Retired movie nut living in Chattanooga, Tennessee with a wonderful wife, Kristen and pomchi baby, Sharma
Author: JONATHAN MOYA
“Dumplin’”: A Beauty Pageant Comedy With a Dolly Parton Heart and Song Track
Dumplin’ (a Netflix movie) folds a whole lot of Dolly Parton songs (six new, and six classic) and witticisms into its rebellious BBW daughter (Danielle Macdonald from Patti Cake$) versus former beauty pageant queen mom (Jennifer Aniston) plot. It is …
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“Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle” Getting Beyond the Disney Version to a True Kipling Sense
Mowgli: Legend of the Jungle (on Netflix) realism and violence makes it a truer version of the Rudyard Kipling The Jungle Book stories than the sanitized Disney versions. Though not quite Darwinian, The Law of the Jungle does rule here …
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“Widows”: A Heist Film With a Large Detour Thru Character Hell
In Widows the best heist occurs at the beginning of the film and it is fast, smoothly edited, filled with stunning action shots and crashes that flow by seamlessly in one take— and almost every criminal dies. The important one, …
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“Green Book” Is More Than a Reverse Driving Miss Daisy
Green Book, a semi-true story about a black concert pianist being chauffeured around the early 1960’s deep South by a white Italian racist New Yorker with the deepest of accents, tries to be a reverse Driving Miss Daisy with Viggo …
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“Ralph Breaks the Internet” Gets Stuck in the Disney Princess World Wide Web
There is one thing that Ralph Breaks the Internet does very well— satirizing the Disney world wide web, and Princess culture in particular. The regular internet not so well. The Disney Princesses show up to semi-anoint Vanellope into the harem. …
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“Outlaw King” Mucks Its Way Thru Scottish History
For those expecting Outlaw King (on Netflix) to be a sequel to Braveheart will be sorely disappointed. The only appearance of William Wallace in David Mackenzie’s telling of Robert the Bruce (Chris Pine), is his quartered (judging by the outward …
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“Instant Family” Manages to Get It Right, Eventually
In the adoption comedy Instant Family Mark Wahlberg and Rose Byrne agree to foster and adopt three minority children (Isabela Moner, Gustavo Quiroz, Juliana Gamiz) who are caught in the intricacies and sometimes unfairness of the juvenile justice system. There …
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