Here are the recent movies I’ve seen and my review of them:

Spoilers ahead

 

Kong: Skull Island

Man proves how evil they are once again, really. This time in the form of Samuel L. Jackson as a somewhat bloodthirsty colonel. I can see where he’s coming from and I don’t think he’s all bad. It’s sort of ambiguous here. Kong does immediately attack them upon reaching the island and kills several of the men he’s responsible for. Kong has his own reasons, of course, and isn’t the monster Jackson thinks he is. I liked this movie and found most of the characters in it likable. And Tom Hiddleston, who obviously did some bulking up for this role, with his exposed and beautiful biceps was quite the pleasure to ogle I must say.

 

Beauty and the Beast

Casting in this movie was perfection as far as I was concerned. I was a fan of Jerry Orbach and his roles over the years but I still think Ewan was pretty good as Lumiere. And I adore Ian Mckellan in whatever he does. But Emma Watson was a fantastic Belle and Luke Evans and Josh Gads as Gaston and LeFou were genius. Add the guy who played the beast/prince who is the cartoon prince come to life and…well it was great. There were a couple extra songs that I didn’t really think added much but for the most part, it deserves the success it’s been having in the box office and I think if you enjoyed the Disney animated movie, you will quite enjoy this.

 

The Siege

This is an old movie from the late 1990s with Denzel Washington, Annette Benning and Bruce Willis. We saw it as a Netflix movie. I have to say I thought it was really well done and seemed very appropriate to our current times as it deals with terrorist attacks and bigotry toward those of the Muslim faith. Denzel is great in anything he does and the other two are no slouches either. Plus they were about 20 years younger than they are now and were pretty easy on the eyes. There’s a part where Muslims are rounded up and forced to stay in Yankee stadium in NY as part of martial law that I think isn’t all that far off from reality at this point. A striking movie, considering it all happened before 09/11.

 

Arrival

I’d heard good things about this one and finally got a chance to see a DVD copy. Basically Amy Adams is a language expert tapped to talk to aliens who have arrived in Montana. Along the way she sees visions of her daughter who died of a disease. She works closely with a scientist played by Jeremy Renner. I was frankly pretty bored. I think the other two who watched it with me were a little more interested in it than I was, but I found it kind of slow, to be honest, and not the amazing movie all the commercials led you to believe. I think it was nominated for some awards too, though I don’t think it won. The so-called shocking ending wasn’t a shock at all. Everyone who watched it with me said they had figured out that’s what the deal was before the ending came. So, um, yeah.

I remember years ago watching The Sixth Sense, and THAT was how to do a shocking ending.

This? Not so much.

So those are my current movie reviews.