Reviews

I recommend that everyone watches BOTH versions, but the British version first. The production value is lower, but the quality of the story telling is better. If people watch this THEN watch Faucci at the White House, the reality will hit home. From the launch of the program, no one knows what is going on and the pieces are laid neatly in place, in a plausible way, for the watcher to discern. The quirks of the characters, and their conclusions, are reasonable and respectable. Even the craziness of the lead-female-protagonist, and her process of eliminating conflict, as well as reducing it while urinating is original. The American version was quit at the end of season 1 because the COVID pandemic broke out and it all looked like current events. Remember, the difference between a Conspiracy Theory and Conspiratorial History is 2 months to 10 years.

The previews looked good, and the cast is solid . . . Ish, but the final product is mournful in its shortcomings.

In it all, Tommy Flanagan turns in a six of ten performance, but he is the highlight of the show. King and Banderas showed up, and maybe they did exactly what the director told them, but it is not what we call acting. Arnold has no competition in either Action or Acting in this one - sad.

The fight scenes driven by Jaime King are woefully lacking in talents of combat. She is terribly underweight, and slow, with ungraceful kicks and weak punches, so much so that all sequences of direct impact, blocking, evasion, et al are completely unbelievable.

The relationship between Banshee and Caleb is cold and distant in a way that says, these people are working together but don't know each other, and they don't show any attachment beyond a paycheck.

Too bad he was not on screen enough to carry the show. Hailee Steinfeld was stunning as always, but the world's most beloved Tragic Romance deserves but doesn't receive better than amazing eye candy. Please understand that if it were just Juliet then Hailee would have been enough, but people, this is Shakespeare - and in this case, a heavily rewritten Shakespeare at that. In reading along with the script (from MIT) I find that there was considerable editing. I understand that the play is far longer - when properly metered - than the usual cinematic venture, but this one had lines omitted, expanded, and moved around for a preferred order, as well as having many of the words replaced with conjunctions and anachronistic language, while still presenting it as a period piece.

Paul Giamatti was the only really excellent performance in the whole thing, but second by quite a bit was Damian Lewis as Lord Capulet and Lesley Manville as Juliet's nurse. Between the three of them, they were half the excellence of the whole.

Sadly, the best character in the play is Mercutio, which in the 1968 version was absolute joy - but in this presentation was dull and unfinished. Shakespeare wrote him as a brilliant poet/humorist, but he comes across here as someone reciting someone else's lines.

The entire enterprise lacked all of the flow and meter of the play, whose rhythm stands in memory to all who have beheld it done properly, and in this one is flat and lifeless. How sad.

Remember when you saw that slightly overstuffed looking Jeep thing on the road and it said HUMMER on the rear? Remember, it didn't have any of that case-hardened military look to it at all? Well, that what this is as a "Star Wars" venture.

McGregor is phoning it in, Darth Vader is not menacing; he's an evil tantrum with no control. Even Leia's father is overacted by one of the best actors around.

A while back someone put together a movie about the life of the wives of Yaakov (Jacob) from the Bible. It was so departed from the original script that it was an abuse to the history and character of the people. It could have been done with ALL different names, just any Bedouin family 3500 years ago and it could have earned a 7 or 8, but instead, because it claimed to be legit Bible stuff, it earned a 3 or 4.

Here are some suggestions - change out McGregor; he's done his part in the SW world. Replace Darth Vader with someone more like Captain Phasma from Episodes 7 and 8. Change everyone else's name and make it NOT a Star Wars venture, because it wasn't up to the challenge. It could have gotten a 7 and the right protagonist (instead of Obi-Wan) it could have done better. IF they could have gotten Gina Carano to be the rescuer, it could have earned a 9 - but she would have had to carry almost all of it.

David is at least a decade too old when the film begins. Saul is not "head and shoulders above" the men around him, as the Bible says. And Goliath is WAYY TOO SMALL. I understand that the producers are treating the Bible as a typical action tale, but to get the facts of the matters wrong is to miss the point of the telling. Further, the liberties taken with even the first episode are so extreme that they reveal that the producers and or directors have no real knowledge of the Scriptures and no reverence for them. They treat the entire history as if it is a compilation of scraps from a high school year book. For example; when Samuel (BTW the only Israeli in the main cast) calls Saul out for not killing the King of the Amalekites, he doesn't even mention the fact that the livestock of the Amalekites was kept alive too. Further, he doesn't mention that the entire people and property - stock, dogs and all - were to be an Oblation to the Lord. It may end up being good cinema, but change the names to protect the guilty - by which I obviously mean the men who get the money from this bilge.

This presents Jack Reacher in a far more faithful reflection to the author's intent. Unlike the Tom Cruise editions - which were doubtless popular - this Reacher has a much stronger physical resemblance to the character in the books. He is also calculating and decided, while still hearing and sometimes heeding the advice of others on how to proceed. The romantic interest is believable and not in the obvious bikini model sort of way. She has brains and courage, fight in her spirit, and a gun in her hand. She could have her own show. All around an excellent piece of work that removes the taste left by Treadstone, Taken, Hanna, and the recent Perry Mason.

It borrows heavily - and sometimes outright steals - from prior traditions and myths, right down to stealing the opening line from the Bible as "In the beginning . . ." And the story really concluding with - "and the truth shall set them free." Borrow much? Oh, wait . . . Since no asking seems to have been done, isn't that just stealing?

One character is so much like Superman that one of the lesser characters says that he IS Superman, but the greater character rebuffs the child by saying he doesn't do capes. Batman is mentioned as well, and the powers of the Flash are borrowed, even though they are already borrowed from Mercury to the Romans and Hermes of Greek Mythology. But that's not the only one. Most of the main characters are derived from either Greco Roman Mythos or Hindi Mythology, and even more remote fables. One of the most amazing parts is that it steals so much from DC Comics without a single mention. :-(

We have seen all of the super powers before, with different capes. The story is a variation on the Kraken with a touch of Thanos thrown in for the intergalactic measure. Like I said . . . Derivative.

Someone said this was a loose remake, but it is not really a remake at all. Caine wandered the Wild West alone in search of his brother. Nicky jets about with boy toy Henry, brother Ryan, sister Althea, her parents, and she talks all the time with her dead shifu. Instead of being a wanted man on the run, Nicky is a woman with an assistant DA ex-boyfriend, and sometimes unsanctioned work to support the police. Instead of addressing stereotypes and racism, like Caine, Nicky is trying to stop some evil woman bent on becoming a super villain, complete with super powers. Along the way she and her never still family deal with every family issue they can except menstrual cramps - but I guess they have to leave something for season 2. Further, adding to the unbelievability, the family is supposedly suffering from a cash flow shortage, thinking about closing the restaurant, but she flies back and forth to China, Vegas, and LA, without a concern. To add to the losses, the super-pro-gay presentation of the brother and his lover is JUST a distraction, and the BLM episode was an hour I will never get back. That one was so full of innuendoes and not-so-subtle lies in support of BLM that I kept wondering if they were going to get back to the story or if it was going to turn into complete political BS. Next thing we know, the family will be attacked by rednecks in MAGA hats and beat back their aggressors with signs that say Joe Really Did Win. But . . .

The extremely assumptive Pro-BLM crap was such an exhausting waste of time. I was hoping that somewhere it would get back to the story, but even the end of the episode glossing back to the original mission was only a minute before it got back to the fraudulent presentation of a Terrorist Organization, dedicated to violence. But like Islam - a religion of peace - the MSM is selling the benevolence that does not exist in BLM. I hope the next episode doesn't disappoint as much as this one did.

. If someone wants to think that this contains spoilers - the only spoiler is that it is what I have said - pass this one by.

Throughout the show there are little snippets of things that happened once or twice in Scripture that the writers have made into polity of modern operation, often pulling moments from 5000 years past and making them the way things would be, or should be, if two things were to happen.

ONE, the Church of God has to become the animal that they portray and TWO, the government must have succumbed to the church as the power brokers.

The fear of a Church takeover, from the writer's perspective is so great that nothing resembling religion should ever be given a foothold of any kind, in any thing, for any reason - and they say so by spending every moment besmirching faith and the faithful. And while there is not value in faith alone, the object of faith - which is God in Christ - gets painted with a dishonest brush from start to finish. Hence the goal is met by encouraging minions to decry God in every way at every opportunity. While engaging, it is not honestly believable to a believer.

All in all, about one seventh as perceivably valid as "Animal Farm," one sixth as predictably expectable as "1984" and one tenth as real as "Misfit Toymakers."

I was excited to see that Rent was coming to the Big Screen. For years, I had seen ad-panels on the backs of taxis in movies for the stage show, and I heard that it had garnered rave reviews, great success and applause for many years from packed houses of New York theatre goers. Still, all I had actually heard of the presentation itself (other than that it was WONDERFUL from those who loved it) was the song 525,600 minutes. That sounded good . . . and the previews looked great. Still, I had no knowledge of the story or characters or . . . anything.

Not being in a hurry to see it - still wanting too - I was going to wait until the second or third week to go. I hardly ever go on the first night; or even the first week unless it is a "gotta see" movie for me. When the second week rolled around Rent was nowhere to be found. In San Antonio it didn't even get shown at the dollar theaters after week one. I thought that was strange, but, not having the inside track, I figured I would wait till it showed up in video stores or cable, and so I did. I set the digital video recorder to capture the Pay Per View showing a week or two ago, and learned why the movie left town after a week. I only wish I had not invested the PPV money to see it.

Realize that I have been to and lived in and around DC, Philadelphia, Chicago, Atlanta, New York, Houston, Dallas and more. I say this to point out that my views are not those of one being raised in Hooterville with no better "learnin" than the school marm could muster. I went to 17 schools before college, so I have some serious exposure to the world, and still found this one to be a dog.

The story lines were simple, though convoluted, and even when the music was good - maybe even great at moments - the subject matter was, for the most part, so rank. Almost everything was dedicatedly off norm, and much of it was downright perverse. Of the topics and displays of eccentricity, the relationship between Maureen and Joanne was the most palatable, and between Tom and Angel the most unreasonable. The fact that the supreme example and definition of Love was a homosexual, pet-killing, AIDS terminated, Drag Queen says plenty about the motivations of the production, and why it wandered out of town so quickly, and so quietly.

The only socially redeeming quality of the film, and I suppose the original story, was the fact that two of the characters that were HIV positive were intent on not taking on sexual partners unless they were also HIV positive. But that may just mean that the ONLY social guideline of the movie is that one should be unwilling to kill someone else for sexual gratification. Anything else is okay.

So, on grounds of theology, ethics, morals, social message, and true value of human life, it scores a big ZERO, but some of the music is excellent, gaining them 3 points, still the messages of that music are so vile it loses them another 2 points - rending a final score of 1 out of 10.

This kind of fare may pass for valid entertainment in New York, San Francisco and even LA, but most of America living outside the GLAAD universe would still find it to be both tawdry and mundane, yet more than moderately offensive - and not in a good way.

Thanks for reading. Keith

Come a long way since Family Ties to this movie where her abilities in winning a crowd with her musical motion that rivals that of almost any in the rock/wiggle world today.

The rest of the cast is excellent, Julia Roberts is a ray of sunshine, and Liam is superior as usual, but the Big Ticket is Justine. I found myself wanting to get her next rock video, and not even knowing if she had one. If you are debating which coming of age girl movie, which music movie, which overcoming love flick to view . . . this is the premier choice. I thoroughly enjoyed this one from start to credits.

The ONLY sad point about this movie is that it is only available on VHS -- not DVD. :-( Enjoy