Reviews

The mysteries continue to deepen. The Queen Regent ends up being a complex character that we grow to understand, not just a cruel despot.

And the visuals! OMG, the whole sequence of the baptism, the overhead shot, the drowning of Numenor...just stunning to look at.

The score enhances when it should and is subtle when it should be that.

The acting continues to be solid to excellent. Some of these actors do more with their eyes than other actors can do with a hundred words. And, thank the goddess, little to no whisper-acting, a technique I loathe to communicate intensity or anger (have those actors never encountered an actual human being? I always wonder)

I love the world Tolkien created, and I love what these writers have done with it. Jackson and his crew ruined the trilogy. These writers are making the unfinished second age works come alive on screen!

Stupidity on stupidity, fantasy that makes zero sense, just toss every cliche into a bucket and stir. Isn't there any desire in Hollywood to be correct about anything? "There are no volcanoes in this part of the Caribbean," says the dialog, though the characters are midway between Montserrat and St. Kitts. Lmao. There was an internet by 1996, so that could have been looked up but you'd think they'd notice that half an island blew to smithereens while they wrote this travesty. Lazy lazy writing. Read a book from time to time, writers.

"No nudity!" says another review, and that's about the best thing going for this smarmy, cloying, nonsensical, inaccurate, pap. Oh, and my kid comes within six inches of killing me with a blow gun "by accident?" I'm tossing that brat off the boat before he grows up and learns about guns. Smh.

Everything they say about human history and anthropology is wrong. 100% wrong. People ate meat, and only ate plants when they couldn't get meat. After the agricultural revolution 10K years ago, height went down, brain size went down, bones show wear and disease that did not exist before. And these silly people know zero about what grain farming is like: it kills hundreds of animals. Your tofu has animal blood all over it. The harvester sliced off sweet little bunny heads, and then crows and buzzards got to eat that meat out of the harvested field. But I encourage others to be vegan so meat prices stay low and I can afford a nice roast.

Did 38 people really witness the murder of Kitty Genovese in the New York night and do nothing? Did the NYT reporter lie about this story and know it? How do the families of the victims of such notorious crimes move on?

A very courageous Bill Genovese obsesses about his sister's murder, the apparently yellow journalism article in the NYT we all know about, its half-truths, and he interviews everyone who will speak with him fifty years after that awful night.

A cold, nasty little sociopath (whose son is hardly any better than he, and no, wearing a big ugly gold cross doesn't make a smart person not see that truth, buddy!) killed this dynamic, fun, independent young woman in New York in the mid-sixties, intending to rape her as well as murder her. He'd just shot a woman four times several days before, raped her dying self, and then set her afire. (And I'd point out those are just the two we know about.)

Her life, who she was to her family, was supplanted by her violent death, doubly a tragedy. And little Bill grows up and at 18 volunteers for the Vietnam War because he doesn't want to be the spectator who cowardly doesn't act... and gets his legs blown off. His parents both die before 60, the family is still clearly traumatized after 50 years. Bill's son is clearly hurting for his father in their conversation while doing yard work. The pain never stops. It really does make you think about the far-reaching effects of violent crime.

(Surely the temporary husband and Kitty were bearding each other, but if Rocco never talks, we'll never know for sure.)

This film made me, among other things, want to hang out of an evening with Kitty, maybe pick some numbers and have a drink, put a song on the juke box and dance. I'm so glad her real life was included in here, bringing dimension to what's become more a term, a symbol, than a woman. It's not in any sense a substitute for her having the chance to live a full life. But I am happy I and others had the chance to "get to know" and like her, frozen as she'll always be as a young and vital woman.

I haven't trusted the Times for eight years, and after this I realize I never should have before that. They're all about making money and being important in their field ... and nothing at all about the truth. In a way, if that article was really that far off the facts, they owe Bill a pair of legs. There's a thought to keep you up at night and make you know to never act on anything based on a news report again.

This film, however, does try to find some truth. There are still a lot of questions at the end, but some things, we can never know.

Wishing peace to the family.

And cancer of the penis to the murderer and his slimy son.

They did some good research on how the Royal Navy and pirate bureaucracies worked, and the production values are good, but then everyone has bleached teeth and they talk anachronistically, all of which troubled me.

Real pirates would be missing teeth (scurvy, battles) and a number of the words in the dialog did not exist in 1815 or even 1915, much less in 1715. It wasn't as if they were speaking Anglo-Saxon; it all would have been understood clearly by viewers. And some fake missing teeth, and some brown teeth would have been good, if the actors' egos could have taken it.

I'm not a big fan of watching actors have fake sex (I'll read sex scenes happily in books, and I'm in no way a prude, but actors always seem so very fake about it).

Better than meh. It was no Master and Commander, but it'll do in a pinch.

Tom Cruise as Reacher was like a creepazoid dentist groping you while you were in the chair on nitrous, and this version is like the shower that finally makes you feel like you are no longer feeling that awful touch.

I was a huge fan of the Reacher books pre-ghostwriters (up to and including 61 Hours), and Cruise as Reacher was so, so far off, it wasn't even amusing. Reacher is 6 5, has "hands the size of picnic hams" in the book, and over-the-top skills in combat against multiple people. He's terse, he's low-key sexy, and you really really do not want to make him angry because he is implacable when he chooses to be.

Alan Ritchson personifies the real Reacher. The writers help with crisp scripts, and the changes from the book make the story better for this medium. Willa Fitzgerald is believably tough as Roscoe.

I hope the second series is as good (sometimes, Amazon series are not. But I hold out hope.)

I fear that this was what passed for Hollywood trying to be 'feminist' in 1981, and while it was a step above Charlie's Angels in that, it missed the mark by a good bit.

The movie opens with an utter looser drowning himself in the ocean while high on drugs, and oh boy, are we lucky he didn't live long enough to breed a bunch of children as stupid and whiny-faced as he was; to me, this moment was most likely to win my applause. (please don't rescue him, I thought, pretty please?)

Then his sister goes on a revenge spree toward the drug dealers (as if tuna boy hadn't decided to and chosen to and hunted down dealers and spent his own money on drugs, but whatever, let's not blame him in any way). And she kicks ass, in a vaguely pretty sort of way. Some of the other actresses are exploited more by the director, but the lead remains dressed and serious throughout.

It all hangs together within the sphere of reality in this film, which bears no resemblance at all to the reality that you and I inhabit, or that we inhabited in 1981, but I suppose in these days of 50% of movies being about superpowers, I shouldn't be complaining about this level of unreality.

I almost want to give it a third star for the character name "Mantis Manajian," which is the most original thought the screenwriters had. The extra star I did give is because the lead and her kickboxing girlfriends can kick high. Good for them.

But it's a bad, bad film.

As are the two team captains. Two of those three are quite bright and knowledgeable, and they are all good at self-effacing humor. It's impossible for women to get a break from male viewers, who suffer from and impose suffering with their unconscious sexism, but Sue is every bit as good as Stephen Fry was as a fact/comedy panel show presenter. Sorry if that makes your tiny little things shake and threaten to fall off, fellas, but she is.

I love this show! For Americans, I'd describe it as a blend of Jeopardy (you do need to know your stuff) and an anti-Family Feud (as you are trying to find the answer the studio audience previously knew least, not most). Contestants are rewarded most if their knowledge is deep on some subject, but one must also have broad knowledge because any one question could trip them up and eliminate them from play that day.

The presenters are perfect (I'd already loved Osman from QI, but Armstrong was new to me.) I laugh at myself for my total lack of knowledge of snooker and rugby (really not things here in the US, though I did play snooker one weekend in Canada), and I enjoy the heck out of knowing all the answers to the word and literature questions and most of the plant ones. I've been surprised at how much Brits know about American politics and how little about literature. I'm pleased at how different our favorite desserts and childhood games are. We are cousins, but we are not identical. All of that is wonderful, for it increases my knowledge of our similarities and differences, and also makes me want to bone up on my knowledge of UK politics! Turn about is, after all, fair play. I wish my streaming subscription carried more seasons, back to the beginning, but I'll hunt more down somehow on the interwebz. I'm addicted.

I'd watch anything with Paul Bettany or Margo Martindale in it, and here I get them and a number of other terrific actors just acting the hell out of a moving script. The music is also perfect.

There's a sad story and a lot of humor and bittersweet moments as well.

I pity people whose hearts are so small they can't watch a story about love like this. May the Goddess grant them mercy and a larger heart.

Talk about some heavy-hitter actors! And they do well with what they are given. But the constant slamming us with pop music from the era grated on me quickly, by minute 12 (I always wanted to die to an "appropriate" Donovan song...not). That nearly made me turn it off, but I suffered through, never ending the wish that they'd hired a composer to write original music instead of doing what they did.

I've seen lengthy documentaries on this case which are far more interesting and fact-filled than this was. The case is an odd one. The fact they put in tiny print at the end "but DNA evidence revealed it couldn't have been who Graysmith thinks it was" negates the meaning of the plot and the power of the movie. It's interesting how other lives can be ruined by such a case--newspaper reporters and detectives didn't fare well and probably died, in some cases, younger than they should've because of their connection with Zodiac. And the movie does a good job of showing that.

Best scene was when they confronted the suspect, and they passed around the watch. Everyone in that scene nailed the subtleties of acting it. For a moment, I thought they were cops, not actors.. Robert Downey Jr gets to pretty much play himself.

Louis Joseph Myers is probably a better candidate for Zodiac, but of course they bought the rights to this book, and so the movie had no reason to talk about that, not reality.

I enjoyed the overview of black people in horror films, and being introduced to a couple of films that I missed when they were released. From scary black voodoo practitioners through "black guy who dies first" to (of course) Night of the Living Dead and on up to Get Out, a group of academics, directors, and actors talk about what the changes meant and how they reacted to it.

Why I don't rate it higher is that while the academics and screenwriters and directors had interesting things to say, the actors did not and said basically, only "man, I loved this." Not insightful. I suppose being able to have name actors in the cast means more people might watch the film, but if we're watching a film analysis documentary, maybe we care less about actors and more about the people who have insights they can better articulate.

Good info, half-wrong cast.

With modest budgets, Edgewood Entertainment's action films do manage to entertain. They're paced well, by and large. The action is what they can afford. Something blows up in every movie, and sometimes three or four somethings blow up. That's why people watch action films, and there's plenty of action in this one. There's generally a one-dimensional bad guy (JK Roberts, Rolland, the wonderfully bald Bruce Campbell terrorist), and this one has the cliche gang of small town thugs (none of these films are exactly advertisements for moving to Vermont, but Edgewood is not the Tourist Board, after all) and one more complicated and subtle bad guy.

There's always a B-plot romance, and the one in here is quite tepid, more a mild flirtation. I like the female character and actress, but if you're hoping for an R-rated sex scene, nope. Not in this one.

These films get skewered by the MST/Rifftrax guys, whom I'm a fan of, but these films are far and away above what they usually skewer. If you can't see that, it's because you are judging not the film, but the insults in riffing, like being a bully laughing along while a smarter kid makes fun of the kid in class who might just grow up to become Bill Gates. Quit doing that.

While it's true that this is a bit of a dorky-looking action hero, he's a good actor. And I just watched 2 years worth of Jack Ryan Amazon TV shows with the dorkiest looking Jack Ryan I've ever seen (and dorkier than I could have imagined), so that's hardly specific to Edgewood. In fact, I think that makes viewer identification with the hero easier. Hey, look, it's an average looking Joe, that's me, says the male viewer. I think it's a smart choice.

I could rate this higher to bring up the average rating, but I honestly think 4-5 stars is about right. You're never bored. It's interesting enough to keep me from playing video games while I'm watching the movies. The mystery in this one is pretty well done. Crap blows up. You spent 90 minutes being entertained. Isn't that the whole point?

But the whole gang thing, weird sister-brother relationship, plus the two May-December romances are offputting. But the Viveca Lindfors character, her art in the face of Cold War despair, and the children themselves were quite wonderful.

So what if you could breed a bunch of mutant kids who would survive the inevitable nuclear World War III that's coming? Catch is, no one can get near them while you remotely teach them (zoom classes before there was zoom!) And they aren't happy about being isolated.

Inevitably someone finds out about them and wants to rescue them. Unfortunately the people who do that are not at all heroic. They're terrible people, a rapey middle aged guy and the girl gang member who picks up random men on the street to be robbed. Lovely pair. 8/

The film is unbalanced with too much about the gang nonsense, and Oliver Reed's hammy acting is terrible from the get-go but grows to be even worse as the film progresses. More about artist Viveca and her ancient military BF, and the kids he controls would have made it a better film. A random couple on a boat finding the kids would have been better than people I'd already grown to hate.

But then the film would have had a running time of 43 minutes, so someone would have had to write several more scenes.

A friend told me, "well, that's what series are nowadays. In the first several episodes, nothing happens, everything in crammed into the last two episodes of a season, and it ends on a cliffhanger to make you watch the next season." Perhaps that is what TV is like now, and it probably explains why I don't own a TV, pay for cable, or pay for any streaming service. (I saw 2 episodes of this at a friend's house and the first one free when it was all over for free.)

This is like Chinese kung-fu wirework movies crossed with a vague generic dark SF movie. The music overpowers the dialog, so no intimate moments are allowed to play with just acting carrying it. Not that the poor actors have a script to work with. I feel for them. I ache with longing for the art of Melinda Snodgrass and Harlan Ellison.

Honestly, I didn't need to add my review except I could see the shill reviews that began this and keep the rating inflated far beyond what real viewers are feeling about it. This is pernicious practice that makes me want to quit streaming the occasional movie I do stream. I've quit going to movies, for why support a bunch of gropers and their lined pockets? But I digress. Or, I don't. CBS, after all, is one of those corporations that allowed such things and may still, for all I know. People of good morals should probably avoid all their shows.

People with good taste should definitely avoid THIS show. It's bad.

IMDB, don't allow new reviewers to review TV shows until episode 10. Only allow established users to do so.Then your site won't be quite such a joke.

A really lovely and fun film about the dangers of sudden wealth for regular folk not trained in its management. A rich old fellow comes into the lives of a typical family and becomes the curmudgeonly grandfather they never knew they wanted, but he hides his wealth and what drew him there. When he gives them an anonymous gift of cash, they don't do very well with it.

The movie is almost entirely Charles Coburn playing a role he was born for, and a nearly as appealing character is played by child actress Gigi Perrault. The scenes of the two of them together are a pure delight. I rather hope they liked each other as much as they seem to on screen--but if not, that was a heck of an acting job on the part of both! There's a romance, but I didn't much care about it. I was riveted by Coburn, and the romance was more like noise to me, but it did motivate him to do some amusing things.

Some truly good comedy writing in the script by Joseph Hoffman. It's around for free somewhere--do give it a chance!

They tried, they really did, to get on the Bond wagon, but they didn't have the money to pull it off. So the action scenes involve our hero doing things you or I could do with a mild headcold--riding a scooter at a sedate speed, jumping in the back of a van that's barely moving, and running a wire from a TV to a door. It's all they had money for, so I feel a bit bad for them. While spy movies are supposed to be goofily over-the-top (In Like Flint did it better and with humor), you have to put some money into the stunts and gadgets to reach that height of silly/amazing the genre depends on. Instead of fun, therefore, this spy film comes off as sad.

Harder to forgive than this lack of "wow" factor is the old guy hitting on the young chicks, but I know men who make movies like to think that they are completely irresistible to younger women and will be until they are 80. However, once I did the research into the actors, it seems that Adam is played by a (at filming) 38 year old man. Yeah, I know, he looks like total crap already, but that's what imdb tells me! The girls were 21 and 23. So it's not as creepy as it looks. He definitely looks 55 and they do indeed look to be in their early 20s. So he couldn't really be their grandfather--barely the younger one's father. The poor girls are often in unflattering clothes and awful 1966 hairstyles that relied on hairspray in a big way. One looked considerably better as Animal in Beach Blanket Bingo.

There's a plot. An Eastern Bloc scientist has escaped to continue his researches into bacterial sporulation (which is actually a thing, google tells me. Who knew?) Despite that he's developing a biological weapon, he's doing it in a rental house in Marina del Rey. (I once located the precise house on Google Maps, and that house had not changed in 40 years!) Seems like an odd place to have the super-secret bioweapon facility, but hey, if I knew what I was doing in this field, the CIA or USAMRIID would hire me, am I right? More things happen once spy and scientist and femme fatale meet. There are bad guys, but they don't do much until near the end. There's a showdown. The film ends.

Children? No, though there were no bad words, sex, or violence, the puppets were too offputting for little kids. Adults? Not any I hang out with or any I would hang out with. Teens? A friend says yes, that the lead has that Teen Beat cover model look, so...maybe? But teens want more pace, I would think. This movie had none. It hurt to watch. Everyone talked so s l o w l y and it made no sense. "Here's how you do this. Here's the ring--but you don't need the ring. And here are the three magic words, but you don't need to say them." And yet, we suffered through the ring and magic words six times by my count (said verrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrrry slowly, those words) And there was yellow magic air and purple magic air and yellow magic air was something just clear and then got upgraded to green, but the green magic air never entered the plot and I'm confused.

10 minutes of plot stretched out to what imdb says is 80 minutes but I could have sworn was at least a full day of boredom.

The old guy actor is clearly a good actor. I'm too sad to look up his name and see how far he fell from his best work to this. And the music was decent. That's not enough to elevate it to two stars.

All I can say, is I want my money back, and I watched it for free.

What I like about the Mothramovies is the look, the island culture, the dancing, singing. There's a lovely style to it. Mothra herself is kind of cool, a goddess rather than a monster.

What is less appealing is that this first movie-- as well as the others --is slow. Nothing much happens for the first half. The plot isn't that strong, and it is paced horribly.

And so I find myself waiting for the next musical number, the next interesting minor-key song to Mothra, or the next modern dance number with dozens of dancers.

What a laugh track says to me is this: it says you don't trust your own writing, actors, or show. It says you think I am stupid and wouldn't know where to laugh. It weakens your effort.

The show is fine. The acting is good, and I really enjoy seeing middle aged people in a show. I am not a great fan of family sitcoms, but this one is much better than most. I enjoyed the 12-step background.

But I cannot forgive a laugh track. When did MASH give up its laugh track? 1984? That is getting to be quite sometime ago. So TV, quit doing it. It tells me that your show is aimed at far stupider people than me. If it isn't, then trust your writers and actors.

I rated the first year as an 8.5 out of 10 stars. It worked quite well when it there was a mystery to be solved, but halfway through the second year on DVD I am really bored and not sure I'll even finish those remaining episodes.

I think it worked best when there was a mystery. Once the girl was found, that drive to the plot evaporated, and I was free to examine what there was remaining, and I began to see what was wrong. One thing: all the characters are far too much alike. It is one weary, cynical, manipulative person after the next. (In a sense this is sort of the anti-Star Trek, where everyone was functional, optimistic, and kind.)

Also, year two is full of repetitive scenes. Another argument in the UN of exactly the same type. Another political speech to the rabble of exactly the same type. A nearly infinite number of medical recovery scenes. Another speech between characters about how we have to protect our side, whichever "our" side is. Another boring revelation about somebody's childhood. The same punches being thrown. The ludicrous concept of Mormons somehow becoming a vast religion, surpassing Muslims and Catholics and atheists, who, considering the role science plays, should be the majority in this world. Another pretty face, but no interesting ones. I simply didn't care anymore.

Was excited. Now bored. Can check year 3 off my wish list.

Yes, back in the 1970s I went to the midnight showing of this and smoked a bunch of dope first, nearly a requirement of people of my class and generation. But in seeing it again, I am less amused. This is nonsense propaganda, marijuana's effects are nothing like this, and worst of all, we have spent billions of dollars combating the voluntary use of recreational drugs . And we do it because of nonsense like this. At the same time, tobacco, alcohol, the grains that produce alcohol, big Pharma medicines (98% of which are not necessary) are actually subsidized. It is beyond insane. The only difference between this, the ludicrous public-service message of a generation ago that showed an egg frying and said "this is your brain on drugs. Any questions?" (Yes, several, beginning with WTF are you trying to say, you nitwits?) and the current hysteria about whatever drugs are the subject of the current hysteria is that the fear-mongering message has gotten more sophisticated. Here's an idea: let people take whatever drugs they want. Leave them alone. If they want to kill themselves with them, that really is their business, not the government's. If they prefer pot or MDA or cocaine to whatever big Pharma is pushing, let them choose whichever they wish to choose. Get your laws off our bodies. So I'm thinking this is less funny than I used to think it was. It angers me. I want my war on drugs tax money back.

And jeez, what a horrible movie. Acting, sound, everything: awful.

I had never heard of this food "celebrity," though I am not immune to the charms of cooking and food.

In order to enjoy a movie I have to feel some sympathy with the main character. They don't have to be the most likable person on the planet, but I have to have a connection to them somehow. Even if they are a strange evil genius, I can usually find my way in and relate.

But this main character was hideous: A spoiled, whiny, bizarre little kid, who expected the world to revolve around him. There is an attempt to make a saint of his inept, sickly mother, but she was despicable as well. The child loathed the father, but despite seeing the father through the lens of that hatred, I felt the most sympathy for that character. Surely he had thoughts of infanticide but did not act on them. Now there's a saint.

In no sense that this provide any insight into the human experience. I didn't care about anyone. I was glad when it was over.