Bridget Jones’s Baby (2016) Renee Zellweger – Movie Reviews

September 18, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

Bridget is now 43 years old, alone and still living in the same flat in London — no husband and no children — working as a producer for a London televisions news program. On the urging of a friend and colleague, Bridget is cajoled into attending an outdoor music festival where people can expect to get laid, and often, where she soon meets a charismatic and good-looking American dating-site wunderkind named Jack Quant, with whom she decides to “have relations.” About a week later, she runs into her reserved and refined old flame Mark Darcy, who says he’s going through a divorce but still has feelings for her, and they also, “have relations.” when Bridget ends up pregnant, it becomes an awkward situation, as she doesn’t know which of the two appealing men will be the father, and if so, if they will accept the situation of responsibility.

Little Men (2016) Greg Kinnear – Movie Reviews

September 13, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Jake is an artistically gifted but introverted 13-year-old kid whose therapist mother Kathy and actor father Brian relocate from Manhattan to Brooklyn when they take over the abode of the recently deceased father Brian barely spoke to anymore. The properties inhereted also contain a modest dress shop run by a middle-aged Chilean immigrant named Leonor, who also has a son, Tony, around the same age as Jake. Tony quickly befriends actor-in-training Jake, but difficulties arise between the two families when the lease on the shop is found to not exist, and a major readjustment to the very low rent she had been paying to the grandfather is proposed to keep up with the skyrocketing property prices in the radically changing Brooklyn neighborhood they reside in.

Other People (2016) Molly Shannon – Movie Review

September 11, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The film takes place over the course of a year, with the primary focus being on a struggling comedy writer and improv comedian named David (Plemmons), returning to his hometown of Sacramento from New York to look after the needs of his terminally ill mother, Joanne (Shannon), uncomfortably reuniting with his mostly estranged father, Norman (Whitford), who has yet to fully accept him since coming out, and two mostly annoying younger sisters. The family is preparing for the inevitable life after Joanne, as she has decided to forego additional grueling chemo treatments and accept her fate with the cancer that is overtaking her. While there, David also begins to find some healing time with dormant familial relationships and a bit of perspective on the other trials and tribulations in his personal, professional and romantic life.

Sully (2016) Tom Hanks – Movie Reviews

September 10, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Sully is a docudrama that tells the story of the events surrounding the water landing in the New York’s Hudson River for a commercial jet en route to Charlotte piloted by veteran Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger on January 15, 2009. The Airbus A320 lost both engines after flying into a large flock of Canada geese turing takeoff from LaGuardia Airport, causing Sully and co-pilot Jeff Skiles to have to make the quick decision on whether they could make it back to LaGuardia or a nearby airstrip, or if they must take the risky chance of downing the plane in the icy river. The well-publicized end result on that fateful morning was that Sully, all of the crew, and all 150 passengers survived that day, dubbed the “Miracle on the Hudson”, making the pilot an overnight celebrity and hero in the eyes of millions.

Equity (2016) Anna Gunn – Movie Reviews

September 6, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Naomi Bishop, a self-made, shrewd and successful investment banker who has made great gains in launching highly successful IPOs, though her most recent less-than-stellar effort, in which she was pulled from representing just before launch, had been seen in the media as a black mark on her career. Her latest client is a potential billion-dollar social-media business named Cachet that prides itself on hiring skillful hackers whose know-how have made its CEO confident that all of its clients data is safe and secure from any and all attacks. The film also spotlights two other women related to the event, Erin, Naomi’s protégé in the firm who has been anxiously awaiting seeing more money and opportunities come her way, especially now that she has a baby on the way, and Naomi’s friend from way back, Samantha, a federal prosecutor for the Justice Department who has reemerged in her life in her investigation of alleged securities fraud.

Blood Father (2016) Mel Gibson – Movie Reviews

September 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Blood Father casts a weathered Mel Gibson as a former alcoholic tattoo artist ex-con divorcee named John Link, who’s spent the last few years mostly off the grid in a trailer park in California’s Coachella Valley (shot in New Mexico). He has been anxiously searching for his 17-year-old daughter, Lydia, who ran away at 14. She re-enters his life soon enough, desperately looking for money to make her getaway when she ends up shooting her ne’er-do-well boyfriend, Jonah, during an armed heist, causing others in his criminal organization tied to the drug cartels from Mexico to come after her. Fatherly instincts, and a resurgence of dormant survival skills picked up from his days as a not-so-nice-guy, kick in when the bad guys come around.

Morgan (2016) Kate Mara – Movie Reviews

September 3, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Most of the action takes place, as with Ex Machina, at a large house in a scenic remote location that doubles as an experimental laboratory where scientists are observing the maturation of a synthetic young woman named Morgan, who is five years old in actuality but with the accelerated aging that gives her the appearance of a young woman. The staff there all have fond feelings for Morgan, though that trust is shattered one day when Morgan appears to lash out violently unexpectedly, resulting in severe injuries to one of their own. The corporation behind the experiment sends a risk-management agent to assess the risks of continuing, Lee Weathers, who finds that, despite their fear of a repeat occurrence that has Morgan more or less imprisoned, they rationalize that this outburst is an anomaly, and part of the acceptable risk for the project.

The Fits (2016) Royalty Hightower – Movie Review

September 1, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Toni is a tough but socially disconnected eleven-year-old girl from the projects in Cincinnati, who is a regular participant and a helpful assistant in the nearby community center, where her older brother, Jermaine, a boxer, also trains. Toni tries out to be a member of the Lionesses, the highly successful all-girl competitive dance-battle squad. The girls all regularly work out their highly complicated dance routines, but one of the girls falls during the routine in what appears to be an epileptic fit (hence the title). Some time later, another, then another. Are they overworked? Is it there a problem with water contamination at the community center? Is it something worse?

Hell or High Water (2016) Jeff Bridges – Movie Review

August 29, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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Chris Pine and Ben Foster play brothers Toby and Tanner Howard, who we find at the beginning of the film on a bank-robbing spree in West Texas. Toby’s the smart one who has generally been above the fray, but he’s now going in headfirst into a life of crime with his ne’er-do-well Tanner to secure the funs necessary to keep the banks from seizing the property willed to debt-plagued Toby, whose mother’s property was mortgaged to pay for her medical care, which he aims to give to his two mostly estranged boys. With the Feds not interested in chasing down criminals who aren’t stealing much more than a few thousand here and there, a soon-to-retire Texas Ranger named Marcus Hamilton assumes the case, along with his deputy Alberto, to catch these guys before they strike again.

Southside with You (2016) Tika Sumpter – Movie Review

August 28, 2016 ~ Vince Leo

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The story, inspired by anecdotes chronicled in the memoirs of their actual first date, begins in August, 1989, in the South Side of Chicago, on a day in which a young, smart and career-minded corporate lawyer, Michelle Robinson, accepts spending the day with a Harvard-bound summer office mate, Barack Obama, on the pretense that they attend a housing project community meeting as colleagues, making whatever else they do socially that he has planned definitely not a date. Obama, driving his rusted-out car to greet her, feels differently, and makes it his task to convince her otherwise before the day is through.