December Movie Reviews (V)

Stay tuned to this posting as I will update it as we see more this holiday season and I will change the Roman Numeral as I add to the list.

American Hustle:  A Great Story, well acted, good pace and lots of eye candy.  This is the best movie of the XMAS releases that I have seen.

Dallas Buyers Club:  A little late, we caught up with this November release and enjoyed it a great deal. A true story about mid-1980's AID's patients in Dallas trying to figure out what medicines will keep them alive, it is an uplifting story of individual growth and perseverance with great acting and a lot of eye candy along the way.

Wolf of Wall Street:  It is too long.  It was entertaining but not worthy of any rewards as it is not well edited.  You get the point, but they keep delivering it.  The eye candy here is off-the-charts.  At 3 hours, you either have to really want to see the movie and have nothing better to do with your time, or wait until you can stream it and get off the couch to refresh your beverage (maybe eat dinner too while you watch it).

Saving Mr. Banks:  No eye candy here except for some brief scenes with Rachel Griffiths.  And when I checked out the real story of how Mr. Disney got Ms. Travers to sign off on the movie rights to Mary Poppins,  I found the movie took a lot of literary license with family history.  Somehow pneumonia became raging alcoholism.  And this movie is a bit long as well coming in at 2:45 with all the previews.  I did shed a few tears watching it, so despite my criticism, I am glad that I went and was entertained while wondering what was going to happen in the past.

HER:  If you like personality revelation and growth in your movies, this is the one for you.  Add in some comedy and a sultry voice from a computer and you have the movie.  It is well done and entertaining.

Sole Survivor:  I read the book and know from the previews this one will be too tough for me to watch.  A true story about Navy Seals battling the Taliban, the title removes all suspense and all you are left with is the process.  Some reviews have called it the best military movie since Saving Private Ryan.

Philomena:  The true story of the discovery of Irish Nuns selling the illegitimate children of young pregnant girls who came into the Nuns care.  Judi Densch does a superb job with all the emotional variations of her character as she searches for her son.

So if you would like the summary:  American Hustle was the best (but Gravity is still my choice for best picture of the year),  then Dallas Buyers Club, Philomena, her, Saving Mr. Banks and Wolf of Wall Street.  I'm not going to Sole Survivor so I cannot rank it.

Twelves Years a Slave:  While not really an XMAS movie in NYC, it may be elsewhere.  This is a must see movie if you want to understand the meanness and abuses of slavery, and see in the personal story of someone wronged by slavery the absolute wrongness in any modern absolution of its perpetrators back then.  It is also a totally engrossing movie during which you will never look at your watch.  It is right behind Gravity as my best movie of the year.



As for the news today, we find that the GOP Senators are starting to try and build some GOP support for package of modifications to Heritage Foundation/Romney/Obamacare now that some 6,000,000 people who did not have health insurance under the old system will have health insurance on 1/1/14.

And what do these ideas contain?  Well, Surprise, they want to keep the no exclusion of pre-existing conditions and the Health Care Insurance Exchanges.  They want to add less expensive catastrophic options and modify malpractice insurance (no objections here on that).  And Paul Ryan wants to end employer provided health insurance and replace it with tax credits for individuals to buy health insurance on the exchanges.  (I support this, but it doesn't mean you can keep your health insurance if you like it, as almost every person with employer provided health insurance wants to keep it.)  And the Ryan plan would not require everybody to have health insurance, but everyone would be enrolled and have to opt out.  That all seems quite close to Obamacare making me wonder what all the fuss has been about.