Animated Movie Review: ****Wild Robot (2024)

 This is an excellent movie about motherly love; even if you are a robot.  Roz (Lupita Nyong'o) is a robot that somehow is misdelivered to an island with no human inhabitants.  She seeks her mission, and finally finds it with being the mother to a gosling, Brightbill (Kit connor).  The other animals are wary of Roz, and anything she deals with as they are weird.  Roz however befriends a fox, Fink (Pedro Pascal).  He gives her instruction on how to raise a gosling.  Of course the hard parts are how to teach the goosling to swim and to fly.  Brightbill makes it on the annual migration.  Roz should return home to the factory, her mission complete.  However she wants to stay and make sure her gosling makes it back safe.

During this time there is a crisis in the forest with exceptional cold.  Roz brings all the animals into her home she she keeps a nice fire.  They fight and argue, but eventually learn to get along.

The day the geese return, Brightbill amongst them, the robot factory finally discover Roz, and they want her back to harvest her memories.  She has rewritten her own programming.  These leads to a large battle between the robot recovery team and the animals.  She finally agrees to go back, so as to save all the animals.  

Mark Hamill has a role as the bear who helps the animals live together in peace.

I like the relationships in this movie.  Animals who are traditional enemies learn to get along.  And a robot learns love, as does a gosling.

Movie Review: ****^A Quiet Place: Day One (2024)

 This movie also goes back in time, as did Quiet Place II for the first ten minutes.  This movie however changes location, to New York and characters as well, and doesn't get past the first few days.  Samira (Lupita Nyong'o) is a patient in a hospice.  She has cancer.  She agrees to a trip to the city as they will stop and get pizza before coming back.  They go to see a puppet show; but the hospice calls and asks them to come back as something is happenning in New York.  That something catches up to them before they can leave, as the bus is hit with something; the aliens who attack at any sound and enjoying eating people.  Samira's cat is a real character in this movie.  She is a emotional support cat, and always seems to find her way back to Samira.  The nurse staff who comes with them to the show is Reuben (Alex Wolff).  However he doesn't make it.  After Samira finds a student, Erix (Joseph Quinn) who just wants to live.  They become a team, at first trying to stay alive, then to get pizza and finally to escape.  Actually they are three with the cat.

I really like cats, consequently I really like this movie.

Available on Paramount +

Quiet Place II

A Quiet Place

Marvel Movie Review: *****Black Panther: Wakanda Forever (2022)

 Went to the movie yesterday with Tony and we had a very good time.  Tony before the movie was wondering how T'Challa died (Chadwick Boseman).  I told him we didn't know yet and would have to see.  This was covered at the first of the movie, and I still don't really know other than a disease his sister could not cure.  

Then the movie gets going.  T'Challa's mother (Angela Bassett) is serving as queen.  Shuri (Letitia Wright) failed to redevelop the blossom necessary to create a new Black Panther.  This was destroyed by Kilmonger (Michael B. Jordon) when he took over the country.  However many people want to steal the vibranium which gives the people of Wakonda so much power.  An attempt to steal this is discovered and thwarted.  

In the mean time the U.S. has developed a vibranium detector.  This is used to discover another source, and another people benefitted by vibranium.  This leads to conflict between the two people.  Namor (Tenoch Huerta) the leader of this people is determined that the people of Wakanda help him to conquer the surface people or he will attack Wakanda.  He insists they find the scientist who developed the detector.  Okoye (Danai Gurira) and Shuri attempt to find her.  CIA agent Everett Ross (Martin Freeman) turn them on to Ririe Williams (Dominique Thorne), a student.  She made the machine on a challenge from her professor but did not even know it was being used.  She also has made an iron man type suit and becomes Ironheart.  The people of Namor overtake the group and kidnap Shuri and the scientist.  The queen strips Okoye of her title, and turns to T'Challa's girl, Nakia (Lupita Nyong'o) who served as a Wakondan spy, to rescue them.  She. does, but Namor retaliates by attacking the city of Wakonda and killing the queen.  Shuri is again grieving, but she also wants revenge and using a gift form Namor, she is able to replicate the substance that makes one the black Panther.  She takes this and becomes the Black Panther, but sees Kilmonger in her dream.  Then comes a great battle between the two people, as they have a plan as to how to weaken Namor, who gains strength from water and can fly.  

Lots of action and great fighting scenes.  Namor is spared but he relents and his people return home.  The Wakandans rescue Everett from his exwife CIA agent Valentina (Julia Louis-Dreyfus) who is behind a lot of mayhem in the Marvel Universe.  In the extra scene we meet T'Challa's son. 

Movie Review: ***Twelve Years a Slave (2013)

http://bwardlehistory.blogspot.com/2014/07/kidnapped-slave-solomon-northup.html
My history blog on this story

This movie tells the tragic story of Soloman Northup (Chiwetil Ejiofor), who was a free slave living in Saratoga, New York.  There he had a wife and children.  However he was lured south, to Washington D.C. by a couple of men who claimed to be looking for a violinist to help in their act.  However after betting to D.C., where slavery was legal, they drugged him during his dinner.  He woke the next morning in chains at a slavery holding pen, from where he was sent father south, and sold into slavery.  He was a slave for twelve years, having to change his name to Platt.
As for a movie, I cannot recommend this movie.  However as for a story, I heartily recommend it.  There are scenes, which were not needed to tell the story, which earned the movie an "R" rating.  However one scene, where a slave woman is brutally beaten, was a necessary scene, and really brings to light the brutality of the slave system.  Patsey (Lupita Nyong'o), the woman beaten, had been the rape victim of the master, and thus earned the hate of the master's wife, who knew what was happening.