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Reviews
The Last Letter from Your Lover (2021)
A lovely little gem
Wonder performances all around and a lovely call back to An Affair to Remember, with a fittingly poignant ending.
Dracula (2020)
E1 good! E2 meh. E3 god awful
Wow, this show totally fell apart in the third act (episode 3). It started off with such promise - a gleefully scary and funny episode 1 - and plummeted to very bad in episode 3 (and not in a fun campy way, just bad in boring, get this over with way).
E1
The first episode shows so much promise - great production values, creepy and scary, good adaptation of the source material, and compelling characters played by good actors.
The cynical, dry wit of Sister Agatha is the best part. She steals every scene she's in and fortunately, we see a lot of her.
She's more sleuth-like than nun-like, mocking religion & faith (she has none). When asked why she was even a nun, she snarks something like (not an exact quote) that she's like lot of women, sticking it out in a loveless marriage for a place to live.
E2
Goes no where interesting. Count Dracula kills several passengers on a ship. Kind of meh, compared to E1.
E3 is ridiculous, boring, incoherent, and hugely disappointing. It's not the shift to modern day after a long nap that's the problem; that could have been quite interesting. No, it's the stupid, nonsensical, incoherent plot. Nothing holds together, in universe. It's a complete, dopey mess.
Spouse and I totally agreed. The episodes went from good to terrible.
Inside Llewyn Davis (2013)
Zero plot
As compelling as Oscar Isaac is, and as much as I appreciate a character study, I need a movie to have at least some plot.
Singer struggles. That's it. That's the entire story. It's not even a story, bc nothing happens. It's more a look at a state of being on the edge. A couple of potentially complicating factors are introduced, but they don't amount to anything. They don't actually result in any complications for him. So, there wasn't nearly enough here
to engage my interest.
Strigoi (2009)
Funny, well-acted, WELL DONE!
My husband and I loved this movie for:
1) it's quirky humor -- humor that we found intensely funny (laughing out loud in almost every scene).
One running joke is about Vlad's squeamishness. In spite of going to med school, Vlad failed to practice medicine, presumably b/c of this reputed squeamishness -- well-known to everyone in the small town. So, just about every character says something to Vlad about his squeamishness, as he is faced with increasingly challenging or gruesome tasks. The remark: "Everyone knows you're a pussy, Vlad" is repeated by several characters. The delivery is not teasing or mocking; it's deadpan and matter of fact way, which is much funnier.
2. the political and social context -- very interesting
3. the blood sucking/greedy eating as a metaphor for the communists' greedy thieving of people's land
Tips -- it's not scary -- not supposed to be, but it has a few gross out moments.
LOVED IT!