Change Your Image
homerhoff
Reviews
A Week Away (2021)
Surprisingly Unsucky
This is Camp Rock for the church crowd with a dash of High School Musical sprinkled in (the two leads will remind you of Troy and Gabriella). You'll especially love the movie if you were into Christian music in the late 80's and 90's (there are even a couple of artist cameos for you).
I am a Christian, but my eyes get sore watching Christian movies because I'm rolling them so hard. They're very typically over-earnest, heavy-handed, and usually far-right in sentiment. One Week Away is none of these things, and if you like Camp Rock you'll enjoy this movie too, whether you appreciate the churchy message or not. The themes are universal: love, redemption, belonging, and the characters play through the themes without being schlocky - or at least more schlocky than any teen musical. I like that Will asks the hard questions that Christians are often afraid to ask, and there's no ready answer for him.
There are many things to criticize - the acting is at times uneven and the music isn't for everyone (although the showstopper is the Awesome God/God Only Knows mashup - brilliant performance), but the movie was short and fun and a very pleasant trip down memory lane for me. Worth watching, and worth watching with the kids.
Tenet (2020)
Fun tension
I heard a lot of noise prior to seeing this film: it's inscrutable, it's meant to be atmospheric, it's cranial. It's in fact none of these things. It's just a good action movie. And frankly, it's a good time travel movie, too, in the unconventional sense - not like Back to the Future or Avengers, but like Primer (a far more inscrutable movie). Those that liked Interstellar but found the ending too convenient will be much more satisfied with Tenet.
Character motivation is weak in the story, but it's not enough to deter from a film that commands your attention from the first scene.
Isn't It Romantic (2019)
Lots of laughs
There are layers of unconventionality in this film - Rebel Wilson is not a conventional lead, Adam DeVine is not a conventional male lead, and while it mocks rom-coms, it is in fact itself a rom-com. There are lots of ways to find fault in this film, but it packs a ton of laughs into a fast 90 minutes and I felt happy at the end of it. Great movie fit a dreary Covid night.