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WoehrStephen
Reviews
Ghost Rider (2007)
The four elements.
Not sure if anyone else picked up on this, but Blackheart's three henchmen represented earth, water, and wind (in order of appearance), whereas Johnny represented fire. Earth, water, wind, and fire were what ancient Greeks thought of as the four basic elements.
Mermaid Isle (2020)
Not even weird, just . . . bad.
I read the reviews before I watched the movie and thought I could offer some sort of redeeming quality to it. So I watched it, and I would love to say that this was one of the better-made movies of 2020, if only because Fonzie once said, "Bull makes the world go 'round," but unfortunately, I am too honest for that. Try as I might, I could not find any redeeming qualities about this movie.
SPOILER: One thing that might have helped was if the old lady had offered an explanation for wanting to kill Amy or for having to shooting herself, but she didn't, leaving the others shocked and with no way to even GET a clue about what was happening. Her son was no big help, either. He had about the best line in the whole film, though -- something about having to go fishing.
There was not a whole lot of emotion in the actors' acting, regardless of the obscene amount of profanity. The many awkward silences made me wonder if the actors had even bothered memorizing their lines. I enjoy a good B movie, but not this one.
It was almost like a half-baked movie idea taken from a scary preteen-camp story that the writer did not think through enough and the actors deliberately wanted to sabotage. Really, I think a better B movie than this would be the backstory behind the making of it. For it to be done this horribly, there must have been some drama between the two different sides of the camera.
T.H.E. Cat (1966)
This was great!!
I was scarcely old enough to remember things when the series came out, so I can't say I watched it as a kid. (My parents were a bit protective about the amount and the age-appropriateness of my television viewing.) But now, as a 50-something, I just ran across the name and a little blurb about the series. So I watched an episode that happened to be on YouTube (Ep. 6), and it was fantastic! I can see how the character and the series could intrigue the 12-to-20-year-old section of the mid-1960s. T.H.E. Cat himself was a mix between Sam Spade and The Shadow.
As an actor-enthusiast, I remembered the name Robert Loggia, but I had forgotten where. Looking him up, I found that, besides being a major character in "Independence Day," he was one of the few actors -- if not the only one -- on both the original "Hawaii 5-0" and "Magnum PI."
Adventures in Babysitting (1987)
Surprisingly not for children
This could have been such a wonderful movie. There is a simple set-up and several surprising plot twists -- some little, some big -- but I could not enjoy it as I would have liked to have done, and I certainly cannot recommend it to parents of even teenaged children.
What gets in the way of this being a truly sweet movie is the language. In 102 minutes, there are no less than 40 swear words -- approximately every 153 seconds, someone cusses. I know that is a relatively low ratio among today's sit-coms, but it is unacceptable for a "children's movie." What makes it even worse, in my mind, is that just about every character -- even the 8-year-old girl -- swears sometime during this movie . . . except . . . the major villain.
If there is a cleaned-up version of this movie somewhere, I would love it!