Movie Review: October 8

The October 7, 2023 attacks on Israel by Hamas are the worst attacks on Jewish people since the Holocaust. What happened on October 7th included: Mass Shootings, Rocket attacks, Kidnappings and executions, Arson and explosives, and even torture and beheadings. Over 1100 people were killed and 250 were kidnapped.

The new documentary "October 8" is about the day after these horrendous terrorist attacks and the unbelievable backlash, not against Hamas, but against Isreal within Ivy League colleges, including MIT, Harvard, Columbia, and Yale. The level of hostility towards Israel which suffered a terrorist attack where over 1100 people were murdered was an unexpected after-effect showing the high level of antisemitic hatred among the most intelligent, wealthy, and privileged college students in the United States. This entire documentary attempts to uncover the reasons for this hatred and hostility and at the end of these two hours, no answers to this insane backlash that is still ongoing was satisfactorily explained.

Two well-known actors, Debra Messing and Michael Rapaport are the only two members of the movie industry who actively supported Israel during the time after the Hamas attacks - another insane fact about October 7th that makes no sense. Other celebrities including Sheryl Sandberg, Bari Weiss Kirsten Gillibrand and Scott Galloway also have cameos throughout this film. All of them try to make sense of the hostility towards Israel without any satisfying answers.

I mostly agree with the 79% middle-of-the-road ratings for this film on Rotten Tomatoes, and I am surprised at the very low 5.1 IMDB ratings, given its importance to history. I give this film a moderate recommendation.

Movie Review: Working Man

The new movie "A Working Man" has many similarities to the great Liam Neeson movie "Taken" from 2008. The entire screenplay plays like Taken with one man taking on significant gangs of criminals, in this case, three different gangs, corrupt police, a young woman kidnapped into a human trafficking ring, and a dramatic ending with Levon Cade, played by Jason Statham finding the young woman named Carla, played by Noemi Gonzalez also very similar to the ending of Taken.

The attempts to make this movie different than Taken, with Levon Cade an employee of a family of a construction company to find their kidnapped daughter are not enough to erase constant reminders of Taken throughout this two-hour movie. A Working Man was written by Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer, and Chuck Dixon making it more unusual that with three writers nobody could think of enough new ideas to turn what could have been a much better new story idea, into an obvious clone of Taken.

The acting in this film is good, with David Harbour and Michael Peña and the action scenes are what anyone would expect with a Jason Statham movie. The ending has a major flaw with about 20 bikers running into a bar trying to kill Cade, and later they are nowhere to be found, with Cade fighting the lead biker at the end. As with all movies like this one, when there are multiple people shooting guns and machine guns against one other person, there is no way one person would survive with that many bullets. But this is a movie, not real life.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 53% are accurate and I do not recommend this movie, that did not try to be more original.

Movie Review: The Alto Knights

The new movie "The Alto Knights", directed by Barry Levinson, with Robert Robert De Niro, playing two roles as mob bosses Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese - plays more like a documentary not told sequentially with no noticeable story.

This low-rated film reminds me of last year's "Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1" (it now looks like Chapter 2 will never be released), written and directed by Kevin Costner which had some of the same major flaws. Scenes, storylines, and characters are injected without regard to the previous scene, providing no measurable level of continuity, fundamental to the understanding and enjoyment of the audience. Instead, De Niro, as Frank Costello, talks to the audience at different parts of the story, trying to educate a confused audience about some event in the past. After about 5 scenes like this, this movie starts to fail with everyone watching hoping the two hours will be over soon.

Considering a great accomplished director like Barry Levinson and arguably one of the greatest actors of all time, it is surprising that a movie this bad could have been written, directed, produced and released.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a correctly low 38% and I agree with this low number and do not recommend this film.