Reviews

I watched some footage of the actual Cassandro after we finished the movie, and it showed just how tame and bloodless this movie was. Why was Gael locked into this one bad haircut when Cassandro had great, grand hair?

This tameness also brings the storytelling down to a very banal level; the love story, the career rise-nothing felt like it had any real stakes. Only the relationship between Saúl and his mother raised this by-the-numbers biopic above the snooze-level.

I'm glad to have learned of this fascinating world of Lucha Libre and this interesting corner of queer culture, the Exoticas, but it could have been so much more fun.

You can tell Stephen Moffat and crew were very pleased with themselves when they came up with the concept. Trouble is, they weren't smart enough to realize they don't know how to write mysteries.

There are two halves to this show... David Tennant as the possible murderer in England, and Stanley Tucci as the death row detective in America. The England part is... pretty good? But Tucci's detective set-ups and resolutions are laughably unrealistic. You can poke holes in his "detective work" in two seconds.

The show just feels cutesy. There's a potential interesting story with the (possible) murderer being a good man who thinks he can remain good. The show could have been about that and left the Tucci character on the cutting room floor. Good actors wasted.

The script is clumsy (Really? Breaking the fourth wall?), the blocking is stumbling and cinematography bland (I felt bad for the poor editor who seemed at a loss to shove the clunky shots together). But in the end, this movie still worked.

It was a pleasure to spend two hours with these actors, especially the always witty and wonderful Sigourney Weaver. She gives the part weight without making it heavy, and she is well-supported by Robert Kline, Rebecca Henderson, Rob Delaney, and Morena Baccarin, all of whom turn in well-rendered performances. And in the end, all the pieces came together to make a satisfying story about people trying-some successfully, some not-to get through life's trials.

I'm frustrated by all the reviews that wanted a sentimental ending to a clear-eyed show about the bankruptcy of morality. The brilliant call backs that have made these last 7 eps such a pleasure continued accelerate and surprise. A perfect ending to a nearly perfect show. Just thank you.

I gave the movie 6/10 for the work by the wonderful actors. But this movie verges on the ridiculous. It is an excellent theme-traumatized victims of the Holocaust forming a new family to help each other heal-but it is wildly inaccurate about history.

At the end of WWII, Budapest was a bombed-out wreck. Yet everywhere here, it is in fine shape, and everyone has new clothes and shiny apartments. One character talks about the wedding they were planning for the April, 1945... which was during the siege of Budapest when everyone was starving!

Then there are the unbelievable ways the doctor acts with the girl right from the start of the relationship. Propriety is a much bigger issue in Central Europe in the middle of the 20th Century. The arrangement they made would have been impossible. Only the teachers at the school seem to care!

Multiple threats in the movie just fade away to nothing as if the screenwriters forgot.

Considering the wonderful cast and potential, this movie is terribly frustrating.

There are a lot of great actors involved in this production, and they're doing the best they can, but the conception of this piece is horrible, and the experience excruciating.

When you really sit down and listen to Joseph Mankiewicz's original script, you realize how heavy and pretentious it is. Luckily, in his direction of the original movie, he managed a lightness that made the piece sparkle.

But this adaptation takes the heaviness and just adds to it with pretension. First, there is terrible, intrusive score. Whatever comedy might have been achieved is flattened by an eternal, ominous drone that kills the actors' rhythms.

Then there is the video screen which again looms larger (literally and in attention) than the actors. The idea works best with Gillian Anderson's mirror POV, but it is just awful in the party sequence. The actors caught on camera look uncomfortable and like they're stuck in a scullery closet, but we end up watching them more than the actors on stage, and that's just bad theatre.

Watching Gillian Anderson do Bette Davis almost makes this production worth it, but only almost.

Hot Summer Nights is not a flawless film, but it's an excellent film. The construction of the characters, the use of legend vs reality, the amazing rhythms, visuals, and the crackling script all made for an exciting film full of characters I cared about.

The writer/director doesn't seem to have a lot of credits to his name, but I hope he has a bright career ahead, because he's exceptionally talented.

I tracked down this film because I want to see all of Chalamet's work. This movie and Miss Stevens shows that he had his acting chops early. There is an openness and a confidence to everything he does, and he moves with astonishing grace. Maika Monroe and Alex Roe keep up with him, and they form a wonderful acting trio.

And finally, Thomas Jane, as the cop, gives a turn that surprises with its heart. All through the movie, characters turn out to be more than their own stereotypes, and that makes for a wonderful, rich movie experience.

Doctor Sleep surprised me with its heart and a strong sense of the characters and their journeys. It has fun riffing off "The Shining" (and the actors reprising the original roles are actually one of the weaker parts of the movie), but Danny's story of trauma and growth rings very true, especially with McGregor's beautiful performance.

Of course, it's Rebecca Ferguson whose brilliant character creation as Rose the Hat that steals the show. Her movement, voice, beauty, calm fury are all rich and believable. The child murders committed by her and her family are truly horrific and effectively done.

Abra's character is a little too self-assured for a 13 year old, even a smart and powerful one, but I have few complaints about the movie and the characters have stayed with me days after watching.

I kept waiting for someone to say, "Here, can I clean your wounds?"

A good cast and talented designers are left out to dry by incompetent direction and especially screenwriting. The characters are inconsistent and have no development arc. The understanding of social roles in history is abandoned for nonsensical melodrama. The most centred sex scenes are heterosexual, and queer love is left as a strangely posed affair in long shots.

A waste of time. a meandering mess by a director who seems lost. Tommy Lee Jones' character makes sudden emotional leaps that are utterly unbelievable. You can tell that this movie panders to its audience of Karens because in the end, the trouble with the marriage is ALL the man's. Meryl gets everything she asked for and Tommy Lee gets nothing he asked for.

This is wish fulfillment for entitled, self-centred suburban wives.

Great subject, great actors. The writing was absolutely abysmal. Not only was the dialogue endlessly repetitive and stultifying, but character motivations made no sense, and all because of bad script editing.

There was plenty of room in this series to slow down and learn about the characters, and let those slow scenes illuminate the action ones. But instead, everyone seemed to spend the entire series flapping around like alarmed chickens, especially Fatima, the main character.

Nothing made sense in terms of police and security procedure, the relationships had no depth or resonance.

What a sad waste.

Great idea: using the invisible man plot in service of a movie about stalking and the way especially women are haunted by abusive relationships. But the movie seems to have been made by people who have idea about police procedure, how science and invention works, estate law, general logic, storytelling, or film making.

Elizabeth Moss is such a good actor, she almost makes it worthwhile, but the most fun was just spending the whole second half making fun of the dumb decisions.

The one and only season of "Class" is brilliant, coherent, emotional, and superbly constructed. It puts a lot of balls in the air and juggles them with aplomb. There are no places in the entire season where you feel like they've forgotten about any of the characters or the world they're creating.

The diverse cast is all wonderful and believable, and the adventures they go through always serve character: whether it's pacifist Tadeusz struggling to keep his boyfriend Charlie on a moral course, or Tanya's insecurity about her age, or Quill's dual pull between caretaking and revenge, the stories always reveal more and more about them.

The show looks great, especially episodes like the one where the town is covered in killer vines, and the acting is all top-notch. Yes, it's fairly bloody and doesn't totally settle into its rhythm until the second episode, but this show is anything but second-rate Who. It is a model of action/adventure/SF and it's a tragedy that it never got its second season.

A movie that proves that low budget doesn't mean low quality. This stylish, smart movie uses and episodic structure to tell one moving tale. The main character, a prostitute who ends up with four customers while lost in a slightly surreal apartment building, ends up having to face the truth about his own avoidance of love.

All the performances are honest, the settings beautiful and inventive, and the director fully in control of the narrative, which runs the gamut from comic to sad (although never too dark). Highly recommended!

The movie feels a little underwritten, like they needed to work a little harder on making the plot flow. But I want to HIGHLY recommend the director's earlier movie, "Strapped." It was also made up multiple stories that came together in one narrative, but it was much more focused and fun.

When I saw the first images of "Doom Patrol" - some stills released months back - I thought it was going to be a disaster. How could something that looked this cheesy be created by people with any commitment to quality? Boy, was I wrong. The campy aspects of the show are deliberate and carefully considered, and this absurd show about people who don't want to be heroes is beautiful and tragic and full of love and incredible humour.

It just goes to show you that you can produce the most lavish effects in the world, but it won't help tell your story. Instead, put a terrific movement actor in a dumb-looking robot suit, give him Brendan Fraser's f-bombed dialogue, and we have a character we totally care about. Ditto all the other characters in the show. Even the cheap CGI horsehead totally works!

Six episodes in and the show hasn't dropped the ball once.

The novel, A Wrinkle in Time, was the first I read that really felt like "my" book. I was 12 years old, and was totally captivated and changed by the story. I have re-read it numerous times in my life, taking new lessons from it at different stages in my life.

I approached the movie with trepidation, especially after the terrible adaptation done in 2003, but I was pleasantly surprised by this well-made film. I thought the movie caught the spirit of the book, while updating it cleverly.

The kid actors were terrific, especially Storm Reid as Meg. A couple of the "relevant" jokes (Mrs. Who making hip-hop references) were too cute, but I liked how they linked mean girl culture to self-esteem and then linked that to the spreading darkness of "It." While that is not what L'engle wrote, it is definitely in the spirit of her message.

The filmmakers made great use of a smart black girl lead. When "It" tempts her with a life where she's popular, the vision includes her having straightened hair. Making Oprah Winfrey, as Mrs. Which, her mentor also underlined this thread. Again, a brilliant way to make the film relevant to 2018 without losing the heart of the story in any way.

The movie really needed another 30 minutes in its run-time (and it wasted 12 of what it had with a stupid sequence of "hey look at me!" CGI), and needed to work a little harder on selling the physics, but I thought it was solid.

Don Jon is a movie of staggering confidence, artistic swagger, and biting humour. It is especially impressive for a directorial debut. Joseph Gordon Levitt's control of tone in the service of an important, carefully observed, and nuanced story is amazing. Note the difference in pace, editing, and camera-work as The title character learns to see sex and relationships in the new light. The actors are universally good, rising above stereotype to deliver performances of deep understanding. Especially notable is Scarlett Johansson who turns out to be a comedian of great precision. There isn't a false note in the whole picture, which is brought in at an admirably concise 87 minutes. Levitt is building a whole career on surprises and daring. I look forward to what ever he does text.

This is a maddening movie, though a good one. The structure is just about perfect, and the family's dysfunction unspools in a very controlled way. The acting is universally excellent and clear. The movie makes wonderful use of the unique landscape of the Isle of Scilly, and all in all, I felt I was in the hands of first class creators.

But…

The rhythm is eternally and unchangingly slow. Every scene begins with long, long minutes of barely discernible action. There is, despite the simmering resentments, only a single explosion. This lugubrious technique is both effective and maddening. The movie seems like an experiment in just how far you can go into hazy somnambulance and still create dramatic tension.

Don't watch it when you're sleepy.

In addition to this movie being a bravura and gorgeous piece of technical and cinematographic art, it is also one of the sharpest comedies I've seen in a long time. The cast understand perfectly that the best comedy comes out of acting the pain of the scene. The insecurities and loves of the actors are sometimes ridiculous and hilarious, but always believable and brilliantly portrayed.

In fact, the movie gets less interesting at the end when we stop having the interplay of the four actors in the play. And Edward Norton! Seriously, the man has done almost nothing worth watching since "Fight Club" (he was good in a small role in "Moonrise Kingdom") but here he is astounding. The timing, the physicality, the interplay with Keaton, Naomi Watts and Emma Stone — just fearless and top-notch.