Lady Bird

Review Written by Michael J. Ruhland












Michael's Movie Grade: A+

Review: Lady Bird is a profoundly moving and funny film, and one of the one of the finest American movies in recent years.

What really makes this film so incredible is its honesty and straightforwardness. Everything in this film feels so real in natural. This does not feel like you are watching a movie, but rather that you are seeing these characters' lives unfold on screen. These characters could have so easily become one dimensional stereotypes, but they are so much more. Like us they have fully rounded personalities that are sometimes admirable and sometimes much less than that. When we see a character make a bad choice, we don't just shake our head and think they are stupid as we do in so many other movies. We really feel sorry and regret for them. This is because as we watch the movie they become almost like friends and family to us and we feel legitimate concern for them. The relationship between Lady Bird and her mother is extremely real and powerful. All this is so important because this is a film that is much more propelled by the characters than the story. The story itself is really simple, and resembles stories we have seen in other films. Despite this the characters make it feel so unique and new. Besides just being profound and moving, this movie is consistently quite funny. There were many times and other audience members laughed out loud. The jokes were not only funny but very clever as in. Fitting into the spirit of the narrative, each joke perfectly comes out of the characters. This means the jokes are not only funny, but help us get more and more involved in the characters and story we see on screen. Though this movie does bring up politics and religion and uses them as the basis for jokes, there is nothing mean spirited here, and the movie never preaches to us on what we should think.

All in all this is just an incredible movie and a must see for all movie lovers.

-Michael J. Ruhland 

Thor Ragnarok

Review Written By Michael J. Ruhland



















Michael's Movie Grade: D

Review: Though this film tries to make Marvel's weakest cinematic series into something more enjoyable the film seems bland and lifeless.

The Thor movies are my least favorite Marvel movies. The main reason for this is that I find Thor and Loki maybe the two most boring major characters in Marvel's cinematic universe. There is little to make them more interesting here. Sure, Thor has more wisecracks than he did in the past, but a personality that doesn't make. There is just little reason to care about this character at all. The villainess is equally boring here. She is definitely very powerful, but her screen presence and personality just feels like many villains we have seen in many other superhero movies and there is nothing here to make her stand out among so many similar villains. The Valkyrie is one of the many characters in recent films (like ones we saw in Rogue One) that has a backstory instead of a personality. Bruce Banner is honestly the only character here I actually seem to care about. With the blandness of the characters there seems to be little reason to get into the action scenes, and they come off as boring. The movie does look really good, but all this amounts to little when all but one character are so boring.

One of the main selling points of the movie was the humor. It ended up being very hit and miss. There were some jokes that made me laugh and were the highlights of the movie (though the movie's best joke was already seen in the trailer). Most of the jokes that worked seemed to come from the Hulk. He was the only character in this film that made me laugh consistently. The bickering between him and Thor were easily the highlights of the film. On the other hand much of the humor just falls flat. Thor's wisecracks leave little to no reason to laugh, and Loki's humor is annoying rather than funny.

I know I am hugely in the minority on this movie but I found the film quite bland.

-Michael J. Ruhland

All I Can See is You

Review Written by Michael J. Ruhland



















Michael's Movie Grade: C+

Review: This movie some big flaws, but it still ends up being a good movie thanks to great direction by Marc Foster and a very moving performance by Blake Lively.

Thus film really looks great. However this not only makes the movie pretty to look at but makes the story more effective. These visuals often allow you to see the world through the eyes and mind of our main character. When she sees or feels distorted, we can see that visually on the screen and when things are less distorted for her we see things in a rather normal way. With this the main character feels more real to us, and we believe the story more because of this. Also helping make this movie more believable is Blake Lively's performance. Critics seem to be split on this performance but I love it. You feel the emotion in her face. There is not a scene of this movie where she ever feels fake or unreal. Instead even when she doesn't say a word she conveys every emotion perfectly and pulls you into the movie. Why this film works is that with the direction, cinematography and performance all working together this main character feels undeniably real and this makes for some very emotionally effective moments.

However this film does have some huge problems. One of these is as real as our main character feels, her husband doesn't feel real. Though there are some interesting ideas with him, he is never believable. His dialogue often is the film's most forced and there is little knowing what he would be like or do if his wife wasn't in this movie. On top of this some of the side characters simply seem to be there to show us how the relationship between these two is having trouble. (slight spoilers though these events don't take place that far into the movie, so you won't have the ending ruined) How sexually satisfied the sister and her husband are is supposed to contrast with the awkward sex life of our two leads. However it becomes obvious that that is the only reason those two side characters exist. Likewise the peep show scene is supposed to symbolize their troubled sex life, but that scene is instead just awkward and hard to watch, while only telling us what we already know. (spoilers over) There is also another character who only exists for a similar reason, but I won't talk much about him so I don't spoil something that happens late in the movie. Again though while this problems are big, there is more than enough good here to make it worth watching.

-Michael J. Ruhland