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Reviews
The Beautician and the Beast (1997)
A Hallmark Movie without the Hallmark
This movie at it's core is a Hallmark movie without the Hallmark branding. It is a Beauty and the Beast story applied to a prince and a beautician; it is cute and fun. The story is straightforward but enjoyable and it fulfills its premise; if you like Fran Drescher and Timothy Dalton you will enjoy this movie.
Hollywood (2020)
The concept is good, but the wish fulfillment is far too much.
I have watched a lot of Ryan Murphy's projects and I always start out exited but somewhere in the middle I get frustrated at his handling of his programs.
I know that Hollywood is wish fulfillment but it's wish fulfillment does real history a disservice.
Take for example, Rock Hudson, he was a real person who has forced to stay in the closet because being gay was being less than, it was only in his death that him being gay was confirmed. His death is what helped make the US public see AIDS as more than the disease of gay men. This public figure who was adored got the disease and it made people sympathetic.
Having Camille win an Oscar does a disservice to Haley Berry who fought so hard to be taken seriously that she was crying when she received her reward. Even if it's fictional it's mean to take that win away from her.
Even in 2020 the movie that was made in this fictionalized version of the golden age of Hollywood would not be made and would not receive the Oscar nominations it received. Parasite won for best picture, but Akwafina wasn't nominated for The Farewell.
Race, sex, gender, and identity have always been huge issues in the US and applying this saccharine Disney filter to a topic that could have been handled like Pose does everyone a disservice. Even Disney applied more discretion when they made Pocahontas and Mulan in the 90's aiming to blend realism with optimism and beauty, and those movies were not without consequence.
This show aimed to have big Hollywood dreams and what was given to the audience was a Hollywood lie because it refused to blend hard reality into this dream.
Night School (2018)
Exceeds Expectations
This movie is not great, it's not particularly good but it gets a 6/10 because the actors sell the hell out the script no matter how thin the script may be at that point in the movie. It's "facting" which is basically factual based acting within the story and all the actors do that very well to varying extents. I did not regret using my time to watch this movie so therefore it is a success in my estimation.
Psych: A Nightmare on State Street (2014)
For the B-Movie Horror Fans
For context I did not watch this episode when it originally aired as I did not have cable and I watched it five years later, after the fact, in 2019. When this part of the season originally aired I had no cable and I had been having a tough time with the beginning of Season 8 because the end of Season 7 had been such an authentic emotional hit and Trout was a very specific antagonist. As such I had been since putting off watching the last half of the last season until this year. However, in my opinion, in order to enjoy this episode one must enjoy all that is B-Movie horror and mainstream horror.
There are countless horror movie references that don't just come from scene stealing Bruce Campbell and his well known B-Movies, but also from IT, Children of the Corn, Friday the 13/New Nightmare, and Night of the Living Dead, amongst others. James Roday as the director and other writers of this episode clearly love horror movies and throughout the entire episode I was giddy at the references and clapping with excitement because even if I couldn't 100% place the horror movie I could guess to some certainty the reference they were making. That's why I decided to create an IMDB account, it was for this episode because it was too low rated for the work everyone put in and for how good it was as a horror movie homage.