Change Your Image
jjjj
Reviews
Leave the World Behind (2023)
Saved by a DVD??
This is definitely a contender for silliest apocalypse movie ever, though there's a LOT of competition for that title. But in this one the quintessence of suffering is losing your wi-fi connection and not being able to stream your favorite sitcom. Oh, there's some other random bad stuff, an anonymous dead body and a bunch of deer standing around like a deer in the headlights. Ethan Hawke has to deal with a stranger speaking Spanish, and the generic teenager gets a poison mosquito bite or something.
Worst of all, the actors have to perform almost nonstop to random inappropriate songs and generic "ominous music" on the soundtrack .
I wouldn't call this a spoiler because there's nothing to spoil, but the happy ending here is that the teenager with no wi-fi finds a DVD to watch. Okay then!
The Old Man (2022)
Not the role Jeff Bridges will be remembered for
-- The first episode is promising, the second episode falls off a cliff and it just goes downhill from there.
-- The show was apparently loosely based on (or "inspired by") a book, which one reviewer called "a fleeing fugitive story ruined by absurd plot twists" -- and at least as regards having absurd plot twists the show is faithful to the book.
-- Jeff Bridges pretty much carries the whole show - watching him pretend to be interested while Amy Brenneman spins out her back story is a master class in acting.
-- The two actors who play "young Jeff Bridges" and "young John Lithgow" do a decent job of channeling their models, but unfortunately they are wasted in clumsily explanatory flashback scenes.
Your Honor (2020)
Believability starts at zero and goes downhill from there
Okay, so "Breaking Bad" also had a lot of barely believable elements, but here's the difference: in that series the characters who were faced with extreme and unlikely scenarios at least tried to deal with them in imaginably human ways, so you could to some extent sympathize with them.
In "Your Honor" the characters consistently make the stupidest possible choices and do things that anyone you've ever met would be smart enough to steer clear of. The young kid of course is the linchpin of unbelievably stupid self-destructive choices, but the Brian Cranston character is also required to behave not like a judge but like a drunken impulsive teenager. So it's pretty hard to care what happens to any of these people.
Great Expectations (2023)
A classic case of "the book was better"
It's okay for a movie or show to depart from the book it's based on, but if it does then don't we want it to at least do something interesting with the differences? If this series chooses to show Pip as a moody romantic teenager rather than as a child, then couldn't he at least be given some personality? The screenwriters do keep some bits of Dickens' writing -- which stand out from the rest of the wooden dialog -- but otherwise there's no individuality in the characters: they all speak more or less the same way, even those (such as Joe and Pumblechook) from completely different backgrounds. The show is all atmosphere and scenery at the expense of acting and story.
Bullet Train (2022)
not bad for what it is
Okay, it's a derivative mashup of Tarantino & Ritchie gimmicks, w/ Brad Pitt playing Brad Pitt, but unless you're expecting something different, what's wrong with that? Plus some derivative "Snakes on a Plane" business as a bonus feature.
One way it really stumbles though is with a soundtrack of randomly inappropriate and irrelevant songs slapped on every once in a while, none of them much good. A bit distracting, but doesn't ruin the show.
As Pauline Kael said: "The movie doesn't have to be great; it can be stupid and empty and you can still have the joy of a good performance, or the joy in just a good line. You talk less about good movies than about what you love in bad movies."
- Pauline Kael, For Keeps: 30 Years at the Movies.
Layer Cake (2004)
Put 10 Brit-gangster films in a blender, & add Daniel Craig
Craig's blue eyes do good work here, and everyone in the cast knows how to deliver the requisite gangster-movie clichés, so if that's what you're looking for, here it is. Colm Meaney does the henchman, Michael Gambon does the evil kingpin, Ben Whishaw does the punk hanger-on, all according to Hoyle. One good way to keep yourself awake while watching would be to play "where have I seen this bit before?"
But don't bother trying to make sense of the plot points, they are thrown in for atmosphere & then forgotten in the rush to move on to another of the routines that are required in all caper/heist/gangland shows.
The General Died at Dawn (1936)
Incoherent plot, stagey dialog, ridiculous ethnic caricatures
Gary Cooper dutifully read his lines and went through the motions, and Madeleine Carroll looked pretty, but the plot doesn't hang together and barely makes sense. Maybe it was a rush job or maybe it was butchered in the editing, but it all feels thrown together and patchy. The pseudo-Chinese characters slip in and out of quasi-pidgin "no tickee no washee" lingo, while Cooper's stage-drama speeches about justice and oppression etc are flown in from a different movie. There's also a monkey that Cooper has to carry around for no discernible reason for the first half of the picture, which is then forgotten for the last half.
The Game (2014)
lazy grabbag of le carre cliches
If you've ever seen ANY Cold War spy show, you'll know exactly what to expect here. Decent acting but a careless script that doesn't even try to make sense.
I'm Not There (2007)
Cate Blanchett is good - otherwise this is a disaster
Some of the random grabbag of concepts here must have sounded like good ideas at the time, but the long, long, pointless "Billy the Kid" sequences could never have been good even if they had been executed better.
And the rambling Rimbaud monologues could have been reduced to one line from one character comparing Dylan to Rimbaud, that's all they amount to.
Should have been edited down to 60 minutes tops.
Blithe Spirit (2020)
zombie remake ruins everything it touches
Neither the scriptwriters nor the director nor the actors seem to have any grasp of what made the original Noel Coward comedy sparkle. The clownish slapstick doesn't help, nor does the anachronistic soundtrack of current day easy listening crooners. Inept and pointless.
The Last Tycoon (1976)
the book was better . . . but the book wasn't that great
It's ironic that after Fitzgerald failed as a screen writer, Pinter crafted a screen play that limply transposes Fitzgerald's unfinished novel onto the screen, without making it in the least cinematic.
Many great actors appeared here to read their lines and cash their paychecks, but the two female leads were understandably never heard from again. ( I have heard, though, that this 1976 flop was NOT the end of De Niro's career . . . )
The Pope of Greenwich Village (1984)
great acting and set-up, too bad there's no ending
Roberts and Rourke and Geraldine Page are stellar here, and the concept - yet another De Niro/ goodfellas etc. Homage - is fine as far as it goes.
You might wish they knew where they wanted to go with it, though.
After the standard caper setup and the standard caper-misfire the movie mostly just runs out the clock.
Dancing on the Edge (2013)
for a show about 1930's musicians, why not use 1930's music?
Aside from the sense of time and place being sloppily inaccurate, the plotting here is both predictable and contrived. Some of the actors do make their characters believable in spite of a script that makes them behave in unbelievable ways, but as the story lurches toward its obvious conclusion, we realize that the "jazz" and period setting are irrelevant to a very standard murder mystery formula.
Russian Doll (2019)
Season 1 great, Season 2 tried to jump the shark but couldn't find a shark
The curse of Season 2 strikes again! Wannabe wackiness is a sad thing to watch. Random fragmented episodes don't connect and don't go anywhere. Tries to recycle a few bits from season 1 but they're no longer fresh.
Cyrano (2021)
Dinklage is always good but the music is not musical
Staging and acting and concept are all good, but every time it lapses into "singing", this movie cries out for a fast-forward button.
Worth seeing, but maybe not worth listening to.
The Tragedy of Macbeth (2021)
Cinematography & staging, but not much Shakespeare or acting
Shakespeare's play is upstaged in almost every scene by flashy camera angles, weird lighting effects, and eye-catching but irrelevant imagery. This could be fun to watch if you weren't occasionally distracted by the actors hurrying through their lines.
Get Shorty (2017)
the movie and the book were both much better than this
Loses 90% of the zip and humor of the book and the movie, and drags the plot line out very slowly with sidelines that don't add anything.
The best thing about it is Chris Dowd's Irish accent, though he does the best he can with a not very riveting character part.
The 1995 movie had lots of great actors; this series has Chris Dowd & that's about it.
Perfect Friday (1970)
trial run version of "A Fish Called Wanda"
Much the same plot skeleton as the great 1988 Cleese-Kline-Palin-Curtis caper movie, but with lesser actors, not much of a script, and no real suspense or surprises. Very 1970 in style and spirit, with Ursula Andress undressed as often as possible. Not the worst heist movie ever, but far from the best.
The Lost Daughter (2021)
jumbled, confused series of false starts and dead ends
A vague air of menace is conveyed, but the plot doesn't sustain it. The incessant focus on a doll is ridiculous. The flashback scenes provide some relief from the pointless current-day episodes, but they don't explain anything. And there's no ending.
Dreamscape (1984)
Better than Inception, aside from CGI
The special effects technology weren't there back then, but the acting, concept, writing, and plot here were all a lot better than Inception's silly video-game "dreamworld".
The Harder They Fall (2021)
tries but fails to be Tarantinoesque
Some clever cinematography, but keeps losing track of its own plot (or absence of plot). Lacks any character development, dialog is stilted, veers back and forth unevenly between satirical and would-be-serious, soundtrack feels pasted in but that's better than when the actors try to sing. Idris Elba isn't given anything to do but look unhappy.
Silent Witness (2011)
You'll feel like you've seen it before
Warmed over rehash of every Perry Mason-style courtroom murder mystery you've ever seen, but the wooden acting of the two male leads is what really sinks it. You'd have to be new to the genre not to see the ending coming from a mile away.
Annette (2021)
The first 3 minutes are good!
The opening musical number is very enjoyable; the remaining 2+ hours are dreary, repetitive, unimaginative, predictable, and unpleasant.
The Stand (1994)
Plague outbreak opening is good enough, the rest is nonsense
The series like the book just coasts on the energy of an end-of-the-world apocalypse, then doesn't know what to do with it for the remaining 4 hours.
Of course Stephen King knows how to fill the time with a lot of God/Devil silliness, and the special effects crew can put a scary mask on the devil, but really the characters are stick figures and the plot line is formulaic.
The Quiet Earth (1985)
"The amplitude of the oscillation is increasing!"
Not sci-fi, just a low-budget excuse to have a small cast.
No real effort to make the setup in any way believable, and once the situation has been stated nothing much is done with it. One guy wanders around alone for a while, then drives around with a couple of others for a bit. Characters are stick figures who barely interact, & the science malarkey doesn't even rise to the level of nonsense.