The Weekly Movie Watch Volume 49

This week I watched Lucy, Paris, Texas.

I watch movies every week and then write down my thoughts. Read my previous reviews!
My rating is simple, Watch It, It Depends, Skip it.

Lucy - How did they find enough people that thought this would be good to even make it?

Lucy (2014)
Watch Lucy
Written by: Luc Besson
Directed by: Luc Besson
Starring: Scarlett Johansson, Morgan Freeman
Rated: R

Plot: 
When a bag of drugs ruptures inside Scarlett Johannson's stomach it unlocks her brain's full capacity.

Review:
The smarter she got in the movie, the dumber I felt. It seems like a neat concept, but the potential is squandered. Anything fun or intriguing is abandoned for contrivance and nonsense. An action movie needs good fight scenes, a person or world to save, and a solid conclusion. These items were absent from Lucy.
The movie begins with images of animals and a voice over about evolution by Scarlett Johannson. Why would you not use Morgan Freeman to do the voice over when he is in the movie and a scientist. Animal images are intercut throughout the movie and it is incredibly overbearing. We even get a sequence of a mouse near a trap because the filmmakers don't think we're smart enough to realize the main character is walking into a trap. Then again, maybe these images of nature are trying to pad the run time to a full one and a half hours.
There is no scenario in the movie that makes this believable. Everything is ridiculous, a radio active spider bite would have made more sense and allowed the movie to avoid getting mired into frivolous details.
A good concept is ruined. Too many loose thread added to the fact there is no real point and the movie doesn't show me anything fun, relying too heavily on CGI. Based on this movie alone Johannson can't act. I'm left wondering how this many people banded together thinking this movie was good and needed to be created. Don't make the mistake I made, don't watch this movie.
Skip it. 

Paris Texas - Almost enough charm to justify the length.

Paris, Texas (1984)
Watch Paris, Texas 
Written by: L.M. Kit Carson (adaptation), Sam Shepard
Directed by: Wim Wenders
Starring: Harry Dean Stanton, Dean Stockwell
Rated: R

Plot: 
A deadbeat dad ostensibly having wandered the desert is reunited with his son and they team up to find the boy's mother.

Review:
It's a little slow moving, and by that I mean incredibly slow. The shell shocked father and son are endearing as they slowly trust each other and then set out on a journey. It's an intriguing plot that seems like it should be shorter, but the length and pacing feed into the story. It looks really good with  so many great images and a really good ending. It's a movie I wouldn't recommend overall, but I would heartily recommend for fans of cinema that watch movies to learn about film making.
Skip it.