Reviews

Kept expecting LaKeith Stanfield to wake up in a sensory deprivation tank.

This film is about conspiracy theories and secretive masonic plots involving controlling the visible arts, things that can be viewed through Lenses.

Tierra Whack is here as Herself, being warned by an odd fan against becoming the next pawn of a mysterious group of people (old guys who meet up clandestinely in remote caves to plan which talented young people to turn into their next packaged products ).

Presented as a documentary, complete with re-created historical-type footage of Whack as a young girl, it follows her on tour, and less exciting things such as vacuuming her car. There are also lots of shots of emails & found footage that helps explain pretty much everything. The exact ending moment is definitely a surprise and I loved it!

If you're a fan of Tierra Whack, it's a definite watch. It's a creative movie and fits her style of being unpredictable. Also good if you're into conspiracy theories.

I'll try to distill the message of this snoozer.

Let's see now. A woman who was, surprise, surprise, attractive in her youth, doesn't do the world the courtesy of dying by the age of 35. She continues to age. All the other characters find this repulsive, that nasty aging thing. So the elderly woman becomes the film's monster. She's angry see? Because she can't get laid. Because only people in their early 20s are attractive. See?

So now she kills young people because she's bitter. Seriously, this is the entire plot.

Do people actually think this? Does everyone just find their moms & grandmothers to be repulsive? Was anyone over the age of 35 involved with this film?

Tagline should be: If you hate old women and are so immature as to be scared of aging, this film will terrify you.

This was uncomfortable, difficult, and mesmerizing.

It's not a comedy. It's not even really about religion. It's about lying. The minister lies to his church members, himself, his wife. She lies to herself. Eventually it all breaks down. But it's also about an extremely strong woman being pushed toward the end of her patience.

Reminded me so much of many episodes of "Atlanta" that leave me wondering what the heck I just watched (in a good way).

Here's the "sort of" spoiler. My favorite scene is The Makeup scene. I won't go into detail about the makeup. You will know it as soon as you see it. As soon as her face appeared, full makeup, my jaw dropped and I said out loud, "Oh no, no, no." It was horrifying. Regina Hall plays the main character of Trinitie and she's spellbinding. I rarely react out loud to scenes in movies, but this was so painful and cringe. When another character shows up in the scene, Trinitie remains in background, out of focus, over his shoulder, the makeup making her appear like an accusatory judge.

Trinitie has to endure all the consequences of her husband's crimes in public. Cameras follow much of her life as they film a "documentary". Unexpected meetings with former church members who delight in pointing out her misfortunes. Being forced to stand on the street for days shilling for people to come back to their shamed church. Her husband gives no comfort, continues his advances on young men, tells her how old she looks. When she opens up to her mother it's just another person there to shame her about wanting to leave her marriage.

By the end of the film, we see her continuing to be pushed. Will she eventually push back? Will she stop lying to herself? We are left to decide.

Cute, seemingly-abused kid is actually a demon that controls other persons' actions with her little demon-psychologist brain. It's like a genius must have come up with this idea because I've never seen anything so darn original.

Or have I?

Ok, enough sarcasm. The characters, despite being portrayed by pretty good actors, all do endless dumb things. The demon kid is standard belligerent, ultra violent and manipulative. None of the characters have any depth. Again, these are not bad actors, but they just had nothing good to work with. There is just nothing to make this movie stand out or make a viewer care in the least about the characters.

It's super predictable, has the endless jump scares that aren't scary, much of the dialogue is extra low volume, but the "scary" bits are extra loud. Just so flat.

If you don't want to know everything, don't read on.

The adoptive mother manages to drown the demon in the end.

This documentary about the murder of two young, teen sisters by their psychopathic father with approval of their mentally-challenged mother succeeds in telling the story of what happened. It contains clips & photos of their lives and numerous interviews with friends and family. It contains interviews, police reports, and even the actual call to 911 and the last words of one of the sisters. The story of what happened is horrific and disgusting beyond belief.

However, the film itself was not well-made. Numerous photos, notes, videos of the "pretty" sister, only a few of the "tomboy" sister. Rambling interviews that are not interesting and shed very little light on the subject. Lots of shots of documents like phone records and police reports with barely any explanation leaves the viewer to have to try to read the tiny print and figure out what it means. Even when there were explanations on the screen, the font was hardly discernable from the print it was next to. Visually this just wasn't effective.

The portrayal of the Irvington Texas police and 911 dispatch implies they are idiots and not working on finding the cowardly father Yasser. Truly, what with Texans always bragging on themselves, it seems like they should have been able to arrest this guy by now. There are hundreds of photos and videos of him. And to not be able to come up with anything to arrest the despicable mother Patricia (Tissy)? She lures her two daughters directly to the coward of a father and he immediately shoots them to death, but the police don't think she is an accomplice?

But back to the film itself. There's a painful middle part wherein a woman, with the most monotone voice, drones on about the definition of honor killings, like she's making a public service announcement on cable access. Then the cringy ending in which the mother of the boyfriend of one of the girls (can you guess which girl?) visits the cemetery to put flowers on the "pretty" girl's grave and whine about how ugly the cemetery is and cry and what not. What was the point of that overly long segment? Filling time?

The interviews should have been edited to be interesting. Interviews with people who had nothing interesting to say should have been cut (their blond teacher offers nothing to the film, their teenaged friend had nothing substantial to say, etc). All still shots of phone records and other documents should have explanation with them. To just show them and let us figure it out (or not) was just lazy.

This film should have been an hour, tops. This film should have spoken on the lives of the victims equally. This film should have included explanation for why abused wives behave the way they do. According to this film and the "experts" they interviewed, this wasn't an honor killing either (which in themselves are despicable and horrific). The cowardly father is just a low-life abusive loser who can't handle not being able to control the people around him.

Again, this isn't clear in the film, but it would seem the Texas police or Fox News are the ones that decided to call these cowardly murders "honor killings." Perhaps because this is a descriptor that signals how they want people to react with outrage against immigrants of a certain religion? At least the film does contain a small segment about how the cowardly "father" was not religious and the abusive mother would lie about what religion she identified with when it suited her.

If anyone actually reads this review, keep track of the main important factor - that two teen girls, Sarah and Amina, had their lives stolen from them by abusive parents who, to this day, in Texas, in the USA, hide from police behind boarded up windows and No Trespassing signs, with no justice served.

Well-made documentary explaining how pyramid schemes work, how greedy people set their sights on their "marks" (victims), and how laws in the US need to be stronger.

The film makers use a lot of interviews with key players, and historic clips from the depositions of deanne brady and mark stidham, the founding fraudsters of Lularoe (purported to be a company that sells clothes made out of stretch cloth with brightly colored designs on it). Their own damning words are used against them over and over, and their only response is to imply that if someone lost everything because they bought into the Lularoe pyramid scheme, then that's because those victims are stupid or didn't work hard enough or are whiners. The deposition videos are great watching!

Stidham manages to pull up tears when necessary and makes sure we all know he didn't plan the emotion. Brady, however, seemed unable to muster any expression other than disdain for everyone and every question, sipping her beverage to hide her discomfort, and glaring at the camera with a smile that doesn't really seem to be a smile. She's cold-blooded, and the film makers did a great job of capturing this.

Many people are interviewed and sometimes I couldn't help but wonder if they were allowing themselves to be interviewed because they thought it would help their own social media standings. Several of them seemed to know they had done wrong things, but were not willing to admit enough in front of the camera that they would have to suffer any penalty for their own misdeeds.

Mormonism is brought up. The company brings people in by claiming to be all about "family first" and they put this in all their literature. Apparently they just mean their family, as their nepotism was also highlighted. Stidham is shown likening himself to the guy who came up with Mormonism, saying that nobody believed that guy either.

The film moves along at a good pace and brings a lot of viewpoints. The one area that seemed lacking was when highlighting the victims on the bottom of the pyramid. Maybe they weren't as picturesque or perhaps they were too busy working to take time to be interviewed. These people get crushed by the greedy dishonesty of schemers like deanne brady and mark stidham, and the other levels of pyramid above them. Maybe, had they been able to work their way up the pyramid, they would have become just as greedy. However, I felt the film makers could have gone further to find those people and drive home how utterly life-destroying pyramid schemes truly are.

In the end, we have a quirky former employee expressing his wish to see the super rich founders fall from their mountain of gold. But as we are shown, they continue to operate, continue to defraud thousands of people, continue to hold themselves up to the world as paragons of virtue, as they race around in their 3 million dollar Koenigseggs.

Two loving parents, three children, the oldest of which is a very bright college student working on an invention intended to provide electricity through air.

Very early on, the parents die in an auto accident, and the oldest son quits college to work in a hardware store and care for his younger siblings. The scenes of the family adjusting to this new life with out parents are very good. I definitely felt the sadness and frustration of each of them as they attempt to be responsible and do their parts to keep their now-smaller family functioning.

The characters are written well and acted well. No over-the-top wailing, the little girl is refreshingly not portrayed as helpless. The neighbors feel for the siblings and bring sympathy, advice, friendship & meals.

The oldest son continues to work on his invention in the garage and it is at this point the supernatural shenanigans begin. Unwittingly, he keeps his machine on and it opens/weakens the door between living and dead.

At first, it's just the little girl who experiences their parents talking to her, giving her advice to give to her brothers. Helpful Mom-Ghost changes their calendar each day for them. Eventually they are all convinced their parents are really communicating with them and that they need to keep working on the invention.

It's then that the film takes a turn. The range of the invention, much like wi-fi, extends to other houses. Neighborhood dogs start barking at things only they can sense, and their widower neighbor starts seeing his dead wife. Oddly, the children's' parents are no longer around. They've been replaced by the ghost of a child murderer who lived in their house previously, and, unlike their parents' ghosts, this one can grab them, open doors, and I guess maybe kill them.

It's just downhill from here. The neighbor steals the invention so he can get his wife back, two of the kids are trapped in an underground tunnel, the oldest kid's girlfriend has to rescue them. Lots of running around, fighting, screaming. It's all just too incongruent with the rest of the film.

At what point did the parent ghosts just go away? Why is any one ghost stronger than any other? Is it even ghosts or is it all demons? And if it's all demons, why were they being helpful and nice at all? Why not just BAM! Door is open, let's wreck havoc on humans?

Lots of clichés too. The house haunted by a bad guy who lived there and comes back to kill some more. The Scary Basement (Just once, I'd love to see a horror film in which the basement is the place where the pool table and cheesy home bar is.) The ghosts or demons go from barely being able to make their presence known to full on manifesting corporeal hands in like a day. And last, but not least, the cliché of "We are now having a happy ending scene because we destroyed the invention, thus closing the spirit realm, but one naughty demon has stayed behind to move the little girl's doll around, just in case this movie is popular enough for a sequel".

This movie was first two thirds really good with lots of promise, and last third was totally same-old, same-old.

Not being a huge fan of the first Borat film, I was surprised to find myself laughing out loud so much for this sequel. It had more heart in it too. The relationship growth between Borat and his daughter Tutar was kind of sweet.

I enjoyed being horrified by the extremely uncomfortable moments. All except the part regarding Rudy Giuliani. The Tutar character (Borat's daughter) poses as a reporter to interview "America's Mayor". She's nervous, awestruck, flirtatious, and the old man just ate that up. He kept reaching across to touch her hands to "reassure" her. He has no problem being led into a bedroom by her and even lays back on the bed to adjust something in his pants. Zero funny about that.

Unlike all the other uncomfortable moments in the film, this part just angered and nauseated me. It wasn't rehearsed or fictional, and I guess that's the point. That was the Real Rudy. A creepy and lecherous monster. A definite skin-crawling scene.

Seems like Sacha Baron Cohen has matured. He wrote a much better film that mixes the fictional characters with the real people in a more effective way. In the first Borat film, which I didn't hate, just wasn't keen on it, the character was obnoxious for obnoxiousness sake. This time around, there's a definite message.

Oh yeah, and there are lots of gross-out moments, much to the amusement of the 13-year-old portion of my brain. I'll be repeat viewing.

Watch for the Tom Hanks appearance - fantastic moment!

The characters are all mean, unfeeling, bored with their existences, or actively trying to make other people miserable. None of them seem to have any redeeming qualities. While I realize the show is about "grim reapers," it's still a show, and viewers need to be able to care somehow about at least one of the characters.

The main character is a teenage girl who frowns and pouts her lips, and delivers lines like she's asleep, drunk, or has a mouthful of marbles. In every scene she just stares around vacantly with her mouth hanging open. She sounds bored with everything she says, and that's probably because the writing is just basic and meaningless.

The situation is that she's a grim reaper and hangs out with other grim reapers and they make sure people die every day. Ho-hum.

Think you're going to get any good insights about life and death? Think again. Most of the scenes consist of people sitting around in a diner eating breakfast. Sometimes they get dressed up and go out to make sure multiple people die at the same time. Yep. I can barely contain my surprise this was canceled.

We also get to watch her still-living family be horrible to each other. The actor playing the kid sister has resting B face down to a science. Just glares at everyone with barely contained contempt. Trouble is, that's the only face she ever makes. Maybe she and the actor playing the main character went to the same drama school. They learned two faces: 1. Contempt 2.The Vacant Mouth Breather.

I'm on season one, episode eight and I just can't watch any more of this.

A fun show with an original idea. When real-life famous musicians make cameos on some episodes, it has brought tears to my eyes. The show does a good job bringing many different forms of music together and is, in some scenes, very inspiring.

Gael Garcia Bernal is fantastic. In fact, all the actors, musicians, and dancers are great.

Except one. And that is the problem. Lola Kirke should perhaps look for a different creative outlet other than acting. She seems like she's trying very hard, but it always sounds like she is reading her lines directly off a cue card (with persistent vocal fry as well). She is physically "cute" if you like looking at her one and only facial expression (confused), but she makes every scene she's in boring no matter who's in it.

It is a shame the writers could not find some way to get rid of her character. The two main characters don't even make sense being in a relationship.

I can fully understand why it has been canceled.

An animated, short film re-telling the of the classic Hans Christian Andersen fable. In this version, the ill-qualified emperor lies constantly, bullies everyone, is extremely vain about his appearance, and insists upon throwing a big parade...for himself. Since he has a history of firing people who disagree with him, he is surrounded only by sycophants who tell him exactly what he wants to hear.

All the adults in the film are afraid to speak out about the emperor because he threatens them in vague, but menacing ways.

The telling of the truth is left to one little girl (symbolic of today's youth perhaps?) She is the one person not afraid to speak the truth and speak it loudly. Of course she is punished.

The emperor fires everyone once he realizes they've just been saying things to make him happy.

This contains enough little "inside" laughs to make it an entertaining 28 minutes. Suitable for children. It contains nothing offensive other than the character of the emperor.

The Sentence is foremost a portrait of a family devastated by the imprisonment of one of its members. Regardless of questions about guilt and the legal system, this film was fascinating because it detailed the incredible emotional toll on familial relationships as they adjust to the reality of being without their mother, wife, sister, daughter.

Family members and the woman's spouse are all interviewed and re-interviewed as time passes. We see the children grow up, the husband lose hope and file for divorce, the parents broken-hearted at having their daughter separated from them. Until almost the very end, we only see the imprisoned mother in old photos & videos and hear her voice on the phone during her calls home.

The ending is bittersweet as she is granted clemency and comes home. The reunion of her and her family members is truly powerful and moving. As the film closes we see her trying to make sense of the times she missed. We realize despite the fact that she's home again, everyone's life is irrevocably affected by her long absence.