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Reviews
Identity Thief (2013)
What Melissa McCarthy's character does is mean, evil and totally lacking in value
My wife and I watched the first 20 minutes or so of this movie and found it really disgusting. Not that it was "dirty", just very stupid, unrealistic and the character of Melissa McCarthy is totally without any redeeming qualities that make you want to finish watching the movie. The comedic aspects of her character in the first 20 minutes don't exist. The character lives like a complete self-absorbed jackass. There is no way anyone could identify with her or her actions. Her acts of violence against other characters are truly dangerous and life threatening...not simply disabling. Her callousness routs any possible comedy.
Wast of time.
Even if you find this movie for free on a TV cable channel there is nothing good about it. Comedy can and should have a little tragedy but this movie starts with nothing but tragedy and the amount of it makes you turn away from seeing if it could be funny.
Homicide (1949)
Major bad guy in big movies plays a good guy
The audience is led on a path that ends with a unemployed ex-sailor hanging himself in a fleabag hotel he just checked into. The one detective that has some good forensic skills and plan good smarts thinks otherwise. The audience knows some of the details as to who did kill the ex-sailor but not why.
Robert Douglas played some very big bad guys in "The Flame and the Arrow", "Ivanhoe", "The Prisoner of Zenda" with Stewart Granger, and "The Adventures of Don Juan" with Errol Flynn. In this film he is a wise-cracking Canadian (to explain the accent) that works out step-by- step how and why and who killed a relatively innocent and innocuous young man in his town of LA.
There are some "CSI" and "NCIS" moments of scientific skills used to explain evidence items. And this was 1949! A good film with some good character actors, one of whom is Alan Alda's dad, Robert Alda as one of the bad guys.
I like good actors whether they play "good" guys or "bad" guys. But the ones who play bad guys always seem to say that they have more fun. Enjoy this movie with a well know bad guy playing the lead good guy and how he uses his head, his personality and excellent voice to make viewing a very pleasurable experience.
The Woman in Black (2012)
Asine ending
Okay, what's scary? Sudden camera shifts, a woman's face in black veil screaming? Lets get to the point...a woman sees her son die in a tragic accident (mainly just as much her fault for living on an island when tides cover the only road to their home) and then goes on a rampage as a ghost causing local children to kill themselves in violent ways. So what does our hero do? He figures it out (after all he's a London lawyer) but his solution...using a local's car (early 1900's England) to drag the "marsh" for the son's body...puts the body in in the nursery...and then buries it in the dead mom's casket. Everything's great, right? NOPE! The lawyer's son (his wife/mom died in childbirth 4 years before) arrives in the spooky town with the nanny as previously arranged and......The woman in black isn't satisfied she shows up at the train station (of course, with the appropriately made-up bodies of all the other dead children) and makes the lawyer's son walk into a train...BUT WAIT...the lawyer jumps on the track and grabs his son...AND THEY DIE TOGETHER! But it's a HAPPY ENDING!...the lawyer's dead wife meets them "on the other side" and escorts them to heaven while the woman in black looks on and screams...cut to credits. What a crock of fecal material! The lawyer, who's been moping around for four years gets his wish...to be with his wife again. The heck with his son having any kind of life at all. And the black bitch...does what? Go on killing? Can't tell because the "credits" don't tell you anything.