Movie Review: Tow

The recent movie "If I Had Legs I would Kick You", gave an Oscar nomination to Rose Byrne for best actress. This story was about a woman who was constantly down on her luck, with one bad break after another, trying to survive. We can all relate to stories like this one, because we all know that life can be much more than just unfair.

I was surprised at the similarity of the new Rose Byrne movie "Tow", which is a movie about a woman Amanda played by Rose Byrne, who has lost everything due to a car accident followed by addiction to opioids, alcoholism, and is now barely surviving and living in her car. This screenplay would be impossible to pitch to any producer were it not for this insane story being 100% true.

Tow is not only a story about perseverance and survival, but also the cruelty of other people, who not only do not care about another person who is at their lowest, but go out of their way to make their lives even worse.

On a job interview to work at a Veteranarian clinic, Amanda parks her car legally in a local parking lot. After the interview, when she is on a high after getting the job, she notices that her car (a 1991 Toyota Corolla) has been stolen. Even though the car was stolen and has now been found, Rose is required to pay a towing station $279 dollars. We find out later that this is a scam to take advantage of desperate, poor people. After Rose does not have the money to get her car back, she seeks justice through the court system, which is a disaster of red tape, paperwork, and incompetent people. Even with a court order ordering the towing company to return Amanda's car, the towing company sells her car, and she has to continue to fight to get her car back, and every day the towing company adds more fines, eventually totaling to over $22,000. This is all impossible to believe that a situation like this could exist in the United States.

Due to some fluke luck, Amanda finds a lawyer, Kevin, played by Dominic Sessa, who actually wants to help her, but his help uncovers the lawyer/owner of the towing company, Martin LaRosa, played by Corbin Bernson, who goes out of his way to make Amanda's life even more unbearable than it already is. It is clear throughout this story that Amanda not only loves the car that she has owned for many years, but for someone like Amanda, her car is also her home; and lowlifes like LaRosa only care about piling on their unrelenting cruelty.

Despite this low-budget movie, there are a large number of well-known actors, including Octavia Spencer, Demi Lovato, Corbin Bernsen, and Oscar-winning Ariana DeBose. The acting is great throughout this story. There are also outstanding sub-stories including the manager of a homeless shelter played by Octavia, a homeless pregnant woman played by Lovato, and a single mother and drug addict played by Debose.

This film is about real life, injustice, and the cruelty of some very bad people towards the unfortunate homeless who are down on their luck. Much of this story is hard to watch for anyone who has any level of human empathy.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this very good movie are a too low 78% with my rating at 85% and a strong recommendation.

Movie Review: The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist

One of the most important lines in the new documentary about AI, "The AI Doc: Or How I Became an Apocaloptimist," is: “We are either building the greatest tool in human history… or the last one we’ll ever need.”

The creator and director of this well-produced documentary is Daniel Roher, who interviews both the AI Optimists and AI Pessimists and determines at the end of these two hours that there are no checks and balances to control the negative aspects or manage which country or organization should be allowed or prevented from using AI. There is also no way of separating AI into its positive and negative components. This technology is potentially as important and powerful as nuclear weapons are, but there are no plans to create a worldwide organization like the UN or NATO to monitor the direction of AI and prevent what could result in some unknown potential disaster for humanity.

The conclusion is AI is here to stay, and the wave of improvements and new discoveries is exploding like no technology ever has. For me, it seemed like the main message of this documentary was "let's learn and expand AI, one day at a time, see what happens, and hope it is all for the best" - a message that did not provide any level of confidence about AI for the future.

This documentary is about the director Daniel Roher interviewing many of the top people in the AI field, Sam Altman, of Open AI, Dario Amodei, CEO & Co-Founder, Anthropic, Reid Hoffman Co-Founder, LinkedIn & Inflection AI, Shane Legg Self - Co-Founder and Chief AGI Scientist, Google DeepMind. Some of these interviews were very positive about AI, and an equal number were negative. At the end of this movie, they show several babies, suggesting that they will inherit a new AI world, with no definitive opinion on whether this will greatly improve the human race or end it.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this documentary are a very high 89%, and I agree with this rating and highly recommend this important film.

Movie Review: Project Hail Mary

The new movie "Project Hail Mary" is one of the most unusual science fiction movies involving Space Travel, about a microscopic virus that is degrading all stars in our known universe, except for one, which is 11 light-years away. The science that follows implies that reaching this healthy star, which is 11 light-years away, is possible, but based on current technology, traveling at light speed is nowhere near possible. Due to this traveling at light speed issue, the plausibility of this story is reduced. Perhaps the screenwriter or director should have changed the timeline so that this story takes place fifty or one hundred years in the future - when maybe mankind can travel at the speed of light.

The majority of this story involves the science of Microbiology, which is the profession of the main character Ryland Grace, played very well by Ryan Gosling, and his unlikely addition to a mission with two other astronauts to reach this one star so far away. After some tragic events that happen when one of the "million things that can go wrong" with space travel, and putting the astronauts in long-term comas for the many years-long trip, Ryland becomes friends with an alien fellow astronaut, who is on the exact same mission for his species. Ryland calls his friend Rocky, and their interactions and humor are some of the best parts of this movie. The middle part of this movie does seem to have too much story filler, making this film too long at 2 hours, 36 minutes. Some of this filler is boring and slow at times, and this would be a better movie with some simple and obvious cuts.

German actor Sandra Hüller as commander Eva Stratt is very good in her role as the head of the NASA "Hail Mary" mission to save the world. She is always in a subdued and dire mood throughout this movie, realizing that the odds of success are so low. The contrast between her extremely serious character and her scenes with Gosling's with his easy going humorous personality are very well done. She also has a very surprising Karaoke scene, in the middle of this story, showing off her singing skills.

The ending was more about fooling the audience with a conclusion that was not expected, rather than ending this story in a more logical way.

This is the second science fiction movie produced from a novel written by Andy Weir, the first The Martian was released in 2015 and was also a very good film. This movie is based on Weir's second book Project Hail Mary.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Project Hail Mary are extremely high at 95%, with my rating at 85% and a solid recommendation.