Reviews

This movie can't quite decide what it wants to be, so it wraps everything up in mysticism and religious claptrap. The story is bizarre and goes nowhere, while the saving grace is the good cast. I liked the actors and the acting. They are studied and nuanced, and well-directed. But the rest is pretty much useless and difficult to deal with.

This was perhaps foretold by scenes in the beginning in which the daughter-scientist was hardly allowed to leave the house without a religious symbol; and ,of course, the exorcism which ended with a drawn gun. Let's not forget that. This same person who drew the gun makes sure to advise later that the search for aliens is really the search for god. All righty, then. Even the actors have some difficulties selling this.

Despite a somewhat cheesy concept, if you say it out loud in a sentence, this actually works quite well, thanks to some clever ideas and a good cast. It's more a conspiracy movie than what it sounds like when summarized quickly (such as, the equivalent of a werewolf show). The last season is a bit less interesting, as it become complicated, lost some momentum and was set in a different time. The cast takes a hit as well, with the replacement of a fine French actress (Nora Arnezeder) by Gracie Dzienny playing the mature Clementine, in a major role. Her acting mostly consists of simpering. She's just so wrong for the role.

Overall, though, I was still willing and eager to finish this through Season 3, even with some bumps in the road. One thing this show mastered was the video equivalent of a page-turning thriller. The minute one episode ended, I wanted to start the next. It's well paced, and then some.

How can you not like this charming indie film? It manages to wrap hard issues around light moments. It gets you smiling and dancing, and still makes its point well. It doesn't hurt that they pick Springsteen to be the kid's obsession, but that's just a personal bonus that makes this hard to resist. There's a long road ahead, and everyone can see it. May as well have some music for company.

For this movie, set aside an hour and a half when you don't need something simple and happy. Watch it in a quiet moment when you feel a little contemplative as to how life might have turned out if you had gotten nothing but bad breaks. Remember that this sweet, helpless young girl is someone who would be demonized by a lot of people today. Remember that life sometimes goes wrong. Maybe she'll fix it, maybe she won't. But everyone with a shred of empathy is rooting for her by the end of this movie. It is beautifully told and beautifully acted.

The cast here is great. Watching them go through the motions almost saves this, and when it focuses on them individually, it's better. Loved the scenes of both of them getting high--not because it rang true, but because Charlize was hilarious in how she performed the scenes. Overall, though, nothing in the movie makes sense. Nothing rings true. His best friend's a Republican? That whole scene was inane--I guess since the whole movie is an attack on Fox News and a tv-show president, they felt a need to blunt the edge. That just felt phony--that they lacked the courage of their convictions. Then, there's the painful mismatch of the characters. As one of the other characters put it, it doesn't work. No one can believe it. Then, there's inane video of Rogen's character. Seriously....we're redoing There's Something About Mary? It just got dumber and dumber. It has some good scenes and some good acting. Terrible writing as it wears on. Awful premise. It isn't worth the time it took to watch it.

The first two episodes in particular droned on, betrayed by the poor script, poor pacing and so-so cast--especially JC MacKenzie. He's a role player, not a lead. He lacks presence. He also seems too old for the role (even though he and Taylor are apparently the same age). It feels like he should be playing a character married to the character of his mother instead of to his wife (Tamara Taylor). What he doesn't do--and what the writers don't do--is add any real drama here. Even the fight scene in episode 2 was dreary. It is hard to see McKenzie as a dynamic monster hunter. The rest of the cast is better, but only Taylor is really good. That's not enough to center this. Add the languid pacing, and what should be an exciting show is actually boring.

In another review, someone asked why they were still watching this....good question. After 3.5 episodes, I'm out.

This is the remarkable story of how we attacked another country for essentially no reason at all, and also and more importantly, how we created the illicit power structure that allowed that to happen. They could have taken those things and made it a boring and preachy movie. But they didn't. It moves along nicely. It's very watchable, akin to a page-turner book. Nothing stands out as much as the acting, though. Christian Bale is simply brilliant. He is downright scary, he is so good and so real. Kudos.

You can see the producers sitting around the table thinking about a new movie idea. One of them says, "let's steal a little bit from Alien." Another says,"but let's use Stargate as the main idea for the aliens." A third says, "let's sort of make the human infected look like vampires or zombies, too. Something in between so we cover all the bases."

Then they all agree that they should shoot lots of things along the way, because shooting things is always good fun.

You don't have to spend a lot of money on writing, dialogue or recognizable actors, though. The cast actually acquits itself fairly well considering what they have to deal with. The rest of this is so awful, so bad that it's actually kind of fun to watch if you have a drink beforehand then sit there laughing at it with friends. It doesn't even rise to the level of a B movie.

Okay, this family affair, in which all members of the Ferreri family seem to participate, is not the most complicated apocalyptic movie ever. It's fairly straightforward in a sense. It has no great surprises. Yet, the simple determination of of the lead character is appealing. It is well acted, but there are no histrionics. That makes it more emotional, not less. Overall it grew on me as it went along. I liked it more and more.

This is a movie that always feels cute, but it is wacky enough to avoid being cloying at any time. There's at least a small sense of adventure, and the two leads are pretty terrific as actors, particularly the Microbe. There is nothing profound here, but it is a lot of fun.

This foreign film with a supernatural twist is surprisingly well done. It was based on a well-known and excellent fantasy book series, "The Shamer Chronicles." Unlike so many adaptations, it is not in the least cartoonish. The acting is good. The writing is good. The plot is good as well. The basic concept, that the lead character can shame people into changing their behavior, has power. You do, of course, have to like things in the fantasy genre. If so, this is well worth a look. It is a cut above.

I won't bother with plot details and the like. They have been well set out. This light-hearted movie, or so it seems, becomes a dark tale of the powerful and powerless. The small triumph, such as it is, is very far in the future, offering little solace to the main character. Every scene is beautifully crafted and acted, as the movie builds to its unhappy conclusion.

The whole, however, is better than the sum of its parts. That results in a movie that is unexpectedly moving and insightful.

This mixes in many themes from dealing with failure to dealing with death--but the underlying one is pretty simple: follow your dream, seize your opportunity. It's light-hearted all the time, amusing and entertaining. The plot isn't complicated and the point isn't always profound---yet, you begin to like the characters and it matters that they seem to be happy. Overall, this gentle film is hard to dislike and easy to love.

It's hard to have great send-offs for episodic shows. There can't be a real ending when every new day is a new storyline. Just don't screw it up. This gentle goodbye worked.

The only surprise is that hardly anyone is mentioning the cameo by Sarah Michelle Gellar. I thought that was funny, and so like Raj...and also in keeping with the show's many nods to pop culture, like Star Trek and comics. One more reference, one last time.

This is a dated series that has a decent cast (two of them died young), but uneven writing. It is a good idea, but poorly thought out. It has no series or seasonal arc.

Each episode stands on its own, which is a problem because they are mostly pretty silly. The one in which a guy travels across the ocean to put a tiny statue in a rocket was ridiculous. The one with the wrestler was even sillier.

So many things never made sense. Somehow, what they could do was public and they were sort of heroes, but they had no problem attacking cops all the time. Generally, cops tend to look poorly on that. There were never complications in the simplistic universe created.

So, there were several episodes that were flat-out awful. Few of them were of interest, however. Probably the best was the wistful one with Ray Walston in which the old people had a brief rejuvenation, but that has echoes from an older science fiction story.

The silly plots and poor writing doomed the series. Its one redeeming feature was watching an early and radiant moment in the career of Courteney Cox.

This laconic indie film can put you to sleep in you're not in the right frame of mind. Turn off the phone. Stop checking Facebook. Set aside 1:20 to just concentrate. Lean and simple--but not simplistic--this tells a story that rends any heart still beating, yet it does it quietly, with dignity and without dramatics. Lucy is the key. The cruelty around Wendy is appalling, always doubling down to smash one of life's apparent losers. There's the young creep, lacking a shred of empathy or insight, who blithely declares that if she couldn't afford Lucy, Wendy shouldn't have her.

Yet, ultimately what Wendy does with Lucy is the key to the rest of her life. What will happen to Wendy? No one knows for sure. That's a deliberate ambiguity. If you wanted a clear resolution, you'll have to watch a different film. It takes awhile to get where it is going--something that pierces the heart and creates echoes of calamity as well as growth--but it gets there. Consider the slow pace a journey as well as a destination.

What in the world has happened to Matt Damon's career that he would agree to do this idiotic film? It's not done particularly well. There is nothing clever about it. It's not funny. It's not scary. It's not exciting. It's like a grade c movie that goes direct to video streaming. Maybe we can set up a GoFundMe for him. He seems to be having some problems.

It is the type of film that leaves you a little uneasy. That's what a good film of this type should do. It is a a film that illuminates the human condition and shines a spotlight in places we would rather not have it. The acting is terrific, the casting is great, and so is the script. There is no film that made me think more in 2018.

This had all the makings of a really cute and interesting film. Instead, it managed to take some interesting plots and turn them into pedestrian and boring scenes. There is no pacing, no suspense, no tension. The acting is perfunctory. The directing is routine. Everything is by the numbers. It's a shame, but there just isn't anything here.

After a failed attempt to get younger and go in a different direction in PP2, PP3 happily develops a plot line that makes sense for the aging singers. To me, this is way better than PP2. It has villains with talent (the Zombie performance was exceptional, loved the soldiers, etc.). It has boffo performances. They needed to do something different while going back to their roots. Happily, Steinfeld was marginalized as well. Overall, to me this worked well and the PP3 riff-off was a great one. Sure, nothing will match #1, but that's life.

What's next? Hopefully, nothing for awhile. The performers are longer in tooth. As cute as Anna Kendrick is, she doesn't look like a recent college grad any more. It's hard to keep finding ways to bring them back. The discussions in the movie of getting on with life made sense and imparted an air of finality.

If there's a PP4, it can be in 2030 with the stars mentoring a new cast and showing us where they wound up. But PP3 had a fitting "end of game" feel to it. Maybe sometimes "less is more," no matter how much you loved it. I get the sense that anything more now will just be mindless exploitation.

By far, this is the weakest of the trilogy. The German opponents are silly, cartoonish and not even that good (unlike the villains in PP3--what great rendition of Zombie). The attempt to inject new blood and get younger flops miserably. Hailey Steinfeld is not up to the task in charisma, acting ability or singing ability. The supposedly great finale with Flashlight is actually kind of tepid because of Flashlight's arrangement. (Yes, it's a great song--just not as done here, with a limp performance that echoes the early PP1 scenes that showed why the pre-Kendrick Bellas were deemed to be so bad.) Every moment with Steinfeld on screen reminded me how many better performers were available. The rationales for the international competition are silly--the concept that Fat Amy is doing acrobatics is absurd.

In other words, there is no shortage of flaws here--yet, for all of that, it is still a fair bit of fun. It's well worth watching, warts and all. The franchise revives in PP3, returning to its roots in many ways.

Everything about this is a little off kilter, which I mean in the very best way. The characters proceed as if in a fantasy and it all winds up in hilarious scenes. A Rom-Com with a difference, this is hard to categorize.

Yawn, a period piece and a serial killer. Yet, this enchanting miniseries takes that simple concept, freshens it up and makes it all special. The acting is great, the pacing and the writing are excellent, and the plot (where these things most often fail) works, too. There is also a touch of social commentary, which is well taken and happily more obvious from circumstances than preachy speeches. This clever program is one of the best things of its type that I have seen in a long, long while. Don't miss it.

Any fan of Jim Butcher's great series had to be sad when this died. If you read the books, you'll find that they get quite complex and sprawl. You'd need to have a Lord of the Rings budget to bring them to television. This had a SyFy channel budget. So, instead, this series aimed lower.

The fatal mistake early on was focusing on Dresden's role as a PI, creating a lot of "filler" type episodes. They kept the magic and "big issues" to a relative minimum until the end, by which time it was too late. It became the Rockford Files with a bit of magic. Who knows what would have happened had it continued?

It didn't continue for several important reasons. First, early plots were so-so, careening from one isolated event to another with no theme, no overall arc, no real chemistry allowed to develop between the characters. There were just random episodes in the life of a PI with magic. By the time they changed course, it was too late. Try #10, on how Harry killed his Uncle. Good stuff, and true to the books. Why wasn't it #1 or 2, so people could relate to Dresden's character? Ep. 11 was great, too. It continued moving away from the mundane PI stories. Too late! Too many early episodes were hackneyed.

Second, the cast was generally quite good, but Blackthorne did have limits. He seemed to personify Dresden in many respects--the humility, the bedraggled do-gooder demeanor. I get why he won the role. But he didn't have much acting range, he had 0 charisma, and when he strained, so did the show. Murphy had too little to do early on. Bob, perhaps, had too much. Overall, there is fun to be had here and I still enjoyed it, especially beginning with #10. There wasn't quite enough magic early on, though. It would've been nice if it had had more time to find its voice. I think it would have.