Category: Movie reviews

Movie review: The Accountant

The Accountant movie review by Marlo Yonocruz

[Warning: spoiler alert]


Synopsis: Christian Wolff is a math savante with more affinity for numbers than people. Behind the cover of a small-town CPA office, he works as a freelance accountant for some of the world’s most dangerous criminal organizations. With the Treasury Department’s Crime Enforcement Division, run by Ray King, starting to close in, Christian takes on a legitimate client: a state-of-the-art robotics company where an accounting clerk has discovered a discrepancy involving millions of dollars. But as Christian uncooks the books and gets closer to the truth, it is the body count that starts to rise. -IMDb

Development & story:

I’ll admit, I never expected to walk out of the theater so satisfied and wanting to see more. I will say that the buildup towards the action did take a while. In retrospect, however, I can see that this was necessary to balance out the accountant side of Wolff with the trained killer side. I’m glad the action didn’t overshadow the development of his character. While it took longer than expected, it was definitely worth the wait. The backlog of reveals and plot twists at the end completely destroyed any expectations I had going in.

The plot is so multi-layered, it’s almost hard to keep up, but not enough to lose any enjoyment. However, that’s probably one of the reason I’d like to watch it again. There’s so many great scenes and moments. It’s similar to rewatching a movie like The Matrix where each revisit reveals more depth than the first time around. A great movie for intellectuals who enjoy the bigger ideas like myself.

Stone cold killer as accountant? Cool. He’s a high functioning autisic, using a weakness as a strength? Awesome. He seems very quirky and awkward but wants to helps people? Love it. Strong themes of family, compassion, and overcoming adversity? My feels.

Characters & acting:

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Movie review: Queen of Katwe

Warning: spoiler alert!



Synopsis: A young girl from Uganda trains to become a world chess champion.

Initial thoughts:

Disney.True story. Academy Award winners. High rating on Rotton Tomatoes. I’m in. Disney is consistently good at tugging on my heartstrings, especially when it comes to themes of overcoming adversity and family.

Storyline/Development: 

In hindsight, there shouldn’t be any expectations for anything creative with the story development. Young girl stands out as special, shows promise, encounters resistance, gains friends and momentum, bigger setbacks, faces root problems, breakthrough, climax, then happiness and rainbows.

While I wasn’t expecting to be impressed with any unique plot twists, I knew that Disney would be masterful at executing the five acts: exposition, rising action, climax, falling action, and resolution. This was no different.

Ending thoughts:

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Movie review: Kubo and the Two Strings

Warning: spoiler alert!


Initial thoughts:

To be honest, the main reason I went to go watch this movie was because of the ridiculously high ratings it received on Rotten Tomatoes. I don’t think I heard or saw any advertising about this movie outside of an email newsletter from Univsersal Studios promoting some screening event of the movie. My girlfriend also wanted to see it because she loves animated and epic movies like this. 😁

Aesthetics:

Hands down, this movie is a visual masterpiece. Absolutely loved the animation and visual storytelling. It was such a magical journey from start to finish, from the origami street show that Kubo put on, until the final fight scene with the Moon King.

Story:

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Movie review: Sully

Warning: spoiler alert!


Synopsis:

On Jan. 15, 2009, Capt. Chesley “Sully” Sullenberger (Tom Hanks) tries to make an emergency landing in New York’s Hudson River after US Airways Flight 1549 strikes a flock of geese. Miraculously, all of the 155 passengers and crew survive the harrowing ordeal, and Sullenberger becomes a national hero in the eyes of the public and the media. Despite the accolades, the famed pilot now faces an investigation that threatens to destroy his career and reputation.

Initial thoughts:

I’ve watched hundreds of movies and consider myself an avid movie-goer. So when I saw the movie poster, Tom Hanks, Clint Eastwood, saw it was a true story, and its high rating on Rotten Tomatoes, my instincts were telling me it was going to be awesome. There was no question about whether or not I was going to watch this 😁

Storyline:

I enjoyed how the movie didn’t go in chronological order. Instead, it was broken up into five parts:

  1. Post-crash: the day after and the beginning of the investigation
  2. 1st half of incident: take off up until crash
  3. Continued story and investigation
  4. 2nd half of incident: crash and rescue
  5. Continued story, the final public hearing, and the revisit of the flight audio recording

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Movie review: Eddie the Eagle

[warning: spoilers]

So I watched this movie last night. I wanted to watch it in theaters mostly because Hugh Jackman was in it, but didn’t get around to it before it left theaters.

In a nutshell, it’s a great movie. Based on a true story, I thought it was nothing short of inspiring.

The movie is about a boy who has the dream of becoming an Olympian. Despite, his disadvantage of having no natural talent for athletics, he persists to train hard to achieve his goal. Eventually he learns to ski, but moves to long jump after not being allowed on the British Olympic male ski squad.

Along the way, he faces ton of challenges. Everyone discourages him (including his father), he’s thwarted by the British Olympic committee from joining the team, and he doesn’t even know how to long jump.

He manages to link up with Hugh Jackman’s character, who was a prodigy long jumper back in his day, and together they manage to help Eddie qualify for the Olympics and achieve the impossible.

There are a few things I absolutely love about this story:

  1. Despite many challenges, he persists and doesn’t give up. He went on pure faith in his vision.
  2. He has this amazing optimism that kept him going. Where most people would have been focused on failure or paralyzed by fear, he just did it anyway. The act of DOING instead of just thinking always inspires me.
  3. He was set on proving people wrong. Don’t we all love the story of the underdog? Nobody believed in him since the beginning, but he never waivered and managed to become an Olympian.
  4. He had the unconditional love and support of his mother. Themes about family alway get me. It reminds me about how Jeff Bezos (founder of Amazon) attributes a large part of his success to his parents always encouraging him. It reminds me of the type of parent I aspire to be one day.

While I don’t think this movie is going to win any awards, it’s definitely an inspiring telling of a story with a solid execution. Would definitely recommend if you’re looking for one of those heartwarming movies about determination and human spirit.

Rating: 8.5 / 10