As a lover of the true crime genre, I am insulted when a conspiracy that makes no sense and has no corroborating evidence is made into a lengthy incoherent film with lots of manipulative photos of politicians and scary music that prove NOTHING. The alleged link between an allegedly stolen piece of software used to track convicts in a personnel database and the alleged plot of the Republicans to pay off Iran to hold the 53 American hostages until after the 1980 election is ridiculously weak and the idea that rogue elements of the US government have been killing people for the past 44 years to keep this a secret is laughably absurd. It seems like Netflix is doing its part for the Democrats again by producing a film that vilifies Republicans, even if they have to go back in time almost 50 years to find something! There was absolutely nothing to this series except an illustration of how desperate journalists can go so far down a rabbit hole that they destroy their lives chasing something that is simply a myth. But it lacks the credibility and cohesion of a great film like Zodiac, which was intelligent and believable despite being inconclusive.
Reviews
46 Reviews
Sound of Freedom
(2023)
Realistic yet tasteful expose of horrific problem
26 December 2023
First half is very original, chilling and strong, but it gets formulaic and predictable like a Mission Impossible episode toward the end. Mira Sorvino who plays the wife who allegedly inspired the real life hero of this story, could not have been on the screen for more than two minutes, which was a bit disappointing. After all the raves and earned press the film received, it's hard for it not to disappoint on some levels, but one still has to be in awe of the first film to expose the horrific truth about child sex trafficking originating in Latin America. I would have liked to see much more about consumer activity on the US side of the border, given that the US allegedly represents the biggest share of customers that keep this industry going. Perhaps a follow-up film needs to be made to show that side of the story and how the open border plays into it.
Shababnikim
(2017– )
One of the best Israeli shows ever
26 February 2023
If you've had anything to do with Orthodox Jews or are just curious about their culture in Israel, this is a great show that combines comedy with poignant social commentary. It not only deals with orthodox vs. Secular Jews, but Ashkenazi vs. Sephardic Jews and special challenges faced by Orthodox Jewish women. Well written, beautifully acted and populated by characters you will care about. Every bit as good as Shtisel, if not better. Anyone who went to an Orthodox Yeshiva or dealt with the internal social politics among the religious and non-religious in Israel will love it. And the second season is even better than the first.
Fall
(I) (2022)
Demented: Depicts gratuitous cruelty to animals
10 February 2023
I could tell from the corny, cheesy dialogue and bad acting at the start that this was going to be a cheap exploitation movie of the week but I was prepared to put up with all that for some great thrills and special effects. I quit 20 minutes into the film when Thelma and Louise Jr. Come upon a dying coyote or dog being horrifically eaten alive by vultures. After shooing away the birds, these narcissistic twits just leave the poor creature there to suffer and walk away with depraved indifference saying something glib like "Oh well, that's survival of the fittest." I wasn't expecting anything intellectual or artistic here, but at least something like Stallone's film Cliffhanger (2000) or The Walk (2015) with Joseph Gordon-Levitt. I'm totally turned off by the depiction of gratuitous cruelty to animals in films. It makes me hate the characters in the film, and then I no longer care about what else the film is trying to do or say. No thank you!
Well-done expose of coerced confession case that changed Canadian law.
9 January 2023
Warning: Spoilers
If you like true crime documentaries, you'll enjoy this well-made film about an elderly Canadian man who the Ontario police terrified into confessing to a murder he did not commit with an elaborate "Mr. Big" undercover ruse that rivals anything you ever saw on Mission Impossible in its complexity and use of imposters to fool a target. The ENTRAPMENT was so bad, they couldn't convict the man, but he did serve FIVE YEARS in prison, they destroyed his life, they did not compensate him and NO ONE was even reprimanded for it!!!
Supposedly, Canada tightened its laws around "Mr. Big" investigations in which cops pretend to be big time criminals and actually lead people into committing simulated crimes, but I've read the socialist Trudeau state to our north STILL allows this to a much greater degree than other civilized countries.
A couple of things this film proves that aren't in the description: One, marijuana (that friendly and presumably harmless drug) leads to a LOT of violent crime, misery and ruined lives. Two, the loved ones of murder victims will never accept the innocence of someone the police arrest for the crime no matter how compelling the evidence exonerating them. The tendency of the angry relatives to cling to the belief that the murderer was caught and hate that suspect instead of hating the tunnel vision (or just lazy) police for failing to pursue and capture the real criminal is quite a phenomenon. I only took one point off for having a few white subtitles of wiretaps against a white background which made them illegible. Can't read that, eh?!
Supposedly, Canada tightened its laws around "Mr. Big" investigations in which cops pretend to be big time criminals and actually lead people into committing simulated crimes, but I've read the socialist Trudeau state to our north STILL allows this to a much greater degree than other civilized countries.
A couple of things this film proves that aren't in the description: One, marijuana (that friendly and presumably harmless drug) leads to a LOT of violent crime, misery and ruined lives. Two, the loved ones of murder victims will never accept the innocence of someone the police arrest for the crime no matter how compelling the evidence exonerating them. The tendency of the angry relatives to cling to the belief that the murderer was caught and hate that suspect instead of hating the tunnel vision (or just lazy) police for failing to pursue and capture the real criminal is quite a phenomenon. I only took one point off for having a few white subtitles of wiretaps against a white background which made them illegible. Can't read that, eh?!
The Recruit
(2022– )
Painfully unconvincing and unfunny.
5 January 2023
This is cringeworthy amateurish fake cool Gen Z pap, completely ignorant of how anything really works at the CIA. I could only stand watching it for 20 minutes. Follows the unfortunate recent trend of filmmaking that thinks it's hip to never decide whether you are making drama or satire and, as a result, is completely off pitch and accomplishes neither. The director of The Bourne Identity was one of MANY producers who worked on The Recruit, and they trumpet this connection in the trailer, but this series reflects none of the high quality writing and production standards of any of the Bourne movies, so it's like false advertising.
My Name Is Sara
(2019)
Touching personal story of Holocaust survivor and those who hid her.
1 January 2023
Okay, so why do we need one more film about a Holocaust survivor's story? After all, there are literally millions of true Holocaust stories to be told and at least a hundred of them have already been made into much grander productions than this poor boy sandwich (Schindler's List, to name only one obvious example). This is a very personal film that not only looks at the Jewish victim but the dilemma of the Ukrainian farm family she fooled into taking her in. The Nazis were fanatically genocidal toward Jews, but they also brutally terrorized and took everything from the Gentile people whose lands they conquered. This film shows how miserable the Nazis made ordinary Ukrainians, but also shows how Jew-hatred was an intrinsic part of Ukrainian culture long before the Nazis came. Rather than show all Ukrainians as one-dimensional craven Nazi accomplices or one Ukrainian family as the good exception that proves the rule, they were shown as imperfect complex human beings with good and bad qualities just trying to survive in a Nazi-occupied hellscape that took over their lives. It deserves to be added to the library of great Holocaust films, and the fact that nearly everyone involved in creating it was from contemporary Poland is very meaningful.
Don't Worry Darling
(I) (2022)
Utterly failed attempt to update The Stepford Wives (1975)
27 December 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Utterly failed attempt to update The Stepford Wives (1975)
As one of the other reviewers here put it mildly, "It builds intrigue, then wastes it." LOL! More like it builds intrigue for an eternity pointlessly provoking feminist ire, then jumps off a cliff flipping the the bird to the audience by not providing any rational explanation for how the protagonist Florence Pugh got into this dystopian nightmare (Was she forced?) and fails to offer closure on her ultimate fate! Terrible, confusing editing shows the filmmaker couldn't decide what she was trying to do. Florence Pugh and Harry Styles are gorgeous to behold and watching them simulate hot sex was delicious eye candy, but there's no movie here! Glad I didn't pay to see this.
Belfast
(2021)
Touching and sweet family film, but NOT saccharine.
27 December 2022
This autobiographical bon-bon from Kenneth Branagh about his childhood in Belfast, Ireland during "the troubles" combines some of the best elements of "Cinema Paradiso" and "A Bronx Tale." Filmed in glorious black and white, but cleverly uses color film clips in a movie theater. Branagh grew up loving movies and learning from them and shows how important films are to a child growing up in violent circumstances. Judy Dench and Ciaran Hinds are delightful as the live-in grandparents, delivering genuinely witty jibes in a natural way. The family fights about money and Dad's time away from home for work are completely realistic and Caitriona Balfe has never performed better without removing a stitch of clothes! Also adorable and completely realistic was the story of Branagh's childhood crush on a girl in his class. The kids acted like real kids with no overacting. Beautiful direction! I gag at forced sentimentality, but there was none of it here. I laughed and even cried a wee bit!
Don't Pick Up the Phone
(2022)
Breathtaking True Crime Documentary with Profound Psychology Lessons
19 December 2022
You probably heard the story years ago about the guy who impersonated a cop telling a fast food manager over the phone to strip search one of the employees and the manager actually did that and more! Guess what ? It not only really happened, but it happened 70 times over the course of a decade across 30+ states and was captured on CCTV footage!! Like Sacha Baron Cohen playing Borat, this pervert liked to have fun at the expense of simple naive folks in small towns, but takes it to a level of sexual criminality that will blow your mind. I have to admit seeing it happen the first time, I couldn't help laughing my ass off at the spectacular gullibility of these rubes, but by the end of the film I was reminded that not everyone in this country is a cynical college-educated prick who never had to work at McDonalds and wept at the way these good people were deceived and abused and how very few got justice.
Another one-sided "Me Too" screed with gratuitous racism accusations.
17 December 2022
Let me be clear at the start: If Peter Nygard actually "raped" even one woman, meaning taking her and penetrating her by FORCE, I would gladly cut his pecker off and feed it to Canadian wolves, then burn what's left of him at the stake using a Manitoba Native American totem pole! It appears he actually did rape at least one woman he met getting into an airport taxi, so that's what he deserves.
THAT SAID, MOST of his debauchery was no different than that of Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein or 95% of all fashion and performing arts moguls who have been exploiting young beautiful women for sexual favors since the beginning of time! And if you don't think "respectable" fashion VIPs like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Georgio Armani never did things like this, you are VERY naive! The women who play their game and choose to roll the dice know exactly what they're getting into, never say "No" and I don't feel sorry for them. In fact one of the so-called "victims" in this documentary was honest enough to say that she did it because she was a single mother and needed a lot of financial support, which she gratefully received. At least she was honest about it.
There's no question that Peter Nygard was an evil scumbag who deserves whatever he gets. But if 95% of a documentary like this is essentially redefining rape as any sex a woman later regrets having, I have to call B. S.! This infantilizes women in a Victorian way and belittles the real victims who screamed NO and still endured the horrifying violent crime of forcible rape.
THAT SAID, MOST of his debauchery was no different than that of Hugh Hefner, Bob Guccione, Jeffrey Epstein, Harvey Weinstein or 95% of all fashion and performing arts moguls who have been exploiting young beautiful women for sexual favors since the beginning of time! And if you don't think "respectable" fashion VIPs like Calvin Klein, Ralph Lauren and Georgio Armani never did things like this, you are VERY naive! The women who play their game and choose to roll the dice know exactly what they're getting into, never say "No" and I don't feel sorry for them. In fact one of the so-called "victims" in this documentary was honest enough to say that she did it because she was a single mother and needed a lot of financial support, which she gratefully received. At least she was honest about it.
There's no question that Peter Nygard was an evil scumbag who deserves whatever he gets. But if 95% of a documentary like this is essentially redefining rape as any sex a woman later regrets having, I have to call B. S.! This infantilizes women in a Victorian way and belittles the real victims who screamed NO and still endured the horrifying violent crime of forcible rape.
The Devil You Know
(III) (2022)
Well acted and engrossingly unpredictable, but morally confused and racist
11 December 2022
Warning: Spoilers
Well acted and engrossingly unpredictable, but morally confused and racist.
I'll never forget seeing the New Black Cinema classic "Menace II Society" in a movie theater in 1993. When the young, violent, murdering main character in that film tries to go back home to his family, they won't let him in the door. A black guy in the theater approved, yelling at the screen "Get yo' ass outta here, you CRAZY Mother-F---er!!!" I would think that guy and the Menace 2 Society filmmakers would be disappointed to see middle class black people depicted as morally challenged as some of the characters in The Devil You Know. The acting was great and the film's unpredictability kept me very engaged throughout, but in the end, it seems to espouse that it's okay to lie to the authorities to protect a family member even after they murdered 2 and possibly 4 people in cold blood. The black homicide detective (who's quitting his job because he can't stand to see another black man murdered or guilty of murder) can't even get the family to charge this murderer with an attempted assault on his own brother. Only a racist would think that black people don't have the moral integrity to report family members when they commit murder or that a black cop would not be more passionate about punishing evildoers and protecting the innocent than he is about their color.
I'll never forget seeing the New Black Cinema classic "Menace II Society" in a movie theater in 1993. When the young, violent, murdering main character in that film tries to go back home to his family, they won't let him in the door. A black guy in the theater approved, yelling at the screen "Get yo' ass outta here, you CRAZY Mother-F---er!!!" I would think that guy and the Menace 2 Society filmmakers would be disappointed to see middle class black people depicted as morally challenged as some of the characters in The Devil You Know. The acting was great and the film's unpredictability kept me very engaged throughout, but in the end, it seems to espouse that it's okay to lie to the authorities to protect a family member even after they murdered 2 and possibly 4 people in cold blood. The black homicide detective (who's quitting his job because he can't stand to see another black man murdered or guilty of murder) can't even get the family to charge this murderer with an attempted assault on his own brother. Only a racist would think that black people don't have the moral integrity to report family members when they commit murder or that a black cop would not be more passionate about punishing evildoers and protecting the innocent than he is about their color.
Inside Man
(II) (2022)
Convoluted and not nearly as clever or witty as it presumes to be.
29 November 2022
Convoluted and not nearly as clever or witty as it presumes to be. You would think with great actors on both sides of the pond like David Tennant and Stanley Tucci that this series couldn't miss, but it does. Tucci, who plays a convicted murderer who gives advice to investigators similarly to Hannibal Lecter, reprises his smug foppish character from The Hunger Games which feels obnoxiously inappropriate here and grows very tiresome. It wavers between straight drama and satire, unsure of what it is trying to do. There were a few amusing wisecracks along the way, but the tenuous sub-plots ultimately don't hold it together well and the ending doesn't satisfy.
Monster
(2022–2024)
Heavy-handed didactic racism focus diminishes but can't sink this blockbuster.
30 October 2022
Every weekend in Chicago, black youths murder up to 50 other black youths and Leftist Hollywood/Silicon Valley still wants us to focus our attention on the racism of SOME white police officers over 60 years ago! It's really obnoxious, passe presentism, everyone is sick to death of it, Dahmer himself was clearly not a racist and racism should not have been the primary focus of this intense and beautifully made series.
ALL THAT SAID, the series did an incredible job of showing the experience of Dahmer's family, his victims and the families of his victims. Every performance was incredible and irresistible. Molly Ringwald was uniquely impressive as Dahmer's father's second wife, manifesting a supremely confident, strong, self-assured, loyal and empathic type of female character you don't often see in contemporary films at all.
ALL THAT SAID, the series did an incredible job of showing the experience of Dahmer's family, his victims and the families of his victims. Every performance was incredible and irresistible. Molly Ringwald was uniquely impressive as Dahmer's father's second wife, manifesting a supremely confident, strong, self-assured, loyal and empathic type of female character you don't often see in contemporary films at all.
Moonage Daydream
(2022)
Narrow and Speculative focus on Bowie's creative process
2 October 2022
I was sorely disappointed because this film was sold to the public as a collection of great Bowie concert footage, not to mention all the hyperbolic rubbish about it being the best documentary ever made about an artist! There is some great footage of Bowie onstage during the Ziggy Stardust period, but that's it. Everything else is scattered bits and pieces that flash on the screen for split seconds in the midst of a loud laser light show. It heavily borrows clips from the film The Man Who Fell To Earth, which most Bowie fans have already seen. The filmmaker attempts, ONLY through use of curated interview footage with journalists, to get inside Bowie's head and understand his philosophy of life and the creative process which boils down to this: If you want to be productive and creative as an artist, embrace chaos and go outside your comfort zone. We didn't need two hours to hear that message. We also would have learned a hell of a lot more about Bowie's creative process by hearing from significant people like his wives and the army of artists with whom he collaborated over the years.
Clusterf**k: Woodstock '99
(2022)
Great documentary, but fails and sells out in the end.
10 August 2022
Warning: Spoilers
This visually shocking documentary does a great job of showing how Michael Lang, the mastermind behind the original Woodstock, became a greedy capitalists who didn't even care about whether people died at his revival 30 years later and hatefully keeps grinning and giggling about it with the same depraved self-deluding indifference as his bussiness manager/promoter John Scher. The testimonies of those who were there are a powerful indictment of the guilty, but in the end it fails in two ways. One, this is an ironic story about greedy capitalist pigs who exploited a brand that was supposedly about peace, love and understanding. Yet it did not reveal or even show its filmmakers asking how much money did they make while putting the liives of a quarter million people at risk?! The second way in which it failed was allowing MTV Presenter Ananda Lewis to pompously proclaim that it showed how men were sexual predators before wokeism and the Me, too movement improved our society for the better. Oh really?! As if young women getting naked and erotically dancing and painting their nude bodies in front of 200,000 young men is not going to provoke sexual aggressiveness in ANY PLACE OR TIME including right now! If you wanted to make an HONEST cultural observation, you could compare the handful of gentle women bathing nude, nursing babies or sunbathing topless at Woodstock 1969 with the army of narcissistic out-of control drunk girls being as sexually provocative as possible to call attention to themselves in a crowd at Woodstock 1999. The point is, a lot of things in America have changed for the worse since 1969 and wokeism surely didn't fix it!
Black Bird
(2022)
Engrossing and well-acted, but PAT ending feels abrupt and unsatisfying
6 August 2022
Fantastic acting by the two principal characters, particularly Paul Walter Hauser, who convincingly plays a psychopathic serial killer. That said, this could have been an excellent 90 or 120 minute film (instead of a fairly good 6-part mini-series) by removing the extortion sub-plot with a corrupt prison guard and a budding relationship with a revered mafia boss, neither of which is resolved by the end of the series and neither of which have any bearing on its conclusion.
The Gray Man
(2022)
Fast-paced action entertainment with great SFX, but corny cliches abound.
31 July 2022
Sometimes all we want is a "popcorn movie," an action-packed thriller that entertains us and provides an escape for two hours so we don't have to think about real life. That's what this is, nothing more, nothing less. Excellent special effects make the non-stop action even better. But even within its action genre, this fireworks show relies too heavily on worn-out plot cliches, one-dimensional superficial characters and wisecracks, leaving the viewer feeling like they just wasted their time reading a comic book!
Before and After
(1996)
Engrossing and worth seeing despite its flaws
28 July 2022
VERY similar plot to the Apple-TV drama "Defending Jacob" (and ironically the boy accused of murder in this film is also named Jacob), although this has a much better ending. It feels like a made-for-TV movie, but not so bad that it detracts from the joy of watching Liam Neeson and Meryl Streep together in good dramatic scenes, with fine supporting performances by Alfred Molina and Daniel von Bargen. Edward Furlong was unfortunately still playing the smug punk he played in Terminator 2 and did not emote properly for this part. The plot is engrossing, however, with some twists and turns that keep you watching till the end to find out what happens. I found the ending very realistic and (thankfully) not sugar-coated or idiotic. Will stimulate conversation about ethics, conscience, justice and naivete.
Weird flaws that irked me were: Both parents testifying to the grand jury WITHOUT their lawyer present, an interlude of gratuitous sex between the parents at a juncture when they were both too emotionally devastated to be doing that, and the mother blithely saying "I have to go on with my life" and go back to work when her son has been missing for days and she was presumably an emotional wreck.
Weird flaws that irked me were: Both parents testifying to the grand jury WITHOUT their lawyer present, an interlude of gratuitous sex between the parents at a juncture when they were both too emotionally devastated to be doing that, and the mother blithely saying "I have to go on with my life" and go back to work when her son has been missing for days and she was presumably an emotional wreck.
Memory
(I) (2022)
Solid entertaining action genre film.
24 July 2022
It's idiotic to watch a film like this and criticize Liam Neeson for not making another Schindler's List! You can say it wasn't as good as the original "Taken" or his other recent Mexican border drama "The Sharpshooter" because that's comparing apples to apples. It didn't have the heartstopping pace and action of Taken and it didn't have the warm character development of The Marksman, but it did have some exciting chemistry between Liam Neeson and Guy Pearce, who really should have shared top billing in this film. Let's face it. Sometimes you don't want a movie that makes you think. You just want a solid entertaining story of good vs.evil where good essentially wins and Liam Neeson is the cinematic equivalent of comfort food! That's why we keep paying to see him!
Creative and well-acted, if a bit too long.
24 July 2022
This independent film did for the late rock star Johnny Thunders of The New York Dolls what the major studio film Hollywoodland (2006) did for actor George Reeves. While not as nationally known as the actor who played Superman on TV, Johnny Thunders was also a tragic cultural icon who was loved, admired and pitied by many (particularly those who grew up in the 1970's and 80's punk rock scene) and died under VERY mysterious circumstances that will never be understood with certainty. That means filmmakers can use the few facts that are known as an outline and fill in the rest with the best creative fiction they can muster. In the case of Johnny Thunders, who struggled with heroin addiction and was moving to NOLA to get away from it, the filmmakers appropriately depicted his downfall as a bad drug trip. It is widely believed that Thunders was deliberately dosed with LSD and murdered by locals in NOLA who wanted to steal his money and large methadone supply, and that is what the film essentially shows. The late Sylvain Sylvain, Johnny's former bandmate, lent his actual voice to recreate a realistic phone call with Johnny. I saw Johnny Thunders perform numerous times and even spoke with him face-to-face off-stage and I can vouch that Leo Ramsey's performance was incredible. He obviously studied films of Johnny Thunders and got the voice and mannerisms right without descending into New York caricature. Took away one star for being too long and having some repetitive nightmare sequences.
Bent
(1997)
Bad play even worse on film.
26 June 2022
Would anyone watch this but for the lurid curiosity of seeing Mick Jagger in drag doing a bad impression of Marlene Dietrich? That's what gets you through the first 5-10 minutes of this film. After that, it doesn't even offer hot sex scenes for those inclined to enjoy that. Mind-numbingly boring self indulgent art house garbage.
The Power of the Dog
(2021)
Too ugly to bear. Like watching Jake LaMotta leading a cattle drive!
28 February 2022
Too ugly to bear. Who needs to watch Jake LaMotta or Whitey Bulger leading a cattle drive?! I quit at about 30 minutes into the film when the lead character Phil starts sadistically beating a horse around its head. That's not toxic masculinity, that's just pathological cruelty. The character was already well-established as a bully. No thanks! Unless I'm learning about something that really happened with practical moral lessons like the Holocaust or the Rwandan Genocide or the Ukrainian Famine, I don't need artisans of cinema to enshrine fictional stories about cruelty into gorgeous art.
The Tale
(2018)
Why was Israel interjected into a story of childhood sexual abuse?
29 December 2021
As Jennifer, the young victim of childhood sexual abuse, walks down the corridor of her school remembering things her abuser wrote to her in the years that followed, one of the audio snippets we hear her abuser say is "All the trouble in Israel." Like, WTF?????!!!! Can't the author/producer keep her obligatory anti-Israel hate out of a movie that has nothing to do with it, or does her anti-semitism outweigh her artistic integrity?
Collision
(2009)
Great drama but leaves too much unresolved
9 September 2021
Ten masterfully interwoven human stories that come together and are teased apart in a multi-car highway accident. If they had only given us closure on all the stories involved, I would have rated it a 10. I won't spoil it by getting more specific because this is really worth watching. Douglas Henshall who later played a similar lead role in Shetland is incredible and alone worth the cost of admission.
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