gary-426-161272 Reviews

Sense, Sensibility & Snowmen (2019 TV Movie)

Hallmark is Hallmark but still

[6/10 · 1 November 2023]

Be ready -to -wear right off the rack. Don't get me wrong: Hallmark fans expect a certain product. We want to know who is the incompatible couple within the first 10 minutes, and we expect that they will kiss politely within the last 60 seconds of the film. The leads are reliable; the direction is professional; the snow is pleasant and not too deep; and sometime or another there will be a Christmas tree lighting. I'll find and good. But the whole experience should not feel so cookie cutter that you wonder after the last kiss whether you really would have missed very much if you had skipped it after the first 10 minutes and just come back for the last kiss.

People Will Talk (1951)

It Holds Up Rather Well.

[8/10 · 16 August 2023]

A film almost 75 years old cannot avoid having dated a little. The wonderful doctor is perhaps a little too wonderful. The virtuous-though-pregnant heroine is a little too virtuous. Certainly, in a world of HMOs, it is not possible to watch the Clinic That Puts the Patients First without at least a giggle, if not an outright guffaw.

But the characters are nice and well presented. This was Grant in his late 40s, a lovely age for his "responsible hero" movies. Walter Slezak and Sidney Blackmer were always consummate pros in their quieter roles. Hume Cronyn was not less than brilliant as the administrative "little man." And Findlay Currie was a treasure.

No less important, Mankiewicz as writer and director brought heart and an air of some optimistic goodness to the script and to the project overall, certainly as welcome in these days as in those.

Stay (I) (2005)

Severely Underrated Film

[8/10 · 6 December 2022]

The film was trashed by most, but not all critics, and lost like 40 million dollars.

I found it engrossing, beautifully acted, and directed with imagination, nuance and touching sensitivity.

I want very much to encourage people to watch it, so I will avoid spoilers which is not easy to do in discussing this film.

Although it is rightly classified as a drama, it is in many ways a mystery, and like the best mysteries, the clues are all there, but the story itself becomes so compelling that the viewer is too involved in what is happening on the screen to put the clues together and solve the mystery.

Please watch it and decide for yourself. It really deserves serious attention. After you have watched it and thought about it for a while, go to YouTube and watch one of several analyses of the film which may help you appreciate how skillful a film this really is.

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol (2022)

Wholly Unnecessary

[4/10 · 5 December 2022]

There have been over 100 versions of this story on film and TV in the last 100 years or so.

This one, while competently made, adds nothing to the canon.

It is technically well enough done and has some fine glitz and glitter, but the plot is truncated to the point of abandonment; the character development isn't; the songs, with some exceptions are lifeless and listless.

How can I say this: even Tiny Tim comes off as a two-minute afterthought.

It's not that the story can't abide restaging. The best may still be the 1951 Alistair Sim, but the 1992 Muppet version was fresh and winning, and eve last month's Spirited gave us some pizzaz and some energy.

Scrooge: A Christmas Carol 2022, while not bad, per se, was as unnecessary a project as I can remember.

Journey of My Heart (2021 TV Movie)

It got awkward to the point of embarrassing.

[4/10 · 17 February 2022]

There were elements of the location and culture that could have been examined and developed. They weren't. The plot was superficial and remarkably aimless.

More crucially, the lead played most of the movie like she was a high school sophomore giggling her way to the prom. When she reached the de regeur kiss, the hero looked like he was twice her age, and the kiss was awkward enough to be truly creepy.

It's Hallmark. I'm not looking for Emmy Awards here, but this was substandard by any standard.

Clara (III) (2018)

And Then They Ran Out of Movie

[5/10 · 16 October 2021]

A sincere--if relentlessly somber-- well-acted film until the last half hour. And then they apparently ran out of plot or theme or scientific jargon and went first into fantasy and ended at silly. A shame.

Extinct (2017)

Marginally Better than watching with the TV turned off. But only marginally.

[2/10 · 3 October 2017]

I begin by noting that I have been a fan of the writing of Orson Scott Card for more than thirty years. His mind is wonderfully creative; his stories complex and thoughtful; and he writes with a deep dedication to a moral code and a spiritual concern. (Yes, and I know all about his loudly-stated position on homosexuality.) I waited thirty years for an attempt to bring Ender's Game to the screen, and if it was a disappointment--and it was--it had more to do with the fact that the studio could not make available the three films and assemblage of seven-year-old actors that the novel needed to transfer honestly to the screen. But if Ender's Game was disappointing, Extinct is a failure almost too difficult to comprehend. I would never have believed that anything Orson Scott Card had been involved in could be capable of such clunky, dare-I-say inept dialogue. I don't know if it's the actors or the director or perhaps an unimaginable intermingling of the two forces, but there is more wooden, stolid presentation on the screen than in a convention of tree stumps trying to do stand up. And Card is not only listed as co-creator but as one of three Executive Producers. I am sure there is plot somewhere in all this because Card could not NOT write plot, but plot isn't enough. There isn't a character that appears on screen who is vaguely interesting or in any way believable. I think we must conclude that this whole project was an act of sectarian loyalty for Card who made this film for BYUTV - Brigham Young University Television. The best that could be said here is the series (in truth, I could only get through the first one and half episodes before giving up) looks like a sincere Final Class Project in a sophomore TV production class.

Colossal (2016)

Originality Counts

[7/10 · 29 July 2017]

This is not an Anne Hathaway movie to take the kids to. It is several steps short of greatness and could do with some tightening. But it is juggling more than a few axes in the air that I, for one, have not seen anyone try to juggle before. "Bizarre" will do an an adjective, but there is no small amount of courage here to take on these disparate elements and try to mold them into something thoughtful and even insightful. Kudos for Anne Hathaway for getting involved in a "little" picture like this that is never going to appeal to the wide audience. And, as others have said, Jason Sudeikis stretches his standard persona more than a little. Well worth watching, for all its limitations, to see an attempt to try something new.