Movie: The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019) ***

In the Peanut Butter Falcon, Tyler and Zack are two very different guys who runaway from their lives for two very different reasons: One misdirected his anger and pissed off a very violent man, the other wants to get out of the nursing home he's been dumped in and learn how to wrestle. They manage to find each other and form a bond. A third party, Eleanor, who was searching for Zack in order to return him to the nursing home is cajoled into joining them and their bond grows stronger. It is a heartfelt friendship story that dives just deep enough into each player's history to reveal skeletons, but to not bog you down with cobwebs.
Shia LaBeouf and Dakota Johnson act alongside first time actor, Zack Gottsagen, with appearances by Bruce Dern, John Hawkes, and Thomas Haden Church. Nothing fancy here, just good movie stuff.
I would recommend it and re-watch it, so I'll give it three stars ***.
I checked the DVD out from the library and have kept it hostage during the closure of March 2020. I watched the movie back then, but I just watched it again so I can write my review.

Movie: The Photograph (2020) ****

Afro bubble gum romance at its best. A reporter stumbles upon the lost story of a photographer and in writing about her finds a love interest. They struggle with honesty and being there and their struggles parallel the life of the photographer. This is one of those romances you can watch over and over. The writing takes romance in a different direction by doing a study in honest dating. The acting was authentic. I liked all the characters. I wanted to hang out with them, sip a good rum and listen to music. The soundtrack was unobtrusive, but mood-perfect.
It was so comfortable and comforting and I would recommend this to so many people. I’ll give The Photograph four stars****

Movie: In the Aisles (2018)***

In the Aisles is a German film I watched with English subtitles.
A young man, Christian, who has a rough past gets a job at a warehouse store. He forms relationships with his shift mates, especially his supervisor in Beverages, Bruno. And he falls in love with Marion who works in Sweet Goods, who is unhappily married.
This arthouse film was a respite from the very saccarine-Hallmark-type and studio-typical stories I've been watching lately. This story is refreshingly different, It takes some dark turns, but isn't a sad story, it isn't a love story, and it isn't a story of redemption. It's just an artsy snapshot of Christian's life and the two new people who come into it through his work.
The production is authentic. The music supervisor had a good ol' time: She soundtracks the beginning of the worker's shifts with the waltz, The Blue Danube. There's a random rap instrumental inserted in a longer forklift driving scene that was fun. And I don't know how a Son House song got inserted into this film, but there it was and it somehow fit.

The idea of the ocean and beach was a running theme throughout the story that was unobtrusively woven through so that you had to try to notice.
I enjoyed this film, I could very easily watch this again, and although I find subtitles hard to recommend to other people, I would recommend this to a few adventurous movie watchers. It was on the fun side of the Nitpix scale and I give it three stars***.
I'm glad I took a chance on this DVD I checked out from the library.

Movie: Greta (2018)**

Spoilers follow, but you might as well read this because if you watched the trailer then you know what happens in the movie, anyway. 

I watched Greta before the COVID-19 shutdown and at the time, I thought this movie required a lot of suspension of believe to watch. Why in the world is the young woman in this movie so trusting and naïve? How did she end up the prey of this unimaginative stalker woman with a fabulous bohemian gem of an apartment in New York City? 

I am in this mid-COVID-19 world now, skimming through Greta so I can write this review and I can now clearly see that there are people who think differently than I do. I was just having a conversation with my best friend about how people think: Some people only think out a few steps past their action, some people think out many steps past their action and some people don't consider the consequences of their actions at all. All those people who went to the Trump rally in Tulsa. All those young folks who partied after the summer 2020 re-opening. All those people who had COVID parties so they can get it and get it over with. They would all, after some chain of events, find themselves locked in the room behind Greta’s piano if they were the protagonist in this movie.  

Back to the movie:  At nearly 20 minutes into the movie Frances, the protagonist, discovers that Greta does this regularly: Sets it up so that nice, honest and usually vulnerable people find her purse on the subway and then try to return it, possibly getting caught in Greta’s trap.  After discovering this fact, Frances does the smart thing and tries to get away from Greta. But then, for some stupid, bad-writing, terrible logic reason, Frances decides to dig into Greta’s life. It's like she can’t even let go. To add to the funky odd story, Greta doesn’t even bother to hide. It's like the opposite of other obsession movies, this obsessor isn’t even trying to hide her crazy behavior.  

This movie was a bad. It needed more better writing and filmmaking techniques to pull off a dark obsession story. There are too many good obsession movies that put this to shame. Greta gets two stars** because I watched it, but I would never recommend it, I don’t want to watch it again and I would delete the catalog record from the library if I had control over such things.  

Greta brought to mind an old movie about obsession that I’d like to revisit. Have you ever seen Mark Wahlberg’s 1996 obsessive bad-boy in Fear? I used to love that movie.  

I checked the Greta DVD out from the library. Burn it. 

Movie: Not Cinderella's Type (2018) **

I thought Not Cinderella's Type was going to be a gentle romantic cheesy movie, but it turned out be an after-school-special-like-film about emotional abuse with a storyline that went all over the place. Let me tell you how it went:

Girl's mom dies when she is little and her uncle and aunt, who already have two daughters, take her in.

Flash forward to 16: A boy runs over the cat her deceased mother gave her (That's the only thing left of her mother).

Boy tries to apologize, but she refused to hear him, so he kind of stalks her at school and beyond.

Boy asks her out, she considers.

When talking about boy to her bestie, she discovers that her male best friend thought they were boyfriend-girlfriend.

Seeing both boys at the same time.

Weird neighbor who never says anything all of a sudden calls her aunt to tattle that the girl is making out with male best friend on the soccer field.

She finally gets fed up with the mean uncle and aunt who treat her like a maid and she speeches at them about how mean they are to her.

Boy comes over and picks her up and takes her back to his house because his dad is certified to host foster kids.

After her uncle and aunt are investigated, she ends up living with boy and his family.

Male best friend failed to be there when she needed him, now he's in the friend zone.

Boy and her go to prom and start dating. Yes, she still lives in his house, but moved out to the pool house.

The end.

• Cheesy or sentimental: The production was cheap, but not cheesy. Its like they used the producer's house and maybe the director's parents' house for locations.
  
• Production value: Low
  
• Suspension of belief: High
  
• Trope: Cinderella-like story
  
• Diversity: Nope. Nada.
  
• Paranormal: None.
  
• Clownish character: None.

Rating: Not Fun; Two stars because I made it to the end **

I wasted on of my Hoopla credits to watch this.