barbett-1

This is a nice little film that the whole family can enjoy together. It will not deliver any surprises or stun you with Academy award performances. Just a simple story requiring a suspension of disbelief and, perhaps, an open heart.

Bindi Irwin delivers a good performance and it's too bad she didn't continue to make movies as her acting ability was strong even as a child.

The plot is standard family fare - good guys win, bad guys lose and protagonists learn valuable life lessons.

The CGI whale is pretty good by 2010 standards. The robo-whale, however, is pretty dreadful and totally unconvincing.

I agree with many reviewers that the title of the film should not have included the phrase "Free Willy". This film exists in a separate universe and has no connection to the other three films whatsoever.

It's somewhat amusing to hear from the "Free Willy" purists who hold those films in such high regard. They were not the high-concept, altruistic message films these people imagine them to be. Although the production values were higher, all those films were implausible and predictable. The addition of a environmental blurb on the end credits does not raise the integrity of the film.

To those who feel this movie disrespects Keiko all I can say that the orca was exploited from the moment he was captured at about two years of age. He lived a miserable existence in concrete prisons where he was chronically ill from a variety of infections. Warner Brothers exploited him for the movies and even his disastrous release was hyped like a circus sideshow. For all its flaws, "Escape from Pirate's Cove" didn't exploit and harm a living orca.

September Storm is obviously one of those kind of movies they just don't make anymore. In the 1950s and early 60s, the ingredients for an adventure movie were an exotic locale, a handsome hero, a sassy and pretty girl and a couple of bad guys. This movie has all these ingredients and they are mostly put to good use. The story itself is simple: two shady characters convince a Majorcan sailor to use his boss's yacht to recover sunken gold. A lovely American model is thrown in to keep things interesting. The voyage leads to cross and double-cross as the men quarrel over the money and the "dame". Underwater scenes are actually filmed very well considering the period, although the use of a rubber shark is unconvincing. There are several cringey moments of sexism in the dialog that are reflective of the period. Perhaps the most outstanding is when the bad guy says something to the effect of "Why do I gotta cook? - we gotta woman".

There is some glaring unevenness in the characters. One moment they are literally trying to kill one another and in the following scene they're all one big happy crew. The ending is kind of open-ended and a tad unsatisfying but at least nobody got killed.

Poor Things is a strange little movie and seems to revel in it's unique oddness. Set in an alternate, steampunk world, the visuals can be both fascinating and jarring at the same time. There is an abundance of explicit sex scenes ("furious jumping") and some mild gore. Emma Stone plays a young woman, Bella, who has had the brain of her unborn child transplanted into her by the strangely amoral Dr. Baxter. She develops from an obnoxious brat into a coldly logical, yet highly insightful traveler through a world of contradictions. Through her experiences subjects such as social mores, capitalism, feminism and politics are examined. It is an absorbing tale but is sure to offend the sensibilities of some. I found it an enjoyable, often humorous film, but can only recommend it with a bit of caution.