Caro the Movie Critic

This is an interesting team once again with George Clooney as director and the Coen brothers as writers to showcase a life of American suburbia in the 1950s. You can tackle so many issues as how suburban life can affect both male and female perspectives as how they work throughout the day. I thought Revolutionary Road was a prime example of how we witness a couple being bored of a life in  1950s suburbia but priorities halt their dreams of pursuing a happier life. However, after learning that director Clooney was adding things to the "dusted-off" Coen Brothers script from the 80s before they became such masterful filmmakers, it shows in the movie that Clooney tries too hard to insert humor in the narrative. He tries too hard to become the Coen directors as the tone is all over the map and is almost a complete disaster. The movie starts with new residents moving into the neighborhood as the mailman is greeting one neighbor, Mrs. Mayers (Kamirah Westbrook) who is African-A...

Firefighting is a dangerous and scary business to focus and fight a fire that will make communities safer and protect other people. They do not run away from their business, they face their business as flames are in front of them. It is combat between a human being and the worst creature that threatens nature. This movie highlights a true story that is worth telling and never takes the approach of being so conventional by producing the fire sequences as entertainment but horror. This is a movie that showcases fire but is anchored by a tribute to the brave firefighters, both local and national. The movie introduces the Granite Mountain Hotshots as they evolve from being trained to be a tightly-knit group of firefighters combatting fires and also their other personal lives, but the movie focuses on two firefighters. Eric Marsh (Josh Brolin) is a team leader who had a past of battling alcohol addiction, however, fighting fires is basically therapeutic for him as he is focused. He als...

What a weird time for two movies about a superhero to come out this year but surprisingly, they are different and good. Many people including myself enjoyed Wonder Woman  as it is a rousing and fun origin story that inspires heroism and bravery out of its characters along with introducing an empowering female superhero in the forefront. Now, we have a movie coming out as to how the comics of Wonder Woman was introduced into our presence and I was surprised that I have never heard of its story. This is a movie that showcases the importance of exploring such serious and risky themes in a conservative world that overall, it is an intelligent, absorbing and sensuous story about the human condition that started an origin story for many people to read and watch. As William Moulton Marston (Luke Evans) is giving out his testimony in 1947, the movie is told in flashbacks in 1928 where he and his wife, Elizabeth (Rebecca Hall) are teaching in Harvard and Radcliffe colleges. William hir...

Crime thrillers are one of my favorite genres from both books and movies because the mystery delves you right into the characters' investigations, motives and the plot itself. There are great crime thrillers like Seven and The Silence of the Lambs and Chinatown  that transports you into that world. I was looking forward to watching this movie and see where Michael Fassbender, who is one of the best actors out there, can do with solid material like this. Even though it is not his fault, he has been in a slump of movies with The Light Between Oceans , X-Men: Apocalypse  (I liked his performance in that movie) , Assassin's Creed  and Alien: Covenant , I hoped he was going to make a comeback this was released in the Oscar season. Well, this movie is considerably worse than those movies I listed and it is the most colossal disappointment of 2017. Detective Harry Hole (Michael Fassbender) is living in Oslo and is head of a homicide squad that is investigating a series of m...

Without watching the movie, Alps , Greek director Yorgos Lanthimos has made a name for himself with the decent Dogtooth  and the quite unique but almost brilliant concept in The Lobster . So, I did not know what to expect from this director with his next project but I do know it is going to be quite weird. And with this movie, even though it is not a total brilliant achievement from Lanthimos, calling it a psychological thriller could be debated as a misconception, however, this is a "horror movie" that is supported by cerebral themes and solid performances. Steven (Colin Farell) is a cardiovascular surgeon that has been living with his wife, Anna (Nicole Kidman), who is an ophthalmologist, and has two children, Bob and Kim (Sunny Suljic and Raffey Cassidy). Steven meets his mentee, Martin (Barry Keoghan) at a diner. Martin has been looking up to Steven because he wants to aspire to become a cardiologist. Later, Steven invites Martin for dinner and has had a tragic past ...

Here's another almost annual maybe, bi-annual disaster movie...um, disaster movies are not award contenders unless you count Airport  and The Towering Inferno as they were historically nominated for Best Picture. Since then, you can debate what movie is the best disaster movie of all time, it is definitely a subjective genre because many movies are style over substance. I was not looking forward to this movie because the plot was one of the stupidest I have ever heard. However, I have to admit after enjoying some of the spectacle in the first half, the characters are written as disaster movie caricatures (except one) that you cannot even remember them after the movie is over and there's not much suspense in an otherwise formulaic storyline with the main character. A coalition of 18 nations has commissioned a system of satellites called "Dutch Boy" to control climate change on a global scale after natural disasters wipes out nations and killed millions of people. ...

Welcome back, Jackie Chan! He has been in not many movies of recent years and lately, we are missing that factor that we had in the 1980s and 1990s where action movies have not been in conversation as much as we'd like to be. But, Chan is one of the heroes of that genre that makes an action movie exciting with his martial arts expertise. Was I excited for this movie? Yeah, somewhat. But, the only question is the director, Martin Campbell has had an uneven resume: so are we getting the director who made Casino Royale  or the director who made Green Lantern . I think we get a mixture of the lean, mean action of Casino Royale  and enjoyment from The Mask of Zorro , an underrated movie that he has made too. This movie brings dramatic chops out of Chan that we never had seen in his action movies. A retired Vietnam War special forces operator named Ngoc Minh Quan (Jackie Chan) is dropping his daughter off somewhere but unfortunately, she is killed in a department store bombing ...

It is very strange and unfortunate that a subject about sexism was covered in the spotlight almost 45 years ago because the topic sheds a light on today's society surrounding the news of what is going on, especially in Hollywood. I will not discuss too much on today's news that you have may not have read or heard from the Internet but I have to say the allegations are certainly appalling. But, back then, it seems to become lighter but start a new wave of equality and/or women's rights that took the nation by storm a little bit at a time before the media highlights the "friendly rivalry" between two tennis competitors, male and female. In that case, it was the infamous Battle of the Sexes  tennis match. I did read it on before and it was interesting so I was curious about the movie more so because of the cast. Even though I was impressed by the performances by both lead performers, the movie could have been better but I still think it is a solid effort from the ...

It is easy to categorize what your favorite horror movies are. It is not easy for me as I am not a huge buff of this horror genre. Maybe, it is because they use the same thorough line and same old cheap material of killing people. Is it entertaining to see people get disemboweled or getting stabbed multiple times? No. There are some movies that I don't care about like a movie in which it takes a place at a motel or house and two people are kidnapped and then they get killed and that is the end of the movie. What is the point? Anyway, however, there are iconic moments or moments that I personally like from horror movies that elevate the material from being generic to being somewhat likable, very good or rarely, in my opinion, great. What's so great especially this month that you can watch some scary or fun horror movies along with siblings, relatives or friends to maybe get scared or laugh at some hokey jump-scares. So, what I decided to do is show some clips from other hor...

Another version of Groundhog Day? Really? This is the second movie this year revolving around a girl who has to wake up on the same day to figure out what went wrong and what went right. The first movie this year was Before I Fall , which suffered in its narrative with an unnecessary subplot but it had a solid conclusion. That movie is a rental at best. However, the difference between that movie in Happy Death Day  is the girl's status: the former takes place in high school and the latter takes place is in college. But, someone had an idea of taking the familiar concept on a birthday but in a horror genre and the result is even though the movie has a predictable arc, the journey is fun enough as a marginal recommendation but I would categorize this movie as a slumber party horror movie to watch because I believe teenagers would like this. At Bayfield University, Teresa "Tree" Gelbman (Jessica Rothe) wakes up hungover in Carter Davis' (Israel Broussard) dorm room,...

I was sort of looking forward to this movie primarily because of the actors but also a movie set in the wilderness gets me a bit hyped because we may not know what may happen to one character or a group of characters. But what I like about these survival movies is how they overcome the obstacles physically but also mentally as they use their skills to try to survive. The Grey, 127 Hours  and The Revenant are prime examples of that and Kate Winslet did ask Leonardo DiCaprio as to how experience filming in the snow felt after it was over. Even though I applaud the filmmakers and the production staff to film the movie in the mountains, I wished they focused a lot more on realism on their script than fall onto these cliches in both its narrative and its formulaic romance. While being stuck in an airport because of an upcoming storm and cancelled flights, surgeon Ben Bass (Idris Elba) and photojournalist Alex Martin (Kate Winslet) need to desperately leave so they board by a charte...

Steven Spielberg. Without the success of Jaws  or the passion of filmmaking, we would not have some of our beloved favorites in our storage of memories in the theaters or while watching at home. Hearing about a documentary about one of my favorite directors of all-time, I was in. But, I did not want like a timeline in which how the experiences of each movie differed from one another. Even though I wanted a bit more from the personal insight based on other experience in other films, this is a very good documentary about a man that has the behavior of a kid that loves what does he best: make movies. We go on a journey with him and many of his co-workers, cast mates and a few critics in praising how Spielberg is one of the best working filmmakers and what makes him the best. He has filmmaking techniques that satisfies everybody but he also he has the same creative team for many movies in which parallels the fast pace of finishing the movie under budget and on time or close to tha...

I am going to be careful with this review because basically the main plot is a spoiler of some sorts and I do not want to sabotage your decision on going. I will say this if you are hesitant on wanting to see this movie or anticipating this movie: GO SEE IT, however, see the first movie (the final cut) so you can cover the basics because this movie has details from the 1982 movie. Ok, how many years later? 35 years. Did we really need a sequel to the divisive classic,  Blade Runner ? No. But, we all know that it is a sci-fi classic because of a cult following. It was not instant because people, critics, fans, professors study the movie as to what Ridley Scott and Philip K. Dick are saying with that murky world with a simplistic plot. You can have many interpretations. But, when I heard about they were making a sequel, I thought and asked, "Are you kidding me?" However, when I heard Denis Villeneuve, the director of Prisoners, Sicario and Arrival , was involved, I was hap...

Boy, Stephen King adaptations are coming back into fruition with The Dark Tower and IT . About everybody who went to see the former was utterly disappointed or deemed it to be forgettable. I do not think that will be in anybody's top 10. I personally do not think it was that awful but it is still forgettable. The latter was a complete surprise not because of how the clown was used or how scary it was (it had scary moments but not completely scary) but the chemistry between the children in the Losers Club. They carried the movie to make it become a better experience than anticipated. Now, we have this smaller adaptation that is coming onto streaming services that might appeal to Stephen King readers or fans who appreciate his adaptations more than most people. But, the result is that this is a tense movie about survival and trauma that is centered in one room and mostly one solid performance  that is directed solidly by director Mike Flanagan. Jessie and Gerald Burlingame (Carl...

There's bound to be another horror movie surrounding the general themes around people obsessed with social media. Yeah, we had a solid movie with Unfriended  surrounding bullying, social media and Skype. It was an original idea and it worked but I do not know if I want to see another movie with that concept again. But, we have another one of this nature and this movie is like a concoction of a human being that seems nice but is artificial in the end. This is an utterly forgettable horror movie. So, Laura (Alycia Debnam-Carey) is a popular college girl living with friends Olivia, Izzy and Gustavo (Brit Morgan, Brooke Markham and Sean Marquette). Laura is a very active social media user, especially on Facebook. During lunch, she catches attention from a girl named Marina (Liesl Ahlers) and she later sends Laura a friend request. However, Laura sees that Marina has 0 friends on Facebook and is intrigued by her artwork and her animations. Laura starts hanging out with Marina. So...