Reviews

First, a couple of things. I realize this is a Godzilla movie and you have to suspend belief in, well, everything. Second, I don't think I've ever experienced a movie that took such a 180 midstream in my long, movie going life.

The movie starts great. Kamikaze pilot ends up on South Pacific island for plane repair/refueling (?) and ends up being there when the big guy shows up and almost wipes the island and all of it's military off the face of the earth. The kamikaze and another guy survive but the pilot, because of his job choice (remember, kamikaze pilots don't get a pension plan) ends up being shunned by almost everyone back in Tokyo when he gets back there after the war. All the things you've read and heard about the honor of the kamikaze must be true because this guy is shunned to the max because, well, he's still alive. Fast forward a few years and he meets a woman who is raising an orphan, he gets a job cleaning bombs out of Tokyo harbor and his girlfriend also gets a job. He builds a small house, he has a few bucks, he has friends, he has a girlfriend - things are looking up. - except for these horrific dreams he gets often about his island encounter with Big G a few years before. These dreams are tearing him apart. He can't even tell if he's alive or just living a dream or whether his girlfriend is a dream also. Of course Godzilla picks just them to show back up, tear up Tokyo, kill thousands and show off his new 'heat wave' weapon, which is basically a nuclear blast that GZ can direct at something close by and basically just vaporize it. That's a nutshell of the first 70-80 minutes of the flick.

The last 45 minutes of the movie? No government military can help (???) so pretend the 3 Stooges are put in charge of destroying this beast. They go to Acme Supply Corp. And concoct the most convoluted, crazy scheme that's so off the wall that I doubt Wile E. Coyote would have used it. Add to that the very end 5 minutes which is basically a Hallmark clip show and you have a very good monster movie that touched on some interesting facets of depression, guilt and grief and turn it into a bad Warner Brother Looney Tune. So, 9 stars for the first 80 minutes of the movie, and zero for the last 40 minutes. Let's just call it 5 stars over all. I liked the little orphan girl best, after Godzilla.

Contains a few very, very tiny spoilers, nothing you won't see in the first 15 minutes... First, I did not see 'Dopesick' - yet. It slipped under my radar. I've actually just finished 'Fall of the House of Usher' which I thought was almost perfect. Both of these shows dealt with the same subject, evil pharmaceutical companies.

There are a few small problems but not enough to warrant not watching. Some of the acting may have been a bit over the top, but. That was offset by great work from Matthew Broderick and, of all people, Taylor Kitsch. The fact that they led off every episode with heart-wrenching testimony from the loved ones of people who died from the drug was a good call. Unfortunately, when the loved ones spoke they started off their speech by basically saying everything being said or portrayed or shown was, or at least could've, been altered to fit the narrative. You've heard the disclaimers before, they're usually quite vague. This disclaimer seemed very specific, which for me gave the producers carte blanche to change facts to fit their narrative. Don't get me wrong, I'm sure almost all of this happened, just not the way it was portrayed - and I have a feeling it was changed to bolster their story a bit too much. At any rate, that leads to my main complaint, there was just no nuance or subtlety in the story. You didn't need a program to tell the good guys from the bad, the filmmakers left no doubt. Quite often the best part of a series like this is forming your own opinion about how meetings turned out, who said what and why did things turn out that way? This left no questions, it answered everything, no reading between the lines. And if anything seemed too confusing, Matthew Broderick would just have a conversation with his dead relative. Now, on to Dopesick....

First off, and most importantly, this is bad. Mostly geared toward 6th grade boys and people who really, really like very dumb, not funny, stereotypical Jewish humor, 98% of the jokes fall flat. Even if they were 'groan worthy' they'd be funny, but they're just not.

Now, the part that I've noticed that so many people stated in their reviews, I don't think Mel Brooks wrote very much, if any, of this. If you look at the credits at the end they credit all of the writing to Mel AND every single person who acted in all of the sketches. I sort of envision it as 'here's a story, General Grant from the Civil War was a drunk - let's go with that!" Now this can probably be funny if the jokes were even slightly original, but they're not - nothing is. It's as if all the people in the sketch (generally always Ike Barenholtz) were asked what they thought was funny, then they took all of the suggestions, picked the worst ones, and used those. Mainly because of this I can't 'blame' this fiasco completely on Brooks, it was a group effort.

First, to all of the reviewers who have complaints about why certain things were included (do we really need to hear Yoko 'sing'?) and why, like I'm wondering, why wasn't Billy Preston - who's such a massive part of 'Get Back' especially when they're on the roof - why very little of him playing the keyboard? That's all a decision that Peter Jackson had to make while editing over 56 hours of video and I'm sure he thought long and hard about every second of film we ended up seeing. Whether he even had video of Preston playing or perhaps he had hours of Yoko singing, it was his choice what to include it or not.

Next, if you're going to watch this to hear complete, polished Beatles songs, you'll be severely disappointed. Except for the last 45 minutes or so on the roof of Apple HQ in London there's not a complete song in the 7+ hours - and that's sort of the point.

You quickly realize what you've suspected all along even as a casual Beatles fan, Ringo is the drummer - period, George is the guitar player - sometimes lead, sometimes rhythm or slide - and he writes some material which is SOMETIMES worked on and brought to fruition, but more often than not it's given a chance then basically forgotten about, left to die on the vine, possibly to be included on a future LP. That of course leaves John and Paul. Being a casual fan myself and having listened to the Beatles since they were on Sullivan in the early 60's I always assumed that Paul and John were more or less equals. Be honest, most of the Beatles songs that made the group famous were on albums that came out in the 60's and carried the names 'written by Lennon/McCartney'. I'm not sure if it was a conscientious decision by Jackson to cut the film the way he did, but Paul quickly establishes himself as the alpha male in the group hands down. When record company executives or any 'suits' entered the studio they immediately head over to Paul to ask the question, make the comment or solicit an answer - and Paul never defers to anyone else. Perhaps it's because this has been happening for over a decade since the group was formed, the others perhaps have gotten into a habit of just saying 'ask Paul' because Paul will generally have the answer. The other obvious fact is, which they delve into a bit, is the fact that by this time (early 1969) John and Paul have been writing together for about 15 years, they know how the other one thinks because they've done it for so long and have been so incredibly successful at it that everyone knows they're in charge. I believe the only reason John seems slightly throttled in some scenes is because he constantly - yes, constantly - has Yoko sitting/standing within 3 inches of him. I don't mean he doesn't love her or anything like that, it's just that he has to divide his time slightly between the music and her which I think takes away from his creativity a bit and therefore makes his a slightly less forceful power in the band, which then elevates Paul to the top. Yes, I realize that the other members of the band also have their wives and sometimes children there, but not to the extent that Yoko is shadowing John in every scene. Also, what the hell is Yoko doing in some of the early scenes, balancing her checkbook? It honestly looks like she's doing some sort of bookkeeping - looking through papers, taking notes, writing in what looks like a check book. Very strange.

I also loved the look and sound of the documentary. Obviously it's 2021 and the ability - especially to someone like Jackson - to take some 50+ year old video and film and make it look as though it was recorded with top of the line equipment in near razor sharp 4K with accompanying 9-2 sound is just phenomenal. I do have a nice basement theater and this 7.5 hours looked and sounded stunning from beginning to end.

I was also impressed by the way sound was added to some scenes that didn't quite include the same sound that was shown on film but a different version of it. Does that make sense? Remember, the source material for this was 50+ hours of video but 150+ hours of sound recording. You can tell on some scenes where the song doesn't quite match the lips but perhaps the sound on the video was junk and they just replaced with another take. At any rate it's noticeable but not in a bad way.

All told this is a fascinating look at one of the most - if not the most - powerful and influential group of musicians to ever record anything and it's right before they broke up for good. Though Paul was only 26 and George was only 25, mere weeks before his 26th birthday, they accomplished more in 6/7 years than any other band before or since had done. And in what would now seem like the blink of an eye in a musical time line it was over.

First off, science fiction is probably my favorite genre of TV and movies, but that won't make this reviewed biased - this is really a well done TV show. The look and feel of the show, the scenes in space, on the various space ships, on the various asteroids and planets, are excellent, very believable. With most sci-fi movies you have to completely suspend your belief in reality to get into the movie or TV show because everything that happens on the screen is so crazy, wild and unbelievable that you know it can't happen. Think any movie by Marvel - they're not bad, just impossible to believe this could ever happen. Not so with 'The Expanse'. It doesn't take too much imagination to believe that in the next 200 years or so people from Earth are traveling between the Earth and Mars, or Ceres and Ganymede. They don't travel at 'light speed' or 'warp speed' but they do get there fast, just not faster than the speed of light. The main driving force of the story, which like almost all good stories, can be broken down to 'good versus evil'. The fun is trying to figure out just who is 'good' and who is 'evil'. I've watched all but the last 2 eps of the second season and I'm still getting surprised by some of the things that are happening. Granted, you know that certain events are steering you in one direction (if an asteroid/spacecraft crashes on Venus it'll be vaporized, and everything in it will burn up - right??) but you can also pretty much figure out quickly that that isn't what's going to happen. Now, the few problems I have with the show - none of which are deal breakers. The show starts slow. As with most TV shows or movies that start out as books (or a series of books in this case) there's a massive amount of information, scenes, characters and whole worlds that have to be introduced before you can get to the main 'meat' of the story. A writer can devote a whole 400 page book to slowly do this, in a TV show you've got maybe one 45 minute episode to accomplish this. Although you're more than rewarded later on, especially in season 2, getting there takes 2 or 3 episodes. Some of the actors are great. I don't think Jared Harris, so perfect in 'Mad Men', has ever turned in a bad performance. Even Thomas Jane is passable as the over the hill cop with a chip on his shoulder. I haven't read the books, but Jane seems about 5 years too old to play his part, plus he's too small. It just seems like the guy playing Miller should be a touch larger and a bit younger. The rest of the actors are all workman like in their various parts. They have a job to do and they do it well, not Oscar worthy or Emmy winning, but passable. Unfortunately the whole storyline with the UN ambassador on Earth is a mess. Bad acting, some very incomprehensible dialog, and poor casting choices. I like Shohreh Aghdashloo, she's the definite 'go to' actress when you need an exotic, Middle Eastern/Indian, 50 something cop/bad wife/rich foreign oil heiress. Here, she's completely out of her element. Her accent is so thick (it's her real accent) that easily 20% of what she says is incomprehensible. She's also called on to be a bad a** and to swear, dropping a few f bombs from time to time, which she absolutely can't do. I don't know if she's just apprehensive about cursing, or saying those words in such a thick accent, but when she says those things she sounds more laughable than tough, and tough is what she's going for. She doesn't work for me, not in that part. Plus her mole, the sort of bald guy she hired in the second season, is just a bad actor. I can imagine his part being much larger in the book, but here it's just condensed into quick one and two sentence blurbs. Hopefully people will check out this great show. Please don't simply dismiss it as a cheesy ScFy POS movie of the week with grade school CG effects and no story, just give it 2-3 episodes to set the story and then sit back and enjoy. You won't be disappointed.

I set the old Tivo to record 29 Palms a couple of nights ago. It was on at 3:00 AM on Sundance and it looked kind of interesting with Rachel Leigh Cook and Michael Rapaport and a heist and a bag of money. Unfortunately what I got was this, Twentynine Palms. After a minute or two I realized somebody had made a mistake with the movie description so I FF'd for a few minutes but then fell asleep from the dialogue. When I woke up they were in the desert and the girl was covering the guys dong with her hand as they slept out in the desert naked. I FF'd through most of the rest of it but I'm still trying to figure out how they didn't turn red and fry out there in the desert. I would've been burnt to a crisp in ten minutes. I guess it's a good thing she covered up his junk - I imagine a sunburn there would be extremely painful.