Reviews

Two episodes in, but what a soap opera. There is no question Cate Blanchett is a remarkable actress and her fragile beauty is breathtaking. Here she does all the right moves and puts on all the appropriate facial and physical expressions, but in this venue I suspect an AI bot could have done as well. On top of which, as others have mentioned, her character is played by an entirely different (but less talented) actress in scenes taking place circa 20 years earlier. Yet her substitute looks no younger.

Opening scenes on a train and in Venice, also as mentioned by others, are superfluous and performed in an embarrassingly amateurish way. Kevin Kline and Leslie Manville are pros at what they do but totally wasted here.

All in all, what a mess, at least so far. Sorry, but I give up.

I've always enjoyed Vince Vaughn in everything. A sharp, witty actor & his large size and small boy features just accent his overall irony. The other actors here are very good, too, especially Meredith Hagner and Jodie Turner-Smith. John Ortiz is always first-rate, too. The settings and photography are stunning and the action moves right along. And yet...

The problem I have is that the movie feels padded. As the episodes progress, I feel like there's more and more Who Cares stuff. Like the relationship between Dragon Queen and Egg. I've read most of Carl Hiaasen's books and always love them, though I don't remember this one. Maybe on the page the stuff flies by, but on the screen it kind of ruins the overall tone.

I just finished episode 8 & am lowering my previous rate of 8 to a 6. Getting really boring & repetitive. Can't believe Hiaasen had all this mindless twaddle in the book. May not make it the rest of the way.

I can't believe I watched the whole thing. Last 2 or 3 episodes are embarrassingly bad. No plot tie-ins or tie-ups, just everyone jumping their own individual pathetic sharks. Wow, no sequel to this mess. Hopefully.

Is this truly based in a Hiaasen book?

This film is about as enjoyable as a jackhammer on your brainpan. It has to be the very opposite of subtle. I started the book and enjoyed it: interesting and well-written but not enough to continue to the end. Maybe some day...But the film is something else. A very little goes a very long way. I have nothing against sex and have enjoyed a good deal of it in my day. But not, I have to admit in the grinding, relentlessly (that word again) calisthenic manner depicted in this film. I guess it's a movie about obsession, most likely the director's (maybe he's the "God" figure, get it?). Whatever the meaning, it ain't subtle. Oh, I did like the costumes...and Mark Ruffalo's performance, so I gave it a 2 instead of a 1.

I finally got around to watching this series after putting it off for years. Probably not a great idea to be binging it because the repetition and shallowness get old really fast. It's like watching the same basic sketch skits over and over and over. Some, like Moira the mother and Alexis the daughter become really hard to endure. I've always liked Catharine O'Hara but really, enough is enough. Why does she wear different wigs, outfits and so much makeup in every single episode. We get it, don't the other characters? After all, it's such a small town. And Annie Murphy seems to have 3 or 4 set expressions which she varies quite predictably. Even ditzes have some depth. I won't even mention the pretty boys who play her boyfriends. Maybe it's the Canadian humor.

The best characters, imo, are the ones who are funny because of their acting abilities, mainly Stevie (Emily Hampshire) and Bob (John Hemphill). Chris Elliott is totally wasted in his part. Dan Levy is quite good for the most part, funny and well-played, but again, so repetitive.

I've always loved Eugene Levy. For years my favorite piece of modern sketch comedy has been a routine from Second City called Perry Como is Alive which has a nearly comatose Como lying on a couch barely singing the title song from Fame. Has stayed with me for years. When I looked for it on YouTube, I discovered it was Eugene Levy. Still the funniest thing I ever saw.

Not at all like the old days, is it? Chevy Chase, Gilda Radner, Dan Ackroyd, Bill Murray. They don't make them like that any more. Now the humor you get from members of the cast and their guests is what I term Imitation Humor. Give the audience what they expect is funny. Mug like crazy at the camera, say lots of gross things, especially as related to sex and drugs. And sex. Make believe that people can still be shocked. And laugh about it. And above all, act smug and scream your lines. Looney Tunes should be your role model. Or, as Long John Silver used to say: "Arrrrgggggggghhhhhhhh!!!!!!!!!!!"

Here I was thinking all along that Roy Tillman was a super-mean super-evil right-wing madman (get it?) officer-of-the law ready to take over the whole country with his own private militarily-armed militia. A really bad bad guy. I even wondered in a previous comment on another episode why John Hamm was so wishy-washy in the role. He looks the part but he acted like he was asleep on his feet.

Now I get it. Tillman wasn't some right-wing fanatic nutcase, he was just your basic generic serial wife-abuser. He did make some questionable choices in the spousal selection. Nadine/Dorothy's whiny voice & mean little eyes would challenge any man except the idiot she ended up with, but that's still no excuse for Roy's behavior.

I've always liked Hamm. Witty but not overly so, good-looking in an old fashioned masculine way, laid-back and laconic. But in this season of Fargo, he truly seems to be phoning in his performance. Or maybe just dozing on his feet. The part needs someone who can think and feel evil. John Hamm doesn't seem to be that guy. Maybe he really dislikes the character he's playing and just can't get a mean fix on him. It would have been a perfect part for a younger Tommy Lee Jones or Robert Duvall. Even Nicolas Cage could have done great things with it. Actually the ideal actor (imo) would have been the younger Joe Don Baker as he played Molly in Charley Varrick. One of the all-time bad guys in all filmdon.

I have to agree with most of the commenters about how disappointing this so-called documentary is. I have a theory about it, though. William Friedkin was a gigantically talented man, a man of great intelligence and taste. Look at his art collection. Look at his wives (Jeanne Moreau and Sherry Lansing). Look at his work! (French Connection is a film that I can watch whenever it's and never tire of.)

But I think Mr. Friedkin was also a vain and controlling individual, not surprising in one of his Olympian gifts. I think he felt extremely parsimonious in the presence of the makers of this film. He did not trust or respect them enough to reveal his true self. So he deflected his blessings to Damien Chazelle, Kathryn Bigelow and the city of Venice.

Too late now. Maybe someone with more perspicacity with do a full bio on the man. He (and we) sure deserve it.

Bad. Bad. Bad. Kenneth B has normally been a terrific actor and director but I realize that he has to make a living like everyone else. He looks really good in that confection of a moustache. But oh lord, almost everything about this over-the-top embarrassment (besides the star casting) is pathetic, pitiful. For one thing, why oh why must the French accents be so bad? Because most Brits can't let go of their native diphthongs? Why are the Blues being played and sung in this film so anachronistic and phony/forced. Oh well, part & parcel I guess with the rest of the dumbing down going on all about us. Sigh....

It borders on tragedy (for true film buffs, at any rate) that there aren't more Richard Dix films shown on TCM, and that the ones that are shown are mostly from the latter portion of his career (though there are a few gems there such as Death Ship). While not a Clark Gable or Spencer Tracy leading man, Dix had a special quality about him that gave many of his films an almost riveting simplicity and directness right out of the comkic strips of the day. The guy looked like the role model for Dick Tracy and Captain Easy. When his hair was slicked back against his scalp (Wildroot Cream Oil?) he looked positively two-dimensional: no-nonsense rugged and solid, nothing pretty pretty about him. When the bad guys worked him over, he had the mane of a wild man. With a hat on he was Dick Tracy's double.

In this film he gets to display all the best traits of a 1930s lead: He's smart with is adversaries, generous with his friends, compassionate with gentle folk and tough as nails with his enemies.

The plot is simple and generic as a biblical tale, moves along at a brisk pace, serves its purpose, which is to demonstate the workings of Good vs. Evil.

One thing did stand out for me. In a key scene on a train when he is leaving behind some unpleasant business, he introduces himself to a stranger as "Mr. Farnsbarns". The name rang a bell; I could hear another familar voice from the past saying it. Watching the remainder of the film, I churned through my mental vault of old films but it wasn't until I looked up the name online that I came up with Ricardo Cortez in The Phantom of Crestwood in which he spends the first half of that movie introducing himself as Mr. Farnsbarns. Phantom turned out to be directed by the same man as Shooting Straight: J. Walter Ruben. Turns out he directed another Richard Dix movie in which Boris Karloff temporarily identified himself as Mr. Farnsbarns.

Gotta love it.

Terrific cinematography, what you can see of it anyay, which isn't much. My wife started watching this before I did & she told me it was really a dark movie, so I assumed she meant the plot & mood. Turned out that even wathing it in a dark room on a top of the line 65" flat screen, it's hard to see the characters most of the time. The candles, oil lamps and fireplaces look nice, though.

Turns out not much missed as the plot/story characterizations are prepostrously abysmal. Normal dependable actors like Toby Jones, Timothy Spall, even Robert Duvall, deliver high school huff-and-puff pseudo-victorian impersonations. Harry Melling is a cartoonish EA Poe. I (we) didn't even like Christian Bale in this one. Most over-the-top of all was Gillian Anderson who seemed to be auditioning for Great Expectations.

The costumes were very nice.

I don't understand the popularity of Jordan Peele's films. To start with, his characters - and this film is a prime example - are barely one-dimensional. Here we have a nice little nuclear generically-demographic family: Handsome rugged macho dad, gorgeous (if nervous) mom, smart-ass older sis (welded to her phone, of course) and finally, goofy unpredictable younger bro. They are right out of one of those all-too-pervasive Internet Provider commercials on TV. Yet there's nothing to define each one individually, so who cares what happens? And if their evil doubles appear, so what? They're so shallow and trivial anyway.

Then there's the "scary" plot. I'm sorry but all of Peele's gimmicks, reveals, McGuffins, whatever you want to call them are like stories cub scouts cook up around the campfire. After watching Night of the Living Dead for the 100th time.

Gimme a break.

That part of it I liked. Lots more engaging that your average Marvel franchise flick. Don't get me wrong, I loved the comics & used to read Dr. Strange & Silver Surfer religiously. But that was a few pages at a sitting. I didn't have to swallow all that CGI visual & aural noise at one shot.

I like the low-key aspect of Nope. I like the imaginative stuff, the killer chimp sitcom, the ex-TV kid star theme park/cult. I love the use of the car-lot balloon men & the look of the extra-terrestrial(s). Very imaginative stuff.

And yet, so much of this seems offhand & over-the-top at the same time. I some ways it reminded me of of the the most bizarre movie I've ever seen: The Incredibly Strange Creatures Who Stopped Living and Became Mixed-Up Zombies!!? Maybe it was trying to be a pastiche of that (& a whole lot of other stuff).

Awful in every possible way. First of all the cast: Kim Novak before she could act, Eleanor Parker playing a glamorous society lady version of a working-class invalid, Frank Sinatra playing Frank Sinatra, Arnold Stang as a cartoon chipmunk, Darren McGavin before he discovered his Night Stalker chops. I could go on. So why did I wait so long to write a review? Because every year it's just gets worse. Even the poker game, which is arguably the high point of the film, pales so much in comparison to the poker game in The Cincinnati Kid.

Imagine how it would be made today. There's no comparison with the cardboard cutouts in this film. Only the music stands out.

More padding than a 15 foot sectional sofa and far more parts, too. For along time people have complained about so many movies not being long enough to do proper justice to their plots and characterizations. Well, this is one case where I think the reverse applies. This would have been far far better as a more concise single-sitting film. For one thing, who needs three (3!) different "parallel" cases to be tracked? (Two for Mick and one for Maggie). In fact, I would be willing to pay extra for excess plot removal.

My other carp with this series is how shallow and unsympathetic the characters are, every last one of them.

Don't know how this series gets 7.7 on IMDB but it don't bode well for the world of streaming.

The only word I can find to describe this show is preposterous. It abounds in cliches and borrowings from a messy assortment of better works. It's hard to believe this was written and produced by the man behind Coupling, such a terrific series.

Before opening credits there is a pretty effective set piece on a subway (underground ) car involving a menacing guy who gets a crowd-sourced come-uppance that has an almost dance-like quality. I'm still not sure what it has to do with the rest of the series other than sharing a couple of characters.

The plot is weak, tanged and plain silly. Tucci looks bored. Tennant looks re-animated. The rest of the cast looks puzzled and confused. Maybe it's a post-Brexit thing.

I'm embarrassed even to admit I watched this - all the way through yet - but only for Idris Elba who I hope was paid a trunkful of dough, Because was the worst stinker I have seen so far. If this doesn't sink Netflix, they must have a powerful fairy godmother (and it ain't the BBC). Not only was there no perceivable plot, it seemed like they were making it up as they were going along, frame by frame, from old (and I do mean OLD) hoary B (or less) movies and long-forgotten TV shows. When the final scene played at least a half dozen major threads were left hanging. I guess they figured no one would notice as there was no real plot either. Finally, the villain was played by Andy Serkis who has spent a good part of his career under heavy makeup and monster and animal disguises. Which is where he belongs because he's definitely no Anthony Hopkins.

From every standpoint & perspective, David Cronenberg has perfectly captured & translated Don Delillo's brilliant novel. Perfect casting, acting, direction, it all works. Just the opposite, unfortunately, the current film version of Delillo's White Noise. Odd, because Cosmopolis is by far the more cerebral of both novels. But then that's the difference between a brilliant, skilled, imaginative director and one who goes after obvious cinematic effects with a less than stellar cast.

Why does IMDB require a fixed number of characters in a review. And why does it now require you to search for "Celebs" on its site versus individuals or just plain people? Oh well, soon, I guess, we'll all be replaced by Chatbots.

White Noise has always been one of my favorite books. Don DeLillo is a cerebral writer. He is an artist of words. I put him in a category with Shakespeare, Joyce, Hemingway, Beckett. My original 1986 paperback is filled with many dozens of bookmarks & annotations. It spoke to me as a universal parable of modern American existence. It was not a situational comedy. It was not a snapshot of life in the 1970s. It was not sci-fi or satire. It was all of the above & more & way beyond.

What was brilliantly insightful & funny on the page becomes petty & clever self-consciousness on the screen. Comes off like Shakespeare as performed with earnest sincerity by an untalented community theater group. Lines should have been spoken with little or no inflection, Twilight Zone-style. There are far too many layers of unnecessary "acting". An overabundance of actorly quirks & mannerisms. It all comes off like bad sketch performing.

There used to be film directors capable of converting novels into cinematic masterpieces. Three who come to mind are John Huston, Stanley Kubrick, and Andre Tarkovsky. Their kind has apparently reached extinction.

PS Why does IMDB require a fixed number of characters in a review. And why does it now require you to search for "Celebs" on its site versus individuals or just plain people? Oh well, soon, I guess, we will all be replaced by Chatbots.

Considering that Brazil and Fisher King are two of my all-time favorite films, I am amazed at how awful this thing is. Sloppy and choppy are the first descriptors that come to mind. Shallow and meaningless are two more. It's like a gourmet feast whose ingredients have been sitting around the kitchen, decaying like Miss Havisham's wedding cake, until for the lack of cohesive effort, they are simply thrown together in a pot, stirred and served to a (mostly) guileless audience. Ugh.

No comment on the "acting". No acting was called for in this thing. Adam Driver was a perfect choice for the lead..

Delectably French: Funny. Ironic. Glamorous. Sexy. Fabrice Lucchini is one of France's great actors. What a voice, what diction. He is so perfect in this. Gullible yet guileful.

And...

Turning and turning in the widening gyre The falcon cannot hear the falconer; Things fall apart; the centre cannot hold; Mere anarchy is loosed upon the world, The blood-dimmed tide is loosed, and everywhere The ceremony of innocence is drowned; The best lack all conviction, while the worst Are full of passionate intensity.

Surely some revelation is at hand; Surely the Second Coming is at hand.

The Second Coming! Hardly are those words out When a vast image out of Spiritus Mundi Troubles my sight: somewhere in sands of the desert A shape with lion body and the head of a man, A gaze blank and pitiless as the sun, Is moving its slow thighs, while all about it Reel shadows of the indignant desert birds.

The darkness drops again; but now I know That twenty centuries of stony sleep Were vexed to nightmare by a rocking cradle, And what rough beast, its hour come round at last, Slouches towards Bethlehem to be born?

Started off with a bang. Pilot was a 10, no hesitation. Then it went more or less steadily downhill. Became more & more a pile of tropes & cliches. Hillbillies of the most generic variety. Ex-military dudes performing CGI-assisted maneuvers out of a cheap video game. Futuristic badguy/badgirl characters doing lame Matrix imitations in pointless & confusing gambits. Overall pretty bad acting, too. Especially the lead who hasn't changed in looks or range since she was 5 years old.

I really like William Gibson's work, too, but they never seem to work on the screen. Interesting that his original inspiration was supposedly my favorite film, Blade Runner.

Not going back to watch after ep. 5.