Warrior

Movie: Warrior

Genre: action-drama

Synopsis: Brendan Conlon (Joel Edgerton) and Tommy Conlon (Tom Hardy) are brothers.  Growing up, Tommy was a champion wrestler of amazing talent.  When their abusive, alcoholic father, Paddy (Nick Nolte), became too much to bear, Tom and his mother fled.  Brendan opted to stay behind.  Flash forward to the present.  Brendan is a high school physic teacher, married (to Jennifer Morrison) with children and is estranged from his father.  He is also about to lose his house to the bank.  Tommy has returned home for the first time since he left – while he was gone, he had no contact with his brother or his father.  Although he still despises his father, Tommy asks him to help him train for an upcoming Mixed Martial Arts (MMA) world championship.  Paddy has been sober for 1000 days and agrees to train Tommy, in hopes of building a relationship.  Brendan also enters the same MMA tournament – in hopes of winning the $5 million prize so he can save his house from foreclosure.

My two cents: A really enjoyable movie.  While there are a lot of fight sequences that are well done and fun to watch, the movie is just as much about a father trying to redeem himself with his sons and build a relationship with them – and the sons trying to bring themselves to forgive their father and each other and put the past behind them.  Nick Nolte was great to watch.  I first saw him as a boxer in “Rich Man Poor Man” in the 1976.  It was interesting to watch him play a tired old man trying to coach his middle-aged son as a fighter. I also liked seeing Jennifer Morrison (Brendan’s wife) – I have not seen much of her since she left “House”.

Bottom line: most definitely worth seeing.

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Contagion

Movie: Contagion

Genre: drama

Synopsis: Beth (Gwyneth Paltrow) is infected with a particularly virulent virus while on a business trip in Asia.  She brings it back to the U.S. where it spreads like wildfire.  Her husband, Mitch (Matt Damon), was immune but she and their son both succumb to the disease.  One story line follows Mitch as he tries to keep his daughter from being infected.  A second story line follows the efforts of the CDC doctors (Laurence Fishburne and Kate Winslet) try to track the origin of the disease and develop a plan to contain it.  A third story line follows a WHO doctor (Marion Cotillard) as she tries to locate the origin of the disease in Asia.  Another story line follows a fringe blog writer (Jude Law) who claims to have predicted the outbreak and also claims to have a cure.

My two cents: A really good thriller.  A lot of good performances.  The really scary thing about the movie is how possible it is.  Something like the 1918 Spanish Flu could spread throughout the world in a matter of days.  It’s pretty sobering stuff to think about.  Definitely a movie worth seeing.

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Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

Movie: Bucky Larson: Born to Be a Star

Genre: comedy

Synopsis: Bucky Larson (Nick Swardson) is a not-so-bright kid (early 20’s) who is hanging out with his equally dim-witted friends one night watching a porn film from the 70’s.  Much to his surprise, the film starred his parents (Edward Hermann and Miriam Flynn).  Much to his delight, he learns that his mother and father were a famous porn acting team in the 70’s.  Bucky decides that his destiny is to also be a porn star . . . so he moves to L.A..  There he meets Kathy (Christina Ricci) who becomes his good friend.  He also meets a down and out porn film producer, Miles Deep (Don Johnson).  Mile guides Bucky into his new career where, amazingly, he becomes a wildly popular star.

My two cents: I saw this movie because of the “0” rating in Rotten Tomatoes.  I thought it might be one of the those “so bad that it’s good” films.  It was not.  This was the type of film that regularly made me feel really uncomfortable because the lead character was just so naïve and downright stupid.  I was surprised to see actors like Christina Ricci, Edward Herrmann (the grandfather from Gilmore Girls), Don Johnson, and Kevin Nealon (Weeds) in a film like this.

An example of the level of this movie is the opening scene: Bright and early in the morning, a farmer is shown standing in his goat pen holding a big jar of peanut butter as he takes a handful of it and smears it on below.  A big smile appears on his face as the goats crowd in. . . and you get the definite impression that this is considered to be perfectly acceptable behavior, as he waves and says “howdy” to a passerby who gives a friendly wave back.  Too much for me.

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