Change Your Image
asterhune
Reviews
Butch Cassidy and the Sundance Kid (1969)
Collasal waste of time
If it wasn't for Redford and Newman this film wouldn't have made a dime. Not that their acting shines. It doesn't. I had avoided watching it for over 50 years based on what I'd read about. I should have avoided it forever. Don't waste your time. There are better ways to spend two hours.
The Shape of Water (2017)
Creature from the Black Lagoon with bigger budget
The only reason I went was because of all the Oscar nominations. What a mistake. The plot is simplistic. The bad guys all wear black hats. The plot is as subtle as a brick and predictable start to finish. What is the Academy thinking?
Moonlight (2016)
Two wasted hours
Yes, it had good acting. Yes, it was technically well made. But there's no there there. For us it never achieved liftoff. It kept plodding on and on, nothing really wrong with it, but nothing to justify spending two hours on. In the end (and at the end) we were left wondering, why is the end now? Why not 30 minutes before or 30 minutes after? Possibly a good movie for film buffs/critics who are tired of the same old thing, but for the occasional movie goer, we can do better.
Whiplash (2014)
You'll never look at drums the same way again
This film is what the movie experience is all about. You must see this in a theater to get the benefit of the sound - which is key - and the immersion of being in a room where the story is the only thing going on without distractions. Simmons and Miles "inhabited" their roles. The tension in this story began in the first five minutes, and did not relent until the credits rolled. As the lights came up, we three viewers turned to each other and said "WOW" simultaneously. We went to this film with no expectations, but had read other reviews that were glowing. Based on them alone, we took a chance. SO MUST YOU.
The acting is so fierce at one moment, and then so subtle in the next. These characters are extreme studies of what is takes to be "one of the greatest". You will be thinking about it for days.
Mr. Turner (2014)
Wait for the video. No, on the other hand, not even worth that
My wife and I normally love period pieces of this sort, but we give this two thumbs down. What a waste of an afternoon. Yes, there is gorgeous scenery, but I don't need to spend 2 1/2 hours in a dark room to get that. Somehow a plot seems to have been forgotten. The movie starts we don't know when, and jumps from place to place in a series of vignettes that often have little to connect one to another. At the end, we left knowing little m ore about Turner then we knew coming in, and not had a good movie experience. This, like Birdman, is a movie critics movie. If you're a professional critic, you'll love it for being different than the usual Hollywood pablum, but the rest of us can do better. See Whiplash instead.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Excellent actors in search of a good story
I left feeling that I had wasted two hours of my life, and I'm not the type who watches pop features like Rocky XVII. I enjoy the art house genre that this clearly belongs to. I don't know if this is a spoiler alert or not, but if you're waiting for the moment when the loose ends are all tied together in any coherent manner, you will be waiting in vain. That said, Michael Keaton and the cast give wonderful if sometimes overacted performances. You can see why critics like it - it's not the pap that they are forced to view day in and day out because it's their job to watch it. Professional critics, for their own sanity, grasp at any opportunity to promote something different or unusual. But just because it's good for them doesn't make it good for us, the casual movie goer. Since this is a play within a movie that is set in a theater, I got the feeling that there are inside jokes that those in or familiar with the business (such as critics) will get but which is over the heads the audience.