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nysalesman
Reviews
Motherless Brooklyn (2019)
BOORING! Left wing Hollywood hit job on Robert Moses
Let me begin by stating two facts. I am a 60-year old man with Tourette syndrome who grew up in New York City. That being said, I am divided about this movie. On one hand it has four fatal flaws. The most notable is that the Tourette syndrome angle brings nothing to the film and is more a distraction than anything else. In other words, the film would likely have been a little better without the Tourette angle. As someone with Tourette, and someone with both a brother and child who have Tourette, I can also state that I was not happy with the way Norton portrayed someone with Tourette syndrome as his portrayal simply perpetuated a false stereotype. The word association for instance, which was portrayed accurately in the book, is something we think in our head but do not verbalize. That being said, there was also some truth, like the fact that the majority of people with Tourette have compulsive obsessive disorder. It was also nice to see Norton's character show that Tourette is not a mental disease but a physical one. Hence, the two star rating instead of only one star.
The three other fatal flaws were: 2. The moving was so boooring! It was so boring that I fell asleep half way through watching it in the early evening. This made me wonder, how can a movie with such great actors be so bad? This brings us to the third fatal flaw. 3. The movie was written and directed by Edward Norton. Norton is obviously a brilliant actor, but his is obviously a horrible writer and director. Ed - stick to acting please. The last fatal flaw was the obviously politically left-wing driven agenda of the movie to trash Robert Moses, who wasn't even in the book on which this movie is based. To set the record strait, Robert Moses did not rape a woman and Robert Moses made New York City what is it today (yes believe it or not life in New York would be even more miserable - even for minorities - had Moses not modernized the city). As far as the parks are concerned, Moses gave up his own land to create many of them. Furthermore, Moses lived in the slums that he purportedly destroyed. So, he didn't call them slums because there were minorities, he called them slums because he lived there and saw it for himself. When it comes to eminent domain, it is clear that highways, bridges, fall under that statute. So, this movie had no right to trash Moses for doing what the law allows. If this movie wanted to trash anyone, then it should have gone after Bobby Brown; who's unrelenting efforts to build the Metro-Center stadium and Mall in Brooklyn displaced hundreds (if not thousands) of minorities to convert their neighborhoods into rich-white Yuppie heaven. Let's see, Moses Taylor used eminent domain to build roads and bridges and Brown (along with the New York Politicians who put his plan into place) used eminent domain to build a stadium and shopping mall. Hmmm, I wonder why Norton didn't go after Brown instead. Oh , now I know, it's because Brown is a rich black left winger, and Hollywood only targets rich white right wingers. The movie would have been better if it just left politics out by portraying Moses as who he really was or at least not building their villein as a parallel to Moses. Even so, it would not have been much better thanks to the other three fatal flaws.
Haunt (2019)
Are all the positive reviews for real?
Even though I knew this was by Eli Roth, who has yet to be involved with a film (horror or otherwise) that I find entertaining, I still got fooled by all the positive reviews. Let me set you straight, this is a typical college kid slasher movie. Nothing new, nothing inventive, no clever writing, everything is rehashed from every cheap haunted house/slasher movie that preceded it. I found myself bored to death and unable to connect with any of the characters or the movie itself. In fact, I would have felt less cheated if they ended the movie at the 30 minute mark by simply throwing all these kids into a giant blender and killed them off at once. BTW, the backstory the girl added absolutely nothing to this movie. I find it hard to believe that the positive reviewers are all connected with the movie, but I cannot think of any other explanation. "The best horror movie of 2019" - really? "Every time they did something that made me say 'wow' they did something else to top it" - NOT even close. This movie was boring, predictable, and slow!!!
To be totally truthful, it should rate about two or three stars, but since it was obviously so heavily biased by what I see at false positive reviews, I'm giving it one star. If you spend $5.99 to rent this thing, then you will feel cheated. Do yourself a favor and wait until it is free on Netflix and you have 90-minutes to kill sometime.
Batman Ninja (2018)
I didn't expect it to be this good
Okay, let's start with some background. I'm a 58 year old who grew up with, and loves, superhero comics and cartoons. I'm a huge Batman fan, but prefer the Dark Knight to the campy stuff like the Adam West version and Batman Bold and Brave. Additionally, I HATE anime. I find the style annoying and the story lines ridiculous. That being said, I rented this movie to watch while flying back to New York from California. After reading the reviews, I dreaded the thought of watching this movie. While watching it, however, I was pleasantly surprised.
The anime style was done with a level of detail that I found it tolerable. Yes, the story had tons of Japanese influence - but that was expected, after all it is called "Batman Ninja." Overall, I found it fully engaging and entertaining and a good addition to the Batman genre. In fact, I found it more entertaining than the 'By Gaslight' movie.
I'm amazed at all the low reviews, many of which I am sure are from the same fans that applauded that horrid Adam West animated feature released last year. I'm also amazed that I rated an anime move at 8 stars, but to me, Batman Ninja was that good.
Let There Be Light (2017)
Seriously?
Let me start by saying that I am a Christian and I love a good movie that promotes the Christian faith and what Christians are all about. It's so hard to judge these movies by reviews, because so many Christian haters will leave bad reviews just to keep the movie from being a success. That being said, I went and saw the movie for myself.
I had reservations, because I saw the train-wreck of a Christian movie last made with Kevin Sorbo (God is Not Dead). I hoped that this movie would be different. It wasn't. Let's get something straight. There's are great Christian based movies and there are horrible ones. Some of the great ones that don't sanctimoniously preach, but let Christianity speak for itself, are "God is for Real," "Jesus of Nazareth, "The Passion," and "Risen." Even low budget movies like "The Encounter" hit the right chord. Among the bad ones are the two from Sorbo "God is Not Dead," and "Let There be Light." What makes this movie bad? I think littleangelik's review pretty much sums it up with "results are often hokey and creates an us against them mentality." That and the fact that someone decided that the script must have the word "Isis" in it at least 200 times.
To start with, the movie tries too hard. Yeah, we get it: Isis is bad. We don't need to movie to constantly tell us that. Yeah, we get it: Sorbo's character is a drunk. We don't need to see him drinking five drinks at a time to know that. This movie insults the intelligence of all its viewers by thinking they are stupid and can't understand a subtle concept and that the people watching must have the point drilled into their heads until their brains spill out. They also try too hard to prove that Christianity is great. Well, guess what? Christianity is great. So it can speak for itself. Pushing so hard in such a sanctimonious manner is not going to bring people closer to Christ. Instead it will push them away. The attitude of non-Christians will be that "The lady doth protests too much. Me thinks." Even open minded people will think, "Yeah, everything I heard about Christians is right. They are elitist, sanctimonious, hypocrites." Then there is the aspect of realism. There isn't any. A drunk who cannot stay away from the bottle for any waking moment can somehow sit in front of a computer and concentrate on writing a best seller(?) I think not. An atheist goes from not believing to being a religious zealot with the flip of a switch(?) I think not. Sorbo is clinically dead for four minutes and has a serious life threatening blood clot, but the hospital doesn't even keep him overnight. Absolutely not. Then there is the character of the ex-wife. She is all over the place. She goes from being totally hostile to Sorbo (won't hold Sorbo's jacket when he is in a wheelchair and gets upset with being compared to the shrew when Sorbo playfully quotes a line from "The Taming of the Shrew") to holding him so he can sleep and accepting his proposal to re-marry her merely days after he becomes a believer.
I took a chance and really wanted to support a good Christian movie, because I heard Sean Hannity say this was such a movie. Unfortunately, it was not. The movie was merely a shameless exploitation of God and Jesus for the sake of making some money. Hannity was never my favorite talk show host anyway. In fact, I only listen to him because nobody else that's any good is on in New York during his time slot. Now I don't think I'll waste my time with this guy at all. He obviously doesn't believe in what he says and promoted this movie for the sole purpose of making a buck. How I long for the days when Rush Limbaugh was followed by the late, great, Bob Grant.
Scare Campaign (2016)
Ruined by the Ending
The movie shows so much promise at the start. Then you think it's going to decay into a cheap slasher flick when they twist it up on you and re-invent it into more of a torture horror deal. Overall, they could have gotten a lot more inventive to include real paranormal activity. Nonetheless, the twist in the middle was enough to save the movie - until the end that is.
While they did tie up the loose ends, the ending was pure nonsense - tantamount to the cop out used by the Sopranos. Totally ruined the movie for me. Had they given it a proper ending, then I would have rated this movie a 7.
The Damned Thing (2014)
Comes across like a student project, but still decent
This movie starts really bad. Everything about the first scene (and subsequent set-up scenes for the anthology stories) is bad. It has the worst acting and the worst production values. It must have been shot on an iPhone, because my home video camera takes better quality video than these scenes. The poorly written dialog, along with the poor production values, makes it nearly unwatchable.
I was about to give up on this movie after the first ten minutes. Then I remembered the other reviewers saying to stick it out. One even said that the bad acting and story was for a reason and it would all be clear by the end of the movie. So I stuck it out. I'm kind of glad that I did, because the first anthology story was actually pretty good and although the acting was still not that good, it was the best of the entire movie. Suffice it to say that the first story is sort of like the first paranormal activity film, but better and shorter. The second anthology story was decent, with the third being the least decent. Unlike the first scene and set-up scenes, the anthology stories actually had good production values.
The entire movie, however, never explained why the first scene (and subsequent set-up scenes) had the worst writing, the worst quality, and the worst acting. I'm taking a leap here, but this movie came across to me like a very well made student project. If I were attending film school and watched this as a final grade project, then I would say it was great. Otherwise, as a commercial film, it is entertaining enough to rate 5 stars.
The Big Short (2015)
Short on Truth
I found it ironic that a movie that preached about the truth went out of its way to lie. It's as if the screenwriters started by listing every politically correct message (including blaming the evil 1% - of which Pitt, Carell, Bale, and Gosling are a part) and wrote the story around it. Lies of the movie, the true facts, and where to find them:
1. Mortgage funds were greatly profitable for the banks by filling them with riskier mortgages (sub-prime). Banks that did not engage in taking on shorts broke even between the profit from the bonds and losses of sub-primes. HISTORY: 1977: Carter passes the Community Reinvestment Act which still called for sound banking practices. So Carter started this but was not the true architect. 1995: Clinton amends the Community Reinvestment Act to abandon sound banking practices and impose heavy fines to banks if they turn away sub-primes for minorities. These loans were then vetted and backed by Fannie and Freddie. 1999: Clinton repeals the Glass-Steagall Act of 1932 allowing banks to invest in the stock market. 2002: Dems saw fit to exclude mortgages from SOX regulations as no sub-prime mortgages would pass muster, which would effectively end the Community Reinvestment Act. It also gave Fannie and Freddie a license to steal. IN A NUTSHELL: The banks were forced to accept bad mortgages (sub-prime) by the gov't and were losing money. After Glass-Stegall was repealed, the banks put the bad mortgages in bonds to trade them for profit. The people buying and trading the bonds, not the banks, were making a killing (among those people BTW, were the Clintons). 1999 – 2007: Fannie and Freddie cook their books allowing the problem to balloon into a huge bubble and crash the world economy. An astute federal regulator caught this and hearings pursued. The Dems blocked the hearings and ran interference for Freddie and Fanny to continue to cook the books so no-one would be aware of the coming crash. 2007: Wanting an October surprise, Chuck Schumer's office leaks the true housing numbers to the media. The next day it is reported and public and the economy crashes. The Dems (counting on the ignorance of the public who don't bother to educate themselves) blame the Republicans and get their October surprise. Obama's poll numbers (which were failing since the Republic Convention) go through the roof and he becomes the next President of the US.
2. The movies says nobody knew about the upcoming mortgage/banking crisis and no one is paying attention, because the banks are making money hand over fist. This just isn't true. There were warnings about this as early as 7-years before it happened. As I stated before, the gov't knew about this and the Dems kept blocking it from being investigated, resolved, or leaked to the public. This is where the Republicans are also to blame and they also did not 'leak' this info to the public back when the damage could have been managed. This was at the bequest of the Dems to be bi-partisan. Just Google Fannie-Freddie hearings of 2004 to see for yourself. Additionally, Paul Kasriel of Northern Trust on July 30, 2004 (before the geniuses portrayed in the movie every saw this) warned that 60% of banks earnings assets were mortgage related twice as much as in 1986 and if the housing market would go bust, then it would devastate the banking industry and the economy (Forbes).
3. The movie first says Greenspan was clueless, then the movie said he was the architect. First, how can Greenspan be clueless if he was also the architect? Second, I've shown above, that Clinton was the true architect of this debacle. Greenspan warned about this in his annual reports but shrugged it off because he miscalculated that the housing market consisted of multiple bubbles so if one failed the others would not be affected.
4. The movie shows sub-primes as having been taken by typical white people, knowing full well that the Community Reinvestment Act only applied to minorities. The end of the movie even goes so far as to have Steve Carell monologue about how this will be blamed on minorities and poor people as it always has been in the past. I don't remember a bad economy ever being blamed on poor people. Second, it was the minorities that caused this by taking loans that they couldn't afford because the gov't told them they had it coming to them. The makers of this movie are so afraid that people like me would expose their lies that they take the time to stereotype us by saying we just want to blame minorities as white people always want to do.
5. The big banks were wrong for creating the shorting market because they thought it would be easy money. These are the only banks that needed help after the crash. The small and medium sized banks were fine, because they didn't get greedy. The fact that Bush and Obama gave bail-outs to save the big banks is the real crime. Who should have gone to jail: Franklin Raines of Fanny Mae (a gov't appointee who cooked the books and made millions).Instead, Obama rewarded Raines by appointing him as an economic adviser.
If I learned one thing from this movie, or more accurately the reviews of this movie: "Why We Should Hate Corporate America," "A Story that Must Be Told;" it's that even with the Internet providing a wealth of information at the touch of a button, the majority of US citizens are woefully ignorant and deserve to be treated like idiots by Hollywood and their government.
The Gambler (2014)
How much money did Mark Walberg owe the mob to be forced into this movie?
I never thought I would see the day when Mark Walberg appeared in a bad movie. Of course the usual clueless eggheads and elitist wannabes had to give it rave reviews because, in their minds, some jittery screen effects made a boring, classless movie 'artsy.'
The movie was boring, the dialog was inconsequential and dragged out, and there was no plot or theme. The characters, including the main character, were not developed at all and the romantic interest was basically a one night stand that at the end of the movie was made out to be Romeo and Juliet. By the end of the movie and the so called "surprise twist' I couldn't care less about whether Walberg's character won or lost, lived or died. The only redemption was the superb acting by Walberg and Goodman, but they didn't come anywhere close to saving this movie. It was simple boring and nonsensical. I'm glad that I saw this on 12/31/14, because if I had seen it a day later, then it would have ruined the New Year for me.
Now I understand why people pirate movies. After getting their pockets picked by movies like this, it is only right that they would look to pick the pocket of Hollywood right back. Do yourself a favor and see any other movie. Even Plan 9 from Outer Space would be better than this dog.
I Origins (2014)
Don't Believe the Negative Reviews
I couldn't believe all the negative reviews about this movie. In fact, they almost convinced me not to watch it. Then I saw the positive reviews. The reviews had no gray zone. Either people hated it or they loved it. Some said is was horrible and others that it was a cinematic masterpiece. Some said it was scientifically based and others said it was based on pseudoscience. In the mist of such an enigma, I just had to watch this movie - figuring that I could always stop watching if it was just too bad.
Fact is that the movie was excellent. It had everything that many bad movies lack, such as a good, captivating, and entertaining story; good writing, good cinematography, and good acting. Truth be told, it should rate about seven or eight stars, but I chose to give it ten to negate the obviously biased negative reviews. I can only conclude that the negative reviewers have an agenda or a belief system that the premise of this movie contradicts. As a scientist, I can say that the science presented is fundamentally sound, and as a believer in God I can say that the spiritualism is sound as well. Overall, this was the best movie that I have seen in quite a while.
If you are a reasonable person who has an open mind about God and the afterlife, then I think you will enjoy this movie.