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shermanvoeh
Reviews
Stronghold (2023)
Simply awful.
30 minutes in and I'm still waiting for the movie to start. I check to be sure it's not a first of a series episode. The repetitive dialogue is embarrassingly awkward to hear. The acting painfully stilted. Why do they keep saying each other's name at the end of every sentence? Were they worried the audience would get confused by an ensemble cast of three?
Where are all the other user reviews? Am I the only one to sit through the whole thing?
This movie was created by taking 20 different types of dystopian movies, load them into some AI script think machine and set for 126 mins of run-time. My local family-owned furniture store infomercials are more entertaining.
Let Him Go (2020)
Good to watch once......
If Diane Lane and Kevin Costner are personal favorites, this is a good movie to watch at least once. It's based on a well received novel of the same title. While the actors do their best, the script is disjointed, characters not believable, plot holes irritating, characters that could use some fleshing out. The movie is a hatchet job of the book.
Grieving mom/grandmother Margaret Blackledge (Diane) goes all out to save her young grandson Jimmy from a horrible life with abusive thugs instead of being supportive to her former daughter-in-law, widow Lorna. Lorna marries thug Donnie Weboy after living with her in-laws several years. Margaret witnesses Donnie physical abusing Lorna and Jimmy in public. Margaret was not seen, nor reports the behavior, yet the little Weboy family immediately skips town without goodbyes or forwarding address. Grandfather George (Kevin) does not seem to employ enough skills learned in as a retired sheriff to keep his family out of harm's way after locating the extended family of Weboys. Both of them sit there like idiots while the psycho step-family becomes increasingly aggressive towards them over matriarch grandma Blanche's porkchop dinner. Run! Get outside reinforcements if the local sheriff is as looney as the step-family! Don't take matters into your own hand(s)! While the entire Weboy family obviously has mental issues, it did not seem like they planned to harm grandson Jimmy or Lorna on pork chop night.
The Blackledge's interactions with reclusive, native Indian Peter Dragswolf are strange and unnerving. Dragswolf is alone by choice after years of abuse by non-Indians. They intrude on his little camp with very little invitation. Leave him alone instead of jerking him into the story to risk his life just to fill in some gaps.
Events surrounding their son James's sudden death at the beginning of the film are unclear - Did he have an aneurism? Was thug Donnie involved? By the time you find out near the end, who cares? Who was the "Him" that was let go? Who cares?
Quote by George Blackledge: "Sometimes that's all life is, Margaret. The list of what we've lost." Add 1h 53min of movie time to the list.