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Reviews

Wicked Little Letters
(2023)

Great British Film
#265moviereview

Based on a true story, this tale of obscene malicious letters directed to various women in Littlehampton, especially Spinster Edith, and the presumption that coarse-mouthed Irish immigrant Rose Gooding is the culprit, is an absolute delight.

But be warned, while it is billed as a comedy, it has its funny moments but it really is a drama.

Whatever deficiencies there might be in plot or direction (and don't get me wrong they are few and far between) are made up mightily by the absolutely tremendous performances throughout the movie.

Olivia Colman is terrific as Edith, who lives with her parents and who is filled with religion as pounded into her by her parents. Her repression is her reason for living and for living a lie. The torment on Colman's face is absolutely astounding as she passes through many emotions. She is so funny.

Similarly, Jessie Buckley matches Colman every step of the way. She is a foul mouthed mother of a young daughter and she really doesn't care but she cares that she is being railroaded and, yet, when she is pushed ahead strives to be a better mother.

Anjana Vasan who was so good on Killing Eve is also good as Woman Police Officer Moss who doesn't believe that Rose is the culprit. But she is butting her head up against the male police establishment.

Timothy Spall is also terrific as Edith's overbearing father, the man whose actions have made Edith into the pill she is. He is a cruel man and treats Edith like a little child.

All of these actors - and the supporting cast - add to the overall enjoyment of this film, which is one of Netflix's best offerings in recent memory.

WATCH IT

4.5/5.

Twisters
(2024)

I'm gonna watch the original again
#265moviereview Yeah, so I finally got to see twisters today and got to be honest. The first word that comes to my mind is derivative.

When the first movie came out in 1996 the special effects were state of the art and you were really blown away by what was going on in the screen in front of you.

Now, the special effects are rather mundane compared to what is generally in the movies and I have to be honest a twister is a twister.

To be sure, there are some nice set pieces in this film and maybe if I saw it in RPX on the really big screen with the premium sound I might've been more blown away, but I really wasn't. I earned for Bill Paxton, Helen Hunt, Phillips, Seymour Hoffman, and of course, Jamie Gertz yelling we have cows the current versions we have twins cannot hold the candle to we have cows,

Daisy Edgar Jones is is fine, Glenn Powell is fine. Brandon Pere is fine. Anthony Ramos's fine.

But it seems to me that this movie was made merely as an nostalgia kick without any concern for story or excitement.

I was kind of bored.

Watch the original it's a lot more fun.

As for this one, skip it

2/5.

Planet Earth III
(2023)

Absolutely fantastic
Sir David Attenborough's third chapter in stunning 4k is absolutely magnificent. Nowhere is this driven home better is the 7th episode which details the symbiosis between animals and humans. A thorough deep dive into understanding our planet and it is amazing how much new material is available for the third installment. The caves, the forests, the extreme temperature zones are all covered and it is fully absorbing and compelling. David Attenborough is not only a British national treasure but a global treasure.

My only complaint- when David is discussing the pavement ants in New York City, my nearby large urban area he references the ants patrolling "Broadway Avenue" when it is only "Broadway". But this is a minor - yet funny - complaint.

Kudos, Sir David.

10/10.

Kingdom of the Planet of the Apes
(2024)

Shorter would have made a big difference
I don't know if it's just me because in the past 52 hours I have watched all of the Planet of the Apes movies (excluding Tim Burton's horrible 2001 version) but it seemed to me that this movie was just OK.

Taking place "many, many generations" after Caesar dies, an ape named Noa and his two friends are going through a rite of passage that has to deal with collecting hawks' eggs when an intruder comes into camp breaking the egg he has collected and was holding for the ceremony the next day. Therefore, he needs to go and collect another egg before said ceremony. While he is out, he runs into a band of apes hurting other apes and they track him back to his village, which they decimate and bring Noa's clan into servitude. Noa escapes and seeks out his family and comes across an orangutan named Raka, and they both encounter a human woman who, it turns out, can talk. They are captured and brought to the palace of Proximus Caesar, an evil gorilla who desires to have all apes under his kingdom.

While there are many, many nods to the original 1968 film (including musical cues) and the movie had very stunning visual effects, the story itself was kind of lethargic when it wasn't in set piece mode.

The acting - with a couple of exceptions - was just okay and this is an indication that future movies need a protagonist that meets the stature of Andy Serkis and Roddy McDowell. Owen Teague as Noa, is barely adequate and the same can be said for Freya Allen as Mae, the talking human. She obviously has ulterior motives, but her performance doesn't. The only three actors in the film that are worth mentioning are Peter Macon as Raka, the orangutan, whose motion capture seems to show his jovial good nature and charm, William H. Macy (yeah! That guy!!!) as a human who educates Proximus Caesar on human history and literature and who radiates the word "collaborator" and finally the great character actor Kevin Durand, as big bad Proximus himself. Durand, as he always does, radiates menace.

There's no reason that this story could not have been accomplished in less than 145 minutes and it just seems that nowadays the name of the game is to make movies longer for the sake of making movies longer. This movie really dragged, not because of any poor story choices (because the story itself was decent), but because of poor choices in the editing room.

I see where this movie trilogy is going and it's fine but is the next motion picture going to be two hours and 45 minutes long and the final movie in this trilogy going to be three hours long? These are Planet of the Apes movies - we're not the defining Pi. The notion that somehow longer is better is absolutely ridiculous.

This is the worst of the reboot films since 2011

Yeah, watch it because it's not horrible but it could give you a headache (although I may have a headache because I forgot my eyeglasses when I went to the movie theater but, thankfully, I sat in the fourth row and my eyesight isn't that messed up that I couldn't see)

If you're into monkeys, WATCH IT - Otherwise, Skip it

3/5.

Civil War
(2024)

Trailer 1/5 Movie 4/5
This was not the movie I thought it would be - I was expecting an action movie about a civil war but this movie was about journalists and war photographers and what they have to do to carry out their jobs.

And on that level it succeeds being reminiscent of Salvador or The Killing Fields (although not in their class)

Kirsten Dunst , Wagner Moura,Stephen McKinley Henderson and Cailee Spaeny play three world weary journalists and one newbie - bright eyed and bushy tailed- on a road trip from NYC to Washington DC via Pittsburgh during a national civil war. Unlikely bedfellows, Texas and California, have seceded from the country and their army - dubbed the western forces - is on the move trying to get to the White House to capture or kill the three-term president- and the journalists are also on the way there to interview the President (nicely played in an extraordinarily small role by Ron Swanson).

Amazingly, the film is devoid of politics. There is a secession, like I said, but the underlying causes are not known - and, quite frankly, unimportant.

What is important are the encounters that they have along the way. Those encounters are unnerving from men with guns showing off "traitors" hanging by their thumbs to a shootout in which experienced war photographer Dunst and newbie Spaeny shoot pictures in battle with bullets flying by, the pictures shown in black and white as taken by the photographers.

But it is a thoroughly scary encounter with two guys with machine guns tending to a mass grave that is the hallmark of the film. When one guy asks "what kind of American are you?" it is a gut punch - and not because the actor playing the lunatic with the AR-15 is perfectly portrayed by Jesse Plemons (Mr. Dunst) - but because this could happen now. And if you doubt me, just google shootings on YouTube. This scene was most reminiscent of two guys in Texas that had a dispute with a neighbor which ended up with the neighbor being shotgunned. If there's any politicizing in the film, it's the guns in the hands of civilians angle. But it's minimal. Mostly it's fighting between the two armed forces.

It's amazing to me to how this movie got review bombed - on google it had a 2.5 rating last time I checked and very few of the 1 star ratings had accompanying written reviews. People just assumed it was anti-whomever and bombed it without seeing it much like people did to The Last Temptation of Christ, the Passion of the Christ and many others without Christ's name in it - oh yeah, Ishtar.

Is the acting magnificent? Not really. Aside from Plemons, who has been a shining star since Breaking Bad, Wagner Moura was good in his outrage and Stephen McKinley Henderson as the wizened old veteran were outstanding. Dunst wasn't bad but it seemed that she went through the movie with sort of a bland expression on her face.

I saw it on Regal's RPX large screen format and it was impactful. I think the reviews that knock the film were looking for more of an action film and I understand where they were coming from. The trailer for this movie gives the impression that the movie is something else entirely.

WATCH IT

Trailer - 1/5

Movie - 4/5.

Heat
(1995)

Still holds up almost 30 years later
#265moviereview

Seriously, this movie is so good I think I am committing a crime along with the crew.

I had the pleasure of being in Los Angeles in a building overlooking the bank heist shootout courtesy of a friend and nothing prepares you for it. Even in Los Angeles blanks were used but you could hear the gunfire. It was absolutely chilling.

The dialogue is crisp, the action is first rate and as to the performances, everyone gives it their all: Diane Canova, Natalie Portman, Tom Sizemore, Wes Studi, Kevin Gage, Ted Levine, Miletti Williamson, Jon Voight (before his mind went bye bye) Tom Noonan, William Fichtner, Amy Brenneman and especially Dennis Haysbert and Val Kilmer. Talk about a powerhouse cast.

And of course there's two guys - Pacino and DeNiro who never shared the screen before and a big deal was made out of it - and for good reason. Two guys, cut from the same cloth but on opposite sides of the law both with their own credos, they sell the movie. DeNiro's low key criminal suits him to a tee and while I usually find Pacino's yelling to be grating it works perfectly in this film.

Michael Mann knows the nighttime. It's where he thrives and it's where he does his best work. And this movie is his pinnacle of PM mayhem. His script and direction are flawless and should have been nominated for an Oscar. It's a pulse pounding thrill ride with characters that are a different shade of the same color.

As Vincent says "What are you, a monk?

I don't know how to do anything else", Neil responds "Neither do I."

The point is that they both don't want to do anything else.

And neither does Michael Mann.

And we are better for it

5/5

P. S. BUD CORT!!!!!

Lured
(1947)

I Love Lucy
#265moviereview

Dime-a-dance girl's dancehall friend goes missing and the police recruit her as bait because there have been other similar disappearances of women who have answered a personal column, never to have been seen again.

While she is second-billed, this is Lucille Ball's movie and while it is a taut mystery thriller noir her very presence and demeanor gives this movie a bit of a sense of humor. This is my favorite movie performance of hers. She owns this movie.

Making it creepy is the short appearance - despite above the line credit - of Boris Karloff as a man whose personal ad Lucy answers. He is just terrific, in one of his first "mature" roles and certainly his first semi-comic role.

The lead cast is uniformly well-cast, including George Sanders as a man who owns a more high class dance hall and Sir Cedric Hardwicke (and his bad toupee) as his partner. Rounding out the main cast is Charles Coburn doing his best Charles Laughton-lite impersonation as the Scotland Yard Chief Inspector who recruits Lucy as the bait.

There is a whole plethora of suspects which is part of the charm of the film. It's another UK set movie filed in Hollywoood and, unfortunately, one can tell from the generic London sets. A film like Kiss the Blood from My Hands that actually created blocks of sets on the Hollywood backlots made them more realistic. But this only marginally detracts from the story, which is terrifically directed by legendary film director, Douglas Sirk.

Alan Napier who played Alfred the Butler on the show Batman which had Neil Hamilton playing Commissioner Gordon, plays a police inspector named Gordon, in this film.

This film got shafted by the studio when halfway through its release the name was changed from "Lured" to "Personal Column" - the name of the French Original- because the title sounded to much like "Lurid". The box office dropped when this occurred - blame the Hays Office.

It's not the greatest of noirs but it is a fun one and heck, I Love Lucy

WATCH IT

4/5.

Woman in Hiding
(1950)

Love that Ida Lupino
#265moviwreview

Terrific blend of melodrama and noir, this film doesn't have any surprises but the sturdy direction by Michael Gordon and terrific performances by the always great Ida Lupino good Stephen McNally, good Howard Duff and the terrific Peggy Dow make this worth a watch.

The ending is a bit lazy and during a climactic fight scene, it's kind of a mistake in showing the stunt men's faces in closeup.

But, seeing Joe Besser 7 years before Stoogedom saying "stop crowding me" is worth a watch.

Fun fact: Lupino and Duff got off to a rocky start. She thought he was obnoxious. Obviously their time on screen made their relationship blossom since they got married in 1951.

WATCH IT

3.5/5.

My Name Is Julia Ross
(1945)

Fun story
#265moviereview

Woman hired to take care of an old lady but wakes up in a house in the Cornwall coast and she is told that she is not Julia Ross but a woman named Marion Hughes and she's married to the old lady's son, Ralph.

Sound familiar?

1987's dreadful Dead of Winter is a remake of this film. And it is a turgid mess because of its overexposition.

This film benefits from a sturdy 65 minute running time - which is more than enough for this story - and great performances from Nina Foch, Dame Mae Whitty and George Macready) keep this nicely paced and enjoyable.

The story is predictable - especially who is good and who is bad - but the final scene is not and it just cruises along nicely to conclusion

WATCH IT

3.5/5.

Undercurrent
(1946)

Hepburn in a Noir - Sugn me up
#265moviereview

Interesting film noir starring Katherine Hepburn and directed by Vincente Minelli, two names not associated with Noir. Kate plays a middle aged spinster who is swept off her feet by Robert Taylor who makes her into a society wife. She wants to know about his family but becomes enraged every time she mentions his brother, Mike. She knows he has secrets but doesn't know what they are. And she is afraid for her life.

Hepburn gives a tremendous performance, intelligent and appealing but also shows hurt. She also shows fear as she doesn't know her husband's true intentions. Robert Taylor - just back from serving in WWII- was cowed by the relationship between Hepburn and Minnelli, thinking that this would be another Hepburn showcase. But his performance is absolutely riveting and there's no doubt that Minnelli brought out Taylor's best.

Robert Mitchum also stars and his non-entrance entrance is really a thing of mastery by Minnelli. Young Mitchum in a low-key, genteel role is just great to watch. As is Edmund Gwenn as Kate's father. And there is a terrific film debut from Jayne Meadows. She really tears up the screen in the couple of scenes in which she appears.

The movie also looks great. Karl Freund's cinematography is absolutely stunning.

The script, though, is fairly generic and doesn't trod new ground. But it gives Minnelli and Company a base from which to work and produce this nice watchable film noir.

WATCH IT

3.5/5.

Kiss the Blood Off My Hands
(1948)

Better than average minor noir
#265moviereview

Kiss the blood off my hands is a first time watch for me and it wowed me. The story of a man who accidentally kills a bar owner and gets away with it but is later jailed for another, lesser offense but who, upon release, is then blackmailed by a shady character who witnessed the accidental killing fired in all cylinders.

From superlative performances by Burt Lancaster (the man), Joan Fontaine (the woman with whom he falls in love) and Robert Newton (the blackmailer) to a great, taut script and tons of noir mood. It is terrific.

The film is set in London, England but was shot almost entirely at Universal-International Pictures' Sound Stage 21 from March to May 1948. Some exterior scenes were shot on location at Los Angeles's Griffith Park Zoo and Hollywood Park Racetrack. And this last one must have messed up the horses as they had to run clockwise as many British tracks did at the time !!!!!

If you have not seen it, it is worth a WATCH

4/5.

Red Eye
(2005)

Terrific
#265moviereview

In my estimation, of the three or so films that Wes Craven directed that are not in the horror genre, this is head and shoulders above the rest. It is a terrific thriller about a hotel manager who is held hostage on an airplane, and whose father is under threat of being killed by a mysterious man who wants the secretary of Homeland Security moved to a different room so he and his family can be killed.

Rachel McAdams, and Cillian Murphy are absolutely terrific as the leads in this. While both had made films prior to this -notably the hot chick and mean girls for her and 28 days later for him - putting them together was total genius because their anti-chemistry works so well.

Even though it's not a horror film and is an out and out thriller, there are several great horror tropes contained within the film that just enhance the action.

A literate, fun film, that never ceases to entertain .

If you haven't seen it, watch it. If you have seen it, hell, watch it again.

WATCH IT

4/5.

Scoop
(2024)

A good film. Not great
#265moviereview

Interesting story of the women at the BBC who managed to scoop the interview with Prince Andrew, the interview being described as "a plane crashing into an oil tanker, causing a tsunami, triggering a nuclear explosion."

But All The President's Men this is not. Nor is it Frost/Nixon

It drags and what keeps it alive are the performances by Billie Piper as Sam McAllister (whose book upon which this film is based), Gillian Anderson as Emily Maitlis - the BBC interviewer - and, last but not least, Rufus Sewell as Prince Andrew. It might not be his movie but he owned it during the interview scene. Piper and Anderson excel when doing their planning and strategizing. It's always interesting to hear Anderson's British accent - I thought her raspiness as Margaret Thatcher in the Crown was because of that role but it carries forth hear.

It's not that this isn't a compelling story - it is. But the way it moves along, it plods - but when its focus is on single mom Sam, trying to make a name for herself at the stolid BBC with a Daily Mail attitude, it shines. Because, after all, it is more her story that about anything else.

It's definitely worth a watch.

3/5.

2010
(1984)

Don't compare it to 2001
#265moviereview

Nowhere near the original

And yet

It feels a different story while remaining a continuation of 2001, but in a more literal sense.

Well acted, good Cold War storyline which was perfect for the timing release - and now. Helen Mirren is terrific in her American movie debut. Sets of discovery were perfectly recreated and the interior of the Russian spaceship looks like it's out of alien.

A real fun film even if it's lighter. One of the fun Easter eggs shows a nurse reading a copy of Time Magazine. The cover story deals with US-USSR relations and the US President is represented by a drawing of Arthur C. Clarke and the Russian President is represented by a drawing of Stanley Kubrick.

4/5.

Mommie Dearest
(1981)

Bad
#265moviereview Hated it

Faye is not even acting

According to Rutanya Alda, Faye Dunaway was despised by the crew due to her unpleasant attitude. "Joan got her way in a ladylike way. Faye was despised because she was so rude to people. Everyone was on pins and needles when she worked, and everyone relaxed when she didn't. I wish Faye had learned from Joan." This does go along with what Bette Davis said about Faye in numerous interviews; that she was rude and unprofessional.

1.5/5 and the 1.5 comes from Rutanya Alda's performance in the film

SKIP

Not even campy - just bad- unredeemably bad.

Immaculate
(2024)

Fun film. Great joke towards the end
New novitiate nun Cecilia takes a posting in a convent in Italy that caters to other nuns who are infirm or at the end of their life. But she discovers a much darker secret. The title should clue you in.

I'm not a big fan of organized religion, so I find anything overly religious a bit creepy. I am spiritual and I believe in God, but I also feel that the organized stuff is just not for me.

Having said that I found this movie really creepy.

Which is good.

I credit the look and feel of the movie to its director, Michael Mohan, and production designer Adam Reamer and cinematographer, Elisha Christian. The performances are good, but they're not great but the entire film is bathed nearly in darkness and while that might not work for some films, it adds to the level of dread in this film. The design of the convent is outstanding and it is lit beautifully for a horror film. And there are a couple of effective jump scares.

I think this is the first thing I've ever seen Sydney Sweeney in with the exception of Madame Web (which I've pushed out of my mind) and I thought she was okay. She was good, like I said, but nobody was really great, although the main priest was played by Alvaro Morte, "El Profesor" from Money Heist, and it was nice to see him in a really creepy role that he carried out effectively.

And without giving anything away I quote one of my very good friends who said that this movie had "a very ballsy ending" and he was right.

Is it the best religious horror film around? Absolutely not - that would be The Exorcist. But the decision to have this movie play out over 85 minutes kept pacing of the film very spry and made the movie enjoyable.

Also the fact that the Catholic Review states: "The film contains blasphemy, sacrilegious jokes, gory violence, including torture and infanticide, grisly images, partial upper female nudity, sexual humor, at least one use of profanity, a couple of milder oaths and fleeting rough, crude and crass language...morally offensive" makes it all the more attractive to me.

Which is nice.

WATCH IT

3.5/5.

The Zone of Interest
(2023)

Wow
I'm probably not saying anything new when I speak of Hannah Arendt's discussion of The Banality of Evil but this movie thoroughly encompasses that notion, which she coined about the trial of Adolf Eichmann. He was not a monster but a bureaucrat who just did his job-as evil as it was.

And, it is so with the Höss family, Rudolf and Hedwig and their children who live in a beautiful house on the outside of Auschwitz. Rudolf is the camp commandant and he is a family man, trying to balance his work with his family. Even a meeting he attends with other camp commandants towards the end of the film is handled with the brutal efficiency of any corporate meeting I've ever attended - and just as dispassionately.

Hedwig maintains her household but as she dotes on her children she is also extremely proud of her garden, one that has been constructed in the family compound while the buildings of Auschwitz are in the background.

Everyone goes through their days - there's school, there's work, there's the occasional birthday party for Rudolf where all the officers kiss his ass.

Unlike Spielberg's Oscar winner, this movie doesn't look past the walls. It doesn't need to. It's about what happens to humans when they are placed in a dehumanizing situation. Daddy has a job and we live next to the job is the story that's being told. Aside from the smoke from the crematoriums and the occasional gunshots we don't hear much. We do hear a motorcycle reviving as Hoss ordered one to make the sound a from the camp.

Christian Friedel and Sandra Hüller deliver world class performances as Rudolf and Hedwig. Rudolf throws off lines like "I wasn't really paying attention... I was too busy thinking how I would gas everyone in the room." And Hedwig is rather benign until she tells one of the maids who is not working efficiently enough "I could have my husband spread your ashes across the fields of Babice." Terrifying glimpses into characters who lead their daily banal lives.

Director Jonathan Glazer doesn't challenge any of this. He presents this scenario as if it were a documentary, a slice of life. And by avoiding the moralizations that would be easy to make, the simple family life portrayed becomes, in and of itself, a horror because it asks the question "what would I do?" It also challenges the notions of those Germans who claimed that they had no idea what was going on. And the final scenes in present day Auschwitz underscore the mundanity of how many in the world feel today.

It's a simple film but one that is powerful

WATCH IT

5/5.

Missing
(2023)

Fun film
#265moviereview MISSING

In 2018, Aneesh Changaty wrote, directed and released a movie called SEARCHING. To me, that was an absolutely fantastic movie because I am lost when it comes to the notion of electronics and all the various apps that are available to people online. That movie absolutely fascinated me, causing me to learn more about the Internet and understand what happened in the movie. Everything in that movie occurred on the screen, perhaps, as a sad commentary on what our life has become. Yet it was a revolutionary way of storytelling, which I truly appreciated.

So when I heard that Netflix had a movie called MISSING, and it was a new 2023 release, it seemed kind of interesting so I put it on my watchlist and then I started watching it.

My jaw dropped. This movie is a standalone sequel to the 2018 movie even starting out with scenes from the first movie that were re-shot for this film.

But this movie, not so much. Don't get me wrong. I thought the movie was good, but it no way came close to the quality of its predecessor.

June is an 18 year old girl whose mom is swept off her feet by a man named Kevin and they fly on a trip to Colombia. During this trip, mom disappears and June uses all of her online online skills to track her mom down

Just like the prior movie everything is on the screen, there's notes, there's websites, there's, Gmail there's FaceTime and WhatsApp, there's all different sorts of apps that are being used in an Apple environment (I'm a PC guy and old so a lot of it is new to me)

What's nice about this movie is, unlike the first movie, which is just about a man trying to find his daughter, this movie has layer upon layer of deception, so although initially it seems tired and repetitious from the first movie, the storytelling becomes pretty darn good.

The actress at the center of it, Storm Reid, is absolutely terrific. Also, terrific is Joaquim de Almeida, a man in Colombia whom June employs via website to run several on site tasks for her so she can try to tack track mom down. Their repartee is part of the charm of this movie.

What differentiates this movie from the movie searching is that in the former, the online instances were almost unbroken, that is to say, they were from the perspective of the father looking for his daughter.

In this movie, however, most of the movie is from the perspective of the daughter looking for her mother but then the prospective changes (I don't want to give spoilers) and this changed perspective makes the movie lesser than his predecessor.

It's still a clever mystery, it's just not as good as his predecessor.

WATCH IT

3.5/5.

Breaking Bad: Fly
(2010)
Episode 10, Season 3

The best episode of the series
While it's the lowest rated episode I beg to differ. This show has an extraordinary sense of humor to it and this episode is the epitome of it. In fact, this is a Bugs Bunny episode.

Walt is a total jerk

Jesse is the show's moral center

They are two of the best characters ever on television and this episode showcases their talents.

It is tremendous

I think it's the best episode the series.

USS Indianapolis: Men of Courage
(2016)

Not as bad as the reviews would have indicated
Not a great movie and it lives on the border of good and bad but it is certainly watchable. I'm not a movie professional but I've watched my share of movies and if this movie was about 20 minutes shorter, Peebles would have had an opportunity to cut out a lot of the nonsensical hackneyed world war 2 dialogue that you'd expect from a picture from the 50s. Yet it was still a watchable film

Liu lang di qiu
(2019)

Sit back and enjoy it
It's fun One guy said the science was made up WHO CARES? it was an enjoyable movie Sometimes a movie is just a movie for watching and doesn't have to change your life

The Invaders
(1967)

Wow. Just Great
I rarely write reviews. I remember the invaders as a kid and actually have the big little book "alien missile theft". So when I saw this at the library I took it out. I previously took out Hawaii Five-O and after four episodes and had to stop as all the episodes were the same. Similarly with Mission Impossible there were some episodes that were fun but the rest were so-so. But armed with my free library DVDs I figured I had nothing to lose.

Wow- this show immediately had me sucked in-even with the hokey 60s stuff which is charming-this show was just so much fun. Roy Thinnes' David Vincent is a holier than thou alien hunter and along the way he runs into great guest stars, including Gene Hackman, Dabney Coleman, Suzanne Pleshette, Ed Asner, Harold Gould and many more 60s and 70s names.

The special effects were pretty good for the 60s and the alien death scenes were pretty cool. Each episode played out like Quinn Martinks previous series The Fugitive where the protagonist shows up in a different locale each week. In the second season, the concept of the believers came about in which other characters helped David Vincent fight the aliens. This concept detracted a bit from the story line but it didn't hurt it overall.

I don't know if the show was cancelled but at 43 episodes it does not overstay it's welcome and even ties up nicely. Watch it for good 60s fun.

Mary Poppins Returns
(2018)

Waste of time
Everything in this movie is done to evoke the original and it certainly looks good, especially the hand drawn animated sequences; however, the main problem is that this version makes you pine for the original even more. Standing on its own it is a passable but forgettable musical. When compared with the original it is pale. Even the trip a light fantastic number is less evocative of step in time as it is of the big bamboo from chitty chitty bang bang.

Cabaret
(1972)

Bleh
Perhaps one of the most overrated 8 time Oscar winners ever This movie makes Hello Dolly look like West Side Story. Wooden acting Poor staging Dark cinematography Muddled script

Ready Player One
(2018)

Bad movie
Should rub it's nose in it so it won't do it again. Three stars for the Shining sequence.

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