Change Your Image
nurtzkid
Reviews
La La Land (2016)
I regret buying a ticket to this turkey -- and I went to a matinée
The production is slick. Supporting roles are strong -- casting John Legend as a musician takes money, I guess, but it's an easy 'win.' But making a musical requires leads who can sing and dance. Gosling can't sing at all well, and Emma Stone simply can't produce pleasant sounds. Neither can dance at all well, and in at least one scene Stone not only danced badly, but repeated her moves (a failed trick in Flashdance, and no better here). The movie lasts too long, given its weak themes, and then, when it could be stopped and the audience blessedly released, it generates an alternate ending (no visible reason for this dodge) that makes it another 20 minutes or so long. If I were at home I would have turned it off, but my significant other had a very large bucket of popcorn to finish, so I had to sit through it.
King of Herrings (2013)
A series of misunderstandings
The makers of this film suffered from many misunderstandings. To identify a few for them, filming in black and white doesn't make you an auteur (and it makes a plot mystifying when one character is referred to, for over an hour, simply as "the redhead"); casting character actors as leads doesn't always make them good enough to carry the larger role; long pauses in conversations do not make that conversation meaningful; and working without a script does not inspire brilliance. OK, I'm guessing on that last point, but it sure seems like no one knew their lines. Oh, and lens flare isn't an especially good look in black and white.
In sum, a pretentious, vapid, poorly constructed story.
Crush (2001)
complete waste of time
Editing barely OK, some of the cinematography was OK. Acting was generally poor, and the story line was bare of detail, full of elisions, and generally boring. Older woman, yadda yadda, wild sex with young man, he's not cultured enough for her so her friends take her off to bone an old french guy, then when she wants to marry him the friends try to make a video of one of them seducing the other.
This causes the young man to walk down a dark road at night and get run over and die.
Then the older woman decides to marry her minister, but the friends decide to break that up as well. So they arrest her during her wedding ceremony.
Naturally they all remain good friends forever.
The male characters are about as carefully drawn as a Scooby-Doo cartoon, and the women are without histories, backstories, or motives.
If someone gives this to you, don't watch it -- burn it.