Reviews

I thought this movie had a good chance of being awful, but that it could have been fun. There were definitely fun bits, but the whole thing just fell apart at the end.

This is a classic case of the writer trying to be a bit too clever with the plot twists and cascading betrayals/turncoats. It wasn't too bad until the last act where all plot lines tried to get tied together. Instead they got knotted tangled, and cut apart. Too many loose ends and a very unsatisfying ending.

There were some good things that happened. Ron Perlman's character was a pleasant surprise, but the potential was wasted/subverted in the last act. Nicolas Cage actually was mostly fun to watch, especially the comic timing of some of the bits.

I was going to give this a 6, but the ending was just bad. Characters were going against character for inexplicable reasons, and abuse of suspension of disbelief left a sour taste.

This was an interesting concept, but it fell short in execution. One annoying thing that movies that try too hard to be clever often do is have a lot of dialog that intentionally avoid revealing certain bits of information. All of the characters know what is going on, but the viewer is left without that benefit. It can work, occasionally, but for The Tangle, they drag it out and abuse the viewer as a result.

Overall this felt more like a stage play than a movie. Partially driven by the single set (well, 90% of the movie is a single set, and the scenes that are elsewhere, don't actually contribute a lot to the story). The other thing that made it feel like a stage play was the overdone costuming and makeup. There is nothing wrong with style, but it felt driven by pretentiousness rather than innate style. Finally the acting was exaggerated, with the dialog's rhythm feeling stilted and contrived, and not natural.

It is an interesting underlying idea, but I think the execution was about being stylistic and clever rather than actually exploring the idea.

After watching 10 minutes of this movie, I could tell it was based on a book, probably of the YA variety. There was a very rich world with strange things going on, but no time/effort to explain things. Part of that is intentional (to follow the main character who doesn't know what is going on either), but part of it is simply that there isn't time in a movie to establish things. There also isn't time to explore/develop the characters. The lead and his co-intern/love interest, go from almost hostile to love, in a montage of trips through the portable door.

I did enjoy the movie quite a bit, but it just felt rushed and incomplete. The acting was great, even over-the-top characters with pretty small roles were enjoyable (although in some cases they were too over-the-top and almost distracting, rather than intriguing). Visually it was exciting, but not overwhelming.

Overall, I think this movie would be great for teens and pre-teens, and there are plenty for adults to find entertaining as well. But it feels like there is a lot in the book that didn't make it to the screen, which would have helped quite a bit.

There was something not right with this movie. Actually there were a number of things that didn't hold together. To me the most annoying thing was that it seemed to be trying to be a film Noir, with the brooding voice over by the lead character. But it fell so far short of that, in basically every other aspect.

The love story was confusing and there was no chemistry between any of the characters. The leads were wooden and it was hard to tell when they were supposed to be in love and when they weren't.

Mallory Jansen as Francesca Quinn was particularly out of place. She looks like a model doing a photoshoot as a a P. I. (or a cop) rather than an actual P. I. Her hair is always perfect and her cheek bones proudly on display. She just doesn't seem to have any grit.

Hallmark mysteries have a bit of a formula, for instance you know there are going to be a few red herrings. But here the red herrings are a bit too pat and shoe horned in. They are also not resolved so much as ignored once the next clue shows up.

Overall adisappointing and unsatisfying movie.

I don't expect a lot from a Hallmark mystery, but this was a pretty good one overall. I was a little generous with the rating, giving it a bit of a bump for being unexpectedly fun.

The actresses who play the sisters are great. The ditzy sister might have been a bit too ditzy at the beginning and the serious one too serious, but a few scenes in and that evened out. The actresses are also very believable as sisters.

Overall the story has the usual red herrings, which weren't too overplayed (which is a nice change) and actually contributed to the overall story, since usually they are just dead ends.

I think to put it another way, I really hope this does well, because it would be a lot of fun to see a series of these movies, akin to Hallmarks other winners.

I have seen worse movies, and I have given up on better movies. It is in the zone where it can almost be enjoyed for how bad it is, but it is teetering on the brink of being so bad it can barely be stomached.

Overall this reminded me of exploitation movies from the 60's and 70's except with worse acting, directing, special effects and writing. It really seemed like a bunch of teenage boys wrote the script, trying to outdo each other for how macho and tough they can sound. Except the lines are being delivered by their parents.

For the copious amount of guns, they drew in explosions and maybe cartridges ejecting, not to mention occasional ricochet sparks and incredibly evenly spaced holes in cars and buildings. I think they also spent about five dollars on ketchup packages.

Anyway, if you are a fan of really bad movies, give it a shot. If not, avoid it at all costs.

I thought I would watch 5 minutes and then turn it off, ended up watching the whole thing. It was a very odd movie overall, and probably takes the right mindset to enjoy. Basically take a movie with the plot described, but written by high schoolers. Then give them some decent actors, a decent director and a decent film crew. Then have the high schoolers make sure they include the "good" stuff and you pretty much have this movie. So it is a weird hodge podge of decent B-movie, with some A-actors, and a high school film project. I enjoyed it, even if it wasn't great and at times pretty uneven. BTW there is quite a bit of blood and gore, but it isn't super graphic despite that.

I have to say I was a bit disappointed in this movie. I actually wasn't expecting a lot, but I didn't quite get that much. I think if the writing, directing and editing were cleaned up, this would have been a better movie. The pacing was off, and there were too many someone just happened to see something at just the right time moments. I am not looking for plausibility in my superhero movies, but a chain of events that isn't held together with duct-tape and fishing line would be nice.

Anyway, Stallone probably gave the best performance in the movie. His sidekick got really bad direction and falls victim to the hero-worshipping doofus syndrome, and the screeching kid syndrome. Cyrus and his crew weren't bad, but very one-dimensional.

Overall, I think the folks making the movie fell too in love with the idea (the major plot point which I won't spoil but isn't too surprising), and kind of kludged the story together around it.

If you want a brainless romp, you could do a lot worse, but also a lot better.

Whenever I watch a movie about an amateur sleuth, I understand that there will be actions by the protagonist that no reasonable person would perform, but this takes it to a bit of an extreme. Simply put: call the police. It is one thing to do amateur sleuthing in parallel to the police, but to actively conceal/tamper with evidence is never appropriate. Also, if you suspect a murderer is breaking into people's houses, why put a murder-board in the front room?

There were plenty of Hallmark movie moments that I was more of less willing to forgive. The oddly forced love interest, the even more oddly forced ex-boyfriend with pregnant wife. The matchmaking while showing subtle disapproval of her mother (although Marilu Henner does an excellent job in the role).

Anyway, the movie as a whole strained incredulity to the breaking point. But, if you want half scooby-doo mystery and half Hallmark quasi-romance, then you might enjoy it.

There were quite a few scenes in this movie that were very well done, but the overall movie was slow, plodding and somewhere between silly and hitting you in the face with symbolism.

It seems like they did this movie from a draft script, not realizing there were nonsensical holes in the plot, and blatant discrepancies (and plausibility problems) in the main character. Also that they only had about 45 minutes of movie that they needed to stretch to feature length.

Maybe the problem is I wasn't expecting this to be an art-house kind of movie, and expecting more of a SyFy channel movie. In the latter type of movie it is easier to accept and laugh at nonsense, in the former it is as irritating as a rock in your shoe.

There are a lot of things about this movie that I thought were good, but overall the movie just plodded along. It was like the story was happening to the characters rather than the characters making the story. In particular Annie just kind of stumbles through the movie, making all sorts of out-of-character decisions, then reverting back to her stoic self a few minutes later, as if the actions never happened. In some cases, she does something and then almost instantly is a different person, with no segue between. Part of that problem is that there is no sense of how long there was between scenes. Did this happen over days, or weeks or even months. No idea.

I did like the "First People" aspect, which provided the background for the story. The cadence of the speech and mannerisms seemed very authentic. It was also great showing how the non-First people characters interacted with them. But telling the "first people" story, over-whelmed the actual plot, making a sub-par movie overall.

You know how some movies have pictures/clips of each character with text saying where that character ended up after the movie? Coming 2 America seems like they took those snippets and wrote a movie around them.

Coming 2 America also does not have the same feel as the original. The original, even though it was over the top at times, had a backbone of plausibility. The sequel has the backbone of a cartoon. Eddie Murphy's character has become a caricature, who vapidly is lead by the story, rather than leading the story. His son and especially the son's American family, seem to be written from stereotypes.

Another way the feel is different for this movie, is it seems like it was written to be enjoyed by teens and pre-teens. It is almost childish, especially the villian of the movie played by Wesley Snipes. If Snidely Whiplash had backup dancers, he would have been more realistic than Snipes.

The cameos are also excessive and distracting. They fall into two camps, the first are the real celebrities who play themselves, in tacky almost pathetic bits. The second is people who had bit parts from the original movie, which in many cases were unnecessary.

Anyway, there are a few enjoyable moments, but it really feels like they tried too hard for nostalgia for the original, and also aimed for the children (or grandchildren) of the people who watched the original.

The really sad thing is, there is even a bit in the movie where they talk about how bad sequels are.... "except" not this one. This one really is bad.

I watched the pilot episode last night and laughed quite a bit. The show is obviously going to be quirky, based on the premise. It will be a few more episodes before we'll see if the musical number concept will hold up, but so far it's working and fun.

The casting has a lot of familiar faces. In particular, I love seeing Mary Steenburgen as Zoey's mother (there is a moment when Zoey and her mom look at her father, and they really look like mother and daughter). Peter Gallagher does a great job as Zoey's locked-in father, especially making the transition from singing back to locked-in. Lauren Graham is also doing a fine job as Zoey's boss, even if the character is a bit too cliched.

Actually, the biggest deficit in the show, based on the pilot, is that many of the characters and situations are too cliched. From the big brassy black woman living next door who dispenses wisdom and insight, to the unrequited love angle, to the boss who sends emails while not really listening. Even the basic arc of Zoey's character is too easy, shy/socially clumsy girl has an unusual thing happen and is suddenly bursting with self-esteem.

I think this show has a lot of potential for fun. It'll be interesting to see how Zoey deals with her ability in the longer term (the pilot covers a week of time). If you like quirky comedies with a healthy does of drama, then this is likely the show for you.

One thing I have always loved about Sci-Fi is how they can flesh out a thought experiment. The how/why something happens is secondary to what chain of events occurs when you start with a catalyzing thought/event.

In this case the the thought experiment is what would happen if everything that came within 50ft of a person dropped dead instantly. How would that person react, how would they figure it out? That was the portion of the story that I found compelling and interesting. The second part of the thought experiment, is what if there is another person who renders his powers safe.

The second aspect of the story, is that person in question, wakes up with amnesia. He can't remember who he is or anything about his life. There is also another person who also can't remember her life, and happened to be in the car wreck with him right before he woke up.

The part I found less compelling was the backstory of the two main characters. It was an odd mystery thriller added on top, that was kind of at odds with the characters' arc. It also kind of made the ending seem morally OK (perhaps even blah), instead of poignant and/or tragic. For many viewers, I assume, the added layer may make it more enticing, so I can't say it was bad, just not for me.

The ending did leave some unanswered questions, but that is to be expected and even desired for movies like this. Overall the movie was very well done, and worth watching.

There was a lot to like about Alita. The action scenes were engrossing, the world was fascinating and detailed. But if you strip away the visual appeal, the story is much too sacchrine for my tastes.

Alita has the doe-eyed wonder of a Disney princess. Basically falling in love with the first boy who talks to her. I get that they were going for the naive yet dangerous, but it was really too much.

I think if you are in the YA range, this would be a great movie. Younger than that and the violence is too much. Much older than that and the cliches and sacchrine nature start detracting too much.

First off, I have to say I watched this dubbed into English and I'm not sure how much of this movie gets lost in translation. I got the feeling there were some jokes and play-on-words that got lost. There are also a few references that likely make more sense in their native country.

As for the review, I thought the movie was quite enjoyable overall. Fairy tale stories are a hard sale though. The movie included too many tropes and too many fairy tales, all mushed together. If you go in just wanting to have an escapist viewing, then this won't be a signficant con for the movie. If this is something that really would nag at you, then best not view it.

I think one problem for the movie is the target audience. There are a number of rather disturbing/fightening scenes, that might make it inappropriate for younger viewers. However the overall tone is the kind of whimsical folksiness that appeals to children, and might turn off the teenage crowd.

I would file this one in the check-your-expectations at the door, sit back and relax kind of movie. Don't expect much, and you'll have fun with it.

A number of the actors in this, actually have had good moments in their careers. None of them deserve to be in this jumbled mess. Forsythe in particular seems to be cashing a paycheck in this one, rather than trying to act. Part of the problem is the script is a mess. The story just isn't coherent, the bad guys' plans don't make sense, and nothing even tries to pass a reality check. Maybe the bad guy's lines are supposed to sound like rehashed rhetoric that compound dwelling morons parrot, but the hero's lines aren't any better.

The action is handled with very poor CGI, where the bullets look more like white blaster bolts than anything. The blood squib effect in particular is laughable.

Anyway, this seems to be one of the new slew of so-called action movies, that are done on a cheap budget, with almost no effort on anyone's part. Let's just short the draft of the script. We filmed the actors during the walk-through, and they did good enough. Oh, we'll add some bullet flashes in post, just pretend you got shot in the head. Back in the 80's and 90's this would barely qualify for direct-to-video. IF that's your thing then you're going to watch this no matter what the review says... If not, then avoid this movie.

The publicity, and even title of the movie, misrepresent what this movie is about. The movie is not about Bruce Lee, at least not as the main character. It is more about Steve McKee, a fictionalized character, who serves to get the Bruce Lee vs Wong Jack Man fight to happen. It is a rather contrived plot, involving Steve falling in love with a woman who is basically a slave to the local triad.

For the first 20-30 minutes of the movie there is a good deal of Bruce Lee being a street tough teacher. But as the movie progresses Bruce Lee takes a secondary role, perhaps even tertiary, to Steve and Wong Jack Man. Bruce is also portrayed as a brooding, arrogant, egocentric jerk. This might well have been true, but he ends up being a very one dimensional character.

Wong Jack Man on the other hand gets a very favorable portrayal. He is shown as the stereotypically wise, humble, etc, Shaolin Monk. According to the film, the fight only occurred because Bruce Lee and the Triad goaded and connived to force Wong Jack Man to fight.

The fight also follows more closely the "historical" accounts of the fight as seen from Wong Jack Man's camp rather than Bruce Lee's. Basically that Wong Jack Man was in the moral right for the fight, that he "won" the fight, and that he inspired Bruce Lee to develop Jeet Kune Do.

One thing I noticed (and I'm a guy who doesn't normally notice such things), was that women were not portrayed particularly well in this movie. First of all, Bruce Lee's wife doesn't appear at all, and is only mentioned once (and even that is only to detail how much Bruce is hated for fraternizing with whites). There are three female characters, one is the mother of a minor character who shows up to scold her son and basically act as a harridan. The second is the love interest who is the soul of virtue, but enslaved and in need of rescue. The third is the triad leader of Chinatown, who is shown as a a cruel and powerful woman, but who submits quickly when the Chinese boss comes to town.

Anyway, if you pretend that the Bruce Lee character is not Bruce Lee, it is not a bad movie. It's not a particularly great movie, but not bad.

Before going to see this with my wife, I read some reviews and saw that it was certified fresh on R.T. with the blurb saying pretty good things. It was especially rated favorably relative to the Clint Eastwood version. Sadly neither was true.

The quality of the movie seemed inversely proportional to the age of the person involved (with the possible exception of Elle Fanning). The youngest children did the best job, even when they were basically background for what was happening in the rest of the scene. For the older/adult characters the acting was leaden and heavy handed. The seduction was almost comical and incredibly uneven. Kirsten Dunst was apparently directed to be frumpy and boring, which simply doesn't work. Nicole Kidman's character was even more of a mess. With every knew scene I had to wonder how much time had to have passed for her character's behavior to change so much. The kids are forbidden to go into the room, and in seemingly the next scene they are coming and going freely. She hates Colin Farrell's character, then suddenly they are friendly, with a single smile being the seduction.

I think the problem is that the beguiling of the women/girls is so terribly clumsy, both in terms of the acting and in terms of the direction/screenplay. My wife and I were both laughing and rolling our eyes when Colin was delivering his lines and the women/girls were lapping it up. In the movie, it comes across as a single thick application of honey, when I'm sure the intent was days/weeks of thin layers. But the movie doesn't show the gradual beguilement, only drastic step changes.

The most fun I had with this movie, was talking afterwords with my wife and speculating that a sequel would be more interesting. The children grow up to be serial killers or men. Perhaps one of them is the mother of the Brewster sisters from Arsenic and Old Lace.

I just saw a sneak preview of Colossal. I really liked the concept of the movie, it was original and fun. Sadly there was something lacking in the execution. It just didn't feel put together correctly, like there was something in the story telling that was missing that would have made it more compelling.

Anne Hathaway was cast a bit too far out of character. She just wasn't quite believable as the wastrel party girl. She couldn't quite pull off acting drunk. Her character's story is a classic redemption tale, with the monster twist.

Jason Sudeikis plays her foil in the story. His character arc is very poorly handled. There wasn't enough setup, almost like a few scenes in the middle were cut. That being said, he played it pretty well, except it was hard to tell when he was supposed to be drunk.

As I've mentioned both main characters being drunk, there is a lot of drinking in this movie. The central movie set being the bar run by Oscar (Jason Sudeikis) where Gloria (Anne Hathaway) starts working. This is after returning to a home her parent's left vacant, and after being kicked out by her boyfriend for being a party girl who can't get her life together. This is where I would caution that this isn't really an appropriate movie for children, despite the silly almost cartoon premise.

The bottom line of a movie review is the recommendation of whether or not to see it. If you are bothered by plot holes and trite characters, you probably want to steer clear. If you like silly popcorn movies, you might want to give it a shot. I don't feel like I wasted 2 hours on the movie, but I probably wouldn't watch it again.

I just saw a sneak preview of Kong: Skull Island. I don't think this will be a long remembered monster movie. It's a fun movie, but ultimately forgettable. The CGI Kong, Samuel L Jackson, and John Goodman all took a backseat to John C. Rielly, who did a superb job playing a WWII pilot who was shot down and landed on Skull Island. Seriously, his role is the greatest thing in this movie.

The movie is set in 1973, and the premise is that LandSat (land mapping satellite) has taken pictures of an elusive island (Skull Island) that has been rumored to exist, but not proved. John Goodman convinces the government to launch an expedition to explore the island. They take some soldiers who were pulling out of Vietnam, and are headed by Samuel L Jackson. They also pick up a British ex-special forces "tracker" (Tom Hiddleston) and an "anti-war" photographer played by Brie Larson.

They start the mission by dropping bombs on the island to map the bedrock, ostensibly to look for mineral deposits. That's when Kong shows up to smack the helicopters out of the air, and generally wreak mayhem on the team. The scattered survivors then have to survive on an island filled with monsters and get to the extraction zone. One group finds John C. Reilly's character, who has been stranded on the island for 29+ years.

That's about all I'll say about the story, so as to avoid serious spoilers. The story line is fairly conventional with very little arc to the characters. In many regards it actually sets up more like a horror movie than action/adventure movie. In fact, there are numerous jump-scares and other horror movie devices throughout the movie.

In many ways, it felt like the movie couldn't quite decide what it wanted to be. Is it a monster movie? A horror movie? An action movie (anti-war)? There are also numerous characters who seem like they were intended to play more significant roles. For instance they bring along a biologist, played by Tian Jing, who does no biology and seems to mainly appear to allow another character to give exposition. Similarly most of the LandSat team, who seem to be around for comic relief (horror movie style comic relief). Even some of the major characters do little aside from provide a single plot piece.

Then there is Kong. I think they could have spent a bit more time developing Kong, partly as a character and partly as an animation. The CGI was pretty good, but his proportions looked wrong and his motions were wooden.

Anyway, I think there was just too much going on, and not enough time for this movie to be really good. I think it could have been an excellent mini-series, or TV season. As it is, it's an okay movie, that is fun if you go in with a low-bar. 6/10, so I enjoyed it, but not enough.

Mechanic: Resurrection at times felt like watching someone play a computer game. Unlike the predecessor, the plot in this movie was very bland and lacking in nuance. It was like a series of gates, break into place 1 and defeat boss 1. Break into place 2, defeat boss 2. Obtain clues, break in and defeat boss, repeat.

The other reason the movie felt like a computer game was that the CGI was a bit too obvious in a lot of scenes. Fire that spreads perfectly and regularly. Every bullet that hits someone creates a minor fountain of blood (that doesn't seem to hit the ground or soak into their clothes).

The movie did start off with what could have been a great action scene, but ended up being so-so. The reason it was only so-so was because it was impossible to see what was going on. Too much jerky camera work and jump cuts made it hard to see. Statham has the chops to do action scenes without making the scene more frenetic with cheap cinematography.

One comment I overheard leaving the theater was why cast Jessica Alba. I won't say she did a bad job, but she wasn't particularly compelling either and had little chemistry with Statham, which undermined the motivation for the whole movie. I would also comment that I was very sad that Michelle Yeoh didn't get a more substantive role.

Overall, it was a bit disappointing. There was some good action, although it was usually undermined by the camera work. There were a few minutes of wittiness, but overall it's a summer action movie that will be forgotten.