The Burial

2023 Amazon MGM Studios

Rated: R

Length: 2 hr 7min

Comedy ~ Drama ~ True Story

Starring: Jamie Foxx, Tommy Lee Jones, Jurnee Smollett, Mamoudou Athie, and Bill Camp, and Alan Ruck.

“Jerry’s a… a dream client. He’s got a great narrative. He’s a war hero. A decorated war hero. He served in World War II. He was, he was awarded the Distinguished Flying Cross… for service for his country.”

Tommy Lee Jones stars as Jeremiah O’Keefe, an honest hard working Businessman and Family Man from Mississippi. He runs a chain of Funeral Businesses and a Funeral Insurance Company. Jeremiah found himself in trouble with the Mississippi State Insurance Commission after one of his Business Associates got him involved in a Ponzi scheme and he lost a lot of money. His Contract Lawyer, Mike Allred (Alan Ruck) suggests they set up a meeting with The Loewen Group from Canada who have been buying up privately owned Funeral Businesses that find themselves in financial trouble. Jeremiah agrees and they meet with the head of The Loewen Group, Raymond Loewen (Bill Camp).

Jeremiah and Raymond reach an agreement for The Loewen Group to buy three of Jeremiah’s Funeral Businesses, but Jeremiah stipulates that they must promise not to sell them Funeral Insurance. Jeremiah wants to keep that aspect of their business for himself. They shake hands on it but months later the Loewen group is stalling on any payments and has sold their own Insurance to those businesses, reneging on the handshake deal. Infuriated, Jeremiah takes notice of a flashy personal Injury Lawyer from Florida named Willie E. Gary (Jamie Foxx). Jeremiah and his young Lawyer Hal Dockins (Mamoudou Athie) convince Willie to take the case and file a lawsuit against The Loewen Group. The showdown is on as Jeremiah O’Keefe and his lawyers and the flamboyant Willie E. Gary and his team of lawyers take on the very successful and powerful Loewen Group.

I have to point out the racial overtones in the story because they play a part in the story and the trial. Jeremiah O’Keefe and his Contract Lawyer Mike Allred are successful old school white folks from Mississippi, who grew up in a very segregated and racist environment. White is white, and black is black. Although Jeremiah seems less prejudiced than Mike Allred who is definitely old school Racist, with family ties to the K.K.K. Jeremiah’s Lawyer is a young well educated Black Lawyer, and Willie E. Gary and his team of Lawyers are all black. Raymond Loewen and his Corporate team of Lawyers are white Canadian. The Contract Lawyer that the Loewen Group hire to head the legal team for this case is a Black Female Trial Lawyer (Jurnee Smollett) with tons of experience winning cases.

The Lawsuit was filed and the trial was held in Hinds County, Mississippi, a predominantly African American Community. The filmmakers wanted to highlight the dynamic of a white plaintiff facing a predominantly Black jury, leading Jeremiah O’ Keefe to hire a prominent Black lawyer, Willie Gary, to navigate this situation and appeal to the jury composition. Jeremiah was confidant that his contract Lawyer and old friend Mike Allred was too white, southern and racist to win the case given the environment in which it was held. The Trial in itself is a study in racism in the deep south.

I love this movie, I have seen it several times. I am a Tommy Lee Jones fan from way back and I think this is one of his best. I have gained new found respect for Jamie Foxx recently after watching his special on Netflix, where he addresses the health and life scare that he had. I liked him in this as the flamboyant Willie E. Gary. And I love the True Story movies, and I love the underdog stories and this one is both. I think it is a really good movie and I would definitely recommend it. Amazon bills it as a Comedy Drama and it does have it’s comedic moments, but I would say it is more of a courtroom little guy against the big guy drama than a comedy.

Highly Recommended!

The Founder

2016 The Weinstein Company

Rated: PG-13

Length: 1 hr 55min

Biography ~ Drama ~ History ~ True Story

Directed by: John Lee Hancock

Starring: Michael Keaton, Nick Offerman, John Carroll Lynch, Linda Cardellin, Laura Dern, and B. J. Novak .

“Nothing in the world can take the place of Persistence. Talent will not, Genius will not, Education will not. Persistence and Determination alone will always solve the problems of the human race.”

Michael Keaton stars as Ray Kroc, a traveling salesman in the Midwest selling milkshake mixers to restaurants. Ray is 52 years old and has been struggling to make ends meet, not having much success with the items he has sold in the past. His office lets him know that a restaurant in California has placed an order for six Milkshake mixing machines. Confident that there must be a mistake, he calls the restaurant and is promptly told by the owner, Dick McDonald (Nick Offerman) that indeed it is not a mistake and that he should up the order to eight machines…..and hurry. Ray decides that he has to see for himself and drives to San Bernardino, California.

Upon arriving in the McDonald’s Brothers Restaurant he is amazed by what he sees. After purchasing a Burger, fries and a drink for 35 cents and receiving it immediately, he is astonished. Mac McDonald (John Carroll Lynch) offers him a tour of the kitchen where he shows Ray their “Speedee Service System”. Completely blown away by what they have invented and their restaurant, Ray takes them to dinner to pick their brains about their operation. Over the coming weeks Ray is so obsessed with the McDonald’s business he convinces them to franchise and to let him do all the work. They draw up a contract and from that day forward Ray Kroc does everything in his power to build a franchise empire of McDonald’s Restaurants as fast as he can.

In the process he goes from selling franchises to buying the land the restaurants sit on and then leasing that land to the franchisees. Eventually buying out the McDonald Brothers, and turning it into an 8 Billion dollar business with 7,500 stores in 32 countries around the world at the time of Ray’s Death in 1984. He is quoted as saying that that first day when he saw the San Bernardino store for the first time and saw the operation, the Golden Arches and the name McDonalds,” I knew I had to have it. It was a great business and the Speedee service was incredible, but the name and those arches were what I saw. That was the valuable thing. It was as American as Apple Pie and I envisioned one in every town. Every town has a courthouse with an American flag and a Church with a cross, and there should be a McDonalds in every town.”

It is a fascinating look at the True Story of McDonalds, The McDonald Brothers and Ray Kroc the visionary who saw much more than just a restaurant. The Screenplay was based on the 1977 Autobiography by Ray Kroc Grinding It Out: The Making Of McDonald’s. Of course it is a little sad how Ray basically stole the business out from underneath them. He was a very persistent determined man who saw a vision and pursued it no matter what. Michael Keaton did an awesome job in this as Ray Kroc, Nick Offerman and John Carroll Lynch also as The McDonald Brothers. I have seen this quite a few times and still enjoy it. I love Entrepreneurship and the process of starting with nothing and building something out of a single idea. It is truly a fascinating true story movie.

Highly Recommended!

Two Thumbs Up!

Saturday Night

2024 Sony Pictures

Rated: R

Length: 1 hr 49min

Comedy ~ Drama ~ True Story

Directed by: Jason Reitman

Starring: Gabriel LaBelle, Lorne Michaels. Rachel Sennott, Cory Michael Smith, Ella Hunt, Dylan O’Brien, Emily Fairn, Matt Wood, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula, Finn Wolfhard, Nicholas Braun, Cooper Hoffman, Andrew Barth Feldman, Kaia Gerber, Tommy Dewey, Willem Dafoe, Matthew Rhys, and J. K. Simmons.

“The writers are stoned, the set is on fire, the sound system is fried, the actors are physically assaulting each other, the crew is in open revolt and they have 90 minutes to figure it all out or the network is pulling the plug.”

Saturday Night is based on the true story of the 90 minutes behind the scenes leading up to the first episode of the show now called Saturday Night Live (SNL) which aired October 11,1975 at 11:30 PM. The cast was an unknown group of comedians referred to as The Not Ready For Prime Time Players. They included Gilda Radner, Dan Aykroyd, Chevy Chase, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin, John Belushi, George Coe, Michael O’Donoghue and Laraine Newman. The name was a direct reference to their main competition, Saturday Night Live with Howard Cosell. ABC’s program, which ran for only 18 episodes, was sports announcer Cosell’s stab at the comedy format.

Howard Cosell’s own rotating group of performers were called The Prime Time Players. That cast included Bill Murray, who’d go on to join NBC’s Saturday Night Live cast in 1977, and This Is Spinal Tap actor-director Christopher Guest, who eventually became an SNL season 10 cast member. The NBC show was renamed Saturday Night Live two years later after Howard Cosell’s show was canceled. SNL has had just under 1000 episodes and is currently in it’s 50th season. It has also featured over 170 cast members, a large number of whom went on to careers in film and tv.

I have been a life long SNL fan for as long as I can remember. I don’t always watch a season, sometimes it’s just not as good as I remember the show being so I pass. There are certain periods/seasons/cast in the show’s history that are just classic and very memorable. I love Weekend Update, that’s probably my favorite sketch. Well, that and the opening sketch is always the best. So when I saw this on Netflix I had to watch it. Wow, what chaos, it must have been quite the experience to have been involved in that first night.

The Cast of the First SNL Show posing at the foot of the stairs in a brick building. www.streamingmovienight.com — The First SNL Cast, The Not Ready For Prime Time Players: Chevy Chase, John Belushi, Gilda Radner, Laraine Newman, Garrett Morris, Jane Curtin and Dan Aykroyd.

The Cast of Saturday Night recreating the photo of the original SNL cast at the foot of the stairs in a brick building. www.streamingmovienight.com — The Cast of the Movie Saturday Night recreating the photo of the Not Ready For Primetime Players: Cory Michael Smith, Matt Wood, Ella Hunt, Emily Fairn, Lamorne Morris, Kim Matula and Dylan O’Brien.

I don’t remember if I did watch that first show but I’m guessing that I probably did. I would have been a young teenager and loved staying up late. And I loved comedians, I was a huge fan of Flip Wilson, George Carlin and Bill Cosby to name a few. So I probably did see it but I have to say if you are going to watch the movie, I would check out the first show first. It is available on Peacock for free although you have to jump through a couple of hoops first. I enjoyed it, I thought it was a very interesting look at the drama, politics and resolve it took to make the show happen that first night.

I think they did a great job casting because the resemblances to the original cast are pretty good. And the actors did a great job mimicking the original comedians. The scenes in the original show look just like the scenes in the movie, so they did their homework.

If you are an SNL fan I highly recommend it. If you are not a fan but have an interest in the show and have seen some of the classics, it is worth watching. If you are not a fan of SNL or any of the comedians that have been on the cast or the show, I would say skip it. It’s just not going to make sense to you without the background of the show. So there you go, that’s Saturday Night!

NBC will be broadcasting the original episode Saturday February 15 at 10 PM. The next night Sunday February 16 NBC will air a three hour Prime Time Special commemorating SNL’s 50th Anniversary starting at 8 PM.

Last Known Location

2024 Quiver Distribution

Rated: 16+

Length: 1 hr 54min

Crime ~ Drama ~ Thriller ~ True Story

Directed by: Danny Donnelly

Starring: Aimee Theresa, Sophia Lucia Parola, Jennifer M. Kay and Danny Donnelly.

“Will Detectives find them before it’s too late?”

Last Known Location is an Indie movie made by Silver Octopus Productions, a small Production company based in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania. They are owned by the Husband/Wife team of Aimee Theresa and Danny Donnelly. The movie was filmed in West Chester, Pennsylvania. It is reportedly based on a True Story but I couldn’t find info on the true story it is supposedly based on. It could be a Philly area story I’m guessing. Aimee wrote the script and plays the main character Callie Holloway. Danny Donnelly directed and starred as Matthew Martin.

It is the story of three women who were abducted one by one. Each of them not having many family or friend ties so their disappearance goes unnoticed for a considerable time before anyone notifies the police. A Detective and her partner are assigned to the case and start piecing clues together and decide it is foul play and the work of one person. The three women are seen chained up in a basement somewhere with only a toilet and a laundry sink. They arrived there one by one. I don’t want to say anymore about the plot so as not to spoil it.

It does keep you guessing right up until the end, because the end is a complete surprise you didn’t see coming. There are some things that bothered me about the movie. The acting was a little forced at times, kind of like a bad TV movie. There wasn’t enough depth to the characters, or the villain. And why didn’t the three girls fight harder, I saw opportunities early on they could have exploited. Why did he do what he did? The Movie alludes to it but doesn’t really say. The Hooks in the concrete basement floor the girls were chained to were obviously there for a long time. Had he been abducting women for a long time? Or was it something to do with the villain’s mother?

Later in the movie Callie finds two little green toy soldiers that boys play with hidden in a crack next to her Chain hook in the concrete? Was the villain chained there as a kid, perhaps by his mother because he was “bad”? The upstairs of the house has an old feel to it…the furniture, the decorations. It almost looks like he’s living in his mother’s house, but you never see the mother. It did leave me with those questions, I felt like it could have been better with a little more back story and depth. But it wasn’t all lacking, the plot and the girls kept me intrigued. Wanting to know more and see where it all ended up. And the end is a complete surprise, good one there!

From what I could find out this is a very young Indie film outfit with this being their first Major full length feature movie. Given all that, I’d say it was pretty good. In fact I’d say they would be ones to watch in the near future as they hone their craft and produce better and better movies.

So, yes, it’s worth a watch.

Number 24

2024 Motion Blur/Netflix

Rated: Not Rated

Length: 1 hr 52min

Biography ~ Drama ~ True Story ~ War

Directed by: John Andreas Andersen

Starring: Sjur Vatne Brean, Erik Hivju and Philip Helgar

“I have five drawers in my head. I closed the bottom drawer May 8th, 1945 and I haven’t opened it since.”

Sjur Vatne Brean (as the younger Gunnar) and Erik Hivju (as the older Gunnar) star as Gunnar Sønsteby in this Norwegian Film by Scandinavian Motion Picture Company Motion Blur. They also released the Movies Troll and Troll 2. It was released in October 2024 in Scandinavia, and released by Netflix worldwide January 1, 2025. It became the most popular film of 2024 in Norway at the time of it’s release, and it was viewed over 9 million times in it’s first week on Netflix. Number 24 is the True Story of Gunnar Sønsteby who was a young man in Oslo, Norway in 1940 when the Germans invaded. The movie is based on the autobiographical Novel Report From #24: The Thrilling Tale of Norway’s Most Decorated World War II Hero by Gunnar Sønsteby ~ May 1, 2017.

The movie starts with the elder Gunnar getting ready to speak to a group of University students. He spent the rest of his life after the war giving lectures about his experience in WWII to pass on the lessons learned to future generations. “As long as I live, I will tell the important facts. The Historians can analyze, but I was there.” As he starts to recount his story, the movie flashes back to Gunnar in 1940 as the Germans invade Oslo. He was a 21 year old young man working as an accountant when Germany launched it’s Blitzkrieg on Norway. The movie flashes back and forth between the elder Gunnar giving a lecture, and the younger Gunnar in Oslo during WWII as he narrates the story.

When the Germans invaded Oslo, Gunnar made a very deliberate decision to fight no matter what. He joined the initial Norwegian Resistance fighters which was a very unorganized rag-tag group of young Norwegian Citizens determined to fight the Nazi’s. Gunnar quickly saw that they needed to be better organized, and rose to the forefront of the resistance as an organizer and leader. He was eventually recruited by the secret British Special Operations where he became known as “Agent 24”. An undercover agent largely responsible for a lot of the covert operations in Norway. He later became a member of the infamous “Oslo Gang”, a sabotage group responsible for halting German operations in Norway.

Gunnar Sønsteby is Norway’s most Highly Decorated Citizen, having been awarded several medals including the War Cross, Norway’s most prestigious medal for his war efforts. It is a somber but fascinating story and a great movie. The sadism and inhumane cruelty of The Nazi regime is hinted at in the movie. Most notably in one scene early on where the Nazi’s torture one of the resistance fighters with hot motor oil. Barbaric. I was completely transfixed by the story and the movie. Unbelievable what Gunnar went through and the risks he took to stop the Germans.

I only have one complaint, and it is totally a personal one. It has nothing to do with Gunnar nor the movie. I am not a big fan of foreign movies that are overdubbed or sub-titled, in fact I avoid them. I really get immersed in a movie, I like to transport myself into it. Really get lost in it, feel like you are right there with the characters. There is nothing like a sub-title to completely blow the illusion for me. Or really bad overdubbed voices that don’t match the physical movement of the actor’s mouth, that really gets me. I can’t watch, if it’s bad right off the bat, I’ll quit watching.

That being said, Netflix did a good job with this one. At first it bugged me because I’m such a snob about overdubbing, but they did a good job and the story quickly overcame any discrepancy in the dubbing. It is a fascinating look at a horrendous time in Norway and a young man who said no and took a stance. The courage, determination and bravery of Gunnar Sønsteby helped change the course of the war in Norway and saved his country.

Bravo to Gunnar Sønsteby and Number 24, a great man and a great movie!

Highly Recommended!

Two Thumbs up!