Movies -- A Recap -- Part XXXIX -- Feel-Good Redemption Stories

The list of movies which I have seen an not written about is so long!  So many movies, I'll see how many of them I can remember....

Florence Pugh is someone that I am only beginning to know well enough to recognize her face.  I first appreciated her talent as part of a two-star cast opposite Morgan Freeman in A Good Person.  As a (relatively) young actress able to hold your own against Morgan Freeman, you've got to have some real skill. In A Good Person, she plays a woman who kills some of her fiance's family members in a car accident and suffers serious injuries herself, leading to addiction to painkillers and a reckoning with her fiance's family. It's a lovely look at people who are struggling and a portrait of modern addiction.

I watched Sr. not really knowing what to expect.  I love Robert Downey, Jr. for reasons I am a little bit hard pressed to explain.  But I do.  It's right there in his name, "Jr.," that there is a father of the same name, but I had never really thought about it until I heard about this movie.  It's a non-traditional biopic, made by the son as he knows his father is dying.  It's about their relationship (as you would expect), but also about the father's career and about film-making as an art.  It was a beautiful portrait and a sweet homage, though I feel like some of the appreciation of the art was lost on me because I know nothing about Sr.'s career. 

I didn't know until I was looking into Rams that Sam Neill, probably best known to my generation for his role in Jurassic Park, grew up in New Zealand. The movie is actually set in Australia, and is about a decades-long feud between two brothers who also happen to be neighboring small-town sheep farmers.  It's funny (not ha-ha funny) and requires a bit of cultural understanding.  I always liked Sam Neill, now even more than previously.  Fun fact: this movie is a remake of the original Icelandic version.

The Guardian is an appreciation of and homage to the United States Coast Guard rescue swimmers who save troubled boaters, and a look at the toll that work can take on a person and their relationships. The plot is one of those predictable but enjoyable ones.  Kevin Costner plays the person he so often - a grumpy old man, once the best in the business, who despite his grizzled exterior has a soft, gooey center.

My boyfriend, Matt Damon, stars in We Bought a Zoo. It's based on a book and a real-life true story of a widower with two kids who, in an act of frustration and desperation, abandons his prior life and buys a broken-down zoo desperately in need of funding and repairs, to say nothing of the crew of misfits who are there keeping it running as best they can.  It's a tearjerker and a genuine feel-good story.