Movie Review: The End of Oak Street

"The End of Oak Street" is one of the very few movies involving dinosaurs chasing and killing people, aside from the seven Jurassic Park films. When it comes to dinosaurs, with no exception, there will be scenes with people running for their lives and being eaten alive.

This new movie has the interesting idea of a small town in the 1980's that transports through a portal of time back to millions of years ago, where dinosaurs dominate the planet Earth. This is, of course, completely crazy, but it sets the stage for highly unusual scenes of people running for their lives and being attacked and killed by a number of different dinosaurs around a normal lower-class neighborhood.

This film stars Anne Hathaway (Denise Platt) and Ewan McGregor (Greg Platt), who are having relationship problems with hints of a possible divorce. They have two children, Brian Platt (Christian Convery) and Audrey Platt Maisy Stella. In terms of character development and any complex story, understandably, this is not that kind of movie.

The first 20 percent of this film is just setup for the run for your life rest of the story. My main problem with this movie is that there are too many scenes where the characters do things that nobody would ever do in real life. The worst one is Brian leaving the protection of his house to chase after his dog, with giant man-eating dinosaurs running all over the neighborhood. Obviously, nobody would ever do this. There was one shocking scene that seemed way out of place in this film, where two dinosaurs are mating. This scene should have been cut from this movie, including the selfie that Denise takes of her husband standing in front of the mating dinosaurs. What were they thinking with this scene?

The Rotten Tomatoes rating of 84% for this film is mostly correct, with my rating at 80% and a mild recommendation, mainly for some of the impressive special effects.

Movie Review: The Brink of War

This movie, "The Brink of War", much like the recent film, "The Invite," is entirely dialogue. The logline: "As the Cold War threatens to erupt into nuclear catastrophe, President Ronald Reagan meets Soviet leader Mikhail Gorbachev in Reykjavík for a historic summit, where two deeply distrustful adversaries must overcome political pressure, military hardliners, and their own convictions to decide whether the world moves toward peace—or annihilation" , reminds everybody who is old enough how dire the Cold War was in 1986; we were at the brink of war.

This movie was at times boring; however, the conversations between Ronald Reagan (Jeff Daniels) and Mikhail Gorbachev (Jared Harris) were fascinating as they both tried to negotiate to eliminate half of their nuclear weapons and then tried to destroy all of the nuclear weapons in the world. The major roadblock that caused the most disagreements was Ronald Reagan's ambition to create something called SDI (Strategic Defense Initiative), which would provide a shield in space to completely cover the United States in the event of any Nuclear War. Gorbachev thought that the United States could be in a position to destroy the Soviet Union without worry of any retribution if it had a shield to protect its country. After they had made the decision to eliminate all nuclear weapons, the SDI argument came at the end and ruined the entire negotiation.

One major acting standout in this story is J.K. Simmons, who plays George Shultz, Reagan's Secretary of State. Shultz provides some of the best comments during the negotiations and has some great moments, pointing out the insanity of nuclear war and two countries having so many weapons to kill each other so many times over.

The one miracle that happened at the end of the negotiations, after all the agreements failed, was a very small and subtle agreement between Reagan and Gorbachev that set the stage for future trust between Reagan and Gorbachev. What followed in the next few years changed everything between the United States and the Soviet Union. In December 1987, Reagan and Gorbachev met in Washington and signed the INF treaty that eliminated an entire class of nuclear missiles along with verification procedures.

In May-June 1988, Reagan went to Moscow, and during another meeting with Gorbachev, Reagan stated that he no longer considered the Soviet Union an evil empire. In November 1989, the Berlin Wall fell, and finally, in December 1989, the Cold War was essentially over. All of this stemmed from the meeting in Reykjavik in 1986, which was at first considered a failure, but in reality was the first step in finally eliminating the Cold War.

The Brink of War is a very well-acted and important history movie, which is a great movie for history buffs. As a history movie, I rank it a solid 85%. As a regular movie, I rank it around 80%, with the Rotten Tomatoes rating of 65% too low.

Movie Review: One Night Only

In an attempt to be new and different, the screenwriter for "One Night Only" (Travis Braun) decided to turn the idea for the horror/crime franchise "The Purge" (5 movies) into of all things - a Romantic Comedy, with this ridiculous logline: "On the one night each year when single Americans can legally have sex, a recently dumped man and a hopeless romantic woman search for love amid the chaos of New York City — discovering that the one thing they really want may be something neither of them is allowed to have." From the beginning this idea about "one night a year, where people can legally have sex", never worked, was never interesting or funny and was just a bad idea that never should have been greenlighted. This idea may have worked for the violent Purge movies, given the five films produced, but it will die on the vine after this attempt at a Romantic Comedy based on a bad premise.

One Night Only stars Monica Barbaro (Allie), who works as a singer for bad commercials, and Callum Turner (Owen), who owns a small pizza parlor in New York City. Both Allie and Owen are having major relationship problems, including during this one insane night where everybody tries to have legal sex within a 24-hour window of time. This story is all about mishaps with both Owen and Allie trying to find the right person in bars and clubs in New York and Brooklyn, with several scenes that anyone watching this ridiculous movie would realize "no sane person would ever do this".

Owen lives with his mother, Linda, played by Molly Ringwald, who is living with her boyfriend, Turner, played by LeVar Burton. This will make anyone seeing this movie think, "Why did LeVar Burton and Molly Ringwald agree to act in this film?" Is it this difficult to find a good part in a new Hollywood movie? It must be, to convince bankable stars like Monica Barbaro and Callum Turner to act in this bad idea for a Romantic Comedy.

What could have rescued this bad idea might have been a well-written smart comedy to offset this dumb premise. Unfortunately, there is not nearly enough comedy to bring this movie over a 50% rating.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of 49% is mostly correct, with my rating at 30% and a prediction that this one will be out of theaters in about two weeks.