By Brenda Fenech-Soler (08/24/20)
Send a review of your top 3 movies or TV series to spoonbill@mindspring.com
PICKS:
- 7500: This 2019 action-thriller stars Joseph Gordon-Levitt, and as I’ve been fan of his since his “Third Rock from the Sun” days, I just had to check this one out! Gordon-Levitt delivers a solid performance as a co-pilot whose plane is hijacked by terrorists. Although this film is not based on actual events, the writers did take inspiration from real hijacking reports. The title “7500” is derived from the Emergency Transponder Code for “unlawful interference”. Since the COVID-19 pandemic, I don’t really need another excuse not to get on a plane, but this film might give one pause. You can check out a trailer here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=F4W5c_3_rhs
- The Aeronauts: In this 2019 film, pioneering meteorologist James Glaisher (Eddie Redmayne) teams up with daredevil balloon pilot Amelia Wren (Felicity Jones) to advance knowledge of the weather, and fly higher than anyone before. Although this movie was billed as being inspired by true events, I was disappointed to learn that the movie gender-swapped a real-life character, Henry Coxwell, for the fictional female character Amelia Wren. It probably would have been better to stick to the real story, but then we would not have had the chemistry of Redmayne and Jones together again. Here they are reunited after 2014’s “The Theory of Everything”, which garnered Redmayne an Oscar, for his portrayal of physicist Stephen Hawking. Honestly, Eddie Redmayne could read a take-out menu and I’d watch, riveted. Check out “The Aeronauts” here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Rm4VnwCtQO8
PAN:
Call of the Wild: What’s not to love about a movie based on Jack London’s literary classic about Buck the dog and his adventures during the Klondike Gold Rush? Throw Harrison Ford into the mix as the grizzled outdoorsman who befriends Buck, and you would think this would be an instant classic. Yeah . . . . . not so much. The problem here is that all of the animals in this movie are CGI (Computer Generated Images) which makes them more than a little unrealistic. Don’t get me wrong, the CGI effects are amazing, they just make the animals a little unnatural and mawkish. I’m a sucker for dog movies, and they almost always make me cry, but I didn’t even have to break out the tissues for this one! See what I mean here: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=5P8R2zAhEwg
Send a review of your top 3 movies or TV series to spoonbill@mindspring.com
