saneman1 Reviews

Straight Outta Compton (2015)

Good fun bio that takes it a little easy on Dre

[7/10 · 29 January 2018]

Dre and Ice cube are producers and so one can see the the way they whitewash certain aspects of their early lives. Having said that, the movie is done reasonably well. Ice Cube's son is pretty good casting as he resembles and sounds like his dad.

The highlight of the movie is Jason Mitchell who is great as Easy E. JAson Mitchell deserved an acting nomination as he is one of our emerging great actors and has a very engaging screen presence as one can see in this movie and the TV series Chi.

Paul Giamatti is good, but i wish they showed just a little more nuance in his shady character in the second half of the movie.

Rough Night (2017)

Dreadful movie

[2/10 · 27 January 2018]

This movie makes Hangover 2 seem like a classic by comparison. Bridesmaids, Think like A Man Too, , even Soul Freaking PLane look like great movies by comparison. Sometimes a cast can sell a dumb script. But the actress who plays the movie's main crazy character, Jillian Bell, lacks the Melissa McCarthy or Zack G level off the wall zaniness to sell a poor script. The scarlett J character was a disaster. This movie didn';t even the guts to go all out in its zaniness. YOu have a person like Scarlett who casually takes coke like it's Coca Cola with a very minor objection that it may not be the best time even if she has absolutely no problem taking it. But then she gets all skeezed out by a stripper coming on to her and just comes across as a very unlikable unfunny person. She is a lot better in her SNL skits. Also, the movie does not even have the out there craziness of a Very Bad Things to sell the important development that happens early in the movie. This movie is directed with the skill of a direct to video movie.

Most of the characters are unlikable. But much worse is they are unfunny. If you are funny, likability has no bearing. If you are not that funny, then if you are likable and can ham it up in a charming way, you can make a bad movie tolerable to watch. This movie is just awful.

SMILF (2017–2019)

One of the most annoying leads

[3/10 · 3 December 2017]

While I found the show watchable , the lead character is just annoying as hell which is fine if she were more interesting or was a side character in another show. But for her to be the focus of this series is too much. I lost all patience when she tried to pay homage to Run Lola Run. The screenplay of that episode was ridiculously immature. Like some 5th grader decided to make her own Run Lola Run homage Jason Scwartzman Rushmore style.

La La Land (2016)

How can it be a great musical without good songs?

[3/10 · 16 September 2017]

You don't need a great voice to carry a musical. But you need to have an interesting voice. A lot of the old time musicals pretty much had the likes of Gene Kelly, and others have songs tailored to their limited range as singers. Even the silly Mamma Mia which suffered from cringeworthy screenplay and Pierce Brosnan's earnest donkey braying benefited from the rich catalog of songs and performers immersing themselves into the songs no matter how bad they sounded. Rocky Horror Picture Show made better use of the voices of non singers like Sarandon and even though Rocky Horror was never considered Oscar worthy , it actually has much superior songs to more lauded movies like La La Land.

LaLaLand is just flat out lacking in even semi memorable songs with great melodies. And even the non musical sequences are drab and stilted in the beginning of the movie which kind of makes you impatient right off the bat. The first half hour, there is only one semi compelling scene where Emma Stone is auditioning for a role. So it puts you in a mood not to give this movie the patience it probably needs.

The first scene that grabs my attention is the pool scene with the 80s cover band by an overeager cheesy singer who entertained me more than the other singers in the movie. Then the movie descends into mediocrity again where Ryan Gosling and Emma Stone have a duet where the song does their voices and our ears no favor. Ryan Gosling's voice comes across as a bored half hearted rendition after someone just woke him up in this song. At that point, I just gave up on the movie and watched the rest of it as I did other stuff.

Emma Stone had a better mini musical with her funny SNL skit(Les Jeunes de Paris) set in a french coffee shop than what we saw here. Ryan and Emma are both good actors and just wasted in a sloppily directed effort. This movie somehow achieved what I thought was impossible - make Emma Stone seem boring when she was having fun dancing.

I don't understand the cinematography wow factor here.The imagery looks more akin to late 2000s HD cinematography with the lack of adequate vibrancy in the colors and contrast.

Tequila (II) (2011)

Narrative not fleshed out

[4/10 · 10 May 2013]

Sure the movie has a beginning, middle and ending. But the tempo of the movie kind of leads you to think there is something more to be expected but the relationships are just depicted in a very perfunctory manner.

And description of the plot is misleading a tad. There is no layer under layer complexity of deception here. Just a couple of lies and the lies are not what causes the misfortune here. THe movie starts off with an affair and that is pretty much the extent of deception here. (not really a spoiler, but I figured I would mention it as a spoiler in case people expect something that this movie is not).

The acting is average with a couple of awkward roles for the American actors - one of them a bloated Furlong.

One Minute to Nine (2007)

Overrated documentary: The HBO cut

[4/10 · 10 July 2010]

I saw the HBO version with the changed title. My low rating does not reflect my lack of interest in the actual case itself. I wish 48 Hours made this instead of a pretentious filmmaker. THere is sadly, nothing new or strange about this case or the people involved that merits "a day in the life of" approach taken to showing the 4 days leading up to her sentencing and the past flashbacks. The doc starts off great showing anold eerie clip of the family at some carnival like setting.

We get thewhole picture of the dynamics and what life was and is like for these people in the first 15 minutes. Why is it deemed revelatory that the killers are ordinary good people? Showing the mother just go through the motions in those four days is a waste of my time and bores me. It is because we understand right away why she did what she did. We do not need to see boring footage to be convinced this is a normal woman.

They could have easily condensed the first 50 minutes into 15 minutes and spent more time exploring at least one or more of the following issues - why did the cops fail them, and why did such an indifferent system all of a sudden feel the need to extract justice now and sentence them to an inhumane amount of time in jail? Showing the judge mentioning that his hands were tied was not enough. There had to be some depiction of the defense team and why they failed the mother and son.

The blunt truth is this . This is a case that is sadly not uncommon in our society. The filmmaker taking a passive approach doesn't reveal to us anything that is educational or revelatory. What is of interest is how the system failed them before and after the murder. I would like to know what the defense attorneys said that did not convince her she didn't have a good chance of a better outcome? I would like to know why the DA was not persuaded to present a better deal.

Very Young Girls (2007)

Well intentioned, but incomplete and overlong

[5/10 · 12 December 2008]

You won't waste your time watching it, especially if you are watching it on TV and you are able to do other stuff while it is on. It does a decent profile of GEMS. It gives us an idea of how messed up our court system is when they convict underage hookers instead of treating them as victims of sexual abuse. But no interviews with prosecutors or legislators of why this is so.

The documentary should have been titled GEMS because it really offers no fresh insight into why these girls turn away from their families in the first place? Yeah, we know the father figure aspect of these pimps attracts them to the profession in the first place. But why were they for the taking? No real insightful interviews with the mothers of these kids were done.

It would have been nice to have seen what it took for Rachel Lloyd to set up her non profit to give us an idea why more of these non profits do not exist.

There was one girl who expressed an interest in becoming an archaeologist, travel to England. The doc really dropped the ball in explaining why someone like this, with good grades, would even be in the position of being approached by a pimp and why she was so quick to fall for his persuasive powers.

It should have been a 45 min to one hour doc at most profiling GEMS.