Synopsis:A New York stock broker refuses to cooperate in a large securities fraud case that includes mob infiltration into Wall Street and the corporate banking world.
That synopsis is directly from the theatre website and fits perfectly with the very sanitized trailer shown the previous week by the same theatre.
The list of movies I gave were NOT "sacharine crap" (except perhaps "The Christmas Candle".
"Saving Mr. Banks" is about how a father's alcoholism and a different father's child abuse brought 2 famous figures together to bring a classic story to the screen. It's a complicated story and not a "kid's movie". Her father's death affected the author her whole life; and her pain is very deep, although it is told in a light hearted way.
"Philomena" is about a heartbroken woman who searches her whole life for a child who was taken from her as a young mother and finds him after his death with the help of a journalist whose career has been ruined. Two broken people who combine their resources to solve a mystery and who emerge better people for it. It is a true story with nothing vulgar in it despite a horrific child birth scene.
"The Book Thief" is about an orphan child in WWII Germany and features fantastic acting and filmography. Dispite the horrific setting, it is a story of human kindness. No one who has seen that movie, or read the book, would call it "saccharine". It is narrated by Death.
"The Christmas Candle" is a fable about the meaning of Christmas. The costumes are terrific. The story is silly. They should have allowed Susan Boyle to sing more than one song (in 4 different arrangements), although she handled her part adequately, considering her personal disabilities.
I'd give the first 3 movies 3-4 stars, and the Christmas Candle 1 and a half. Read that "Wolf" synopsis again with fresh eyes and see how misleading it is.
You need widen your horizons.
Trailers HAVE to be sanitized, that’s an MPAA requirement to get the “green band” (the name for that white text on a green background you see before the trailer) then the trailer must be G rated. They can also make “red band” trailers (guess what color is behind the text for these) that can be R rated but pretty much the only place to see those is youtube and most movie companies don’t even bother to make them. But you’re here attached to the internet, a VAST array of resources are available to you, with a couple of mouse clicks you could read 132 reviews of the movie, not to mention finding the book the movie is based on. Heck with a bit of digging you might even be able to find the script, interesting enough when I google “wolf of wall street script” the first link that comes up has this title: “Wolf of Wall Street movie review: An entertaining and vulgar 3 hours”, right there you would have had a clue.
Christmas Candle is the one I labeled as saccharine crap. The problem with Saving Mr Banks is it severely glosses over just how deeply Pamela Travers did not like Disney and did not want to sell the movie rights only doing so because she was severely impoverished at the time, but she hated the movie they made of Marry Poppins and fro mall accounts never spoke civilly to or about Walt again.
Don’t like tear jerkers so Philomena is out. And The Book Thief is generally disliked for sanitizing the situation.
There’s nothing deceptive in that synopsis at all. That IS the elevator pitch of the story. Had you just bothered to look up the MPAA rating (which started coming with a brief reasoning a couple decades ago) you’d have found out everything that made you walk out of the movie: “Rated R for sequences of strong sexual content, graphic nudity, drug use and language throughout, and for some violence”. But you didn’t bother. UNinformed.
My horizons are very broad. I watch many types of movies, read many types of books. Except for boring, I avoid that.