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Reviews
Genius: Einstein: Chapter One (2017)
Einstein
After 10 minutes or so in the first of this series one is struck not by much of anything a young or adult Einstein has to say but the way in which Ron Howard the director is choosing to say it. It's just freaking exhausting watching the relentless swooping of the camera to record simple conversations, the cuts every moment or 2 to take in Howard's determination to prove he can show light flares, floating dust, shadows in lecture halls, characters looking at each other. Edit, edit, cut, pan, cut, and repeat, every damn scene. When the viewer is on edge waiting to see how else Howard will f up a story he's trying to tell that's not good.
The Holdovers (2023)
Kind of dreadful
So much wrong on so many levels. A cast of young actors is introduced as holdovers over Christmas at a boys' school, ones who can't be home for the holidays. So then this is a movie about their changing relationships? We hear one briefly reminiscing out of nowhere to his friend about Christmas at home, where it's warm inside, as if their own school and uncountable other places in winter are not warm inside. Bad writing No. 1. Director Alexander Payne presumably shouts cut, and one wonders where that was going, because it made little sense. I thought of Tommy Wiseau. This would usually be called character development, except that every one of them save for the one our story is about is very soon placed in a helicopter, landing on school grounds mind, and taken away for unseen fun elsewhere for the rest of the film. So goodbye to the cast of young actors and any reason to have felt anything about them at all, including of course the one who couldn't conjure up any other place where it might have been warm inside except for back home. Anyway, more bad writing.
So, a lone prof is charged with "babysitting" the one of them over the holidays, resentful and angry for this. Except they hang out in bars together, the prof flirts with a waitress, they go to a Christmas party, other fun stuff, defeating as far as can be seen the premise of the movie. A bit of grief about a dead father yadda yadda after an hour but it's hard to care.
Hijack (2023)
A bore
Bailing after ep 1. What "thriller" and "action" there is is neither thrilling nor action. Everything transpires so slowly one gets the impression they've had to admit we've got to string this series along, so pad the sucker. More wandering of hijackers demanding mobile phones (and not too worried that by the time they get to the final passengers maybe some of them may have tried the wifi anyway, and gotten through), the extended, repetitive attempt to get in the flight deck. The brit passengers seemingly have no clue that a flight from an Arab speaking country will have Arabic speakers on board. And so our hero has to explain why hijackers might be speaking in Arabic. Our hero's last line of the first episode makes little sense given there are a half dozen bad guys who sure think they've got things under control, thank you very much anyway, but episode 2 has to hinge on that nonsense. Couldn't care less then.
Fleishman Is in Trouble: Free Pass (2022)
A grind
This one's a bit of a plod with most every cliché out there, like the writer opened up the ol' relationship screenwriting handbook. Playful getting to know you banter at the predictable skating rink, deep thoughts lying in bed, more banter with the obligatory moving in to a first apartment, dully written narration explaining what we're capable of seeing for ourselves as the relationship starts to fall apart, fatty dialogue in most scenes that no one involved thought to trim. It seemed like a smart college student's stab at a tv script. Almost best move on to see what's in store with the next ep.
Tár (2022)
Best actor/ress?
Only one comment to make. From the start it shouldn't be hard to see Cate Blanchett merely repeating lines she'd learned, with odd hand gestures, unnecessary pauses before words, jarringly self conscious. The effect was enough to bring on the thought, who else might have done this differently, who would have owned the character, spoken lines that weren't somehow merely memorized, that flowed. Maybe the character, maybe the actor, but hard to not see it's all quite unnatural and probably not what an actor strives for. The rest of the movie was the same in this viewer's opinion. It's quite inexplicable how Blanchett garnered much more than just workmanlike.
This Is Going to Hurt (2022)
Virtue signals
Subtle and biting wit. That the good doctor is gay adds a nice through line to the series. One quibble: It's jarring the creators' seeming insistence on the camera swoop-in for the doctor's lip locking whenever and wherever it occurs. Let alone a heavy bedroom scene. OK we get it, it's cutting edge, upending hetero tropes, blah blah. The sense is that by God the viewer is going to be schooled, but this viewer though doesn't see so much VDA anywhere else on TV so, why here? The why here could be answered by what one suspects is a smug agenda and it's kind of disheartening in the end this choice to stoop to hitting us over the head. It's just dumb.
Mission: Impossible - Fallout (2018)
Dumbest thing going
Something about plutonium. Actors at any rate kept mentioning plutonium, then another actor would reference said plutonium, and so on. I made it to the bathroom fight scene just to see what that was all about, noticing of course that a sink somehow has an unconnected pipe fitting (not possible for this particular Paris club, so not possible, and stupid) that can also somehow be ripped from the wall (not possible, so stupid) for use as weapon, then somehow our boys crash clean through a chunk of solid bathroom wall (not possible, so stupid). At the end of this I turned the entire stupid thing off. This film depended on me being some teenager in Jakarta or Seoul to not give a darn about the utter dumbness.
The Crying Game (1992)
Silliness
Almost inept in its writing and direction. I appreciate the unconditional love angle but the rest is a lot of cringe, from Miranda Richardson's silly bad-girl acting to the would-be lovers' dully offered dialogue. Is there some IRA hit involved? Who cares, in a movie set up partly as some IRA "thriller." After the big reveal there's some hack tedium at work. That anything that could better be viewed as a rental back in the day when one could rent movies for a killing of 2 hours is nominated for film awards, shows how irrelevant awards are.
The Long Goodbye (1973)
Swill
Bad from begin to end. Didn't look at it as a take on Marlowe or film noir but as a movie to kill a couple of hours. Bad writing, bad improvising, amateurish acting. You can see the whirring going on their heads to think of what a tough guy says, stabbing the air like how some kid in a high school play thinks tough guys act, and it wasn't being done as parody. Such pointless rambling it was a relief to shut it off.
The Comeback Trail (2020)
Couldn't finish it
Witless junk. You get the impression they had no idea how to end a scene without having found anything funny there, so the befuddled characters just keep repeating what they've already said. Over, and over, and mugging it up. The director maybe the only one not noticing nothing's working. Or worse, wrapping and moving on. An insult to your intelligence beginning to end.
Ted Lasso: Tan Lines (2020)
Cringe
So the wife is introduced, all is well, then from nowhere it's not again. Something about needing space which is not explained beyond Ted's vague sad sack telling of her needing space. Overacted melodrama, cloying direction that ticked off all the boxes, an endless end that compensated I suppose for a script that came in too short. Let's get back to the show please.
Enemy of the State (1998)
One of the dumbest
A movie that treats the viewer like a drooling idiot. Very little makes sense, the government apparently only hires frat boys who say lots of Copy That, Will Smith sees a panicked guy he recognizes from school and in 5 seconds has given him his business card for no apparent reason except the writer and director figured he has to or the movie stops, cut to plot development for a few minutes, chase, manufacture some domestic strife just to have some accusation and yelling, chase, some high tech stuff that shows electronic bugs in "pants" and "shoe" that you're not supposed to laugh at, Gene Hackman at one point yelling at baddie govt agents to leave the surveillance van they're in and help the other baddies, and they do with a He's right let's go! Or the movie stops, etc. Tony Scott is playing you for a dimwit from begin to end.
Barb and Star Go to Vista Del Mar (2021)
Silly doesn't mean funny
We have the girls gabble on about an imaginary friend they'd like to have named Trish. They describe her at length. This was meant to be hilarious. A lounge singer has a song about liking boobies. Is the word itself supposed to make it comedy gold? Wiig and Mumolo thought so I guess. Is the extended gabbling about anything that popped into their heads supposed to be funny because it's done with a nebraska accent? Again they seemed to think so. A tedious movie. Jamie Dornan pretends to be a comedic actor while having no business being a comedic actor. The whole thing was forgettable after about an hour.
Owning Mahowny (2003)
Pardon me, but
Don't know why such positive word for this film. Everything about it looked cheap and laughable -- a casino that looked like a Holiday Inn; we're told Mahowney's in Atlantic City via a sign saying "Atlantic City" plastered on a highway overpass in Toronto where the movie was shot -- yeah, I believe that (a highway where there are no other cars on the road, btw, except Mahowney's); lots of pseudo hip "Vegas" dialogue -- he's going to "Vegas," the money will be sent to "Vegas," etc.; a legion of police cars waiting at an airport, segueing to -- wait for it -- Mahowney's car passing through the shot, slowly tailed by the aforementioned legion of police cars. Didn't see that brilliant bit of direction coming. Couple of tough cops at the casino wicket hear "630,000 dollars" for Mahowney, one actor cop jumps, makes a big "630,000 dollars!" deal out of his one line. He's acting, don't you know. Deeply symbolic shots of water over Niagara Falls. As in, do you get it? Falling? Ya know? Just terrible. But Philip Seymour Hoffman was good.