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Above Suspicion (2009)
Police woman solves crimes while dressed as sexy secretary
I am watching this in an effort to avoid going through better series too quickly. It's not awful, but it's close. Instead of being clever they've ramped up the profanity and the gore (that's always a bad sign). I have no idea what they were intended with Reilly's character. She staggers around in high heel pumps, formfitting dresses and snug shirts. I guess police work doesn't involved moving too quickly, doing anything strenuous, or walking on any surface save for smooth pavement. And she speaks in this weird 15 year old girl voice a lot of the time. The actress has a normal voice why doesn't she use it? She really does look and act like someone's secretary fetish. Ciarin Hinds, he yells so much I hope he got a free supply of throat lozenges, he'll need them. And, of course, the men are all leering rubes (enough already). As for the criminals, they're certainly no masterminds.
Everything Everywhere All at Once (2022)
The Oscars proves, yet again, that they live in alternate universe
There have been many occasions in the past where I've looked at movies the Oscars think are best picture (Birdman, Moonlight) and wondered what they were seeing that I wasn't. But not even close to the bewilderment I felt over this.
Apparently, there is some intergalactic conflict, and some hapless owner of a laundromat and her family are drawn into it. That sets the stage for an unrelenting, almost nauseating, set of colourful, hyperkinetic scenes that also manage to be rather boring.
I guess that buried deep in there is a message about accepting life and finding pleasure in the small things, and another message about accepting gay persons, which is fine, but it's been done better in so many movies. I guess the people who made this movie thought wrapping it inside some sci-fi adventure/acid trip would make more of an impact? I don't know.
In any case, this movie did not even come close to deserving the accolades it received. And it pains me to say this, but Jamie Lee Curtis getting an Oscar for this is absurd. Her part is tiny and took less talent than her role in the original Hallowe'en.
This movie proves my theory that you should wait several months for a movie to come out, read the most recent reviews, and you'll find the truth about a movie, not the early reviews whos objectivity is questionable.
This movie was a '2' but I am giving it a '3' for some of the visuals and a couple of interesting martial arts sequences.
Piece of Cake (1988)
A disservice to RAF pilots
The only positive aspect of this show was seeing the vintage aircraft flying around. However, with the advent of YouTube there is plenty of opportunity to see that, filmed in HD no less.
As for the content of the show, the less said the better. Badly scripted and generally badly acted. The characters are thoroughly unlikable stereotypes...as though they were written by someone who'd never been to Britain and only knew it from watching old movies...or Monty Python.
The manufactured tensions on the airbase are just embarrassing. More like a bunch of high school 'frenemies' than a bunch of fighting men. At no point did I develop any empathy for the characters.
The show failed completely to convey how dire and tense the situation was during the Battle of Britain. Speaking of which, the much older and oddly lower rated Battle of Britain from 1969 did that more effectively.
Don't bother.
Marcella (2016)
Starts off mediocre, then falls of a cliff of absurdity.
Having my worked my way through Shetland, I was looking for another British detective series and landed on Marcella.
I wasn't terribly enamoured with it. The lead character is not overly likable, mostly because they delve into her bizarre psyche through these weird out of focus flashbacks. If they keep people like this on the force, I'd be worried.
The story itself is kind of all over the place, as are the scenes...they cut back and forth between characters and locales far too frequently. And the story itself is quite convoluted and, frankly, a bit absurd. Even then, I was hanging in until season 2. Spoilers ahead. A young buy is kidnapped, but he's a clever and resourceful lad who manages to escape. He stumbles out onto a road and two cars pass a distressed, bloody child trying to flag them down. Really? Then the next car does stop but (wait for it) ends up pulling in front of a train, getting obliterated sending the kid who could crack the whole case open into a coma. It is one of the most absurd things I've seen in a serious TV show. At that point, I quit.
The Last of Us (2023)
A tedious retelling of the familiar post-apocalyptic surivival genre
I know this is based on a video game which I haven't played but I know it's very well regarded. I hoped that would lead to an interesting show but sadly it was not to be. The initial infection scene is reasonably effective but not as much as recent films such as A Quiet Place. And the assortment of infected is reminiscent of some unremarkable series such as Resident Evil. And the trek, such as it is, isn't nearly as ominous as The Road, as one example. In short, it's a mishmash of things done better in other movies. Then there's a useless episode about a survivalist same-sex couple, and the customary decision points where people do things that most viewers would not (getting lost in the city because you don't plan your route, even though you have a map? Having access to an arsenal of weapons and leaving with one rifle?). And instead of a teen character you can empathize with we get a chippy, pain in the behind (as usual).
Last, the whole concept of batteries being the scarce commodity that keeps vehicles motionless. Does no one know that you can start a manual car by getting it rolling, putting it in gear, then popping the clutch?
I appreciate it's hard to do something different with this genre, however, that's what writers are supposed to do. In this case, they failed.
Christmas Bloody Christmas (2022)
Extraordinarily bad
Laying around the house with an injured knee, my demands for entertainment haven't been very high lately. Yet somehow even by that modest standard, this is only deserving of a '1'.
Acting is abysmal, and the dialogue is written to incorporate as much profanity and vulgarity as possible. Sorry, but am insufferable, foul-mouthed wench isn't likely to garner much sympathy regardless of who is chasing her.
The rest of the cast are relative non-entities, not interesting, not funny, not sympathetic.
The greatest sin perhaps is that this movie doesn't produce even a single scare...not even a 'jump cat scare' to wake you up.
A c-grade horror movie should be the low hanging fruit of movie making, yet somehow they managed to fail miserably at that.
Not worth even a minute of your time.
The Fall (2013)
Season 1 was very good, Season 2 falls of badly
Season 1 had an interesting story and a strong cast. Jamie Dornan does a good job of being creepy in a very unsettling way and the rest of the cast is solid. The only annoyance is Gillian Anderson seemingly whispering all the time. It's not how she speaks at all. Why in the show?
Season 2 though, what a disappointment. In between the 'how can he/she/they be so stupid' and the 'coincidences do happen but that's absurd' moments I pretty much lost faith in the series. In one episode I said 'That's not Rose it will be a suicide by hanging' and later 'Watch, he's going to fall through the ceiling' and not 3 minutes later, I was proven right. Now I just want to see get arrested or, preferably, rubbed out.
They should have gone the Broadchurch route and had a different story line in Season 2 with the Season 1 story percolating in the background.
Nomadland (2020)
A tedious movie offering no real insights
Again I am exasperated by the disparity between praise lavished on some movies and the experience of viewers. This movie is very tedious. It shows the day-to-day life of McDormand the nomad. But it presents her with very few opportunities to stretch any kind of acting muscle; for the most part she's just a person going through the motions. A couple times she's sad and occasionally angry but those scenes are brief and fleeting.
We learn very little about any of the other characters, most notably Strathairn's character. He is a nomad but has a family and home to return to. All we get is that he doesn't think he was a great father. And?
The other characters, real nomads, offer the occasional pithy words of wisdom which have about as much impact as a greeting card slogan because we know so little about them.
The film offers very little insight into the circumstances that drive people to become nomads or the challenges, logistical and otherwise, of that lifestyle (yes, we get it, you have to pee outdoors and you sit around campfires). I'll add that it depicts these people as universally benign. I suspect that not all of them are and paying some attention to that would have been interesting.
The Last American Virgin (1982)
A teen movie with a cold dose of reality.
Often overlooked overshadowed by well known classics of the era. It didn't help that the ads (which I can still remember oddly enough) made it look slapstick. Instead halfway through it veers in a far more serious direction. One of the main protagonists helps a girl he's in love with through a crisis (pregnancy). Whereas other teen movies of the era offered generally feel good but not terribly realistic endings, this one offers a punch to the gut. Maybe that's not what people were looking for. I won't say much more than that but to most guys the ending is eminently relatable. Considering the prevailing atmosphere in Hollywood I'm amazed the people who made the movie went with such a gritty ending. For that reason alone, I give it a 7.
The Cook, the Thief, His Wife & Her Lover (1989)
Extraordinarily tasteless
Normally I go to some lengths to explain why I don't like a movie. In this case, I'm simply not going to bother other than to say this movie is an utterly tasteless. The grotesque plot and indifferent performances render this movie almost unwatchable.
The only people who would rate this movie highly are pretentious snobs.
Call Me by Your Name (2017)
The hypocrisy of Hollywood at its worst.
In this era where we reminded almost daily of the evils of inappropriate relationships between people in a position of authority (whether it be teachers or anyone else) and others, Hollywood makes a movie celebrating the relationship between a 24 year old student and the professor's 17 year old son. And the masses eat it up. Think about it...17 years old is grade 11 and 24 would be a graduate student. If the 24 year was male and the 17 year old was female and this happened today the 24 year old's career would be OVER. In some places he'd be prosecuted for statutory rape. But because the main characters are gay Hollywood loves it and so do the chattering classes. Unreal.
Gisaengchung (2019)
Further proof that many people let media types tell them what's good.
Once again, I find myself questioning 3 things 1) the entertainment industry's media machine which seems to be growing further and further away from 'the people' 2) the willingness of an army of sheep to fall into line and 3) the veracity of many online reviews.
The caustic social commentary is irksome and tired, i.e., hardscrabble, noble poor struggle to survive while self-indulgent rich people tread on them. This has been covered in literature and film countless times and often better than this. In this case the poor family are (with the exception of the daughter) listless and dim, not at all sympathetic. The fact they ruin the lives of two people who actually do their jobs is forgivable apparently. In contrast the unlikable rich are in fact a clever entrepreneur and his wife who, though not smart, dotes on her children and wants nothing but the best for them. Not sure why the somehow deserve to be exploited by a family of indolent grifters. And apparently the father's distaste for poor grooming is deserving of homicide. Great.
In any case the movie is predictable except where it introduces 'deus ex machina' plot contrivances.
The finale is idiotic. The father is desperate to drive his kid to hospital. The car keys are under a dead man's body. While attempting to move the body he notices that the man has body odor and pauses to, in a particularly demonstrative fashion, hold his nose and roll his eyes. Riiiight.
Throw in a little bit of tastelessness (really, if you find a pair of panties do you immediately sniff them?) and you've got the makings of a rather tedious and somewhat offensive 2 hours of mediocre movie making.
Jojo Rabbit (2019)
Tasteless. Tasteless beyond words.
I haven't reviewed a movie in a while but I'm making an exception for this. I'm just old enough to have known many people who lived through the horror of Nazi Germany and people who fought to bring an end to the Third Reich. And knowing what I know all I can say is this movie is nausea inducing. EVERYTHING about it. The fact this gets made, let alone received critical accolades astonishes me.
The Green Inferno (2013)
Eli Roth unleashes another gory bore
I follow a YouTube channel where a bunch of aspiring film makers and actors make horror movie shorts. The next time Roth wants to make a horror movie, that that money and give it to them...they couldn't do worse and would likely be better.
Not the least bit frightening, cheesy gore, and a nasty portrayal of indigenous South Americans for good measure.
The good part? Well, you get a short glimpse of three of the actresses shapely behinds, so there's that I guess.
Piranha 3D (2010)
Incredibly bad
The only good thing about this movie is the astonishingly attractive Kelly Brook and the fact you get to see her in a bikini and au naturel in several fairly lengthy sequences. However, I'd suggest you look up her many images on the net and save yourself some cash.
In terms of the bad, there is the complete lack of real scares. This might scare children under 5, but that's it.
Then there's the fish themselves which are hilariously rendered (and, which I might add, look nothing like prehistoric piranhas...good job guys). And of course the whole science behind. I am not expecting National Geographic levels of scientific rigour but can't they at least pretend they were coming up with something plausible? Not to mention they burp like humans and roar like lions.
Needless to say, you don't give a damn about the characters, all of whom are just sort of there and the remainder of which are so irritating it's actually rewarding to see them get devoured.
There are times when it is hard not to believe that the people making the movies aren't secretly part of a pact to see just how bad a movie they can make and still get people to see it. This is one of those times. Absolutely, positively, the worst horror movie I've seen in a decade.
The Lovely Bones (2009)
Deplorable
'Deplorable' is the adjective Rober Ebert used for this movie and it's the right one.
Suzie Salmon is lured into a trap, raped, murdered and dismembered. We don't see the raping and dismembering but you can figure it out.
It's about as horrific a crime as one can imagine but this movie treats it casually, almost a non-event, rather than with the solemnity a tragedy like this deserves.
There are numerous other flaws in the movie, but this was enough for me.
'The film's primary effect was to make me squirmy.' said Roger Ebert in his review. I'd substitute 'ill' for 'squirmy'.
Don't see it.
Friday the 13th (2009)
An astonishing lack of imagination or scares
It is possible to resurrect a series that has run of gas. Until 'The Dark Knight', Batman looked as though it was pretty well played out. However, this rendition of the Friday the 13th franchise will only drive another machete through its barely beating heart.
The only part of the movie that offers any kind of visceral appeal is a relatively tame sex scene where we get to see Julianna Guillard in her naked glory...and glorious it is. Even then, the dialogue makes one want to press mute and admire the view.
The characters redefine what it means to be a caricature, they are mostly slightly irritating and generally seeing them vanish one by one would be something of a relief if it wasn't for the fact that their deaths are a) precipitated by acts of unbelievable stupidity (that no one would really do) and b) as gory as possible, simply for the sake of it.
And one can only conclude from this movie that Jason Voorhees is actually a phantom. He seems to materialize out of nowhere in scene after seen...presumably the people who made this movie didn't have the imagination to find a way to insert him into a scene.
Last, can they not get away from this tired formula of a killer/zombie/monster who generally moves around rather clunkily yet somehow manages to catch up to an athletic teenager running flat out? Or is this another case where we are supposed to assume that Jason can dematerialize and reconstitute himself at another location whenever he chooses? This movie is yet another dreadful chapter in this worthless series, and is yet another contribution to Hollywood's current obsession with gore and cheap shocks taking precedence over any real effort to craft a story or build real tension.
1 out of 10.
Hard Candy (2005)
Disturbing movie, excellent performances
I was vaguely aware of what this movie was about, but went in largely 'cold'. I was pleasantly surprised at how good it was, but felt my stomach was churning throughout most of the movie. Ellen Page was fantastic. Absolutely fantastic. You'd have to look to Anthony Hopkins as Hannibal Lecter to find a comparable performance.
This movie sets your nerves on edge and keeps them there. At the beginning, you worry about Hayley, assuming that she might fall prey to a pedophile. However, 20 to 30 minutes in, and you sympathize with the man, thinking that he's been trapped by a criminally insane young woman. Then the movie keeps you guessing, is he the victim, or is he a perpetrator getting his comeuppance? The movie goes back and forth several times, and it's only the very end that we learn the truth.
Even then, the ending doesn't offer much comfort. Most people will be happy to see a pedophile buy the farm, but it is much less reassuring when you realize that the punisher is a brilliant sociopath who might not always be 'right'.
Ellen Page (Hayley) deserved way more attention for her performance in this movie.
But, like I said, expect to leave the theater feeling somewhat queasy.
Match Point (2005)
One cliché after another and full of plot holes
The entire plot of this movie has been played out before, often in much better movies. And virtually every scene has been done much better in other movies. Best summarized as the Talented Mr Ripley meets Monty Python's Upper Class Twit of the Year.
Where to begin...
The villain is supposed to be Irish, but doesn't sound remotely Irish, despite having what we are to believe is an impoverished upbringing.
The other male lead comes across as being every North American's image of what an upper class Brit looks and talks like. He's such a stereotype, it's comical.
Scarlett Johannsen's character starts out as a sexy femme fatale, but ends up looking acting like a shrieking teen demanding that the boyfriend who knocked her up marries her. It's like two different characters.
And the plot holes are enormous. The shotgun blasts that no one hears, the laziest, most gullible police force probably in the world. A homicide detective would not tread lightly to spare someone embarrassment about an affair. They'd have a warrant for the father in laws house in a second, feelings be damned.
The attempts at creating tension are laughable. The main protagonist is stealing a shotgun...and at that instant, his insufferable wife comes looking for him. And when he is putting it back, at that instant, she has to find him again. This is the best they can do? In all, a boring, implausible, limp movie that's not worth seeing in the theatre. Rent it some time, maybe, if you are home with the flu.
King Kong (2005)
More (length, CGI, etc.) does not mean better
Someone upthread said 'Sadly, this movie just proves the point that good effects do not a good movie make.' Too true. Amazing how after 70 years, they can't figure out a way to remake this movie but do it better. Instead, we get tons of CGI creatures out of Jurassic Park and a host of B movie creature features. I'll admit that Jackson manages to imbue the ending with more pathos than the original. But too much of the rest of the movie exists for no real reason at all, or to simply throw in some CGI battles for their own sake.
Very disappointing. No wonder the gate isn't nearly as imposing as a lot of people anticipated.
Heights (2005)
Almost good
A movie that attempts to offer a thoughtful contemplation of lives and relationships, but comes up short.
I am content to watch movies that focus entirely on characters, I don't need action to be entertained. However, the characters have to be fully developed, the relationships believable, and the plot devices 'fresh'.
The souring of the previously open relationship between Diana Lee (Glenn Close) and her husband has been well trodden in the past, most recently in Six Feet Under the HBO series.
The breakdown of the relationship between Isabel and Jonathan is telegraphed from very early in the movie, and these two actors have no on screen chemistry whatsoever. The aborted love scene seems like an almost obligatory attempt to show that, yes, there really was passion between these two at some point. It's a pity, because Elizabath Banks is both beautiful and talented, and is really the only actor in this movie who gets to stretch her acting muscles.
The arrival of Ian, the philosopher cum artist who opens Isabel's eyes to the shortcomings of her lifestyle is hackneyed and could have been totally dispensed with.
And the big reveal at the end, where Isabel finally learns the truth about her husbands other romantic entanglements, looks like a hasty attempt to get things wrapped up.
There are other subplots in the movie, which serve only to distract from the primary story lines. Eliminating these would have allowed for a more meaningful examination of the relationships that we are supposed to be intrigued by.
In summary, the most interesting part of the movie was admiring Elizabeth Banks beautiful face. The rest was too superficial to really draw one in.