggie Smith, Judi Dench, Richard Gere, and Bill Nighy.
Insurgent is the follow-up to last year’s Divergent, the movies following the popular young adult book series. As I probably said for Divergent’s review, I’m a sucker for dystopian films, but this one is a little too “young adulty” for me. There are too many “we’ll end this now, once and for all” lines for me to stomach. Shailene Woodley’s Tris is on the run and in hiding, hunted by the government for being a “divergent,” one that shows qualities in multiple emotions in a society where citizens are divided into only like-minded factions. The government wants her now to open a box left by the founders of their civilization 200 years prior, a box that only a divergent can open. Fairly straight forward if a little campy. The ending however is pretty thrilling and leaves you on a cliffhanger, waiting for the next film to see where it goes.
Good Kill is a surprisingly good “war” film while being light on the action. It stars Ethan Hawke as Tommy, a former fighter pilot who, thanks to cutbacks in the air program, is now a drone pilot. He sits in a little room in Las Vegas, shooting missiles at targets in Afghanistan, while hoping to one day get back in the cockpit. He at least soothes himself with the fact that he is taking out confirmed terrorists. However, before long the CIA starts calling the missions, and they are much more comfortable with collateral damage and firing into congested areas, a path Tommy finds increasingly harder to cope with. Hawke does an excellent job showing the conflicting emotions Tommy is dealing with, as he faces self-disgust for his actions at work, to the detriment of his life and family.
This film is about Adaline, a woman who through strange circumstances, stopped aging in her late 20’s. Her past 80 years is told in flashbacks, while in the present day she begins to fall in love, for the first time in decades. A problem arises though when her new love takes her to meet his parents, and she sees the father is her former love interest. He recognizes her immediately as “the one that got away”, but she diverts him by saying it was her mother. It’s an ok film, if entirely too predictable, and the ending is more sickeningly sweet than a pixy stix.
Jons Movie Takes 