Q-Tips Reviews

7/2020 – The Weight of Gold is an HBO Sports documentary exploring the mental health challenges that Olympic athletes often face. The film comes during a time when the COVID-19 pandemic has postponed the 2020 Tokyo Games — the first such postponement in Olympic history — and greatly exacerbated mental health issues.

In a typical year, more than 3.6 billion people around the world tune in to watch the Olympic Games. What most of these viewers don’t know is that just like one in five Americans, many of these Olympic athletes similarly face serious mental health challenges and struggle to find the necessary support and resources. In THE WEIGHT OF GOLD, Michael Phelps, the most decorated Olympic athlete of all-time, shares his account of his struggle, along with other high-profile Olympic athletes including Jeremy Bloom, Lolo Jones, Gracie Gold, Bode Miller, Shaun White, Sasha Cohen, David Boudia, Katie Uhlaender, and, posthumously, Steven Holcomb and Jeret “Speedy” Peterson as shared by his mother, Linda Peterson.

Q-tips say: Yes, see it. Mrs. Q says: Being a winning Olympic athlete is not all Gold & Glimmer. The athletes are candid, personal and, in some cases, in considerable pain as they talk about their struggles. Weight of Gold remains essential viewing.

7/2020 – For nearly 30 years a community of unlikely heroines have lived in Chernobyl’s post-nuclear disaster “dead zone.” Stylish and stubborn, these fascinating women have survived, and even thrived, on some of the most toxic land on Earth. They are the last survivors of a community who refused to leave their ancestral homes after the Chernobyl nuclear disaster in 1986. But the babushkas aren’t the only risk-takers: scientists, bureaucrats and even young men and women called “Stalkers” (who break in illegally to pursue their video game-inspired fantasies) explore the dystopian Zone and seek out its radioactive grandmas.

Q-tips say: Yes, see it. Enjoyed the old Ukraine village gals who said screw it to wherever the Soviets sent them after the nuclear plant meltdown and returned to live out their lives, mostly by themselves but with support from one another, in the contaminated zone they’d always called home.

Banish the dull images of test tubes and musty lecture halls when considering Radioactive (available on Amazon Prime starting July 24th). The biopic traces the career trajectory of Madame Marie Curie (a magnificent Rosamund Pike), the Polish immigrant born Maria Salomea Skłodowska who became  the first person — and the only woman — to win two Nobel prizes. She shared the first in 1903, for discovering radium and polonium (named after her native country), with her French husband and fellow physicist Pierre Curie (Sam Riley). And the historical drama would be a dutiful thing, indeed, if it merely ticked off a list of Marie’s accomplishments, including being the first woman to become a professor at the University of Paris.

The movie whizzes around from present to future to show the major benefits of isolating radioactive isotopes to treat cancer. Such experiments came with risks: Marie died of exposure to radiation in 1934 at age 66.

Q-tips say: Good movie only if they would have just stuck to the scientific facts & her accomplishments. However, the movie finds time to show the destructive force of radium in the bombs that fell on Hiroshima in 1945 and the lives lost due to the 1986 nuclear disaster at Chernobyl. Marie could never have known of these events, and some have faulted the filmmaker for dragging them into her story and breaking the narrative flow.

Q-tips say: Shameful to bring in the destructive issues into the movie.

Tom and Gemma (Jesse Eisenberg and Imogen Poots) are looking for the perfect home. When a strange real-estate agent takes them to Yonder, a mysterious suburban neighborhood of identical houses, Tom and Gemma can’t leave quick enough. But when they try to exit the labyrinth-like housing development, each road takes them back to where they started. Soon, they realize their search for a dream home has plunged them into a terrifying nightmare, in this taut thriller filled with white-knuckle suspense.

Q-tips say: One of the dumbest movies we have ever seen. Dumb, Dumb & Dumber. Don’t waist your money or time on this stupid movie.

7/2020 – on Netflix.

Dazzling and tender-hearted, legendary astrologer Walter Mercado vanished at the peak of his fame. This documentary poignantly explains what happened. Raised in the sugar cane fields of Puerto Rico, Walter grew up to become a gender non-conforming, cape-wearing psychic whose televised horoscopes reached 120 million Latinx viewers a day for 30 years before he mysteriously disappeared.

Q-tips say: Critics & viewers alike highly rated this movie.

Mrs. Q says: It is Mucho Mucho about nothing – is not worth watching. The other half agreed. Feel free to skip this one.

A beautiful and contemporary retelling of Colin Thiele’s classic Australian tale. ‘Storm Boy’ has grown up to be Michael Kingley, a successful retired businessman and grandfather. When Kingley starts to see images from his past that he can’t explain, he is forced to remember his long-forgotten childhood, growing up on an isolated coastline with his father. He recounts to his grand-daughter the story of how, as a boy, he rescued and raised an extraordinary orphaned pelican, Mr Percival. Their remarkable adventures and very special bond has a profound effect on all their lives. Storm Boy is a timeless story of an unusual and unconditional friendship.

Q-tips say: Yes, see it. Mrs. Q says: Uplifting and melancholic, it’s the right “Storm Boy” for our turbulent times. Was worth the remake & movie is still entertainment for wee ones.

Q tips say:  SEE IT! A fun movie of a couple getting a divorce but instead of fighting over who gets the kid(s), they fight over the dog. Even to the point they go to court and get assigned a counselor. Some silly moments but a cute movie with a a sweet and predictable ending.  Mrs. Q says: Refreshing movie instead of watching the news with all the goofiness that is going on now a days.