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Reviews
New Tricks (2003)
Good series, at the beginning
New Tricks is not deep thought television.
It was, at its beginning, fun, frivolous entertainment based upon a contrived premise. With colourful characters to add to the fun.
Up until around season 7, when someone decided it should become yet another crime drama. The series lost it's sparkle, and the original cast slowly exited.
The replacement cast may be faulted for banal performances, but its more likely that the scripts they were given lacked any originality. Crime dramas are common fair. Certainly lacking is any attempt at comedy - comedy being definitive characteristic of the early episodes.
From season 10, episode 9 the series becomes a snooze fest. Uninteresting characters plodding through trite crime stories.
Top Gun: Maverick (2022)
Entertaining...for some
Go see this movie if you:
- are infatuated with Tom Cruise
- love US armed forces promos
- love, but don't know much about fighter jets, military air operations, or the military in general
- love romantic stories
- don't care about facts or logic
Otherwise, you will be disappointed, to say the least.
Nobody (2021)
Good fun
Death Wish meets John Wick meets Austin Powers.
And Bob Odenkirk delivers a great performance as action hero incognito.
Worth a watch, bring popcorn.
Behind Her Eyes (2021)
tv movie of the week stretch into endless hours
Long, with tedious melodrama involving uninteresting characters with an ending that is not creative nor thrilling, just trashy.
Over hyped
Should have been a 90min Lifetime movie that people would ignore.
The Harder They Fall (2021)
Just dumb
A waste of of some really great acting talent.
Weak story. Contrived dialogue. Lame humour. Preposterous action. Gratuitous violence.
And not really any fun at all.
Dune (2021)
Finally, a serious science fiction movie that captures the essence of Frank Herbert's Dune.
It is extremely rare that a movie captures the essence of a book. Rarer still when that book is science fiction.
Villeneuve does even more with his vision of Dune, While keeping true to Frank Herbert's novel, Villeneuve deftly uses visual media to enhance both characters and narrative.
The cinematography and seamless CGI stand out in creating believable worlds of a far future, and yet the visual effects do not detract the viewer from the telling of the story.
Finally, a serious treatment of science fiction. Finally a serious, faithful cinematic rendition of Dune.
StartUp (2016)
Predictable
Predictable story wrapped up in meaningless technobabble and soft core porn.
Outcast (2014)
Sow's ear purse
When the supporting actors are better than the leads....
The Luminaries (2020)
could have been better
Good acting, writing, sets, costumes...
Dismal editing. Creativity over good story telling.
Spaceship Earth (2020)
softball
A very cursive treatment of a bizarre and expensive project that fails to touch on any real explanation how a $200M investment achieved nothing.
Da 5 Bloods (2020)
disappointing.
Spike Lee has many great ideas and he tries to stuff them all in this one movie, with more attention paid to inundating the viewer with political statements than developing an engaging narrative.
Those that love blunt politic theatre interspersed with weakly developed characters will love this movie. Which seems to include most of the professional movie critics.
With the acting talented involved, it could have and should have been a better movie.
Radioactive (2019)
chaotic
Good acting. Set design. Costumes.
Terrible screenplay.
This movie does not know what story it's trying to tell
Very disappointing.
Bright (2017)
Great premise but...
The concept - a modern fairy tale land, is great. But the story is a retread of worn out cop buddy movies. Substitute drugs for wand and mob boss for evil elf and you've seen it before...
I'm Your Woman (2020)
Unique structure induces suspense into crime thriller
Apparently, some people are repulsed by an occasionally crying baby.
Ignore them. Stay with it, you'll enjoy this movie.
The Do-Over (2016)
nothing to spoil
A boring and very predictable movie with no original humour.
The best that can be said is that there is a minimum of Sandler's usual corny schtick.
Ava (2020)
Chastaon deserves better
For today's audiences, action films are box office $$$.
Chastain is a very good actor, not action action film fodder.
She deserves better than a badly conceived beat-em-up.
Field of Lost Shoes (2015)
1960s aesthetic
Some reasonable acting and fair writing around what should be a compelling story.
Yet the movie is far too preoccupied with telling a romanticized tale of war and death, fought by the Confederacy for the morally wrong reasons.
Away (2020)
science fiction without any care for actual science
In these contemporary days when comic book movies are carelessly categorized as science fiction, it may seem unfair to criticize a show about people travelling to mars for its lack of scientific fidelity.
And yet, the blatant disregard for simple logic displayed in Away demonstrates the creators complete disregard (or ignorance) of science and engineering. Suspension of disbelieve isn't even a slight possibility.
And you don't have to be a scientist or engineer to detect the faults in the science. Anyone who has home repair skills will detect the many obvious errors.
Situations are contrived simply to create drama, but the drama deflates quickly as the bad science ruse becomes apparent.
Charlie's Angels (2019)
B- for effort
Lot's of bedazzle, but soulless.
No chemistry between characters.
No characters you want to care about.
Threadbare, cliche plot.
The Man Who Killed Don Quixote (2018)
Trite, egotistical exhibitionism
Gilliam should have let his fetish for making this movie die.
Incoherent, cartoonish and without sense or sensibility,
Dispatches from Elsewhere (2020)
A concept without a story.
Good acting, interesting characters, intriguing situational scenarios.
Overall, shallow pop psychology that repeatably crosses into self-indulgence.
Badland (2019)
nothing new
Plot and character stereotypes that have been used and over-used since the 1920s. Like watching a long, long rerun of Bonanza.
Birds of Prey and the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn (2020)
tedious to sit through
Margot Robie is great.
Ewan McGregor is good.
Supporting cast are all good.
There are some high-points, particularly the very inventively staged fight scenes.
But the mess of disjointed, incoherently presented plot and fractured character development can only be attributed to the inept direction of Kathy Yang.
Anna (2019)
frome the John Wick school of fake fighting
Unlike other female super-spy movies, such as La Femme Nikita or Red Sparrow, Anna fails to generate any interest in either the characters or plot.
Nor does it suspend disbelieve during the excessively choreographed scenes. Even the femme fatale fantasy, Atomic Blonde, provided more believable fight scenes. Watching a lightweight and non-muscular KBG agent destroy dozens of Red Army soldiers without receiving even a minor bruise might be humorous, if it wasn't presented with such banal seriousness (the same problem with John Wick 2 & 3).
A sad waste of the acting talents of Helen Mirren and Cillian Murphy.
Birdman or (The Unexpected Virtue of Ignorance) (2014)
Warning intense contemplation inspired
If you don't understand this movie, you don't understand yourself.