Gil Mansergh’s Cinema Toast
New Releases For the Week of 2/09/18
Peter Rabbit (PG)
Starring: Rose Byrne, Domihnall Gleason and the voices of: James Cordon, Daisy Ridley, Margot Robbie
Directed by: Will Gluck
Beatrice Potter’s Peter Rabbit and his animal neighbors have become furry CG characters in this animated tale of a sadistically murderous Mr. McGregor and a Peter who is completely off the rails. Since pop songs drown out most of the dialogue and the humor turns unnecessarily scatological (and pathological), except for the costumes and Lake District countryside, I doubt Miss Potter would recognize most of what the filmmakers have put on the screen.
2 pieces of this isn’t the Peter Rabbit I remember toast
Oscar Nominated Documentary Shorts (NR)
Directed by: Various
All five nominations are from the USA including 96-year-old and 95-year-old newlyweds Edith and Eddie kept apart by Edith’s daughter because they are from different races; artist and sculptor Mindy Alper in Heaven Is a Traffic Jam On the 405; the small town in West Virginia that fights against being the overdose capital of America in Heroin; recently released prisoners learning culinary artistry in Knife Skills; and a Traffic Stop that leads to a conversation about race in America.
Oscar Nominated Animated Shorts (NR)
Directed by: Various
Two nominees from the USA include Kobe Bryant in Dear Basketball, and how to change a bully’s attitude in Lou. The two nominees from France include a Garden Party invaded by frogs and toads, and a father and son who connect through packing a suitcase in Negative Space. The entry from the UK features the wolf’s point of view of what really happened to Little Red Riding Hood in Revolting Rhymes.
Oscar Nominated Live Action Shorts (NR)
Directed by: Various
The two from the USA include: DeKalb Elementary about a school secretary taken hostage by a gunman, and My Nephew Emmett tells the backstory of the notorious death of Emmett Till. An Australian psychiatrist’s patient believes he is the therapist The Eleven O’Clock. The UK entry features a deaf girl learning sign language against her hearing parent’s wishes in The Silent Child. A Christian living in Kenya boards a bus that’s hijacked by Muslim terrorists in the German/Kenyan entry Wutu Wote (All of Us).
The 15:17 to Paris (PG-13)
Starring: Spencer Stone, Alek Skarlatos, Anthony Sadler, Jenna Fischer, Judy Greer, Thomas Lennon, Tony Hale
Directed by: Clint Eastwood
Despite saying he was through with making movies, Clint Eastwood couldn’t resist making a thriller “based on real events” and starring three true American heroes—friends since childhood, who thwart the terrorist takeover of a Paris-bound train. To make things even more (pick your term here), Clint cast the three heroes to play themselves. To be respectful to everyone involved, I’ll just say that the guys weren’t actors before this film, and they still aren’t. It doesn’t help that Dorothy Blyskal’s screenplay just plods along for the first 2/3 of the film
3 pieces for the train hijacking, 1 and 1/2 pieces for everything else toast
Fifty Shades Freed (R)
Starring: Dakota Johnson, Jamie Dornan, Eric Johnson, Rita Ora, Eloise Mumford, Marcia Gay Hardin
Directed by: James Foley
The success of this franchise about a woman trapped and enslaved by a billionaire and forced to have kinky sex astounds me. In this (hopefully) final film, the couple are newly married and determined to have a decadent and luxurious honeymoon trip to France complete with a cache of BDSM paraphernalia from Christian’s notorious Red Room of Pain. Anastasia’s disgruntled former boss is still trying to kill her but the BIGGEST problem is that she wants a little baby and Christian is too selfish to share her with ANYONE.
1/2 piece of distasteful dreck toast
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