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Reviews
Whitney Houston: I Wanna Dance with Somebody (2022)
Vanity Project for Clive Davis
Ugh! I wanted to love it SO BAD. I love her voice- she is one of the greatest voices of our time. But I watched all this play out in real time. I've seen the real footage a million times. Heard all the songs a million times. Read all the books and saw all the documentaries. I was hoping for something new and fresh. Maybe a different perspective....but it feels more like a vanity project for Clive Davis played by the ever-smug Stanley Tucci.
I want to know more of her internal struggle. I want to know more of what was going on in her head- I wanted it to dig deeper and get more personal. Perhaps if she were still around to tell her story... The actress is good but does not portray her dynamic personality and that she was deeply supportive of other artists.
As a classical singer...I also don't think the singing parts- except for the Star Spangled Banner accurately portray the physicality of what it takes to belt out Whitney's voice on that tiny frame. It only showed her sweating after struggling with drug abuse but Whitney notoriously sweat profusely when she performed because the voice came out by summoning all of her strength.
The Bobby and Robin actors were great, though.
The Wonder Years (2021)
I was rooting for this show
I knew I would come here and see a bunch of comments whining about the race swap aspect of it instead of the actual content and unfortunately, the content is upsettingly disappointing. The original show takes place in upstate New York. It's nostalgic and make you feel good. What on earth were they thinking about making a show about a Black kid in rural Alabama in the 60s? How is that supposed to make people feel good? They had to sanitize aspects of the era in order to create the potential warm of fuzzies. Wouldn't he have gone to a segregated school? And why doesn't anyone have an accent except his mom and like one teacher? Why doesn't anyone SOUND like they're in Alabama? I thought this would take place in upstate New York as the previous Wonder Years did- not GD Jim Crow era- at the hotbed of most of the major tragedies that African Americans have faced. Would he have even had white friends? When you make a period piece, the whole point of it is to be historically accurate so that it is nostalgic for the people who were alive back then or satisfying for people who are history buffs. They could have made it run concurrently with Kevin's timeline and had crossover. They could have made it in the 80s AFTER Kevin Arnold graduated high school. The possibilities were endless to not make this suck.
Choose or Die (2022)
Too European to Be American
I don't understand why it has to take place in New York. It was giving Western Europe, Cold War, Chernobyl vibes. And as great as the actors are at their American accents, it was a huge distraction from the story. I read that it was filmed in London, but all they did was a good job at making it look like an even more depressing part of Europe that hasn't recovered from Soviet occupation. I don't know how these things work, but perhaps it wouldn't have gotten on Netflix if it wasn't a bunch of British actors pretending to be Americans living in New York City. Nothing about it said New York except for the stock footage of the skyline. As an American it made me think, are we THAT ethnocentric that entire casts have to pretend to be us to get our attention? All of this would have been forgiveable if the movie was good, but it was awful.
Confessions of a Time Traveler - The Man from 3036 (2020)
Painstakingly Cliche and Unoriginal
Is this a student film? I really don't want to rag on someone's artistic work for academic purposes. Or maybe it's meant to be a joke or parody. There wasn't very much research done to tell us about the future. Borrowing from all of the very cliche conspiracy theories of a mandatory microchip, the dangers of 5G and the Rothschilds as corporate overlords, this was as deep as a kiddie pool. I have a friend who recommended it who was blown away. Lol I don't know how. Maybe she didn't realize how derivative these notions of the future are. Either way. YIKES. I want my 37 minutes back.
Kid 90 (2021)
Great Footage, not Great Story-telling
I'm glad she was able to put the archival footage together in a film. But she doesn't go into too much detail about some of the people in it. She speaks in very vague and juvenile adjectives "he was sweet and I could tell he was sad". As a forever fan of Jonathan Brandis, it was nice to see candid footage of him. But it felt as if she took advantage of his friendship. I just see someone who was surrounded by people gushing over her but I didn't see her giving much back. Perhaps that's why the documentary felt so empty- she was so self-absorbed that she literally had nothing meaningful to say about other people. "New York is when I met the skaters and the punks". Ok. What more can you tell us about these people? What more can you tell us about the subculture and the scene? Finally we saw she had a Black friend in NY, but apart from that, not much of a diverse group. If it weren't for this footage, I doubt she would remember much of anything.
The Last Blockbuster (2020)
Lack of Depth
The talking head commentary didn't offer much, or tell us what we already didn't know. I was also disappointed at the lack of diversity in the commentary. It's like they sought out every mediocre white man they could find to tell us how awesome Blockbuster was (except Kevin Smith, he earned his right to be a talking head). If you're trying to capture an experience, maybe use different types of people?