Tag: Drama

The Accountant 2

2025   Amazon MGM Studios

Rated:  R

Length:  2 hr  12min

Action ~ Crime ~ Drama ~ Thriller

Directed by: Gavin O’Connor

Starring:  Ben Affleck, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, J. K. Simmons and Daniella Pineda.

DO YOU LIKE PUZZLES?

The Accountant 2 picks up eight years after the events of The Accountant. Ex Treasury Director Raymond King (J. K. Simmons) has been doing Private Detective work since his retirement from the Treasury Department. He meets with an assasin in a nightclub and is found dead with “Find The Accountant” and current treasury Director Marybeth Medina’s phone number written on his arm. She is informed and proceeds to find The Accountant and whoever is responsible for her Mentor’s death. Christian hears about her quest for him and approaches her first. Upon learning of Raymond’s death, Christian decides to help Medina and find out who is responsible.

He decides he must enlist the help of his once again estranged brother, and together they follow the leads to those responsible. They also uncover a larger conspiracy and go into combat mode to set things right. Which leads to a thrilling action packed chase to hunt down those responsible, and when they find out there are children involved, specifically an autistic child it gets personal and all hell breaks out. The Director Gavin O’Connor had stated that he wanted the sequel to focus more on the brothers relationship and The Accountant 2 does just that. There is a lot of bonding between the two of them as we get a better understanding of their tumultuous relationship.

It is a bit lighter in tone than the first movie, but has way more action than the first one. We also see Christian start to come out of his autistic shell as he gets closer and more intimate with people. There is a scene where a cowgirl asks him to join her in a line dance and despite his objections she convinces him and he starts to have a really good time. He even gets her phone number. We didn’t get to see Dana (Anna Kendrick) and Christian get together in the first movie, but we see Christian opening up to the idea of a romance and relationship in this one. And apparently, according to Gavin O’Connor, we will see Christian develop more in that area in the third installment of the trilogy.

We shall have to wait and see on that one. There is a third installment in development as we speak. I liked this one, makes me anxious for the rest of the story. It did go in a little different direction than I thought and after eight years we see that Christian has changed. He has grown out of his autistic shell to some extent and is trying to grow and expand as person. Which includes being a better brother and getting closer to his brother.

I liked it, give it a go, and bring on the third one!

The Accountant

The Accountant 2 And 3

The Accountant

2016   Warner Brothers Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  2 hr  8min

Action ~ Crime ~ Drama ~ Thriller

Directed by:  Gavin O’Connor

Starring:  Ben Affleck, Anna Kendrick, J. K. Simmons, Jon Bernthal, Cynthia Addai-Robinson, Jeffrey Tambor, and John Lithgow.

CALCULATE YOUR CHOICES

Ben Affleck stars as Christian Wolff, an Autistic Accountant with hidden talents. He operates a small accounting office in Plainfield, Illinois, that serves as a front for his money laundering enterprise. He assists a farmer and his wife with their tax problems, and is seen living a regimented life in a suburban property. His criminal clients contact him via an unnamed woman, who also organizes his business, identities and life. Christian is hired to audit the firm Living Robotics after the company’s CEO, Lamar Blackburn (John Lithgow), and his sister Rita learn of accounting irregularities. They assign in-house accountant Dana Cummings (Anna Kendrick), who discovered the issue, to assist Christian.

Meanwhile, Treasury Director Ray King (J. K. Simmons) meets with data analyst Marybeth Medina (Cynthia Addai-Robinson), who has a criminal record as a juvenile but failed to disclose this on her federal employment application. He warns her she faces prison if he chooses to reveal the information and assigns her the task of finding a shadowy figure known as ‘The Accountant’ before King retires in a few months. Medina realizes that Christian is using a series of aliases, chiefly names of great mathematicians. She tracks the Wolff identity to the accounting office and adjacent businesses in Plainfield, realizing he is using them to launder money, most of which is then donated to Harbor Neuroscience.

Which is the key to uncovering who The Accountant is, his ties to The Harbor Neuroscience center. The race is on as Christian gets to the bottom of the cooked books and the missing money, The Treasury Department tracks down who, what and where he is, and the bad guys led by Christian’s estranged brother Braxton (Jon Bernthal) try to put a lid on the cooked books and the missing money. Along the way we find there is more to the Autistic Christian as he has special skills instilled in him by his Military father as a way to prepare his autistic child for a cold harsh and cruel world.

This is one of my favorites, I have seen it countless times. I went back and re-watched it last night before I watch the sequel The Accountant 2 tonight. Ben Affleck at his best along with Anna Kendrick, Jon Bernthal and J.K. Simmons. Big fans of all of them, I did want to see more of a relationship between Christian and Anna’s character Dana, felt like that would have been a good road to go down storywise but it wasn’t in the script apparently as she is not in the sequel. So if you haven’t seen it you are missing a good one, give it a go. I hope the sequel measures up, we’ll see tonight.

The Accountant 2 And 3

The Accountant 2 Coming To Amazon Prime Thursday June 5, 2025

Straw

2025   Netflix

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  45min

Drama ~ Thriller

Directed by:  Tyler Perry

Starring:  Taraji P. Henson, Sherri Shepherd, Teyana Taylor, Sinbad, Rockmond Dunbar, Ashley Versher, Mike Merrill, and Glynn Turman.

This Is Her Last…….

WOW! What an incredibly bad day Janiyah is having………..and then it gets worse……..and then you find out it is even worse than you can imagine. We all have them, incredibly bad days where it seems like no matter how hard you try, it just goes downhill. It gets worse and worse until you just want the day to end. Janiyah wakes up in a crappy apartment with no ac and loud music from the neighbors. No mind, she gets her daughter ready for school and leaves the apartment. Where her landlord promptly tells her if she doesn’t get the rent money, she is going to have to evict her. And it rapidly gets worse from there, to the point that any human being would use their last straw and snap.

I love this movie, it says so much on so many levels. It is dramatic and intense and yet it is heart warming and sad all at the same time. Tyler Perry outdid himself on this one but Taraji……this woman deserves an OSCAR for this performance! If she isn’t even nominated or doesn’t win an OSCAR….you know things are fixed. I’m not kidding, she deserves that kind of recognition for her performance in this. Tyler Perry should have named it TARJI instead of STRAW. Let’s start a movement……

OSCAR FOR TARAJI!

OSCAR FOR TARAJI!

OSCAR FOR TARAJI!

Here’s what Tyler Perry said about Taraji’s performance:

(From Netflix Tudum)

Taraji is the heart and soul of this film — she carries all of the emotional weight of this woman having the most challenging moment of her life.  Taraji takes the audience through every emotion her character is having and that’s why she’s such a brilliant actor. You can’t take your eyes off her when she’s on screen. Anytime I start to write, I see a person’s face, and Taraji was the person that I saw fully and clearly. From the first word that Janiyah spoke on the page, I thought, “This is Taraji. I hope she will do it.” So I sent it to her and she read it, and she was like, “I love it. I’m in. Let’s do it.”

Taraji and her character carry the entire movie. But the support of these characters is so important to turn the page in the story and understand that Janiyah didn’t want to get to this point — life and situations and circumstances happened. And it takes all of these pivotal women and their characters and their experiences to tell that story.

What Taraji thought about Janiyah and Straw:

Straw is about a woman who reaches her tipping point. It’s the day from hell. I don’t know if anyone out there has ever experienced a day where it’s like, “What else could happen?” Everything that can go wrong, goes wrong in this one day. It’s about how humans operate in that heightened state of panic and anxiety and pressure. When the pot is boiling and it finally explodes, what happens? What does that look like and how does it affect the people around you?

Janiyah is a woman who doesn’t really have a voice. She hasn’t been allowed to find it and she’s just trying to survive under the radar. I don’t even really think she wants to be seen by many people. She just wants to do what’s right for her daughter and live her life. There are so many people like that in the world. And, I think for Janiyah, the thing that is keeping her alive is her daughter, because that’s her sense of belonging. That’s the one thing that makes her feel like a person, because she brought life into this world and she takes it very seriously. She doesn’t have much, but all she has, she gives to her daughter. I know so many people who’ll be able to identify with her and that love you have for a child, whether you’re rich or poor.

As a single mother, I understood Janiyah’s struggles profoundly. She’s trying her best with very little, but what she lacks in opportunity, she has in abundance when it comes to the love she has for her child. She’s been given a difficult hand, but it’s how she deals with that really moved me. It’s so easy for people like her to be overlooked and disenfranchised by society. All the odds stacked against her and it’s something I’ve dealt with in my own life. I felt like I knew this woman personally.

You have to watch this one. That’s what I say. What a great movie. It is thought provoking and it has twists and turns you didn’t see coming. And Tyler should have named it TARAJI and she deserves an OSCAR!

September 5

2024   Constantin Film

Rated:  R

Length:  1 hr  35min

Drama ~ History ~ Thriller ~ True Story

Directed by:  Tim Fehlbaum.

Starring:  Peter Sarsgaard, John Magaro, Ben Chaplin, and Leonie Benesch.

The Day Terror Went Live

During the 1972 Summer Olympics in Munich, Germany two very important events took place that altered the course of history. ABC Sports was covering the event live in Munich with a full team and broadcasting live worldwide via satellite for the first time ever, and a Terrorist group named Black September broke into the apartments housing the Israeli athletes and took them hostage. They immediately demanded release of 200 Palestinian prisoners being held in Israel. Word spread quickly and the ABC Sports News Team jumped into action covering every minute of the ordeal and broadcasted it worldwide. It was the first ever televised Olympics and a terrorist attack in real time. September 5 recreates the event from the perspective of the ABC crew in their control room.

FROM THE OFFICIAL WEBSITE:

“September 5” unveils the decisive moment that forever changed media coverage and continues to impact live news today. Set during the 1972 Munich Summer Olympics, the film follows an American Sports broadcasting team that quickly adapted from sports reporting to live coverage of the Israeli athletes taken hostage. Through this lens, “September 5” provides a fresh perspective on the live broadcast seen globally by an estimated one billion people at the time.

At the heart of the story is Geoff (John Magaro), a young and ambitious producer striving to prove himself to his boss, the legendary TV executive Roone Arledge (Peter Sarsgaard). Together with German interpreter Marianne (Leonie Benesch) and his mentor Marvin Bader (Ben Chaplin), Geoff unexpectedly takes the helm of the live coverage. As narratives shift, time ticks away, and conflicting rumours spread, with the hostages’ lives hanging in the balance, Geoff grapples with tough decisions while confronting his own moral compass.

Interwoven with real footage from that day it is a fascinating look at the events that happened and the quick thinking of the ABC team in real time as they decided that since they had the capability, the world should see the events unfolding before them. It is also an interesting look at TV production in real time without the aid of computers and graphics. There is an interesting scene where we see how they came up with titles to overlay on the live feed. Very interesting stuff, way different than now when we can quickly add graphics to video in seconds.

It is a True Story and you know I love the True Story Movies. It is also a really good movie, you feel as if you are right there in the control room with them sweating out every second and every decision. Very well done down to the details in the control room, I was eyeing some of the vintage audio gear on the wall. Very Authentic!

I highly recommend this one. Give it a go!

A Complete Unknown

2024   Searchlight Pictures

Rated:  R

Length:  2 hr  21min

Biography ~ Drama ~ Music

Directed by: James Mangold

Starring:  Timothée Chalamet, Edward Norton, Elle Fanning, Monica Barbaro, Boyd Holbrook, Dan Fogler, Norbert Leo Butz, Eriko Hatsune, Big Bill Morganfield, Will Harrison, and Scoot McNairy.

The Ballad Of A True Original

In 1961 a 19 year old from Minnesota named Robert Zimmerman (Timothée Chalamet) hitchhikes his way to New York City with his acoustic guitar and a backpack. His musical Idol Woody Guthrie (Scoot McNairy) is slowly dying of Huntington’s disease and he wants to meet him before he dies. When he arrives in Greenwich Village he finds out which hospital Woody is staying in and heads there with his guitar and backpack. Walking down the hospital hallway he hears another of his idols Pete Seeger (Edward Norton) singing and Robert walks into the room.

He introduces himself as Bob Dylan and tells them he is a big fan of their music. He wrote a song for Woody and asks them if he can play it for them. After he is finished playing the song, both Pete and Woody express their approval of the song he wrote. Pete is so impressed he invites the young Bob Dylan back to his family home where he stays for a couple of days. Pete takes Bob under his wing and shows him off at a popular Open Mic Folk Club in Greenwich Village. Joan Baez is there and performs before he does. Bob is immediately a hit and record execs soon sign Bob to a record deal.

A Complete Unknown chronicles the time of Bob Dylan’s rise to stardom from his arrival in Greenwich Village in 1961 to the infamous moment at the Newport folk Festival in 1965 when Bob Dylan went electric. Completely immersed in the folk music scene at that time, the songs were all acoustic and the songs were mainly old folk songs or social justice songs penned for the times. Bob soon grew tired of the music and strict formalities of the folk genre that made him a star. He aspired to take his music in a different direction and at the Newport Folk Festival (an all acoustic Folk music event) he debuted music from his upcoming release Highway 61 Revisited with a full electric band.

The Movie is based on the 2016 Book Dylan Goes Electric! by Elijah Wild. It was a pivotal moment in music history and an amazing story of how a 19 year old kid from Minnesota got swept up in the folk music scene in New York City and then blew it apart from the inside out and made music history. Timothée Chalamet did an outstanding job of portraying the young Bob Dylan becoming an Icon. Edward Norton as Pete Seeger was a surprise, a different role for him but a pleasant surprise nonetheless. I loved Elle Fanning in this portraying Bob’s girlfriend Sylvie. Nice Job! You felt as though you were right there every step of the way on Bob’s journey.

Arriving in Greenwich Village with nothing, getting swept up in the music industry, quickly becoming a Legend and a Musical Icon. Having a professional and personal very tumultuous relationship with Joan Baez, and becoming a pen pal with Johnny Cash! It is quite the story and it is quite the movie. I am not a diehard Bob Dylan fan although I do like his music, but I enjoyed the movie immensely and it gave me new found respect for the man and his music. I highly Recommend watching A Complete Unknown, even if he is Completely Unknown to you. It’s a good ride and at 2 hours and 21 minutes it seemed to be a quick one. I’ll be watching this one again.

CURRENTLY AVAILABLE TO RENT ON AMAZON PRIME