Reviews

So bad it's weird. The movie plays like a Swedish body building class decided to work with an English-as-a-second-language night school class's script using a cable access production crew. I know that sounds like campy fun, but it's too incoherent to be enjoyable. Even the foley and ADR are ridiculously cheap and amateurish. Really unbelievably bad. I could randomly select any teenager with an iPhone and a backyard to make a better movie.

This is one of those series that pulls you in with an intriguing, mysterious beginning, then, once you're hooked after three episodes or so, starts explaining the mystery in a way that makes you long for not knowing. The whole thing then is just really thin dialogue, exposition and stupid plot setups in order to offer more exposition. Even Toni Colette seems to not be having much fun. But I was hooked, so I kept watching bitterly.

The series reminds me of the humor in the 1983 Bill Forsyth movie "Local Hero", which was also about charming, quirky locals in a small coastal town, (though "The Cafe" takes place in Weston-super-Mare and not Scotland.)

The best way to describe the humor is that it's very kind and human. The dialogue is filled with the comic mundanities and repetitions of everyday human communication, emphasizing them to the point of being funny. When genuinely quirky people or odd things happen, the characters don't react as though they're strange, because quirkiness and oddness are also part of the mundanity and repetition of their lives. Conflicts do happen in the stories, but they are small ones. And the smallness is the point.

If you're looking for slapstick or histrionics or hamfisted American humor based on ejaculate and flatus, this is not your cup of tea. But for those who like subtlety, dryness and humanity in humor, this is a great show.

I was really excited about seeing the movie-I loved the first one and the same team was in place. But it is stunningly bad. It has the boringness of a mediocre TV movie from the 70s-80s. The plot is a long pile-up of McGuffin-like plot devices that always need expositional dialogue explaining why we're supposed to be concerned and on edge. There's a kind of "McGuffin insecurity" to the movie. It tosses a new one in every few minutes and then you need it explained. It has the feel of a movie ruined by a room full talentless studio execs who needed to justify their jobs and kept forcing new elements into the script to ensure its awesome blockbuster "success."

A beautiful character-driven movie in a sci-fi vehicle-which always disappoints the comic book nerds who want action, then try to hide their disappointment by claiming the "science" isn't credible. I've seen that approach to criticism from incels with other sci-fi movies on IMDb.

The movie is a beautiful study of regret and hope and dreams and what constitutes a full life well lived. Clooney's best directorial effort in years.

Badass Charlize will always be a draw for me. The movie is a comic-based action movie with all of the expected conventions in terms of bad guys and outsider superheroes with vulnerabilities and bad guy minions who drop like flies in hyperactive fight sequences. It accomplishes all quite well.

The premise is reasonably novel, but what really makes it interesting are the characters and their relationships, which are above average in both the writing and acting. It was also fun to see the two most dominant characters be strong women and two gay characters who were 3 dimensional.

As a side note, I'm kind sick of reading reviews by incels whose primary reason for poor ratings is that they are threatened by seeing women lead and the realistic portrayal of a diverse world.

There are two versions of this movie that are strikingly different in their impact and emotional meaning. The theatrical release is a 2-plus hour-long studio edit. The director's cut is 3-plus hour-long edit that was released later. I watched both versions back-to-back, and without question, the director's cut is the superior. It's not just a matter of additional footage putting more meat on the bone--more heart is added to the film as well.

The movie is a violent and gritty portrayal of the Crusades era in medieval times, but wrestles artfully with complex issues of faith, morality, justice and diversity and what it means to live a godly life. Apparently, the studio decided such thematic depth was a drawback and that audiences are mostly superficial morons, so they insisted on an edit that presented it as an action movie, leaving in just enough character development to feebly sew the action scenes together. In the process, not only character motivation was lost, but important plot developments in the story.

After watching the shorter edit first--which seemed disjointed and filled with holes in the way of crappy edits--I had to go look up the movie's synopsis online to understand what the hell I had watched. In the director's cut, it was much clearer. But the biggest difference is the thought-provoking character development and dialogue scenes throughout that bring an intelligence to the primitive times being depicted.

At the end of the studio edit, I felt uninspired and filled with a sense that the movie had many missed opportunities.

At the end of the director's cut, I felt I had seen a real movie with real ideas. And I was left thinking about it.

Ridley Scott has had some bad luck with studio interference in his edits, most memorably with the two versions of "Blade Runner." You would think they'd trust his instincts after all this time.

If you you're looking for a fast-paced action movie or an easy 2 hours of Nicole Kidman-flavored eye candy, this is not your film. It is a character-driven film first and foremost, about a damaged, angry, near-empty soul on a driven mission that teeters between revenge and redemption. It's gritty and brooding and tense throughout, with an artfully rendered narrative told through flashbacks that interweave nicely, keeping apace with the present storyline and revealing background depth at just the right moments. The ending is tremendously satisfying.

Nicole Kidman's performance is amazing. The character Erin is tortured--weak and strong and tough all at the same time--and prone to long, hollow silences. She looks like holy hell, and I was reminded of Charlize Theron's transformational appearance in "Monster."

I'm amazed this did not get greater attention from critics and more awards.

The buddy cop movie has become a tiresome and overworked genre--though don't look for the genre to peter out anytime soon, as Hollywood is indefatigable when it comes to dead horse-beating. That having been said, "The Heat" is one of the best buddy cop movies I've seen in a long time.

In many ways, "The Heat" reminds me of one the earliest and best examples of the form, the Nick Nolte/Eddie Murphy hit "48 Hrs", because so much of its success is due to the manic, wildly profane non-stop comic patter of a character seasoned by the streets--in this case, not Eddie Murphy, but the enormously talented Melissa McCarthy. This is a very funny script with many toss off moments of dialogue-driven humor and some of the best rhythmically joyful, surrealistically inventive uses of obscenity I've encountered in recent years. The physical comedy that exists is nicely choreographed and unforced. And there's a lot of respect shown for, and screen time given to, many comic side characters in the movie. In general, one gets the feeling that all talent involved in the movie had fun making it and like each other.

The bonus is that you see two very talented women working in a traditionally male genre, which brings freshness to the form while not being overly self-conscious in that "Hey! It's a buddy cop movie! But, you know--with women!!" sort of way. Gender is hardly the reason for the movie's success. It's just funny and the acting is good. It's a successful buddy cop movie on the terms set for the genre.

An earlier reviewer who disliked the movie absurdly called it "misandric" (man-hating) and another complained about the vulgarity. My sense is that these reviewers simply have a problem with seeing women do what men are forever allowed to do unquestioningly in movies. This is their problem--not the movie's.

And finally--I've never watched the "Mike & Molly" TV sitcom and only know Melissa McCarthy through her movies. She's a brilliant comic actor. (And yes, as is noted in the movie, she does look like one of the Campbell Soup kids.)