Robin Williams Movie Review: *** Jack (1996)

 The premise of this movie is a child has a strange ailment which causes his cells to magture 4x faster than normal.  Jack Powell (Robin Williams) is ten with the body of a 40 year old, with shaving and everythig.  His mother (Diane Lane) is very protective, but finally convinced to allow him to go to school.  Father (Brian Kerwin) is more open to the idea.  You can imagine someone with a 40 yo body attending elementary school.  The other kids, initially don't treat him very well, but he is tall when when they play basketball he finds a niche, and begins to fit in.  He actually makes a few friends, Louise, Edward, John-John, George and Johnny (Adam Zolotin, Todd Bosley, Seth Smith, Mario Yedidia and Jer Adrienne Elliott.). They invite Jack to their tree house.  Before Jack went to school, he had a private tutor (Bill Cosby),  The tutor comes to the tree house has well, and the tree falls.  I didn't understand the motivation for having th tutor in the tree house.  It didn't make sense to me.  Jack has some difficulty navigating his world looking like an adult.  He makes a pass at his teacher (Jennifer Lopez) and is rejected.  His life spirals down and he quits school until his friends convince him to come back.

Enjoyable but I didn't understand the tutor character.  Seems the motivation was off.

Movie Review: ***^Secretariat (2010)

Secretariat  This is a horse racing movie about a classic horse, and was the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.  This movie focuses on horse ownership.  Penny Chenery (Diane Lane) won the horse based on a coin flip.  Lucien Lauren (John Malkovich) trained the horse.  Eddie Sweat (Nelsan Ellis) maintained the stables.  Most often  Jack Tweedy (Dylan Walsh) was the jockey.  The focus of this movie is very nice, and they really play on the rivalry with Sham, a horse from a rival stable.  I get excited even when I know the outcome.

Movie Review: ****Inside Out (2015)

This is a Disney Pixar movie with an interesting premise.  Many of the Pixar movies are that way; from the view of the world form the perspective of a car, or an airplane, or a toy, or a fish, or a bug, or a forgotten robot, or a monster.  This movie is from the perspective of emotions.  Five emotions Joy (Amy Poehler), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), Anger (Lewis Black), Sadness (Phyllis Smith) and Fear (Bill Hader) have a keyboard and help a young girl (Kaitlyn Dias) navigate life.  Joy is determined that all memories will be happy ones, and wants to keep sadness away from the work.  This goes well as long as there is no pressure or stress in our girl's life.  However when they move from Minnesota to San Francisco, things go haywire, and our girl starts to break down.  Things get worse when Joy and Sadness accidentally loss themselves in the girl's subconscious.  Not even her parents (Diane Lane and Kyle MacLachlan) can get through to her any more.  So how do Joy and Sadness get back to the control center?  And more importanatly how does Joy lean how to intermingle with Sadness?  I enjoyed this video.  I watched with my granddaughter and Tony.  They both had a good time.