Reviews

Thomas Wolfe and William Faulkner were southern American writers known for writing veiled autobiographical novels. Jack Kerouac was influenced by Wolfe's writing. Max Perkins was the most successful American editor have worked with Hemingway and Fitzgerald. Wolfe had a sugar mama twenty years his senior. She was an American costume designer who supported Wolfe while he struggled to get published.

This is a uniquely American story.

So, why not hire a British director? Why not get English pretty boy Jude Law to play Wolfe? Let's hire English actor, Colin Firth to play Max Perkins. Wolfe's sugar mama is played by Nicole Kidman, the over-used Australian actress. It gets worse. Australian actor. Guy Pierce plays Fitzgerald. English actor Dominic West plays Hemingway.

Jude Law plays Wolfe like the same American he did in The Talented Mr Ripley. His American accent is an abomination. It's offensive. His hyperactive antics have become Law's trademark. It's like he has chosen to talk so fast so no one will notice how truly awful his performance is. Wolfe was not a handsome man, and his sugar momma was an old homely spinster.

This British production is akin to watching a play about the Beatles performed entirely by Texan actors. It's is very strange and it derails the whole story. It's not just the horrible American accents that drag this film down, but Firth's portrayal of Perkins as an English Aristocrat is just bizarre.

It's sad too, because you could make an interesting film about Max Perkins and Wolfe. This isn't it.

This is garbage.

I remember discovering this show by accident with my mother. We both instantly loved it. It was funny, suspenseful, and a bit mystical. It was on a Canadian channel we got in Detroit. I remember it being on Friday or Saturday night, but I could be wrong. I just remember loving every second of the show, and the lead character was very funny, but he solved a crime every week. It was just so ahead of its time - a great blend of comedy and suspense. Every once in a while I will try to find it I never do. To my knowledge, it was never on DVD, and has never aired since the 80's. I would pay anything to stream it somwhere.

I can't tell you how angry I was for wasting a day out of my life to watch this garbage. Hollywood's idea of what constitutes an interesting character is that they do drugs, drink too much, and have lots of boring and meaningless sex. Hollywood writers, and the writer who wrote the book that this series is based on seem to have no imagination left. It's like these scripts are written by AI, and the AI is a pervert who thinks that the only meaningful existence is one that clouded by drug use and casual sex.

I love murder mysteries when they are well written. This isn't. It's garbage.

The only reason I am giving this a 2 instead of a 1 is that I enjoyed seeing Nantucket, as I took several trips there when I was young.

The plot is sort of ridiculous. It's a fun ride getting to the truth, but by the last episode where everything is revealed, it's a significant disappointment. The priest had many other options other than the absurd one he chooses, and there isn't a valid reason for what he does. In flashbacks we see that he does what he does the sake of the town, but it's not believable. He had only been in the town a few months. He had no attachment to the town. Maybe the book is better.

The other thing that annoyed me was the female lead. She is played by a cute blond, but she is not a good actress.

She seems to float through this series like an extra, though she is in almost every scene. For some reason, she has a giant baby that she carries on her hip like a bag of groceries. The actress doesn't know how to hold a baby, and she shows no emotional bond with her own daughter. My experience tells me that babies sleep a lot, but this character never lets her. She just lugs the baby everywhere. Even while she is working, the baby is with her. It seems like a health code violation to be changing a babies diapers in a kitchen of a cafe. Can she not find a babysitter in the Scrubland? No relatives to help her out? If I knew there was a mass shouting, and a town full of criminals where I was raising my baby, I think I might move to Sydney and get a job serving coffee.

Most of the negative reviews of this film mention that they felt duped by the marketing campaign for it. It's an odd criticism. I get that people were expecting the best horror film ever made, but this isn't really a horror film, like Silence of the Lambs isn't a horror film. The parallel's to Silence of the Lambs are obvious, and a nod to Zodiac as well. A young female FBI agent is tracking down a serial killer, played by Cage. The killer leaves coded messages at the scene of each murder. It's a puzzle that she begins to solve. The problem is that the deeper she looks the more she sees a connection to herself and her mother. There is something odd about dolls in here as well as the killer appears to be a doll maker.

This all unfolds expertly. There is real tension throughout every scene in this film, as the viewer tries to make the puzzle pieces fit. It's beautifully shot and all the actors are terrific. I was on the edge of my seat the whole time. Cage's performance is creepy and mysterious. Is he the devil or does he just work for the devil. Who is working for him?

My only criticism is the ending. Though some of the questions are answered, there isn't any insight to the origin of Longlegs, Cage's character. It's such an interesting character.

Why does he look like an insane trans clown? What's his obsession with T-Rex about? What are the dolls about? How is a doll able to unleash evil unto a family?

It almost feels like a setup for a sequel but everyone is dead in the end.

This script is so preposterous and lame. The premise of the movie is stupid and lame. Halle Berry gives one of the worst performances of the year. She is almost 60 and has the haircut of a 13-year-old. She is 10 years older than Wahlberg, but they are supposed to be high school sweethearts. I understand the appeal of Wahlberg, but his agent shouldn't be saying yes to every script that passes his desk. He's better than this.

How do movies like this get made? Have all the good screenwriters in Hollywood died of Covid? When was the last time we saw a movie and said, "Wow, what a great script?" Adam Sandler has a deal with Netflix, and it must be difficult to find projects to do. His films can be lighthearted and silly, but the scripts aren't garbage like The Union.

I like Alba, and honestly in the beginning I didn't mind watching her beating up 3 dudes by herself. I mean it's preposterous, but welcome to Hollywood. The bad thing is that very quickly the story gets jumbled and very soon you don't really know what's going on. She sits around talking to old friends it seems, then she just gets in the car and goes out to beat up more dudes. There is a storyline that her old boyfriend's father is a senator, but he's a conservative Christian, so I figure that he must be the villain. I really didn't stick around to find out because I just stopped caring. It was good seeing Alba again, she has aged well and I found her just as beautiful as before. Her acting isn't great, but honestly I blame the script and director for that.

Glenn Powel is definitely a rising star, and he was the standout in Linkletter's baseball movie. This starts out strong mostly because of Powell's charm and comedic timing. Two things happen to derail this film. First the plot takes a sharp turn, and the film suddenly becomes a romantic comedy. Second the lead actress in said romance gives one of the worst performance that I have ever seen. It's like we are airlifted out of charming crime thriller and dropped into one of the most awkward second acts I have ever watched. I don't know who this actress is but she is awful. She tries to be cute and silly but her performance just took me right out of the movie. For some reason, she makes the decision to use her bulging eyes as an Italian actor might use their hands. It's bizarre. Also, she is a murderer. So why would are leading man fall for a bug-eyed psychopath? The film doesn't explain this at all. Suddenly they're married with kids, and this ending is not happy. It feels tragic, as both of them have covered up murders. In romantic comedies you either pull for a couple to get together or you don't. In this one, the moment this actress comes on the thinking Gary Johnston should run for the hills.

Wow, where to begin? When you name a movie, the first omen, it's hard not to compare it to the original film. That film understood pacing and tension. It understood that sometimes just a look from a creepy kid was scarier than most horror movies today. It created a sense of evil that permeated the entire film. What isn't scary is repeatedly showing a slimy hand of the devil with overly dramatic music.

This film is slow and boring. There is a very long scene with two nuns talking endlessly in a bedroom. It was agony to watch. The first half of this movie, doesn't feel like a horror film at all. It feels like a story about crazy nuns. When the plot does unfold, it is like watching The Usual Suspects after watching the ending first. I like the actress from Servant, but in this it feels like she is playing the same character. She doesn't quite know if she is good or evil. She has visions. She is confused. Who cares.

When they tie it to the Omen at the end, it feels cheap. It's embarrassing, and the sort of "plot twist" we all saw coming from the first act.

This film is almost like a one man play so it requires an actor with great skill to keep it engaging. I've never thought much about J Lo's acting, but her bad performance in this film really stands out. Not in a good way. I don't recall ever seeing an actor playing a soldier whose character needed so much makeup and hair maintenance. I've got to save the Earth from destruction, but let me first spend an hour doing my makeup and hair. The real issue is that she just doesn't find the character. There are scenes where she is cracking jokes and trying to be funny, and then other scenes where she is supposed to be in tremendous pain and experiencing intense fear and sorrow, but she plays it all the same. She has the same expression on her face, and she always looks more like an aging model than a soldier saving the world. A role like this would have been great for Aubrey Plaza, or anyone else that tried a little harder to create a believable character and was less concerned about how they look in the mirror.

I just heard that Max cancelled this series. It's at such a high level of filmmaking. The story itself, and the way it unravels is sublime. The animation is astoundingly beautiful. The musical score is perfect. Everything about this film, and I say film because it is not really a series but a long animated film, is crafted so wonderfully. These people are masters at what they do. As an art, Director, myself, I could go on for pages about the color palette alone. The world that's created in this film unfolds in such a mesmerizing way. What seems cute and harmless just may be that, but it could also be a trap, something sinister. I have not see animation so spectacular in a long time.

There are three writers credited on this film. Two of them wrote Möbius. The third, is a woman who literally has never written a thing in her life. Then they hired a woman to direct who has only worked in TV. This is her first big film directing. Then they decide to make Dakota Jonson the lead. Why? She has very limited range as an actress, and she is certainly not an action star. Her character has the ability to see the future and change it. Remember that great scene in Minority Report where Samantha Morton, being able to see into the future helps Tom Cruise escape pursuit? I expected this film to have similar moments. It has none. You can barely tell, amongst all the fireworks, when she has a vision of the future. The overall sense I got watching this was that I was watching a low budget television show. If you know all this going in maybe you wouldn't be so disappointed as I was.

I am going to take the opportunity to discuss Steven King's movie or series recommendations. His first recommendation that I listened to was the series, bad sisters, which I hated. Then he recommended baby reindeer, which I thought was disgusting and degrading. His latest recommendation was the film coffee table which I admit was fantastic for the first 30 to 40 minutes but then it was just a snooze fast, boring, dull and it certainly wasn't a dark horror film as he described it. So I guess I've learned my lesson that I should ignore everything that Steven King says. I believe that he smokes too much pot and he watches too much television.

This series has an identity crisis - It wants to be a charming Irish comedy, which honestly has been done to death and has become a cliche, and it wants to be a murder mystery. I find the murder mystery to be far more interesting, mostly because of a great performance by the Irish actress that plays the cop. She has enough comedic chops of her own, that we don't need the distraction of the goofy, bumbling performances of the podcasters. It is distracting and not in the least bit funny. What we are left with is just a lot of boring scenes that seem pointless, when the engaging part of the story is almost ignored. I know some the comments will say that it starts off slow but gets better in later episodes, but I'm way too busy to sit through 3 boring episodes. Boredom is not entertainment.

There is not a single character in this series that I cared about, and if you have zero empathy about a character, you don't care what happens to them. One thing this series is not about is food. No character in the kitchen seems to have any interest in food. It's like watching a show about chefs working in a prison. A prison kitchen is a good metaphor, because many of the characters in this show seem as if they just got out of prison or will soon be going there. Having worked in a kitchen before, I can tell you that this kitchen is so small that they would be having 10 collisions a night, plates would be broken, and meals would end up on the floor. So, I guess my main point is that this is not a realistic portrayal of a restaurant kitchen. The health department would shut this place down in a second. Especially when the pastry chef is a " cutter" with open wounds. Even if it was a realistic portrayal of a restaurant, the workers would not have time to take endless phone calls and have endless discussions about their personal lives in the middle of a dinner shift. Being a chef is a serious business, and it takes serious people to make a kitchen run. It feels like there were no requirements to get a job at this restaurant.

Overall, I just think the writing is horrible. There are a few good actors in here, but the writers and directors did them no favors.

I had just watched Miller's Girl last week. Similar concept, but an older professor romantically involved with a young student. I didn't care for that one either. I think the problem is that our current culture is void of romance, so when writers are giving the task of writing a romantic comedy, they don't really know how to do it. There was a book and a movie called How Stella Got her Grove Back, 25 years ago that was about a 40 something black writer who falls in love with a Jamaican boy 25 years younger. The book was praised as an empowering story of how love healed this writer who was struggling with middle age. Then it was a hit movie. Black girl power was all the rage. Except that it was all a fantasy. Stella goes to Jamaica and falls in love with a muncher younger boy, but it turns out that the boy was gay and only used her to get a green card. She divorces him and spends years complaint that she was conned.

This movie feels like a con too. Anne Hathaway is 42. Her character somehow wins the heart of a 20 something pop star. Even the scene in the trailer when the pop star looks out at a sea of gorgeous young girls, but is smitten by a 42-year-old mid, seems preposterous, which is why this film went straight to video. It's a tired boring story. There is zero chemistry between the two actors. A love story works because you pull for the characters to get together and stay together. This just feels like watching two empty people passing the time because they are as bored with their lives as we are.

I have never submitted a review so early for a series, but I don't intend to watch any further. Let's begin with Jeff Daniels' "accent." It's such a cartoonish southern accent, that I was immediately reminded of that cartoon series from the 60's, Foghorn Leghorn. I was not able to really take his character seriously, and like a lot of actors that have horrible accents, he seemed to think that going over the top would somehow help. It didn't. Daniels' portrayal of his character is so buffoonish and moronic, that he made the worst possible mistake an actor can make. He made the character so hatable and unredeemable, that I just lost any interest I had in watching him. If you look at all the great villains in film history, the actor usually finds something sympathetic about him, something relatable. He also sort of slurs when he speaks, like he is about spit up. His whole performance is a joke, but this is not a comedy.

Was it fun to watch Sandler floating around in space? You bet. A giant talking spider in space? I guess. However, this really has nothing to do with space. Sandler character could have as easily been working on an oil tanker at sea for a year. His wife, played by Mulligan, seems to want a divorce while carrying his child, or after losing a child, during the worst possible time for an astronaut. She is selfish and cruel, and while Sandler is losing his mind in space, his wife ghosts him. This is essentially the plot. Do you want them to repair their marriage and get back together. ? Not really. This is the problem with the film. It is a film about a marriage falling apart with space as a backdrop, and it is very boring and uninteresting. I had to fast forward through a lot of bad dialog, so I probably missed a lot of plot stuff, but in my defense, there isn't a plot.

A far better space film is Constellation (series on Apple) about a woman in a bad marriage who returns from space but she is not the same woman that left. The mystery is what happened to her up there, and what does all of it have to do with quantum physics?

I gave up up on season one after 4 episodes. I gave season 2 a chance because of Kathryn Winnick who I have loved since Vikings. Plot issues and bad writing aside, I think what bothers me the most is watching 14 year old girls exploring a homosexual relationship while their lives are in danger from drug dealers. It isn't credible and it feels so forced like the writers were compelled to insert an LGBT agenda where it clearly didn't belong. I want to be entertained not preached to. I wish Hollywood gets back to entertaining an audience at some point.

I'm pretty sure astrophysicists have computer algorithms that track the paths of comets. So the opening scene makes no sense, and the tone from the start is odd. It doesn't play as a drama or a comedy. I had the same issues with Vice and that cop movie. Step Brothers is a fantastic comedy because it set a perfect tone from the start. If a movie can't with me over in the first 20 minutes it just becomes a chore. I didn't laugh once at this and I fast forwarded through most of it.

This is so sad. The first Matrix is a masterpiece and groundbreaking. The next two were disappointing but watchable. This is nothing short of a disaster.

I love Lilly James. She is terrific in everything she does. At first her character is charming and full of life, feeling trapped by her families wealth and privilege as she dreams of true love and an thrilling life. The director, Emily Mortimer, like Sophia Coppola before her, decides to mix a period piece with contemporary music. It was great to hear Marianne Faithful I admit, and in the first episode I found the series promising.

However, the character, Linda evolves. She becomes a horrible person who hates her own children and eventually abandons them. She also uses men to escape her boredom. She leaves a trail of human despair in her wake. Her cousin and best friend, Fanny is the narrator of the book and film. Soon you begin to wonder why they are friends at all. Linda seems incapable of being a friend to anyone. She is self-absorbed, aimless, and incapable of being happy and content. This is OK, of course. She is not the first anti-hero in literature and film, but this series tries to portray her as some sort of feminist hero like being a wife and loving mother is a betrayal to her own independence and Bohemian soul.

This is tragic story. Her downfall is very sad, but it's played out like a comedy that is not remotely funny. The characters are paper-thin cliches, void of humanity. I am reminded of today's youth who seem to think that a life on social media is the same as real life. It's a life of veneer. People pretending to be something they are not because it's more thrilling than facing how ordinary we all are.

Linda goes to great lengths to find happiness, ultimately by escaping any chance of it.

And in the end listening to people complain about there boredom is well, BORING.

First of all, Harry Connick Jr. Can't act. So every scene he is in is a real struggle. He in his mid fifties but is trying to pull off a haircut he had when he was twenty. A 55 year old father could not realistically wear that stupid hairstyle without being laughed at by his neighbors and peers. So the fact the procurers couldn't find a real actor to play the father is a bad sign.

Then there is this scene where a girl suffering from schizophrenia ends her stay in a hospital to return to public school. While fumbling through her locker a bottle of medication falls out of her locker and on to the hallway floor and she is mortified and embarrassed as all her classmates stare on with disdain and judgement. 1) every high schooler is on medication these days so it should not be an issue at all. 2) if she so ashamed of being spotted taking medication why not key it in her purse and take them in the bathroom. 3) medications have childproof caps which means it's nearly impossible to drop a medication bottle and have the pills spill out on the floor. So the fact that the writers and producers kept this stupid scene in the film is a very bad sign. It is lazy filmmaking.

... and this is far as I got.