Movie Review: ***Goosebumps (2015)

This is a classic retellng of R. L. Stines's (Jack Black) Goodebumps stories with the monsters coming to life and preying on a town.  This is after Slappy, a mannequin is set loose and he then lets all the other monsters lose.  Zach (Dylan Minnette) a neighbor and Hannah (Odeya Rush) Stine's daughter, help in recapturing all the monsters.  They can only do this by typing a new story, on the original typewriter, which happens to be at a school where there is a prom dance taking place.  Lots of monsters, maybe even too many.

Movie Review: ****The Giver

The Giver 2014

I found this movie very intriguing. It is based on the book by Lois Lowry.  I enjoyed it.  The premise is that a society has decided to do away with all war and pain and suffering.  They do this by controlling emotion, the weather, no music, everything.  They have even done away with color; everything is black and white.  They do this with daily injections of pills, and a memory inhibiting force field.  Everything is the same for everybody.  Those who are not the same, are released.  (This is a polite way of saying euthanized.)  When Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is chosen to be the Receiver, everything changes.  The Giver, (Jeff Bridges) is suppose to give him memories of everything from before, so they will be able to advice the counsel. 

However there is another plot going on, of which the Receiver slowly becomes aware.  That is the destruction of the current existence which does not allow joy for there is no pain, does not allow love, for there is no hate.  The Giver wants to bring back love.  To do this, someone must cross the force field where the memories are kept out. 

Glen Close plays the leader of the counsel.  She is very evil in her looks—so plane that she looks evil.  The Receiver is helped by his two childhood friends, Fiona (Odeya Rush) and Asher (Cameron Monaghan). Taylor Swift has a small roll as Rosemary, a prior Receiver who went bad.  Her "release'" is what has been gnawing at the Giver for some time.

This movie makes you think.  Here is Satan’s plan in all its glory.  No free agency, no choice, no love, no one lost.  Everyone knows there place.  Even to the point of “releasing” people without really knowing what you are doing.