Reviews

Sandra Oh, one of the most underrated actors in the business, finally gets a vehicle where her immense talent is utilized to its fullest. I was riveted by her from the first scene-and that was before the appearance of Jodie Comer. There's no screen portrayal of a psychopath, male or female, that I've seen who is more convincing than that of Villanelle.

The only comparable ones, that come to mind, is Michael Caine's portayal, in the absolutely brilliant, original Get Carter, and of course, Anthony Hopkins' Hannibal Lecter in the Silence of the Lambs. There haven't been any such comparable portrayals by a female-until now. Villanelle kills it (pardon the pun).

I noted that Jodie Comer, an exceptionally and uniquely beautiful woman, has eyes that are spaced relatively far apart. I'm wondering if that was a deliberate consideration when she was cast, because my first thought was that I was reminded of a lizard, or bird of prey. Villanelle has as little mercy, or compassion, as either.

The scene captured in the trailer-where she is in the ice cream shop, exchanging gazes with the little girl, was breathtaking in ways beyond what she does to the child when she walks out. In the lead up, when she is sitting across the room from the girl, it's clearly communicated that this is not a normal woman. The first instinct for most of us, upon meeting the eyes of a child in that circumstance, would be to smile. She does not-until she's reminded to do so by her observation of the man behind the counter. Of course; a sociopath is incapable of sentiment or affection. They can only fake it. She could not, until reminded by the man. In the end, walking out, she cannot help but follow her true nature.

She's clearly capable of anything.

She's a monster, but a beautiful, charismatic and extremely compelling one. All the more so, when we find out that she's an assassin, and an extremely skilled and resourceful one. So much so that she's apparently the "go to" killer of her employer, whoever it is. One gets the clear impression that she's not only indifferent to taking human life, she does it with almost gleeful and cruel nonchalance. There's no actor, male or female. that I've seen who pulls that off like Comer.

It becomes clear that Sandra Oh's Eve hides the scores of demons and trauma that she's clearly carrying with that flawless dry humor and wit of hers. One wonders if those demons are in part what makes her so relentless and driven. That she pulls off her character so effortlessly (so it seems) is a tribute to her underappreciated skill as an actor. It's for those reasons that virtually any other actor would have been well overshadowed by Comer's performance. Not a chance here.

I'll be stunned and disappointed if she-along with Comer-do not become bona fide stars now.

At the end of the first episode, with Vellanelle's already impressive body count-and ruthlessness-showcased to full effect, and with she and Eve (her prospective nemesis and muse) having inadvertently crossed paths, I can't even imagine what is to come between these two very damaged, and very powerful women.

As a member of the male gender, I'm already hooked.

First of all, I must address the inevitable complaints about "political correctness" and "too many minority" complaints that I knew were coming about Star Trek Discovery while I was watching the show. Sure enough, I note that those complaints have already started coming, fast and furious. In the interest of being as civil as possible I won't say what I really think of those opinions.

The fact is that the majority of the people in the world are people of color; half are women. The casting decisions in virtually all science fiction movies and television series from "liberal" Hollywood have either been unaware of that fact, or have ignored it, even now. A cast of a majority white European/American crew of a 23rd century space vessel, with one Asian, a Latino/Latina or two, and one African American thrown in (all subordinate to a white American male captain, of course) was "diverse" in 1966, but not now. Had Discovery hewed to anywhere near to this same tired casting model, I would have not been interested in watching.

That the captain of the Shenzhou is an Asian woman, that her first officer is an African American woman, and that many of the crew members are people of color--finally--is completely logical and consistent with a 23rd century era when the Earth, collectively, has achieved large scale space exploration. I have to tip my hat to the creators of Discovery for their very rare, and very welcome insight--and courage.

That being said, I loved the visuals and special effects, but those get old rather quickly without character development. The intent of the pilot seemed more aimed at throwing as much sound and fury and action at us as possible in forty some minutes, rather than character development.

I've always admired Michelle Yeoh as an actor, and Sonequa Martin Green more than proved her acting chops in the Walking Dead, and I was thrilled that she was cast in this role. I was disappointed that neither of them were given the room to practice their craft to a greater extent. Both seemed rather restricted by the staccato, rapid-fire pace of the first half of the episode, but began to find their stride toward the end. I'm really hoping for more, and for the series to slow down and take its time a bit in rendering the characters more fully. More drama and less action would be great.

I'm much more disappointed that, unlike all the other shows that were advertised during the too frequent commercial interruptions, future episodes of Star Trek Discovery are unavailable on the mainline network. I'm not sure that I can swallow being forced to fork over money for future episodes of the one show in CBS's lineup that I've been really looking forward to. I'd love to know the business case that is behind the network's decision to go that way.

Oh, well. Despite the fact that the vast majority of the reviews for "Kick Ass" on this site range from glowing to downright worshipful, I guess I'll have to dissent.

I didn't hate the film--in fact, I think it's well written, and very well paced. Technically, it is excellent. It does have some holes and inconsistencies in the story. There were a couple of plot twists and deus ex machinas that you could see coming from a mile away, and/or were a bit much to take, but that's par for the course with films such as this.

A lot has been made of the character of "Hit Girl," played by Chloë Grace Moretz, and for good reason. She's the reason that "Kick Ass" is groundbreaking, in its way--not necessarily a good, way, IMHO. We have a character, an eleven or twelve year old girl, who proficiently, sadistically and graphically kills people, with smiles and taunts, and graphic profanity. It's safe to say that she's responsible for the vast majority of of the film's prolific body count.

Take a kiddie/teen tongue in cheek fantasy/adventure film. Add a heavy dose of Scorsese-style profanity and Mob themes, along with Tarantino-style graphic, splattering gore, spurting blood, and dismemberment, and you've got "Kick Ass."

It's far more violent and gory than "The Dark Night," either "Hulk" movie, either of the two "Spiderman" movies that I've seen, or for that matter, any of the other superhero movies that I remember. In another time, and not long ago, no one under the age of sixteen would/should have been allowed anywhere near it. But this movie has demonstrated--emphatically-- that just about anything regarding violence and gore goes as far as getting young people into theaters these days.

I want to take nothing from Chloë Grace Moretz; she's likely a superstar in the making. There are very few other actors her age that could have made such a character as hers work, but she pulls it off brilliantly, and as believably as could have possibly been done (even though most or all of the martial arts/bullet dodging/gun fighting feats that her character performs are absurd even for this genre of film). She strikes me like Dakota Fanning or Jurnee Smollett, the amazing young actress in "Eve's Bayou." They're those very young actors who--at least regarding the acting craft--each seem to carry very old and world wise souls inside their child's bodies.

But I can't help but be given pause regarding how far we've come (or regressed) as a society when a sadistic child assassin (who among other things in the movie, pursues and then murders a fleeing, unarmed woman) is one of the "heroes" of a top grossing film, to all of these effusively approving reviews. I suppose the saving grace is that practically all of the people that she kills are scumbags.

As a person of the male gender, I have no problem with woman characters who kick butt as well as or better than any man--quite the opposite. But this was not quite the same.

If the film had been more serious about what made Mindy/Hit-Girl tick, and emphasized the context of her as someone profoundly screwed up, and the product of a profoundly screwed up life experience (there are some things in her past that it alludes to that much more could/should have been done with), then it would have been far more compelling and defensible--I'm particularly thinking of "Let The Right One In". Instead, what is emphasized is the violence that she metes out--the thrills of her stylized, computer enhanced, artfully choreographed acrobatics and battle scenes and killing. That, in the view of the makers of the film, is apparently all that the demographic that they were aiming at is interested in (and unfortunately, they're likely right).

In that regard, I think the biggest stretch of all was toward the end. That after having faced--and decimated--a roomful of mobsters shooting at her (on two separate occasions) along with everything else that she's been through, she enters school, on the verge of interacting and socializing with people her own age for the first time in her life, and apparently just carries on like any normal girl (though she beats up the two inevitable bullies who demand her lunch money). Huh?!?!

I'm sure that even now someone, licking their chops at the prospect of matching or surpassing the box office receipts that "Kick Ass" has brought in, is probably thinking of how to top this, and is working on a pitch for the next rendition of this film genre.

What's next? With CGI these days, anyone, even an infant or toddler, can be transformed, on screen, into a near indestructible martial arts master and firearms expert mass-killer uber-assassin.

Will we witness, in the next movie, profanity shouting five and six year old killers? Or two year old toddlers mowing down and slicing apart crowds of people with machine guns from their strollers while yelling the "c" word? In the context of a film designed to get laughs?

I think "Kick-Ass" is worth seeing, if only because of its role as a landmark where the line of what is acceptable to us as a society has been pushed, irrevocably, ever further. I just don't share the opinion of some of the people on this site who consider it a transcendent masterpiece, yet it is definitely not boring.

But I have very mixed, even foreboding feelings about the experience.

The first scene of the film was very well done; it set up what I thought would be the makings of a very intelligent theme for exploration. In escaping the zombie attack on the farm house, the sole survivor, having left his wife behind, has to live with himself. Given the circumstances presented, many viewers would be torn between hating him and understanding his decision. It was clear that in staying behind and answering his wife's plea for help, he would have died. He later tearfully apologizes to his surviving kids in what I felt was a very effective scene. The daughter tells him that she and her brother are glad he survived. And that is exactly the point, isn't it? Had he answered his wife's call, he would have needlessly died, and the children would have had no parents at all. Nevertheless, his guilt was clear and consuming. What a great potential issue to explore in a horror movie, and what immense possibilities it could have led to.

I was disappointed that such was not on the filmmakers' agenda. What could have been an intelligent and unconventional approach to such a film was abandoned in short order. All the more disappointing in that the movie devolved into just another guts/guns/gore flick, with much sound and fury signifying nothing.

Apparently that was all that the makers of the film were really interested in producing, with little or no point to it. Especially in that, in terms of the "plot" they threw logic and common sense to the wind. Apparenlty the mission was to ensure that the outbreak recurred, ensure mayhem and holocaust and death, no matter what. Perhaps in the midst of the chaos, the viewer would forget about, or excuse, the absurd liberties they had taken with the storyline and character development and motivations. I could not do it.

The great potential set up in that first scenes was spectacularly and almost criminally repudiated by the film, when the wife that the viewer thought was dead is miraculously found alive. Then found to be an asymptomatic carrier of the virus. Then, despite being of crucial importance as a source of a potential cure and a critical hazard in that she could readily infect someone, is left all alone and unguarded in a room for the husband/father to just waltz in with his access card, be infected, and then kill her. Huh?

It has also been noted by many here: 1) a military operation so lax and incompetent in terms of security and crisis response that one would be excused for thinking that the people in charge were actually yearning for, and actively trying to engineer, a provocation to give them an excuse to eventually blow everything up and kill everyone that they had been assigned to protect 2) the zombie dad who was apparently modeled after Forrest Gump, who appears everywhere, at the most ridiculously contrived times 3) two children who it is all but impossible to root for or care about, given that they, along with the mind-bogglingly incompetent military, were instrumental in reigniting the contagion 4) the million times before used plot device wherein the young medical officer (or scientist, cop, engineer-fill in the blank-) whose concerns are ignored or dismissed by superiors who are blind to what would have been obvious to any person with an IQ in the double digits.

A few plot holes can be explained or rationalized, but those in this film were so vast as to overwhelm everything. What started--I thought--as a thinking person's horror flick ended as just another mind numbing exercise in gore porn.

There are only three other movies that I have seen that have evoked such intense empathy on my part as did "Cloverfield"—"Open Water," "The Blair Witch Project," and "Wolf Creek." All of them shared, to a varying degree, features that I consider extremely effective: a cast of unknowns, minimal to no musical score, a minimal to nonexistent use of sets, and dialogue that one must think was improvised or so ingeniously written that the viewer is convinced that the people on the screen are not actors, but are real, and ordinary people that are being eavesdropped upon. A large part of making that work is that films such as these take their time in getting the viewer to the crisis/disaster, and convince you of the fact that the people on screen don't just exist for the sake of the movie, but existed, and have lives and concerns and issues that began, long before we are introduced to them on the screen.

Thus, when they experience the horrors that they eventually do, one feels right there with them, and feels that what is on the screen is really happening to them.

There are no opening credits; the opening scene of the movie is of one of the twentysomething male characters in a rather posh upper Manhattan apartment, clowning around with his camera, and then rousing his sleeping girlfriend. They tease each other about what they are going to do with the day. In the background, out the window, are Central Park, the forest of buildings and the streets far below, teeming with traffic. The dialogue is completely mundane and real. The view of the city, on the eve of what is to happen, is majestic, and spectacular. That is clearly for a reason.

Eventually, we see the preparations for a party, one of the characters arguing and bantering with his other friends, shopping at a corner grocery store, one of the women getting off a line that causes the cashier to laugh.

Then the party at a midtown Manhattan walk up apartment—again, all captured by the hand-held camera that changes hands and is there for posterity—a send off gift to one of the principal characters who is off to Japan for a big-time job.

The movie spends a lot of time at the party, one attended almost exclusively by other twentysomethings gossiping, dancing, goofing off, drinking, making fools of themselves, and flirting. Again, I got the sense that it wasn't a movie, but a documentary or reality TV show of a real party. It, and the participants were in and of themselves so believable and interesting that I and some of the other people in the audience chuckled at what was going on.

Disaster, and the end of life as was known, begins without warning, and in the blink of an eye. The amount of time that the movie has spent showing us the characters, and the city, during normal and ordinary life renders what unfolds for the rest of the movie all the more wrenching. Life, and reality, for the characters, and for New York City, is turned upside down, and irrevocably, in an instant.

Unlike any previous such disaster/monster film that I know of "Cloverfield," shows in graphic and realistic horror (with the viewer in the middle of it) what the people on the ground would experience were such a thing to really happen.

In reading some of the reviews online or in the papers, I've noted that people have talked of, or criticized, the movie's implied allegories to 9/11. I think that's overly simplistic. The source of the chaos and death is almost irrelevant. The human condition/reaction under such circumstances would be the same whether one substituted any sudden real world calamity--a mass terrorist attack, an earthquake, a bombing raid, or tsunami. The horror would not only stem from the source of the destruction, but the suddenness of the event, the complete lack of knowledge (at least initially) of what is happening, and the utter helplessness. In communicating this, "Cloverfield," was unsparing in depicting what it would probably be like to be at that age, to begin an evening, at a party, with a vast future seemingly assured and taken for granted, and then, by wee hours of the following morning, to suddenly have the rug pulled from under you, and to suddenly be in the middle of a war zone, fighting for your life, clawing for survival, seeing the city you live in crumble, and seeing people--including people very close to you--dying en masse and violently, before your eyes.

The special effects were all the more potent in that the advent of the attack begins at night, amid a sea of light and explosions. The depiction of the collapsing of the buildings was not merely effective—it looked as if it were really happening. Initially all that we, and the characters know is that a vast and destructive force has been unleashed, and is completely out of control. The creature, when finally revealed, is all the more terrifying in that it is totally malevolent, destructive in the extreme, and in that no one we encounter in the film, from the military people to the newscasters, seems to have a clue as to what it is, where it came from, or how to stop it.

An especially effective, and heart sinking scene is when the soldier confides in one the characters and his companion, the true magnitude of what is happening, and that if they're to try to find one of their friends, they have little time and need to get out of the city as soon as possible. It is all but confirmed to the viewer that there will be no eleventh hour triumph, or happy ending.

"Cloverfield" is a first of its kind meld of drama and science fiction that I think is destined to be a classic.

I eagerly watched the previews of the show on NBC's site, and more than once. The first time, months ago, I was really looking forward to the show. It looked like a fresh, original, and much more character driven, less hokey version of the '70s version.

The actor playing the lead is quite lovely, but in an approachable and down-to-Earth type of way. The storyline with Jamie's deaf sister, and the scenes between the two, looked really interesting-- real drama mixed with the science fiction motif. I hoped for a storyline that approached just the right mix between drama, SciFi, and action that involved a strong woman lead coming to terms with a drastic and permanent change in her life. One whose remarkable new superpowers if anything, complicated things for her even more.

It's emblematic of how something with great potential was greatly compromised, in that I noted that they got rid of the actor playing Jamie's deaf sister, and that whole storyline, and replaced her with an Olson Twins lookalike, stereotypical angst-ridden, smart-Aleck caricature of a teen.

That was only the first, and worst, of the sell outs. Perhaps all else was going to be the same anyway, but with what could have been one of the most durable foundations of the story taken away, what was left was a glorified, extended play music video.

The writing and pace of the story seemed intent on cramming in as much, with as much flash, in as little time as possible. There was no room to connect with any of the characters, or to really care about them.

Within fifteen minutes we are introduced to Jamie, her sister, her scientist professor boyfriend (another two-dimensional cardboard cutout hunky guy with a stubble); we learn that she's pregnant, compulsory tender moment over dinner at a restaurant, and then poof, accident, secret underground lab, bionic woman, other bionic woman....pant, pant.

Of course, there was the compulsory, only been done a million times before, attacked-by-and-beats-up-thug in the alley scene.

The chemistry between Jamie and her "boyfriend" was nonexistent--or we weren't given time to even see it. What little we were allowed to see of it, including the scene in the restaurant where she tells him she is pregnant, was superficial to the point of being almost laughable. And the scene where she confronts him about what has been done to her, they go to bed, and then he gets shot--what was the point?

What could have been a truly effective and interesting depiction of her transition to a cyborg, and adjustment, was instead given only cursory note. It was as if the writers weren't interested, and, just as regarding the part of the story before her accident, were impatient to just get it over with.

I know that Michelle Ryan can act; the long ago, very promising previews--with the deaf sister and accompany storyline--on NBC's website demonstrated that. But the glitzified, hurry-up writing, and frenetic pace of the story, and the changes that were made that I mentioned in the beginning ensured that there was little opportunity for any of the actors to sink their teeth into their characters, or the story.

The first bionic woman, the storyline with the Russian, and the man released from the supermax prison would have been all the more interesting if they had not been introduced in the tepid context of the overall story.

What a disappointment; I had almost completely lost interest in the episode before the ending. For me, I don't know if it's going to be worth the time to stick it out for another episode or two.