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Average Joe (2023)
What a Great Series - The Soul Train of Gangster Stories...
...and in case you don't remember, Soul Train kicked the snot out of American Band Stand.
I love this series, but I'm only up to EP03, but so far, great! I just finished Big Little Lives, a completely boring series in which almost nothing happened in seven episodes. Not true with Average Joe.
I love most of the characters, but I'm hoping they turn around the character of the young daughter who is the typical whiny kid they put in everything, like all kids are like this. I call this the Meadow Soprano Effect after that horrible creature from our favorite gangster series. Since then, this archetype has been in WAY too many series and movies. Why can't young kids be cool instead of whiny?
And when I say not whiny, I mean like the Cathy character who is a total gangster and bad-a$$. She comes out of the gate shooting.
Update! I'm on EP04 and still loving it. Remember what I said about The Meadow Soprano Effect. Dad sort of addressed this by telling his daughter to knock off the "white girl sh#t." Then Cathy talks daughter off her ledge of drama. Cathy is the only one thinking clearly at this point. She is a great character and the best in the series so far, but I like a few of them.
I hated the wife and the daughter, almost throughout the series. They were always hysterical and stupid and irrational. They could have taken out this family drama and replaced it with something, anything else.
Big Little Lies (2017)
Nothng Happens
Spoiler Alert! Nothing happens, and then at the very end, we still are left with nothing. We don't even see the murder. And duh, the kid doing the abusing is the son of the abusive father? A real Sherlock Holmes mystery there.
Alternative title: Much Ado about Absolutely Nothing. Nothing happens in the in the first (blank) episodes, at least nothing substantial. I was waiting to fill in the blank as I watched each episode, but then nothing happened at all. There is no sort of resolution.
A police investigation shown through a vegetable shredder as we only see bits and pieces in each episode. These flash scenes are completely incomprehensible and annoying as the viewer has no idea what they are talking about.
Next, some rough first-grader sex complete with choking and biting. I guess that's just how kids do things these days. I don't have children and don't care. The parents are too stupid to outsmart their own first graders to find out what is going on amongst the kids. How hard would it be to get the truth out of a first grader? Answer: not hard at all. The whole plot revolves around adults unable to crack the omerta of a class of pipsqueaks.
Spousal abuse comes with rough sex, at least according to the guidelines drawn out in BLL. Nicole Kidman and her man can't seem to shake hands without beating on each other. Battered mom can't put two and two together and come up with her kid being the little molester?
Office Space (1999)
If Ever a Film Deserves a Ten, It's Office Space
How many films or books has ever had the audacity to criticize the American way of life in the late 20th century? I'll wait. I can only think of the novel Generation X by Douglas Coupland. This movie was a much more poignant examination of our society than American Beauty, the winner of the best picture Oscar that year.
Not only was this film laugh-out-loud funny (Yes, it's OK to write that out), it also had so much to say about work, corporate America, our car culture, and many other things. The film deserves praise just for the scene of the workers having to cross a parking lot no-man's-land without a sidewalk just to get a cup of coffee. Why do we build our cities like this?
The movie is worth watching just for the discussion of a worker commenting that, "It looks like someone has a case of the Mondays." Its take-down or corporate America's version of a restaurant is also brilliant
Evidently, this wasn't very successful at the box office, but no one is a prophet in their own country, as the Bible says. This film is much more clever than The Office series to follow which I'm sure were inspired by this movie. It's grown into a cult classic and can be quoted extensively by most thinking adults.
The Boys (2019)
Great Except When it Was Frustrating
I watched the first season on a friend's recommendation a couple years ago (it's now August 2024), and I liked it a lot. For some reason, the second season lost me almost immediately. I got back to the series a month ago and started from the beginning, this time skipping happily through the first two seasons. Sort of slowed down with S03. I got tired of The guy with the bad British accent as his character seemed to drift back and forth a bit too much.
Then they turned Frenchie gay? Like they didn't already check off enough boxes on inclusivity in the series that they felt they needed to double-down on gay? I never liked Hughie's dad and his character got stupider as the series progressed.
What I really hated, absolutely hated about the series were most of the fight scenes with the Supes. They dragged on forever and we as viewers never understood why one Supe was superior to the other. And why did the humans keep using guns against them when they were completely ineffective? For this same reason, I despise the traditional, comic book superhero movies. Some hero will be thrown through a brick building, only to spring back the tear into his opponent again and again.
Starlight seemed mostly freaking useless as a protector of her group. I got bored and annoyed with the mute girl and her powers were also all over the place.
Daddio (2023)
Six Stars Just for the Idea - Execution? Not so Much
I don't know about other viewers, but I wouldn't watch this film again if you paid me by the minute. The dialogue wasn't that good, it wasn't Waiting for Godot in a taxi. The visuals are unspectacular as can be. I give it credit for putting something on film on a shoestring budget (I assume), but that doesn't mean it's good. In addition, I really hate it when a film forces me to read text messages. I don't even like reading my own. It's like asking me to wash your dishes. It defeats the purpose of watching a movie, unless you are watching it on your phone which makes no sense.
My first thought about this movie is why isn't there a train to take New York passengers from the airport to the city? Unthinkable for any city in Europe. One car to take one person over this distance and we wonder why the planet is coming apart at the seams. It's just so completely unsophisticated in this day and age. Get with it NY.
Then he bemoans the coming end to taxis. Great, I can't wait. Ah, no more foul-mouthed moron spending his entire day honking his horn over nothing and screaming at pedestrians for daring to walk across the street. Won't that be terrible.
Then we're supposed to think it's cool for a taxi driver to make judgements about his fares. "It's nice you're not on your phone." Why would someone care? Then she is all over her phone. And then he gets into her sex life?
Who is he? Bernie X from National Lampoon magazine, the world's filthiest cabbie?
Spartan (2004)
This Really Earns Its One Star, From Start to Finish
People write here all the time saying, "That was the worst movie I've ever seen," or the grammatically-challenged will write something like, "Worst movie I ever seen." I've never said that and won't say this about Spartan. I will say that I've never seen a movie that made zero sense from start to finish. I'd also have to say that this rates right up there with the worst films I've ever seen, and I sat through a couple of Steven Segal's films and most of Nic Cage's recent work.
Where's the girl? I wonder how many times this was said in the movie. Too many is the answer. How many people had to die to track down aforementioned girl? It was more than enough to rate in the category of natural disaster.
Horizon: An American Saga - Chapter 1 (2024)
Long, Boring, Plotless, and Long
The only thing worse than a story not making much sense is five or six stories not adding up to anything. It's basically a TV series but the episodes will be years apart. Does that sound like fun to you?
"An American Saga Chapter 2 has been delayed from August 16, 2024, to an undetermined date to allow the first installment more time to find its audience."
Maybe its audience is hiding down in the cellar, too afraid that the second installment will be as pointless as the first?
This just made no sense and jumped from one story to the next with nothing in the way of a story. The music is reason enough not to watch this and is so bombastic and run-of-the-mill that I think they just took it off the free option for phone ringtones.
Shrill (2019)
Mixed Thoughts on this Series with Serious Subjects
This is the only thing on film I can remember seeing in which an abortion is carried out. Why should this be so taboo when most Americans (61%) continue to say that abortion should be legal in all (27%) or most (34%) cases.
In the first episode, right at the beginning, we see the protagonist eating. She's standing in the kitchen while she eats some sort of foul crap right out of the plastic tray from the supermarket. There is a lesson to be learned here that viewers aren't taught. Respect what you eat. If you are going to eat crap, at least treat it like real food. Put it on a plate, then sit down at the table and have a proper meal. No one is too hungry or too busy to sit down and have a meal like a human being.
The most disturbing thing for me (white male 65) is how she seems to have zero respect for herself. I happen to live in a society (Spain) in which obesity isn't nearly as common as it is in the USA. I just think it is really sad to see overweight children because their parents probably know nothing about proper nutrition.
Munich (2005)
Spielberg's Best
I can't believe I've never reviewed this before as it's one of my favorite films and definitely my favorite from Spielberg. Based on a book that seems mostly apocryphal, at least to me. Even when I read the book way back in 1984, the parts outside of those that could be verified sounded like fiction. Still, it's a great story and sort of a David and Goliath tale, except when it drags down into a pointless blood feud between the Israelis and the Palestinians. This seems to be a hobby for both sides.
On that front, nothing has changed in the entire history of this conflict that I'm tired of hearing about, to be honest.
Malcolm in the Middle (2000)
Not Fit Entertainment for an Adult, But...
But this series has moments of pure brilliance.
I never had a TV back when this show first aired, and I wouldn't have watched it if I had. I was too sophisticated to watch network TV. Now, in 2024, I'm a man creeping gracefully into old age (I hope gracefully), so why would I watch this pabulum fit only for mouth-breathing half-wits? And why am I laughing at it? What's wrong with me?
I envy anyone who watched this show at the perfect age, say between 12 and 20 years old. It's dark to the point of being sinister, even disturbing, something I never had on TV back when I was a kid.
I can only take watching this in small doses, like no more than an episode every couple of weeks, so I probably won't live long enough to see them all, but I'm glad I discovered this show, even though it was too late.
American Rust (2021)
Why Would Hollywood Hacks Think They Are Better Writers Than The Original Author?
A terrible adaptation of the book. I don't even recognize this from the novel, or just barely. The murder is shown as something along the lines of a vague memory or a bad dream which changes the time-line of the story completely. In the book, Poe is immediately fingered for the killing and Issac heads out for the territories leaving his best friend in the lurch. The victim was a hobo in the novel, and here it's a former police officer recently fired by the Jeff Daniels character. I don't understand why they would change this.
Their big mistake was trying to wring out more than one season from the book. There's nothing about unions in the book while this seems to be a big part of the series. What the series doesn't talk about is maybe Pennsyltucky's problems stem from their godawful taste in music which is beaten into the ears of viewers, all of them songs I hated when they were released a million years ago.
Issac are Julia Hispanic, or half Hispanic and they speak Spanish while their invalid father can't even pronounce "Alejandro," her new husband's name. How does that happen anywhere other than Hollywood. This was barely touched on in the novel.
I counted thirteen different writers, not including Philipp Meyer whose fine novel this series sprang from, or should I say crawled out of? Note to Hollywood: few good things have ever come from a committee of writers. I'd guess all of them studied creative writing, the graveyard of good writing.
Just two episodes in and I hate how so many scenes are too dark to see anything, a film technique I have noticed all too frequently in recent years. Why bother making a movie if you can't see anything? Maybe you'd be happier in radio. Black is the predominant color here and black reflects no light, meaning we can't see much. Even at night, humans have very good vision, but evidently directors prefer for all of us to be blind.
S01E02 - Do we really need to sit through an entire hick wedding? Been there, never want to repeat that experience, not even if I got married. What was the point? Deer Hunter homage? I thought that movie was too long.
Law Abiding Citizen (2009)
Torture Porn and Hyper-Violence Wrapped in a Ridiculous Premise
So, this guy is a force of nature who makes the entire city of Philadelphia tremble with fear and he allows two random hobos to rape and kill his wife and daughter before his very eyes? How did that happen? This story goes from gross and repugnant (rape and child murder as entertainment) to completely, hyper-violent (woman judge's head exploding and mass-murder), to the dumbest plot device in the world of movies (he has a tunnel dug into his prison cell).
The prison guards would have knocked the smug look off his face in about fifteen minutes of torture.
Forget about the entire premise of the film: a guy infuriated with the American justice system because they make plea deals with criminals. That is the stupidest idea and only one a child would harbor. How about the prosecutor just say something that it would be statistically impossible to bring to trial every criminal case presented before the court.
Brats (2024)
Wanted to Like it, Comes Up Short
First of all, no one read the stupid article and knew whether it was being critical of the kid actors. This was before the internet so an article in New York Magazine wasn't read nationwide. The name stuck as it was easy to remember because it plagiarized the other pack. The article (I just read it for the first time a minute ago) is total crap and if it weren't for the name he coined, no one would have ever spoken of those few thousand words again. It was nothing more or less than a hatchet job by a journalist who probably wanted to sleep with one of them.
It's ironic that the one I despised the most in this group as an actor and the one with the most punchable face, Andrew McCarthy, has had an interesting career lately as a travel writer and now this film. I haven't read anything he's written so I'm beginning with his memoir of walking the Camino de Santiago with his son.
Nothing much of anything is revealed in this film. Once upon a time there was an article written that coined the name. The supposed members of this Brat Pack, young actors, made a bunch of films dealing with young people. There was never much to this story and thus not much more can be said about it all these years later.
The film itself is awkward at times with way too much time inside of a car, too many shots of the film crew lurking around in the background, and there wasn't much at all of what their lives were like 40 years ago.
The strangest thing I learned from the film was that none of them were even friends and haven't had any contact with each other in all these years. It just seems like they'd at least call once in a while to comment on a recent project they had finished, either to compliment each other or ask if they knew about it. In the end, they weren't any sort of pack at all.
One True Thing (1998)
Maudlin Tripe
First of all, the boy flunks out of American literature at summer school? Yes, that does make you a moron, unless English is like your third or fourth language
The dad is the biggest creep ever. She argues with him constantly when what he really needs is a horse whipping. Does the daughter even have one of those? The dialogue is stupid and cliché-ridden. Then she gives Santa a lap dance which could have been cool but was interrupted by her mom croaking, or coming close, on the nearby park bench.
What needed mercy killing more than anything was this film that clocks in at a totally inexcusable 2h7m. Ugh.
Wild (2014)
Just Walk it Off
The perfect movie (or book) for those who put a lot of credence in motivational slogans and posters of cats hanging from tree branches with a line about how crappy Mondays are. If you're the type who thinks that all of life's problems can be remedied with some made-up challenge, like walking form Mexico to Canada, then this is tailor-made for you.
What if she listened to motivational audio books all along the trail? Wow, she'd end up even more fixed and would forever be spitting out piffle like:
1. "Believe in yourself."
2. "You are your only limit."
3. "Dream big, work hard."
4. "Embrace the grind."
5. "You've got this."
6. "Chase your dreams."
7. "Stay positive, work hard, make it happen."
8. "Be the change you wish to see."
9. "The only way is up."
10. "Never give up."
How is this for an alternative ending: At the end of the trail, or "her journey" as they love to call these, none other than Tony Robbins is there with an engagement ring in his hand.
There's nothing that can't be fixed with a long walk. Dead mother, heroin addiction, dangerous sexual promiscuity, and stupidity are child's play for a long hike, or maybe a running a marathon, or climbing Mount Everest, or running a marathon up Mount Everest.
This movie dealt more with toxic masculinity, or whatever they called it back in 2014, and had little to do with the wonders of the outdoor world.
Tires (2024)
Spoiler Alert: It Doesn't Get Better
There was almost nothing worth mentioning in this new series. I sort of liked the fat guy, Dave, but I didn't like him enough to give this anything but One Star. I sort of liked some of Shane Gillis's stand-up stuff, but this was not good.
The whole idea for this wasn't fun. A tire store? Who cares? I mean, this could have worked, a tire store as a backdrop for a comedy series but it didn't. Not even a little.
If there was a single joke in this, someone needs to remind me because I must have missed it.
None of the characters were fun to watch or funny. Annoying isn't funny and all of them never rose above being annoying.
This is what I would expect if you gave a bunch of guys who work in a tire store money to write and act in their own TV series. Maybe that's being classist, but what I took away from this was that there wasn't much thought put into the writing, if there was anything written down. Maybe they just improvised the whole thing.
The Fall Guy (2024)
I'd Rather Watch the Movie They Were Making in the Movie
...although what little we see of Metalstorm is godawful, too.
They only spent about ten billion dollars promoting this thing. I wonder if they paid the writers or they got the script from an unpaid intern on the set.
Wow, this movie wasn't anything like I expected, and I wasn't expecting much. I didn't expect it to be good, that is certain, but I thought it might be a bit fun, at least at times. Wow, it wasn't fun. It was a 2h6m of pointless dialogue and even more pointless stunts. The least they could have done is made it 1h30m of stupid. Why do moviemakers today think fans want more minutes? They think that more screen time equals better. It doesn't; it means more time trapped in a terrible film.
Filmmakers have an odd idea of what they think of as entertainment. Watching Emily Blunt sing a Phil Collins from start to finish isn't entertaining. If it were, we'd buy her records instead of Phil's. It was cringy, not entertaining, at least for me.
There are several huge swaths of dialogue that the writers obviously thought were clever. They weren't. Clever would be entertaining and these segments were about as entertaining as a Hollywood star with no voice singing karaoke. "I didn't just disappear on you, I disappeared on myself." Just awful, right? It goes on and gets even worse.
They report on the TV about a guy's suicide when there was no body found, and the alleged suicider (what is the word for that?) is still dripping wet from jumping out of the boat. Wow, that is some crackerjack reporting. They even had video of the explosion. Did the villains have an Eyewitness News team in their boat?
And forget about boating around Sydney harbor firing automatic weapons like you're out in Kandahar. I don't mind mindless fun, but there are limits.
My advice to any adult forced to watch this is the walk out before the end. It's the worst part, and that's saying something with regards to this disaster.
P. S. It's not even a little bit funny.
A Walk Among the Tombstones (2014)
The 12 Steps of Mediocrity
(I could have written 12 steps, but I don't care enough about this movie to give it that much effort.)
1. Make the movie too long. This runs 1h54m and should have clocked in at 1h30m.
2. Blow the main plot device. With any ransom scheme, the tricky bit is the exchange. How can you get the money without being caught? This film made no attempt to address that point and went with the old "we both show up at the same place and swap the hostage for the money." Very stupid. This should have been the centerpiece for the film and it was a botched job.
3. Go from 0-60, not the reverse. The movie began well enough, especially for a Liam Neesom film, which these days are in a stiff stupidity competition with those of Nic Cage.
4. Throw in Bible verse or some other tripe. Believe it or not, this was the first time I ever heard the 12 Steps. Man, what a load of rubbish! I'm a life-long atheist, so I guess I just need to man-up and do it on my own, if I were an alcoholic. I love booze, but I'm not a screw up about it.
Here are the real 12 Steps:
1. We admitted we were powerless over alcohol - that our lives had become unmanageable.
2. Came to believe that a Power greater than ourselves could restore us to sanity.
3. Made a decision to turn our will and our lives over to the care of God as we understood Him.
4. Made a searching and fearless moral inventory of ourselves.
5. Admitted to God, to ourselves, and to another human being the exact nature of our wrongs.
6. Were entirely ready to have God remove all these defects of character.
7. Humbly asked Him to remove our shortcomings.
8. Made a list of all persons we had harmed, and became willing to make amends to them all.
9. Made direct amends to such people wherever possible, except when to do so would injure them or others.
10. Continued to take personal inventory and when we were wrong promptly admitted it.
11. Sought through prayer and meditation to improve our conscious contact with God as we understood Him, praying only for knowledge of His will for us and the power to carry that out.
12. Having had a spiritual awakening as the result of these Steps, we tried to carry this message to alcoholics, and to practice these principles in all our affairs.
They left out the most important step, step 13:
Stop praying and think of a better ending.
A Man in Full (2024)
Great Character Development, Good Adaptation of the Novel
I'm on EP05 and liking it more and more. After the completely botched adaptation of Wolfe's Bonfire of the Vanities, I think they are getting this one right.
I wasn't sure if this was going to be a limited series, or if they planned to drag it out for another season. I was thrilled that it was over in six episodes. Think Better Call Saul, which would have been fun as one season, maybe two. Instead, they beat it to death.
Jeff Daniels is fine and most of the world doesn't care about a Georgia accent. Just about all of the characters have their own, interesting arc and are fun to watch. The best part about the novel was the kid in jail and his education in stoicism, something he learned by accident when the book he ordered was something other than he expected.
I'd never seen William Jackson Harper in anything before, but man, does he ever nail his role as the incumbent mayor of Atlanta (with some great writing behind him).
Jeff Daniels plays his part well, a man we should hate but we're rooting for him, at least most of the time. That is a difficult character to pull off for a writer. The mayor is also of this ilk and he does a great job.
The racially and ethnically inclusive cast may seem like a product of recent politics, but this comes directly from the novel.
Slight Spoiler: The end of Charlie Croker was pretty stupid, but overall, I enjoyed the adaptation.
American Fiction (2023)
Great Film with the Usual Modern Movie Error
I just discovered Percival Everett and it has been pure joy. This movie is loaded with great acting and even better dialogue. The premise is stellar, something that Everett seems to crank out effortlessly. His insights into modern American society are nonpareil.
The common error in modern films is excessive run times, whether they are destined for theater release of sent straight to streaming. 1h57m? Why? Had this film clocked in in 1h30M it would have been brilliant. How many scenes do we need of his mother's problems with dementia? Answer: fewer.
I loved the interaction and conflict between Monk and the upstart, Sinatra Golden.
Knox Goes Away (2023)
Best Movie I've Seen in Ages
This was one of the best movies I've seen in quite a while and left me with an even greater appreciation of Michael Keaton as an artist.
Loved Keaton, Pacino, the hooker, the woman cop Ikari and her partner, and the he-died-too-soon Muncie.
What's wrong with the film is the 1h54m runtime, or 34 minutes too much. At 1h30m, it would have been a tight thriller with a good story, at the bloated edit they used, it stalled out many times during the narrative, like the lapses in Keaton's quickly deteriorating mind.
If they want my opinion of a scene to leave out, it would be when the young father assaults the guy for looking at his daughter. It was stupid and confusing. So, what, he's father of the year now? Where was this over-protective behavior when his sixteen-year-old daughter was sleeping with a dude twice her age? I thought the son was the weakest link in the film and the less of him the better.
Leave the abortion clinic scene out.
He has two ph.ds? Sort of over-doing it.
Didn't get it: he tells the hooker she is on the list of the three people getting a cut earlier in the film them she claims not to know about that when she tries to rob him. She says that she doesn't look like his ex-wife. Wouldn't she be curious enough to get him to clarify earlier when he told her she was getting a third share? Or better yet, just cut this earlier scene out of the film as well as everything he tells her about his "cashing out."
Awkward: when the thugs are robbing him, the big guy punches him, kicks him in the stomach, and Keaton falls down into the living room. The big guy falls down the stairs, but I couldn't see how this happened, even after watching it frame-by-frame. It's sort of an important moment and a bit of clarity would have been welcomed. It's a crime drama without a whole lot of action, so let us see it when it happens. Try turning on some lights.
Coup de chance (2023)
Neither Sexy Nor Thrilling (My Alternative Ending at the Bottom of Review)
The repetitive music made the film sound like a TV ad. It was like a boombox went off without warning, startling viewers. The music overpowered much of the dialogue, like the actors were standing too close to the stage at a jazz concert, or like a street saxophone player was following them around trying to get a few coins. Pay the guy so he'll stop playing!
The wife talked herself into her infidelity way too easily.
The love-struck writer was a terrible writer as evidenced by his uninspired and unromantic dialogue. He asks a married woman out to dinner after just meeting her again in years, then he confesses his love soon after. The woman's first reaction should have been to run.
Woody Allen seems as uncomfortable in French as he is with murder. There wasn't much in the way of emotion. The husband resorts to murder with all the gusto of going to a car wash, just something that needs doing and nothing more.
Another hunter accidently killing a man a second before he was on the point of committing another murder is a probability that makes a lottery ticket seem like a sure thing. Just too stupid. I know what "coup de chance" means in French and it doesn't mean "completely random and stupid."
The ending left me wanting to scream at the screen. Instead, I rated the film down a star. Adding anything to the story would have been an improvement.
An infinitely cleverer ending would have been for the wife to discover that her lover intended to blackmail her, something the husband's investigators uncovered thus justifying (somewhat) the husband's treachery of the lover being disappeared by his hired goons. Then maybe she finds out the the partner her husband allegedly killed wasn't murdered after all.
Ripley (2024)
Plagiarism, or Homage? Dark, or Boring and Pretentious?
I think this version of the Ripley story is more faithful to the book, but there is a lot in this series that simply copies the Anthony Minghella film from 1999. The way some of the scenes are shot are direct copies from the earlier film. The stairway view during the murder of Freddie, for example.
Before I started watching the series, I had some major reservations about it from the trailer. I thought Tom and Dickie were too old for their characters, and I thought the black and white seemed too film school affectation. Black & White equals deep and thoughtful. Got it. I more or less was able to put both of these doubts behind me as I started watching, but I can't help but think that the series could have been better in color and with young lead actors.
Why would Dickie's father care what his middle-aged son was up to? That ship has sailed, to put it politely.
What is with the director and stairs? For a good portion of the series, we're forced to watch people walk up and down stairs. Elevators aren't working, porters can't be found, and so we go up and down and up and down. I'm sure there is symbolism in all this, but I don't care to figure it out as I'm too exhausted. As far as the photography, it mostly gets in the way instead of telling the story. It's too much like being forced to watch your neighbor's vacation slides.
And how much of this series was spent showing Tom walking around? Walking up and down stairs? Being scrutinized by a hotel clerk? Answer: way too much.
The sparse use of story made eight episodes unnecessary.
Tom and the inspector were good, but none of the other actors took command of their roles. Freddie? What was that? For one thing, he-she-it wasn't in it long enough for us to care one way or other about the character where Philip Seymor Hoffman stole the show in the 1999 film. Marge? Ugh. Dickie? Weak, at best and he couldn't be murdered out of the movie fast enough for me.
The Power of Film (2024)
Those Who Can't, Teach at Film School
Mind-numbingly boring and shallow, Professor Blabbermouth takes us into the world of film with nothing new to say while stating the incredibly obvious. If we only had to rely on what this guy says, I doubt anyone other than his immediate family would make it through this (I dropped out after one episode). There are a million film clips that prop up this bore, but they aren't enough to add up to entertainment. The first episode is completely all over the place and makes not much of a point, and the point made isn't much and hardly warranted forty minutes to tell. He should just write down his point on a 3X5 index card and let viewers watch a real movie.
The Devil's Advocate (1997)
Over-Stated, Over-Acted, Over-Written, and Just Silly
All three principal actors get their shot at embarrassing moments of over-acting that were impossible for me to watch. I can only thank the lord for the mute button and fast-forward. And speaking or religion, is that what the movie is selling? Religion? Because that bag of steaming excrement has been peddled for millennia in different forms and finally people can refuse to buy into it without being burned at the stake, at least in some countries. Instead, director chose to make the gospel-spewing mom the beacon of light. I've never seen religion as anything more than darkness and ignorance.
They were on the right track with this but decided that any sense of understatement and subtlety would be lost on the public. They were probably correct, but the other version would have been a vastly superior movie. In this version, there is more like real life where there is no devil, only human conceits like ambition, sex, greed, status, and power. That would have been a lot more fun, at least for this viewer.
It's amazing how few good movies are out there. I tried to write a list of my 100 Favorite Films and couldn't get beyond about sixty. Movies aren't made for people with much in the way of critical thinking skills. Movies are mostly bland pablum made to shove down the public's throat, like stuffing a pacifier in a bawling toddlers gob.