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She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022)
Who green-lit this thing? (Pun intended.)
I had a tremendous amount of potential. Just failed on so many levels. Very disappointing. I guess Marvel can't make a home run on everything. Hoping no season two or at the least they sack all the writers and decision makers who brought this Abomination. 😉. First of all stop at the fourth wall breaking. Once in a while it works. Continually doing it creates a distraction. The ending could have been so much better. It felt constrained, as if they could not come up with anything so they just broke totally from the story into Disney Studios. That could have been a very funny behind-the-scenes mockumentary, but a failure in the show.
The Debriefing (2019)
It's a commercial for Audi. Why the fuss?
I don't understand why everybody who reviewed this, both of them, have their panties in a bunch. It's simply a longer commercial for a car. I don't see the racism and bigotry one reviewer claimed. Nor do I understand the vitriol of the other reviewer. It's commercial! It's kind of cute. It's ridiculous why anybody is so against this. "It's toast, but it twice the price." It's so true! It's simply mocking modern culture. Relax.
Wonbyeokhan Pateuneo (2011)
Asian Rom-Com a cut above the rest.
Many of the Romantic Comedy films are pretty basic story lines: Boy meets girl. Boy gets girl. Boy loses girl. Fateful events happens and boy gets girl back. Happily ever after. This is cut from the same mold as are most of the Hollywood Rom-Coms. This movie is well filmed and the actors well chosen.
This movie is also known as "My Secret Partner" and is billed as such on Amazon Instant Videos.
The love making scenes in this film are better than the stand fare and share the wealth as far as male and female nudity goes. It is not a pornographic movie. It is erotic at times. The story is also believable, for the most part. I did not find the story lagging and this is relate-able to anyone who has been stuck in their career. I struggled about rating this 8/10. My misgivings about the higher rating came from a purely American perspective in the way the female leads are groped in the very beginning of their sexual relationship.
My basic complaints of Asian Rom-Coms (in my experience, and I have watched a ton being married to an Asian lady) are that nudity is usually male bottoms and a flash, if any, of female breast. Thanks, but throw a bone to the men in the audience. Here, the love making scenes are not very realistic without being pornographic.
The events that transpire are as standard as any other in nature. A has-been screenwriter is teacher college courses on screen writing while he is stuck trying to make a come back. His college aged son is an aspiring chef. They meet people in their jobs that are considered inappropriate for them to date, but end up in relationships with them anyway.
*** Spoilers to follow *** The son meets his famous chef inspiration who is just rehashing old standards that made her famous. She is trying mightily to create new dishes to reinvigorate her career. She has a long time apprentice who rules the kitchen with an iron fist and resents the attention that the new guys is getting.
Our professor/screen writer has an admirer in his class that throws herself on him in the restroom of a restaurant and he wordlessly rebukes her as this is inappropriate for a student/teacher to be in a relationship. Another student, the daughter of our famous chef, is also in his class. She is stuck in a rut both creatively and personally. Her friend suggests she take up with the next man that walks out of the restaurant. Yes, it is our professor.
Events transpire that throw these people together and eventually sparks fly and clothing is tossed aside. And then they all do stuff to ruin the relationships. Hilarity ensues.
The female leads are the best part of the movie. Yoon Chae-Yi is the female coed struggling for inspiration. Her IMDb profile only lists 2 professional movies and I find that hard to believe. She was excellent in the role and totally realistic. Kim Hye-Sun is the middle-aged chef and is not only beautiful, but a wonderful actress in the role. Why her career has lagged and she is not a bigger star in Asian cinema is a mystery to me.
This was enjoyable and worth a look.
Yi dai zong shi (2013)
The Grandmaster is a masterful film
This is not your father's martial art film. It is as much an art film as it is a martial arts film. This is the fact and fiction based story of Ip Man, the Kung Fu master who trained Bruce Lee. The story begins before the Japanese invaded China and starting off WWII in Asia. It is a time when China was a society where Western ideals of Democracy were in its infancy and men of leisure and skill spent their days in social clubs practicing the styles of Kung Fu. A lone woman, the daughter of one of the masters, comes in to challenge the status quo and wins the heart of the married family man Ip Man.
This is not a happy tale. The Japanese invade China and after the war the Communists take over. He loses both his family and his true love. But in the end you walk away smiling and know that you did not waste your precious time.
Though some of the fight sequences turn into Wire Fu, it is done so well that even most fight purists will give it a pass. The story, direction, acting and photography are first rate. I was captivated during the entire film and fell in love, once more, with the enchanting actress Ziyi Yang. Both Yang and Tony Leung give the performances of their careers.
Cocked (2015)
Pilot episode shows great promise.
Amazon Studios produced this pilot.
I was expecting a comedy with some dramatic elements as the plot synopsis claims. What I got, and was highly surprised by, was more drama with light-hearted elements. This is not a gut buster comedy and it never pushed the funny button that hard on me. Having seen it now, I would not want it to be that comedy show. Sure, the prat falls were funny and the interplay between the brothers is your typical dysfunctional family fare, but it was also real in how the brothers sort of hate each other as only family can.
** Spoilers of plot and character follow below ** Jason Lee plays the ne'er-do-well brother Grady Paxson is a firearms engineering genius who just cannot keep from disappointing the family with his playboy, drug addicted lifestyle. He will screw anyone in the bedroom or the boardroom. "You're either a mouse or a snake," he says to his nephew as he feeds a mouse to a python. That is his philosophy. He is as right wing as General Patton, yet ill prepared to grow up and lead. Grady wants to save their family business -- a foundering gun company run by his aging, though tough-as-nails, father Wade (Brian Dennehy) -- but can't keep his pants on or stay away from cocaine long enough to make the real decisions that will keep the business from a rival firearms manufacturing company run by Wade's brother, Rayburn. Rayburn and Wade have been feuding for years. Because of some corporate espionage Rayburn is in a position to force a hostile takeover of Paxson Firearms.
Richard Paxson (Sam Trammell) is the prodigal son who left the family he never fit in with and doesn't want to try to anymore. He is the polar opposite of Grady. Richard is a ultra-responsible touchy-feely guy who married a touchy-feely, gun hating psychologist and lives in Denver with his kids and labradoodle as he drives his Prius to his job where he is a corporate flunky. Richard is at a low point in his career. You can see there are tensions in his marriage. His kids do not really respect him. Richard does not even seem to respect himself.
Richard comes to the aid of the family business because of a threat on his life if his father does not sell the company. Tensions and old angers rise up on his return. Richard versus Grady. Wade versus Rayburn. Brother against brother times two.
The twist at the end of the pilot episode came unexpectedly and made it much more interesting.
I would like to see a little more comedy as he series develops (assuming Amazon picks this up for a full run). The series is rated TV-Mature for explicit language, drug use, female nudity and sex. Add to that the stereotypical right wing gun nut characters the writers portray throughout and some audience members may be either amused or offended, or even disgusted. Being a gun friendly person it took me a moment to realize that they were actually poking fun at us. Good job! It was all for laughs and it was not so overboard that as to be a slap in the face to the gun community. There are even some cameo appearances by NRA spokespeople.
This show was excellent in casting, production values and story line. It is a series that I am anticipating much more from and would have easily seen this as a major network or basic cable series.
Sukûrugâru konpurekkusu: Hôsôbu-hen (2013)
Well done foreign coming of age film.
Looking at the movie poster you may think this is a typical (by American standards) teen sexploitation film. It is not. It is a coming of age tale set in an all girls school in Japan. The writing and dialogue are well done and realistic. The situations between the two main protagonists seemed real in every way. The acting by the girls was first rate. SPOILER ALERT! -- Perhaps the weakest part of the film is a scene at the end during the Arts Festival where several of the girls' openly profess desire for one another. I found this part a bit suspect knowing the Japanese predilection of saving face. However, because of that cultural taboo it made the scene string than some alternative.
SPOILER ALERT! -- If you are looking for lesbian T&A, explicit sexuality and situations, then this is not your film. It is deceiving in that way and I believe it may be the reason for the lower ratings by some viewers. If, on the other hand, you want to see a foreign film that explores taboos in a sensitive and well crafted manner, then give it a try.
Kicking & Screaming (2005)
Save yourself!
Will Farrell plays the same character he did on SNL and it it old, tired, and worn. I want the last two hours of my life and my money returned to me. Robert Duvall brings in a fine performance to this disappointment of a film. The whole coffee sidebar was distracting and pointless. What were they thinking? Troubles is, they weren't. How did this guy (Farrell) become so well paid for putting out less that average garbage onto the film going public? The actress playing the wife is believable and sympathetic. The interaction between Farrell and the son, for whom he is coaching the soccer team, has so little to do with the plot that you wonder why the child even wants the attention of the father. This film should have been titled, "Save yourself, it is too late for me."