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Reviews
The Adam Project (2022)
Fun movie
I'm not sure I've ever seen Ryan Reynolds in a movie before, but I stumbled across this on Netflix the other night when I couldn't find anything that looked better, and I really enjoyed his performance. I was favorably impressed. As other people have pointed out, this is a family-friendly movie with some interesting twists on the time-travel plot, but maybe not the most original. The cast is good, and Reynolds has more charisma than I had expected. I might even watch it again. I liked the lack of CGI, which can me exhausting. With the glut of atrocious comic-book movies these days, The Adam Project is a lot of fun. I highly recommend it.
The Rockford Files (1974)
One of the best shows of all time
I can't recommend the Rockford Files enough. I was a big fan when I was in college in the mid-70s. The show was on Friday evenings, and rather than go out drinking with my buddies, I always stayed home to watch it.
Everything about the show is perfect, particularly the amazing cast. Noah Beery Jr is fantastic and believable as Rockford's father, Gretchen Corbett is wonderful (and stunningly beautiful) as his lawyer, Angel Martin is a well-drawn character, and the cop Dennis Becker is perfect.
I have always appreciated the music, too. Not only the opening theme, but the music throughout.
Also interesting is that the executive producer was Meta Rosenberg, a woman, and that half the episodes were written by Juanita Bartlett, also a woman. That wasn't common in the 70s. I think I like Juanita Bartlett's episodes the best.
I miss Jim Garner. I'd like to think he was playing more or less himself in the Rockford Files. Charming and funny.
Acts of Vengeance (2017)
Formulaic and predictable, but still pretty good
I love Antonio Banderas. I thought this was a pretty good vengeance movie with some interesting framing, including the vow of silence. Not a big-budget movie by any means, and it didn't break any new ground, but I enjoyed it quite a bit. More humanity than in most vengeance movies.
Mars Attacks! (1996)
Not quite sure why the movie didn't work for me
I saw Mars Attacks! Not long after it first came out. I watched it again a few days ago on Netflix. With a stellar cast and Tim Burton directing, I'm not sure why I didn't like it better. It's a nice pastiche of 50s horror movies, but it wasn't particularly funny, at least in a laugh out loud sort of way. It's not a bad movie but feels sort of flat. I can't really put my finger on why it didn't work better for me. Unfortunately, it's lesser than the sum of its parts.
The Dead Don't Die (2019)
Beyond boring and stupid
My girlfriend has HBO+, so on "date night" yesterday evening we decided to watch The Dead Don't Die. We didn't know anything about the movie, but we assumed with such an excellent cast it had to be decent. Boy, were we wrong. Before I get lectures from Jim Jarmusch fans, I've seen some of his other movies and have enjoyed them.
The Dead Don't Die gives an entirely new meaning to the word "boring." Slow-paced is one thing, stupefyingly dull is another. The wooden acting from some of my favorites doesn't help, but very, very little happens in the movie, and when it does, the action is pretty boring and predictable, too. People sit around, stand around, and drive around with expressionless faces mouthing pointless expository dialog even though there's not much to expose. The scenery is pretty, which is about the only positive.
The environmentalist and anti-consumerism message is heavy-handed and pretty stupid. While I would normally agree with such a message, I didn't like being bludgeoned about the head with it, and it's handled in such a haphazard and nonsensical way it certainly isn't going to change any minds. The concept of the Earth tilting off its axis is interesting if utterly implausible, and there is absolutely no follow-through. A kid in a detention facility (I think; little is clear in this movie) mentions to a couple of fellow detainees that the Earth going off it's axis would destroy the world, which I imagine is correct, but the only effects the characters experience is that it gets dark later. Well, that and the zombies. And the moon looks peculiar.
We probably should have turned it off early in the movie when the song "The Dead Don't Die" comes on the radio while Bill Murray and Adam Driver are cruising around in their police car. The Murray character wonders aloud why it sounds familiar. The Driver character says it's because it's the movie's theme song. Cringe. Even worse, toward the end, Murray's character asks Driver's character why he's been saying "It's not going to end well" throughout. Driver's character says it's because he's read the script. Double cringe. There are ways to break the fourth wall in a clever manner, but in The Dead Don't Die it's merely embarrassing.
I love Tom Waits, and he does as well as he can with his part as the hermit, but to me his character seemed tacked on as an afterthought, as if Jarmusch decided he needed an observer to make pithy remarks about mankind's flaws.
I really, really wanted to like this movie, and my girlfriend and I watched it until the end expecting something interesting to happen. Unfortunately, nothing ever does. At one point about halfway through my girlfriend asked, "Do you have any idea where this movie is going? Is everyone going to die?" I yawned and said, "I really don't know."
The Dead Don't Die seems like a "screw you" to the audience from Jarmusch, kind of like when the great Lou Reed, freaked out by his sudden popularity, released "Metal Machine Music." If you're not old enough to remember that, Google it.
I'm embarrassed for all the excellent actors involved in this boring mess. Maybe it looked better on paper than on film. I strongly recommend everyone avoid The Dead Don't Die unless you're having a hard time getting to sleep.
Justice (2017)
Oh, it wasn't so bad
I'm not sure why this well-intentioned movie is getting such bad reviews. Yes, it's a stock-in-trade Western, but it's honestly fairly well done. And one of the biggest reasons I like it is because Jamie-Lynn Sigler is breathtaking. I'd never seen her in anything before.
The Vast of Night (2019)
Really wanted to like this movie
As a long-time SF fan, I really wanted to like this movie. It's well-meaning, and it's filmed in a wonderful 1950s style, but I can't rate it any higher because it's so boring. I've tried to watch it three or four times. I've even tried skipping the most boring parts and it's still boring. I understand it was low-budget, but there's way too much talking. I think the filmmakers have potential. Let's hope this isn't their best effort. Rated three stars for a good try.
Beat Bobby Flay (2013)
Not Bad While Awaiting Car Repairs
I had to take my car to the Honda dealership for regular maintenance yesterday afternoon. I was told it was going to take 90 minutes, so I sat in the waiting room expecting to be horribly bored. "Beat Bobby Flay," which is the type of show I never watch, was on the big-screen TV, and I saw three episodes before my car was ready. I have to say it's not bad. The premise, that two challengers have to cook against each other with the main food item of Bobby's choice, then Bobby has to cook against the winner with the main food item of the winner's choice, is actually pretty clever. The announcers were somewhat annoying but didn't spoil it for me. The cooking itself was impressive and made me hungry. Bobby lost against a challenger two out of the three shows I saw, so the challengers definitely had a chance. I doubt I will ever watch this show at home, but it made waiting for my car less boring than I would have expected.
Treasure of the Amazon (1985)
Hard to know what to make of this movie without RiffTrax
Without RiffTrax, I would have rated this movie three stars. Stewart Whitman is actually pretty good doing a Kris Kristofferson impersonation, as are the other B-movie stars, but pointless shots of forest animals, the boat steaming along, and dumb dialog pad the movie by about thirty minutes. The gratuitous female nudity was definitely helpful, though! RiffTrax, however, maintained my interest and provided a lot of laughs. In particular, while Ann Sidney is lovely, the RiffTrax crew pointed out they couldn't tell if she was supposed to have a US Southern accent or a British accent. It fluctuated. Not sure how the producers got Sonia Infante to appear nude from the waist up throughout, but she's really beautiful, not a bad actress, and I hope she went on to do better things.
It (1990)
Not bad but hasn't aged well
My girlfriend and I watched most of "It" the other evening while on vacation in Eureka Springs, Arkansas. I'd read and enjoyed the book not long after it came out and had watched the miniseries in 1990. My girlfriend had read the book but didn't recall it clearly. While I have no bones to pick with Tim Curry's interpretation of Pennywise, or with the other actors, I was somewhat puzzled with the sharing of the asthma inhaler prior to the children going underground after Pennywise. I realized that was the substitute for the 12-year-old girl realizing the only way the group of kids was going to get OUT of the sewers was by having sex. In the novel, there's nothing erotic about the sex, but many reviewers of the book complained about it, anyway. Stephen King said in his mind it was about bridging the gap between childhood and adulthood. I told my girlfriend, who has asthma, does that mean sharing your inhaler is the same as having sex? I shouldn't be so hard on a made-for-TV movie, but Hollywood manages to botch books in a variety of ways.
Pontypool (2008)
Wonderful on many levels
Watched this movie almost by accident after running across it on Netflix. Normally this is a movie I would loathe: all of it set in one claustrophobic location a small town radio station in the basement of a church, like a stage play. Some of that may have been due to financial constraints, but in this case, it all works. The unfolding oddities, seen through communications among the radio show personnel, create a tremendously creepy atmosphere.
Stephen McHattie carries the show. McHattie, a long-time character actor who's been in numerous movies and TV shows, holds the movie together with a wonderful portrayal of a shock jock with a good heart. His real-life wife, Lisa Houle, plays station manager and ends up being the exposer of details.
It's hard to tell who gets infected with the "word virus" first. Grant Mazzy seems to be immune to it but, after repeated viewings, maybe it's Grant who's passing the word virus, as everyone in contact with him comes down with the disease. And he's the talk jock. Personally, I find this movie to be a condemnation of right-wing talk radio, which can turn people into zombies. The movie has to be a metaphor of some kind.