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I spent eight bucks to see the movie "Downhill" last night. Don't do that!

"Downhill" is an American remake of a 2014 multi-lingual film called "Force Majeure" about a Swedish family vacationing in the French Alps when an avalanche comes a bit too close and disrupts an already fragile marriage dynamic.

"Force Majeure" is a strong film told in a quiet way with superb acting and tight storytelling. It's a small but engaging film with English subtitles over a few scenes when the dialogue naturally shifts to other languages. Apparently American film producers thought it could be redone without the need for those pesky subtitles, or tight storytelling. Or decent casting, acting, photography, sound, or any of the other basics of professional filmmaking. The resulting mess is "Downhill" starring Julia Louis-Dreyfus and Will Ferrell. The characters have been remade into boring cliché's and the story has been puffed up with digressions that stray far from the core narrative and add nothing but distraction. It's awful.

I loved "Force Majeure" and had high hopes for "Downhill." I was badly disappointed, but I can give it a one star in this review because I recognize value in the new version if it's shared in film schools alongside the original, with lessons contrasting the good with the bad (and the really bad).

If you have a chance please go see "Apollo 11" in a theater, preferably on a really big screen. It's a captivating production that blends restored multi-sourced archival footage and audio into a gripping documentary that brings the viewer back to the first moon landing in 1969. The film draws heavily on never before seen 70mm film that's been in a NASA vault for 50 years, and mixes that with still images, previously released NASA film and video footage shot for public consumption, mission specific cameras used to bring technical feeds back to controllers, network news material, and privately held films. The producers blend all that content with extraordinary care so the on screen presentation is well layered fully engrossing. Astronauts Neil Armstrong, Buzz Aldrin, and Michael Collins are necessarily at the center of the film, but cameras spend lots of time in the various control rooms and out on the street to provide technical and social context, and to give the project a strong human grounding. Music and sounds effects add to the story, and it's told compellingly without the need for conventional narration.

America wasn't a perfect nation in 1969. "Apollo 11" touches ever-so-briefly on a few social conflicts of the time, and images from the control room and official viewing stands make it apparent how glaringly white and male the space industry was. But the film transcends those historical wrongs and shines most brightly when it tells the heroic tale of government and private industry joining forces to achieve an almost impossible goal. In doing so, the first lunar landing momentarily drew America and the world closer together, and forced us to recognize our fragile humanity and boundless opportunity.

The story of the Apollo 11 mission has been presented a zillion times, most recently in 2018's sleep inducing "First Man," but I doubt any film has brought the viewer closer to the moment than "Apollo 11." The world needed a successful moon landing in 1969, and America needs a film like "Apollo 11" today.

Here's a quick money saving tip: Don't buy a ticket to see "Amazing Grace" in a theater. See it, sure, but don't pay for it.

Aretha Franklin was an amazing performer and her music is always worth exploring, but "Amazing Grace" is a fifth rate theatrical release of her January 1972 gospel concert, and stands as little more than an offensively opportunistic attempt to capitalize on the current market for historical documentaries. "Amazing Grace" diminishes the genre, and it even diminishes Aretha Franklin. Save your money and watch this film for free when it gets to the streaming services, where its gross flaws will be softened on a smaller screen.

"Amazing Grace" was shot as Aretha Franklin was recording a live gospel album in an intimate Los Angeles church almost 50 years ago. Back then an inept movie director rounded up an equally inept group of filmers to shoot the two night concert, but the production lacked storytelling and the 16mm camera work was a hodge-podge of randomness. Oh, and the audio quality was terrible too. There was apparently a multi-month effort by Warner Brothers to pull some sort of usable movie out of the raw film so it could be released along with the album, but try as they might there just wasn't a movie to be made and the project was abandoned in late 1972.

Spin the clock forward several decades when an expansive list of credited producers dragged the original pile of film out of the vault and slapped it together, then pitched the resulting mess to distribution company NEON, all in an apparent effort to suck ten-dollar bills from the pockets of unsuspecting theater goers. The producers barely managed to match color from each of the cameras, but didn't even bother to remove obvious film scratches or lint on the film gates, which is really the most basic level of restoration imaginable. The whole thing is cheapening. And that's especially sad given the quality that can be wrung out of historical film, as evidenced by powerful contemporary releases such as "They Shall Not Grow Old" and "Apollo Eleven." Aretha Franklin deserved better.

The modern day profiteers of "Amazing Grace" did manage to produce an enticing theatrical trailer, but couldn't come up with a feature film to match. They got my money, don't let them get yours.