Go
Nobody ever said searching for your mother would be easy,
Lion deals with aspects of origin and identity, and that we cannot escape from who we really are. Its subject matter is something people need to be made more aware of.
The acting performances are outstanding: Nicole Kidman is at her best while the five year-old Saroo (Sunny Pawar) is the heart of the film and hats off to Dev Patel. He managed to make you feel the character’s pain just by the way he looked at a jalebi (a sweet that his brother and he fantasized about back in India).
Lion is based on a true story. For those in love with technology, watch Google Maps work its magic.
I did truly like this film and had a string of emotions throughout. Starting with anger on how poorly strangers and agencies dealt with an obviously lost young child.
Bring your hankies and GO see this film.

No Go
The first thing movie-goers should understand about Fences is that it is very much a filmed play. Only go to see Viola Davis as Rose in a great performance! Troy (Denzel) hates himself and he’s going to make sure no one else has any fun either.
Save your money

Go
“Every time we get a chance to get ahead they move the finish line. Every time.” Mary Jackson (Janelle Monae)
Was it really such a short time ago that we couldn’t share a bathroom. Well, I guess it still goes on today. As the Mercury Project progresses, we see how Harrison (Costner) is so focused on getting the job done, that he is oblivious to the extra challenges faced by Katherine (Taraji P. Henson) – that is until her emotions erupt in a scene that will have Henson under Oscar consideration. My favorite scene is when Al Harrison (Kevin Costner) breaks down the colored woman’s bathroom sign to show that everyone can share the same restroom claiming “Here at NASA, we all pee the same color!”
Our actual history is filled with people and events that we just never learned about. like *The Imitation Game*, “Hidden Figures” is one of those movies that shines a light on three brilliant and amazing women and their unheralded contribution to the space program. This is the larger than life (yet true) story of how these three ladies ended up playing an important and critical role, in the space race, in particular getting John Glenn into orbit, yet at the same time suffering from the racial segregation.
Hard to believe the space program relied in manual calculations before NASA got their computers.

WOW! A movie about a Grumpy Geezer! This is an absolute masterpiece.
MUST GO
“You’re amazingly crap at dying.” Parvaneh (Bahar Pars) in the hospital.
Ove can’t wait to join his beloved Sonja in the hereafter; but his attempts are always interrupted.
I can honestly say that I have never before felt such a strong connection to a character in a movie. I have thought to myself how sad it would be to lose a lifetime partner.
Rolf Lassgård plays Ove, a man in his late 50’s who has lost his wife to cancer, and lost his job due to redundancy. He is angry all the time, and demonstrates his anger by berating his neighbors, and making everyone stick to the letter of the regulations of the community in which he lives.

You know something is going to change when new neighbors move in. The husband is Swedish, the wife (Bahar Pars) is Iranian-Swedish and pregnant, and their two daughters are adorable. You can see the end coming right from the start.

What you can’t see from the start is Ove’s back story. Life has dealt him some bitter blows, some of them involving deceit by the people he calls “the white shirts.” Ove truly loved his wife, Sonja, portrayed very well by Ida Engvoll. Now he has nothing and no one to love, and he takes this out on the world by being a pain in the neck.

The movie has some funny moments and some tragic moments, and, eventually, they all fit together. The film is well crafted, well acted, and well photographed. It’s hard not to like a movie like this.
Ove is an eccentric whom you will love by the end of the film. After all, you just need to put an “L” on his last name.

Maybe Go
I was so disappointed with this movie billed as a musical. It has no memorable songs and the dancing is so so. The worst part — it doesn’t have a good ending! They don’t live happily ever after. Kudos to Emma and Ryan for trying to sing and dance, unfortunately proving that it takes MORE talent than they have to perform in a musical.
There was a time that to be in a musical you had to have talent. You might be able to dance like Fred Astaire or Gene Kelly. Or at least if your dancing were suspect you might be able to sing like Sinatra or Streisand or at least like Meryl Streep. But La La Land is a perfect Millennial movie where everyone who shows up gets a trophy for trying.

Here are the top ten of the 57 movies I reviewed last year.

Captain Fantastic

The Lobster

Kubo and the Two Strings

TARZAN

Deadpool

The Handmaiden

10 Cloverfield Lane

Star Trek – Beyond

The Jungle Book

Manchester by the Sea

You won’t be disappointed with any of them.