Reviews

I'm watching for maybe the tenth time at the moment, on VHS in 2023, because it's such a fun movie that even a decent copy on a good VCR is totally worth watching. I remember the ads for this film on TV when I was a child, totally wanted to see it, and first saw it on the Movie Channel in about 1982. I loved it on first watch, but didn't see it again for easily ten years or more, maybe not until DVD, and even today after so many viewings, I'm still laughing really hard at certain things, and noticing stuff that I hadn't before. Everybody in this film is terrific and they mostly appear to be having a great time with their roles, especially the Time Bandits themselves, David Warner as Evil (wearing a headdress that appears to be influenced by the 'Alien facehugger'), and many of the guest stars like John Cleese in a hilarious turn as Robin Hood (which caused me, an American, to pick up the habit of sarcastically saying 'jolly good'), Sean Connery as Agamemnon, and Ralph Richardson as the Supreme Being.

The first parts of the film, especially the Napoleon sequence, are a little slow (much as I like Ian Holm, he's basically given two jokes and milks them to death for way too long among dark scenery, a recipe for early slumber), but after the Napoleon sequence, it really takes off and it gets crazier and funnier through the end, which is a bizarre and not-happy ending that in my opinion works perfectly. Fans of crazy imaginative stuff like Monty Python (a must-see for fans of Gilliam's stuff like 'Brazil'), Douglas Adams and Terry Pratchett should check this out.

I'm still watching it and noticed something that's got to be a Star Wars in-joke that I never noticed: Kenny Baker is scrambling down a flight of stairs while a tank is shooting at him from near-point-blank range, and barely missing him over and over. There's so much stuff like that, it really does get better every time.

But not short enough, really. It might have been a decent episode of an 'hour-long' tv show, which is to say 42 minutes, but I couldn't endure more than fifteen minutes of this film upon first trying it, and only finished it a couple of years later after watching the full run of 'The League' and thought 'maybe this Duplass guy has more to offer than the cringingly-goofy stuff early on in Creep'.

So I ended up watching the whole thing just because he's 'famous' and a friend of mine insisted it's worth watching through the end. Without requiring a spoiler alert, I will just say that the rest of the film got slightly better in the sense that my eyes didn't roll out of my head the entire time, but Duplass's character is more 'highly unpleasant' than entertaining, and most people will not be surprised by 'the big reveal'. It's in about the 40th percentile of quality for found-footage films, but only that 'high up' by comparison because the well of crap is very deep in that genre and it's not as trite as 'a loud camera hog, a sarcastic cameraman and somebody they both want to sleep with are out in the woods when...'

I saw this when it hit Hulu, after I had heard some clips of her standup which seemed good enough that I remembered her name, but this is one of the most-painfully-narcissistic things I have ever seen masquerading as 'standup comedy'. She prances around onstage emitting random forgettable quips, and I kept thinking 'there are women who deserved this opportunity, but this chick is shamelessly phoning it in because she can cash in on her looks'. Watch Helen Hong or Heather McDonald's specials on Tubi because they're actually funny as hell and deserve the attention. When I saw this Berlant special, I didn't see the 'performing in the mirror' photo but it pretty much says all you need to know about this special. Only worth watching if you think she's worth staring at for an hour straight regardless of what she's saying. I made it about a half-hour in and it was one-star material, but maybe there was something funny in the second half that i didn't see, so I'll give it one star for charity.

Dismal, unfunny, forgettable. A 'hitman' is one of the most-trite and played-out characters possible to create (it's really getting old how tv seems to think most jobs in the world are 'cop' or 'criminal'), and Bill Hader mostly just silently chews the scenery trying to exude 'hitman' vibes, and it's just a waste of time. It's like they took the worst parts of 'Arrested Development' and 'Dexter' and lumped it together with some popular names doing some of their least-memorable work, in a boring 'meta' context regarding the 'stage actor' storyline.

Some fans are laughably saying that the show is 'underrated' somehow, which is funny because it's got 99% critical acclaim on RT and 90% audience, and hundreds of glowing reviews here and elsewhere. Let's not throw words around just to pretend "only a select few of us have such good taste". It's not a cult phenomenon when millions of people are watching it and it's showing up in my news feed no matter how many times I hit the 'idgaf' button.

Solely for found-footage diehards who enjoy urban legends and the like. I'm on my second time watching, and starting to think I fell asleep the first time. There's quite a bit of obnoxious overacting with some of the leads. The sound is terrible; very bad acoustics in some scenes, lots of characters talking over each other so nobody can be understood. There's a decent mystery overshadowed by the overcaffeinated dialogue, and it would be a lot better if it were more like an hour long because there's a lot of improvised 'filler' stuff that only erodes one's interest quickly. You can skip about the first ten minutes and won't miss anything, and every time something interesting happens you can fast-forward for another 5-10 minutes and, once again, miss nothing important.

I tried four episodes of this show and the ridiculous amount of blatant audience manipulation was just sickening. The main characters are Suit Guy, Average Programmer Guy and Hot Programmer Girl. Suit Guy waltzes into everything with a stupid amount of confidence even when he hasn't got a damn clue what's going on, and then goes home and cries every night at the realization of his own idiocy, if he isn't consoling his egotism by screwing whatever is available. Hot Programmer Girl is supposed to wow everybody because she's so hot, and bisexual, and duders think that's hot, and she stinks and that's hot, and cuts her hair short, and she's so hot, and she's a programmer who's crazy and stays up for days on speed or something, and she's so hot (even hotness gets as tiresome as hearing about it). Suit Guy screws her within minutes of the first episode, before we know who either one of them are. Average Programmer Guy is the only 'real' character who isn't relegated to the background, and his presence can't save this from the realm of 'most promise and least payoff' of anything I saw on TV that year. Real programmers who were alive during that era have said they see the show as a silly unfunny parody of those times, and that's exactly how it comes off.

'Mystery Train' is one of the most-fun, humble, personable and unique films I've ever seen, as well with some of Jim Jarmusch's other early films. Three fun stories, great musicians onscreen and on the radio, and really a heartwarming story on a rundown background. Since around the time he made the lukewarm 'Coffee and Cigarettes', Jarmusch has mostly relied on star power instead of a script with good ideas, and good lesser-known actors, to power his films, and it's another example of somebody who can't make a good movie with a big budget and big stars, because Jim forgets why his early films were good and is apparently out of good ideas. He has fallen into the same trap which has made for many tepid, forgettable films of the past which broke even at the box office: "We've got Bill Murray, so just let him screw around and forget the script". Forget about 'Dead Flowers' and Jarmusch's pointless, self-loving zombie movie, watch his early stuff if you want something interesting to watch. 'Mystery Train' is the real thing.

If you enjoy fight films and are tired of people trying to out-glamour each other, this is a good one to try. It's consistently fun, and it's intentionally loaded with classic fight-film stuff which, for those who realize it's intentional and not a cop-out, gets increasingly funnier as each typical bit plays out. It's not trying to reinvent anything or sell itself on a ludicrous amount of pretty faces, and the characters are a lot of fun to watch and I appreciate it hugely for these things. Anybody giving this film less than five stars is trying too hard to be critical.

I was doubly thrilled when LMAD came back, because not only is it an excellent version of the classic show (everybody in the audience could potentially be a contestant and there is no 'peanut gallery' in the back) but Wayne Brady is a tremendous host who has great chemistry with Jonathan Mangum, Tiffany Coyne and Cat Gray. Together they are one of the best casts of any game show every made.

Ignore the bad reviews; two of them are people who were disappointed with their experience on the show (and two of those are people who were on the show and aren't even reviewing the actual show based on viewing it, so their reviews shouldn't even be here), and the others are just weird stuff about Wayne being racist or whatever, which is ridiculous (how paranoid and angry do you have to be to think the adorable and charming Wayne Brady is frigging racist?). Bottom line: one of the best game shows ever made, with one of the best hosts ever. They got lightning in a bottle twice.

Some people go to super-hero movies to make themselves feel sophisticated when they aren't. The rest of us go to superhero movies to be entertained and this film does exactly that-- it's a lot of fun, highly inventive and very, very funny. Make sure you see the first film before this one or you might be slightly lost at times for the sequel. If you NEED to see worlds destroyed or massive convoluted plots and more characters than you can follow, just to be satisfied by a film, don't bother with this one, and especially don't bother reviewing it. This is a FUN film, not a self-important film.

All these one-star reviews are by 12-year-olds (mentally at least) who have often not even seen the trailer let alone the film itself; they can be ignored with a laugh. I'm finding out that a lot of people watch superhero movies to avoid thinking about their own inadequacies, and then go blamestorming if one of these total-childish-nonsense movies doesn't have a story which puts all of humanity at risk while trying to be the new Citizen Kane (a reference none of them will recognize I'm sure). It's pathetic to see people getting angry just because others are having fun. These are frigging comic books, folks, not historical literature, and you're just ruining your own genre by taking it SOOOO seriously.

I'm one of many who saw an article saying this is the 'scariest movie ever' or something like that. That article was lying. It's a decent movie but hugely full of cliches, even for this genre. Dead-eyed nuns haven't been scary since the '80s at best; it's like somebody was selling that gimmick recently and a bunch of filmmakers feel they need to get their money's worth out of it, but they should cut their losses. The only real surprise at all was seeing the spirit the girls got out of their Ouija board, because that was a disturbing revelation, but most of what played out was standard possession/haunting stuff. This is a 'filler' movie, not a headliner.

This is one of the worst documentaries I've ever seen. It gets two stars solely for being worth watching with the sound off, because it's entirely clips from 'The Shining' with ludicrous commentary which is absolutely unworthy of documentation. It's like listening to a bunch of people who did a drug that makes you talk your head off about nothing, and they think it's brilliant and fascinating but it's more about their self-adulation than actually having interesting things to say. To paraphrase Stephen King's description of the Kubrick film, this documentary is like a nice shiny new car with some parts missing and so full of BS that it doesn't go anywhere. It might be worthy to use as a soundless backdrop for Halloween parties with a DJ playing music, because what I saw was the same ten minutes of film repeated over and over for the 45 minutes of this film I could stand to watch.

I rarely bother 'following' new shows per episode, but this new Muppet show is absolutely hilarious. I liked the original show when I was little-- I was born the year it began, saw all of it and all the movies through late '80s-- but after not seeing it for twenty years or so, I was very pleasantly surprised to find that I find the Muppets a lot funnier now than I ever found them as a child, both the old show and the newer movie and this TV show. For those who say they need a show they can watch with their kids, that show is called Sesame Street. Let the grown-ups have our Muppets too. It's said to be receiving a 'reboot' this spring, and I hope that's a massive overstatement because it's seriously funny as hell and I'll buy the blu-ray and the t-shirt if it stays this way. If it turns toward banal, obvious humor for the kiddies, I'm out.

This is a beautiful and understated film about people trying to get the best out of the interaction of their personal lives with their sports performance. This is a very realistic, documentary-like film, and not everybody wants that from a film. If you want predictable, this isn't it: this film is human. You see these people go through real changes, as logical, illogical, fickle and precarious as life can be. The acting is top-notch, including the real-life athletes in scripted parts. Scott Glenn and Mariel Hemingway do some of their best work here. Patrice Donnelly is one of the most gorgeous women I have ever seen. The relationship depicted between her and Hemingway is complex, intelligent and non-exploitative. Just don't assume it's a 'typical' lesbian relationship-- it's THEIR relationship and has its own progression with which some will identify and some won't. It's definitely a superior alternative to what gay men were presented with around the same time: 'Making Love', which is soap-opera cheesy and ruined poor Harry Hamlin's movie career before it could get much of anywhere (and, to his credit, he is still proud of having done the role). Any lesbian who thinks 'Personal Best' is patronizing, really needs to see 'Making Love'.

Few movies make me nostalgic, but 'Personal Best' does, very much so-- I wish I could time-warp back to Eugene in 1976! It's got that 'natural' '70s vibe to it, and it is sometimes heartwarming to see people without cellphones or computers. All around this film makes the athletes larger-than-life and gets under their skin in ways few films have ever done, and I'm not a sports-oriented person, let alone given to watching track-and-field. The shot-put scene at the Olympic trial at the end is one of many marvelously-conceived sequences which literally make me feel like I'm in the action, as the athletes in slo-mo coil into position with the shot, getting eye-to-eye with the camera just before they all spring forth at once in a nice feat of editing.

The DVD release of this film is a little confounding because, even though it's widescreen, the image quality is really not much better than a good VHS copy. There is a lot of visual noise, especially obvious on dark backgrounds (like the credits), which was very disappointing to see-- it seems that a DVD release does not guarantee quality, just compatibility. But at least it's available, whereas the VHS is becoming very hard-to-find except on Amazon (can't believe I've never even seen one at Goodwill). I would love to see this film restored to its full magnificence.