Collateral Beauty

I don’t really know what to think about this movie.  Will Smith plays a father who is having a hard time dealing with the death of his child.  A VERY hard time!  He has shut down and pretty much stopped living his life.  His company is about to go under and he seems almost unaware.  After going through questioning everything about life, he decides to write letters to Love, Time and Death.  I don’t think he was expecting any answers, but he actually does receive responses and is forced to deal with everything he has been avoiding all along!  I was looking forward to this movie, but it just didn’t “click” for me.  It wasn’t really what I was expecting and felt like it was maybe trying too hard to be artistic or creative in how it handled the issues, but wound up feeling awkward in most scenes.  It definitely was creative and maybe someone who has lost a child would relate more to what he was going through, but I just didn’t feel it with this one.

Passengers

I wanted to see this movie when it was at the theater, but missed it, so I’ve been waiting for the DVD ever since.  I had very high hopes – and was not disappointed!  It has two of my favorite actors – Jennifer Lawrence and Chris Pratt.  The story is about a group of over 5,000 people from Earth that are traveling to a distant planet colony.  Their trip will take 120 years, so they are all in a state of hibernation until the ship reaches the planet.  Well, that sounds all good, until one of the hibernation pods malfunctions and Jim (Chris Pratt) wakes up almost 90 years before he is supposed to!  He finds himself the only one awake on the entire ship and needs to figure out what to do and if he should try to wake anyone else.  By doing that, their lives would be forever changed, as his was now.  His decision to wake up Jennifer’s character, Aurora, sets off a chain reaction of learning how to live knowing you will never see land again.  There were quite a few moments that reminded me of movies like Cast Away and The Martian as far as being alone and needing to find a way to survive.  I just really enjoyed the story and the acting with this one – I’m sure I’ll be watching it again!