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Night Court: The Roz Affair (2024)
Going Nowhere Fast
I know this is only episode two of the second season but I feel as if the series is already on life support.
Every actor save John Larroquette seems to struggle to deliver their punchlines. Only Larroquette does so naturally, which makes his character more relatable and believable. The others are more like cartoon characters. When I watched the Christmas episode it appeared to me that de Beaufort had softened her frantic delivery, but here she is again with that style of speaking where words fly out of her mouth like a jackhammer and make it difficult to understand her. This is a comedy series. Maybe it's just me and my poor hearing, but unless it is Jim Carrey, if I can't understand something an actor says I'm probably not going to laugh at his/her jokes.
The exchanges between Dan and Roz were the only good parts of this episode. You could tell that the two actors were enjoying the reunion. Maybe if she sticks around, the two of them will be able to keep this series afloat for the rest of the season, but I'm not optimistic. I will be the one not sticking around to find out.
One star each for Dan and Roz.
Hell or High Water (2016)
Watchable but Flawed
A relative of mine recommended this film, and while I do not greatly respect his opinion of movies, I gave this one a shot because it had a high ranking on this site and was available on an IPTV service that I was already subscribed to.
My first thought about the movie as it begins is that it has the look and sound of a Taylor Sheridan film, which is not a bad thing, as I found many episodes of Yellowstone riveting. The leads in HOHW, (Chris Pine and Ben Foster), playing brothers with very different personalities, perform well enough, with credible western accents and the obligatory good-natured insulting of each other. You also see this in the exchanges between Sheriff Hamilton, played by Jeff Bridges, and his deputy, Alberto played by Yellowstone actor Gil Birmingham. Sometimes the insults are humorous; other times they seem too bigoted for my liking. Nonetheless, the scenes with Bridges and Birmingham are the only ones that make the movie enjoyable for me and are the only reason I am giving this film a rating higher than 3. In the scene where the sheriff is investigating the robbery of one of the banks, he amusingly walks through a gaping hole in the wall where the windows were shot out. There was a missed opportunity for Bridges to make a humorous wisecrack here.
The biggest problem with this movie is the far-fetched plot. It challenges credulity to accept that the brothers would go on a Bonnie&Clyde-style bank-robbing spree to avenge the foreclosing of their mother's ranch (and thereby retain possession of it by paying off the mortgage and back taxes with money stolen from the bank), rather than, as another wise reviewer pointed out, simply hire a competent estate attorney to resolve the matter. That shouldn't be difficult, especially since the property in question contains valuable crude oil reserves. I get that the crazy ex-con brother might be up to the insane plan just for the thrill, but why would the more even-tempered brother want to do it? Even more difficult to understand is that it was the quiet brother's idea in the first place-the one with two sons who he hopes will have better lives than those of their loser father and uncle. Theft and murder do not seem like promising ways to ensure a bright future for your young'uns. Makes no sense. To top it all off, there is an obvious attempt to make the two brothers sympathetic characters. And notwithstanding the final scene with Pine and Bridges, where the sheriff points out that Toby is as guilty as Tanner, this attempt to make the "evil bank" a justification for robbery and murder rubbed me the wrong way.
A nice soundtrack and titillating western vistas are pluses.
A final thought: you can always recognize Taylor Sheridan in a cameo--he is the guy who rides a horse well but can't act a lick. LOL.
A final, final thought: I wonder if the writer knows that pigs do not need their sense of sight to locate truffles.
Night Court: A Night Court Before Christmas (2023)
More of the Same
Just a few minutes into this episode and I was reminded of why I didn't care much for season 1. More flat jokes, more of Abby's shrill voice and more bizarre "Gurglings" from Lacretta. This episode also included a crazy character who believed she was a ghost from 'A Christmas Carol' and ran around the court building carrying a big turkey leg or something. I entirely missed what was going on with that, but it probably wasn't anything that resembled humor. On a positive note, John Laroquette can still deliver. He is the only actor here who consistently does. It's a good thing that he is back or season 2 would tank, I believe. Also, the directors must have been coaching the actress who plays Olivia. She is noticeably less staccato in her delivery and thus easier to understand. Unfortunately her lines aren't any funnier. It didn't help that she spent most of the episode running around with the batty ghost lady. Kareem Abdul-Jabbar was surprisingly not bad in a guest role playing himself. I will probably watch the next few episodes although I'm not sure why.
11/11/11 (2011)
Preposterous...Not Scary... Unintentionally Funny
I honestly don't think I have seen a worse movie. This was nothing but a collage of half-baked creepy scenes that were done much better in much better movies. This includes depictions of gruesome deaths that are somehow influenced by a devil child (The Omen); levitating devil child (The Exorcist); a house setting that is the site of strange occurrences and earlier murders (The Amityville Horror); secret cabal of Satan worshipers (Rosemary's Baby); strange markings and unexplained events like appearance of rats, dead cat, breaking windows (many different movies).
All of this might at least make a watchable movie if there was a sensible plot and actors who could actually act, but alas, there was none. Apparently the writers found it easier to make the child a near-mute to hide his inability to act. But they were stretched to even find enough lines for the adult actors, so to lighten the burden, they invented the need for the mom to be sedated mid-way through the movie. She only awakens a few times during the remainder of the film, mostly just to groan, lol. At one point when she resists being injected again with a sedative by her nurse, the nurse belts her across the head hard enough to knock the mom unconscious, only to proceed to jab the needle into her anyway-just to be sure, I suppose.
I don't recall a movie where an apparently loving husband and father could be so clueless. When he is interviewing the two potential nannies, he is handed a list of references by the first candidate. After the second interview with the very creepy and rude girl, he wisely chooses the first girl, but we are not shown if he actually tried to contact any of the references-just took the girl's word for it I guess. I wouldn't be so trusting with my own child. But it matters little, however, because his first choice in nannies is beaten to death by the second girl, who dupes the father into hiring her by making him believe that girl number one is no longer interested in the job.
As the plot moves on, the dad learns that there are people who want to kill his son, who they believe will become the devil or some such thing when he reaches his 11th birthday on 11/11/11. At one point dad is so determined to protect his son, he sits guard at the boy's bed while wielding a baseball bat. But later he seems to be nowhere in sight while his wife is gouging out the eyes of her nurse and the crazy cat lady marches into the house to drug and kidnap the boy. When he does check on his wife, he finds the nurse has staggered to her feet, only to fall out the bedroom window to her death. The scene was so cartoonishly done that I literally laughed out loud as she screamed while falling.
When he returns to his son's room he finds the secret cabal of Satan worshipers (who had abandoned the smokey black van where they held their conferences) chanting and working themselves into a fever, presumably at the prospect of the devil's return in the person of his son. He drives them away with the handy can of wasp spray he had purchased earlier but never got around to using on the huge swarm of hornets hovering around the nest outside the house. I guess the prop guys didn't want that can of spray to go unused, lol. I don't know if the writers were going for comic relief with that scene, but hilarious it was.
In the end the dad has to do what cat lady wanted to do from the beginning. But in the final scene we are left with the idea that maybe he killed the wrong child. Yuck!
A dreadful ending to a dreadful film.
Star Trek: Strange New Worlds: Under the Cloak of War (2023)
Good Episode, But I'm Done
I enjoyed this episode, especially the strong performances by Olusanmokun and Jess Bush. Olusanmokun, in particular, showed depth that I couldn't appreciate in the previous episodes. I still had trouble sometimes understanding his words, but closed captioning is a big help.
I also enjoyed the fact that the conclusion delivered something I never expected. As I watched I was cynically thinking same old, same old same old, expecting Dak'Rah would be initially misunderstood only to have his metamorphosis eventually accepted by the crew as legitimate. But wow, never saw that coming! Kudos to the writers for that.
Despite this fine episode, I think I have watched the last one of this series. I feel that by now, midway through season 2, it should have found its footing, yet it appears to me that the writers are still throwing everything they have at the wall to see what sticks. And by the looks of what is coming down the pike (hah!) next week, I don't expect that trend to change. A Star Trek musical episode? No thanks.
Other beefs of mine include a robotic-speaking Spock, who sounds more like an android than a Vulcan/human, an emasculated Pike, a perpetually insubordinate Lt. Ortega, a cartoonish Pelia, and a thin Paul Wesley who looks and sounds more like Jim Carrey than Jim Kirk. I know, these are all character beefs, but if I can't be drawn to them, the series will not work for me, no matter how good the writing otherwise is, and it hasn't been great.
I've sort of enjoyed Lower Decks, but given my dissatisfaction with SNW, it won't be enough for me to keep my subscription with Paramount.
My 5 Wives (2000)
Shame on you, Rodney
Unbelievably awful film. I watched part of this on T.V. recently. My jaw dropped as I watched a horrendously conceived plot and listened to mind-numbing drivel. Not a single line from the master of one-liners could come close to producing anything resembling a chuckle. It was so bad it made me want to exhume Rodney Dangerfield's body, slap him around and scream, "How could you?" I know many films are done in haste, hoping to cash in on the popularity of a given actor or theme. But please, Hollywood, show a little respect for your audience. It's sad and scary that people were expected to pay to see such tripe. The bottom of the cesspool, even by Sunday afternoon television standards.