The Patriot Post® · Saving You Time & Money

Although I have been a lifelong movie fan, the truth is the love affair has clearly cooled off in recent years. In 2015, for instance, I only saw a handful of movies in a theater, the best of which was “The Woman in Gold,” a work of non-fiction which starred Helen Mirren. It is the story of a Jewish woman whose entire family was not only exterminated by Hitler, but had had their priceless art collection confiscated by the Nazis and their partners in crime, the Swiss. Ryan Reynolds portrays the lawyer who fought her legal battles.

But even though I didn’t go out to see movies, came November and they began arriving at my front door. Because I’m a voting member of the WGA, the studios send me DVDs in the hope I’ll help their screenwriters win a Guild award.

If I tell you that of the 21 movies they sent me, four of them I refused to watch and one of them, “Jurassic World,” I walked out on after 10 minutes, you might think I liked the other 16, but you’d be wrong.

The four I let my wife watch without me were “Beasts of Other Nations,” “Straight out of Compton,” “Carol” and “By the Sea.” The first two depicted blacks behaving badly, the third was yet another sympathetic portrayal of lesbians, and the fourth was a vanity production produced, directed, written by and starring Angelina Jolie. Brad Pitt was along for the ride.

I admit it’s odd to walk out on a movie screening in one’s own den, but after I saw a dinosaur munching on some guy in “Jurassic World,” I figured I had seen the highlight and didn’t really need to see other dinosaurs munching on other guys.

Some of the others were so forgettable that if I hadn’t jotted down their titles, I’d have no idea that I actually sat through “Diary of a Teenage Girl,” “Black Mass,” “Grandma,” “Furious 7,” “Trainwreck” and “Infinitely Polar Bear.”

“Revenant” is another of those man-surviving-in-the-wilderness movies, so if you liked “A Man Called Horse” and “Jeremiah Johnson,” this might be right up your alley. But be warned, it is at least an hour too long.

Speaking of which, some people suspect the reason that movies run so long is because the studios think they have to make up for the fact that when features usually ran between 90 and 105 minutes, an audience was also offered a b-movie, cartoons, a newsreel and sometimes a travelogue or a Pete Smith Specialty. At one time that was the case. However, the reason today is because the egos of the stars and the directors demand it. If Leonardo diCaprio spends six months or a year working on a movie, he doesn’t want people skipping out after an hour and a half.

Besides, they think the additional time underscores the importance of the movie and makes it more likely people will shower it with Oscars and Golden Globes. And what’s more, they’re right.

“The Martian,” which was also longer than it had any business being, will appeal to those who enjoy space movies. So if you liked “Apollo 13” and “Gravity,” you will probably like watching Matt Damon figure out ways to survive alone on Mars.

As a rule, I hate movies that deal with drugs or the drug trade, but I thought “Sicario” was one of the better movies that landed in my mailbox. I even thought Benecio Del Toro, who usually seems to be trying to combine Anthony Quinn and Marlon Brando into one insufferable ham, was believable for once.

It was a very big year for movie bios. Among those that were the worst were “Truth,” which told lies about Dan Rather; “Trumbo,” which told lies about blacklisted screenwriter Dalton Trumbo; and “Steve Jobs,” which, even after two and a half hours didn’t tell me what he did exactly besides show up on stage to kick off new products invented or improved by others, and treat everyone who wasn’t lucky enough to be Steve Jobs like dirt.

“Bridge of Spies” is Steven Spielberg’s take on the swap of Russian spy Rudolph Abel for U-2 pilot Francis Gary Powers. Spielberg tries to milk it for suspense, but if you were alive at the time, you already know how the story turns out. In which case, the best reason to see it is for Mark Rylance’s understated performance as Abel.

“The Big Short” was probably the most ambitious of 2015’s movies because it attempted to portray the real estate crash of 2008 and do it humorously. To their credit, they nearly bring it off. But once things go really haywire in the financial stratosphere, it became too confusing, at least for me, to follow.

Because I had never heard of Joy Mangano, I had no idea until nearly the very end of “Joy” that the movie was about a real person. As a result, I probably enjoyed it more than my wife because I had no idea how things would turn out for her. A couple of interesting sidebars to the movie is that Joan Rivers’ daughter Melissa portrays her mother, and that director David O. Russell managed to reteam Jennifer Lawrence, Bradley Cooper and Robert DeNiro, all of whom appeared in his 2012 delight, “Silver Linings Playbook.”

Finally, we come to what I considered the best of them, “Legend.” You should be warned it is extremely violent, but if you’re going to make a movie about the Kray twins, Reggie and Ronnie, who were the scourge of England in the 60s, it’s either going to be violent or it’s a fairy tale.

Those of you who can deal with screen violence will see the best acting in several years. Tom Hardy should walk off with the Oscar. In fact, since he portrays both Reggie and Ronnie, he should walk off with two.

I realize that not everybody is interested in movies. I even hear from people who brag they haven’t seen a movie in 25 years. Frankly, I don’t know why anyone would want to deprive himself of “Groundhog Day,” “About a Boy,” “My Cousin Vinny,” “The King’s Speech” “The Artist,” “The Blind Side” or “Sense & Sensibility,” but that’s their business. Still, I don’t want to shortchange anyone, so I will add a few comments on the political scene.

It seems that on her way to the Christmas vacation in Hawaii we all paid for, Michelle Obama met with the families of those massacred in San Bernardino, and told them she would perform rap at a fund-raising concert.

I guess it’s never too soon to start planning for a post-White House career. I agree that the First Lady of Rap sounds goofy, but not half as goofy as calling Barack Obama the President of the United States.

A study found that older people don’t really decline mentally, but find it increasingly difficult to recall facts and words because there is so much information crammed into their brains that it becomes a lot harder to access.

It merely confirms what I have always felt, which is to regard our brains as attics. Early on in life, you don’t know very much so it’s easy to keep everything neatly stored in your attic. But if you live in a house long enough, you forego neatness for convenience, and you just start tossing stuff up there willy-nilly, promising yourself that one day you’ll climb up there and straighten it all out. Oh, sure, you and Fibber McGee.

It’s true that some older people are better than others because they’re just naturally tidy, and some lucky ones simply have larger attics than others.

As for dumb older people, it’s not fair to blame it on age. So far as I can tell, they were always Democrats. Their stupidity only became more apparent as they aged because their tiny attics were increasingly filled with spider webs, roaches and rodent droppings.

It occurred to me that wanting to elect Donald Trump simply because he talks tougher than Barack Obama makes no more sense than deciding to marry a brunette because your terrible ex-wife was a blonde.