Wonder (based on
the R.J. Palacio novel) is a movie targeting tweens that follows a year in
fifth grade with Auggie who was born with a genetic abnormality which required
him to undergo surgeries and medical treatments. Julia Roberts and Owen Wilson play
the parents and the movie is saccharin sweet with too many tear jerking moments
and spoon fed life lessons. Predictable and formulaic. Sheesh, even the family
dog dies. In the end, we get a full school auditorium applauding the brave young
Auggie. An emotional lift but maybe the world is not all that kind.
Roman J. Israel, Esq. is the kind of movie you expect to have
redeeming value but it misses the mark. Denzel Washington chose this lifeless
story as his follow-up to his Oscar-nominated performance in August Wilson’s
Fences. Denzel is Roman, a lawyer in a two-man
criminal defense law firm in Los Angeles when his partner, William Jackson is
admitted to the hospital. Roman now is front man in criminal cases in the face
of an uncertain future. And, oh yeah, he has well researched idea about a
movement for landmark legal reform.
Murder on the
Orient Express is star studded production with Kenneth
Branagh as the world-famous Belgian detective Hercule Poirot in Agatha
Christie’s novel. Branagh, the star and director behind the digitally-enhanced
stab at bringing this ensemble vehicle back to life. Who done it? Well,
everyone is guilty in this one.
Lady Bird is written and directed by Greta Gerwig and stars Saoirse Ronan as
17-year-old Christine, aka the self-proclaimed Lady Bird, who impatiently
expresses her post-graduation intention to flee from her staid Sacramento
and take off to the East Coast “where the culture is.” She derides her hometown
as the “Midwest of California”. She lands her opportunity to go to college in
NYC and only then does she fully appreciate her home town and her mom.
