Change Your Image
contactsteverogers
Ratings
Most Recently Rated
Reviews
One Way (2022)
Not a masterpiece but not a waste of your evening (if you're open-minded)
I am rapidly becoming a fan of Andrew Baird who can take a (very obviously) low budget and turn it into a supremely watchable 95 minutes of cinema. I actually like what I would consider the B-Movie genre because I know there are a lot of people out there who want to make a good flick but are limited by budget and time and yet can still squeeze through a bit of artistic spark that has moments of brilliance that you might not see in the 150 million dollar Marvel movie this summer. This movie doesn't amount to much in terms of story but provides good performances by the entire cast in a low-grade well-intended thriller. I've seen Colson Baker perform as Machine Gun Kelly live in concert and he is a genuinely good guy (and performer) so I'm already on board to see his acting career take off. And - credit to Baird as a director - I like movies that don't go for the loud, explosive finish but keep the tension right up to the end. I wish all of you the best - Andrew Baird, Colson Baker, Storm Reid (Kevin Bacon - LOL) - keep doing what you're doing and I will keep watching.
Broken Soldier (2022)
Unbelievably Bad
The story is ultimately about a 17-year old girl who is pursuing a relationship with an troubled adult man, and the filmmakers almost seem to be sympathetic with the idea so I was curious to see how they would gracefully conclude this thing. Instead, the last 20 minutes are more absurd than I could have ever imagined. Honestly, if there was an alien invasion or Godzilla showed up and killed everyone, it would have been more coherent than the actual ending.
And I agree with the other reviewers assessment of how bad this actress Meadow Williams is. Just more evidence that the filmmakers don't know what they're doing because they give her a lot of dialog and she is really, really bad.
Sherlock: The Final Problem (2017)
Sherlock has a officially "jumped the shark"
I'm not writing this for other viewers, but to add to the heaps of letters of disappointment that hopefully the show's creators will see and eventually realize that they have gone far too far off the rails with this show. The show is no longer even true to it's source material - Conan Doyle's Sherlock stories were about Sherlock solving mysteries. In Season 4, these shows have no mystery - the villains are offered up to us in the first few minutes (like and old Columbo episode) and Sherlock spends more time acting like a crazy person and jumping out of exploding windows that doing deduction. It's pathetic - the series' faithfulness to the original stories is what differentiated these shows from Elementary (which is just crap) and the over-the-top Robert Downey Jr. movies. But now, Season 4 is almost entirely focused on the relationships between the 5 or 6 characters in the show and doesn't seem to care a hoot about solving mysteries. I was elated to see that they killed off Mary in the first episode of the season but then felt like I was being tortured when when returned as a sort of ghost whose only purpose seemed to be repeat everything that Sherlock and Watson were saying.
But as for Episode 3: The Biggest Problem. For a show that showed so much energy and originality in the early episodes, I almost felt like crying when I saw how ridiculously derivative this episode is. Sherlock and co. take off to a top secret maximum security prison (Face/Off) to meet the sister Sherlock didn't know he had and for some reason dresses a bit like Sadako (The Ring), who is being held behind glass in a super-secure prison cell (Silence of the Lambs - or Magneto's cell in X-Men, if you prefer). Then Sherlock and co. are led on game of "kill-or-die" puzzles, which is basically the same device as all 19 Saw movies, not to mention about a fifth of the crappiest thrillers you find on Netflix. But the entire story ultimately has to do with some mysterious unresolved family problem from Sherlock's youth and he must return to the country estate of his childhood, which should be called Skyfall, since that's obviously the movie the writers were watching while penning this episode's climax
And to make things more frustrating, the final mystery that Sherlock solves (using erroneous dates from tombstones) is completely impossible for audiences to solve, or even follow at this point, throwing out the basic notion of this being a "mystery" show.
For some reason, I always had the impression that Cumberbatch was a bright guy, so I can only assume that since he's becoming a big star, he saw this script as an opportunity to show the powers that be in Hollywood (like Jerry Bruckheimer) that he was capable of wielding handguns and jumping out of exploding buildings.- since this kind of nonsense has nothing to do with traditional Sherlock Holmes.
About Alex (2014)
Blatant Plagiarism
This movie, About Alex, is such a copy/rip-off of The Big Chill, I honestly don't know how the Screen Writers Guild allows Jesse Zwick to pass this off as an original screenplay. Obviously, he changed the characters and dialog to update to the 21st century, but he has stolen outright so many elements from The Big Chill that there should at least be an acknowledgment, "Based on the Motion Picture..." like there are on other movies that rework original ideas for modern movies (e.g. The Evil Dead).
In The Big Chill, the character who commits suicide and inspires the reunion is Alex; in this version, there is also a suicidal character named Alex, though he is unsuccessful in his suicide. One of the characters in About Alex has a younger girlfriend not originally part of the group and she feels awkward around the others - there is a similar character in The Big Chill. Two of the characters hook up after many years, there is an obligatory dance sequence, a pot smoking scene, etc. All of this is straight out of The Big Chill.
At one point in About Alex, Aubrey Plaza says something to the effect of "This is like one of those movies in the 80s...". I've seen this same contrivance in other movies used as some sort of way to excuse the fact that the filmmakers have borrowed heavily from an earlier work, but personally I don't believe this is a way out from plagiarism. I know people like to quote, "plagiarism is the sincerest form of flattery," but is is still plagiarism.
Maybe this would have been somewhat excusable if writer/director Zwick actually had something interesting to say and was able to formulate a movie that actually spoke to people. But instead, he just goes through the predictable motions of creating characters that are so redundant that they are now virtually stereotypes (the suicidal aspiring actor, the blocked writer, etc.) and having them speak a lot of trite "socially pertinent" conversation. I get the impression Zwick just made a list of all the so-called relevant issues of today's 20/30-somethings - e.g. technology, anti-depressants, lack of good pop music - and then planned his scenes accordingly. The end result is a script that is lazy and tepid and does nothing to stand out from all the other movies dealing with these same issues.