Movie *** Dora and the Lost City of Gold (2019)
Fun, but uneven, adventure. Psychedelic jungle flowers and all the animated sequences and characters could have been eliminated and made the movie stronger.
Fun, but uneven, adventure. Psychedelic jungle flowers and all the animated sequences and characters could have been eliminated and made the movie stronger.
Documentary of Tracy Edwards leading the first all-woman crew in the 1989 Whitbread Round the World Race. Terrific recreation of the internal drive, pressures, rivalries, and dangers of such competition.
Once Upon a Time in Hollywood (2019) – Quintessential Tarantinio, brilliant and flawed. Great performances by Pitt and DiCaprio. Several terrific set pieces and Julia Butters’ performance saved the film from Tarantino’s signature violence. With a great editor, this film could have caught another star.
Fine Neal Stephenson and Nicole Galland collaboration. Starts by positing a scientific basis for witchcraft and time travel and goesn on from there.
Neal Stephenson and J. Frederick George thriller. Very engaging drama of a fanciful Iraqi scheme to build bio-weapons near an Iowa university. Equally interesting is the government compartmentalization that tries to avoid discovering what’s going on.
Clever twists on the Oz legacy. Fine performances, but the songs did not reach the Andrew Lloyd Weber level of musical legends.
Totally entertaining romantic comedy of a down-and-out musician who slips into an alternate reality where he seems to be the only one who’s heard of a rock band called the Beatles. Now he’s the hottest songwriter on earth.