movie reviews [dvr/streaming not in the theater]

I have been catching up on movies I had on the DVR...

These are my thoughts, briefly as I am supposed to be packing.

1) A Separation -- A-
Even though I had to read subtitles so couldn't multitask, this was a great movie. I see why it was an Oscar winner.  I wish I knew more about the class system in Iran because I think it would have been even more meaningful.  The acting was so natural, and the writing so complex that I felt more like a fly on the walls of these families rather than a movie watcher.  It gets a minus only because it is hard watching ... the layers of consequences and the family drama hit me hard.  So well done, though, that I made it through the hard parts without wanting to turn it off.

2) Wish I Was Here - A
I really loved this movie, I did not expect to at all.  The acting was awesome, especially from the children.  The story was not trite.  Rather the twists and turns were not predictable and frequently funny.

3) The Intern - C
Why? Just why? There was really nothing interesting about this movie.  It is not just that I don't care for the main actress.  The predictability was tedious. 

4) Brooklyn - C-
I cannot believe that this was such a popular movie or so well received by the Oscar people  Seriously, were they all high when they decided to nominate it?  Wow, you would think there weren't any other movies made this year.  Predictable doesn't even begin to cover what was wrong with this movie -- if it had not been hyped quite so much, perhaps I could forgive it for feeling like a made for TV mini series.  I hope the book was MUCH better to have attracted so much attention.  And the young actress in the lead is fine but no match for the likes of Brie Larson in Room ... come on.

5) The Danish Girl   - A
There wasn't anything not beautiful about this movie ... the sets, the acting, the story, the lack of predictability (yes, there is a theme going here).  Wonderful movie, everyone should see it.  Eddie Redmayne really can inhabit any character.  WOW.

6) Every Secret Thing - B+
I wasn't sure what to expect from this movie, so perhaps it wasn't as good as I thought -- but I enjoyed the mystery and the twists and turns.  The young actresses in the lead roles were super believable.  The film had the quality of a docudrama but not in a bad way.

7) Our Brand Is Crisis - B+
I love Sandra Bullock but hadn't even heard of this film.  It was an interesting and entertaining story with some twists that I hadn't expected.  Some of the character plot lines seemed thin or like they were just dropped. I wondered if there wasn't a book out there with more fleshed out storylines that filled in the blanks I noted here.  But the acting was great, and that made up for some of the other issues. [apparently based on a documentary of the same name]

Here are some of the movies I didn't get past 15 minutes:
Aloha
Ouija