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TJ_McCarthy
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True Lies (2023)
Okee-dokee
So, the Our Gang kids are at Spanky's house watching TV and the movie True Lies comes on. They are very impressed. "Hey Darla, why don't *we* put on a play just like that?!" "Oh Spanky, I don't think we would be very good." "Don't worry Darla, we'll be just fine!" After 20 minutes of hard work and a couple of potty breaks, the gang has written their play, assembled their CGI effects, and are ready to perform. Other kids come to watch the show, but by the second act everyone has walked out. Strong words were heard from the audience (a "gosh darn" and two "patooeys"), but nobody was hurt, especially no animals. And that's really all you need to know about this series.
Stumptown (2019)
The Wrong Kind of Gritty
A woman, who is wandering aimlessly through life, falls into a semi-romantic relationship with a bartender. Entirely by accident, she finds herself doing detective work to earn some beer money, and becomes a sort of unlicensed private investigator. She even hooks up with a PI to try and learn the ropes. If only . . . . . we cared.
The cast is full of top-notch actors you'll remember fondly from other shows, from Gotham to New Girl to Almost Human to Person of Interest. Each tackles their role with workmanlike enthusiasm, but like a jigsaw puzzle with half the pieces missing, nothing really comes together here. Jake Johnson, who lights up his roles with a sort of bohemian quirkiness, is the brightest light. But surprisingly, Cobie Smulders, who has the enviable ability to steal scenes as a S.H.I.E.L.D. agent, drags things to a halt. She trudges through scenes with a hang-dog expression and all the enthusiasm of a sewer worker approaching a fresh clog. She never goes near a gym, and the closest she gets to exercise is doing 12-ounce curls, yet she'll go toe-to-toe with goons twice her size. The director is going for a noir feel, but to succeed, our hero has to be somewhat likeable and preferably, reflective. Smulders comes across as grim and shallow, asserting her independence by sleeping with whatever warm body is available.
The show tries to be at once light and dark, comedic and dramatic. It can be done, as shows like X-Files proved, but that requires a genius not seen in television for decades, and is woefully absent here. I really wanted to like this show, but after three episodes, I've deleted this from my DVR recording list.
The Walking Dead (2010)
Season 2: Too Little Action, Too Much Soap
***SPOILER ALERT*** This series started out pretty good, and had a solid first season. There was lots of action, plenty of zombies, and blood and body parts everywhere. What was really nifty, you never knew who was going to get bitten next. Just when you started liking a character and thought they would be a regular -- *chomp* -- and they're gone!
The second season had an interesting start, but when the group moved onto the farm, everything pretty much bogged down. Now we have lots of drama, lots of crying, lots of angst, and very little happening. We morphed from "Walking Dead" to "All My Zombies". There are little redeeming bits here and there, but you can fast-forward through most of an episode and not really miss anything.
There is also a huge logic hole here. We know from the CDC visit that the zombies are still basically human, but with an altered and primitive brain. We know from the drinking well episode they won't eat prepared foods like ham, but from the zombie barn, we know they will eat poultry "on the hoof", as long as you break the chickens' legs so they can't run away. So far, there's no indication that they'll eat each other. So, here's the problem: after the first two weeks, or four weeks tops, most of these zombies should have starved to death. The whole zombie infestation solves itself.
What's the answer? Well, they could keep going downhill, slogging through episodes of forbidden love, abortion pills, blah blah blah zzzzzz. But here's an idea. Why not have the group saddle up and head to Ft Benning again. On the way, they're cheered to see the zombies starting to die from starvation. But they get there just as the base scientists discover a way to reverse the virus, and "de-zombie" everybody. Now they're horrified, because the zombies are dying off so quickly. The race is on, to catch as many zombies and treat them as possible, without getting killed! We could lose a few more regulars (I have some suggestions on that one) and get a happy ending. But wait, it's not over – cue the theme from "Groundhog Day". Next season, we go back to the start, maybe in the Northeast, and follow a new group as they try to survive. This allows for growth and fresh ideas, and moves away from the snoozy soap opera episodes. Just a thought . . .
Charlie's Angels (1976)
Spectacular in HD!
Let's face it: nobody, but nobody, watches this series because it's a great crime drama. The plots are awful, with some story lines bordering on childish, the action is tepid at best, the stunts are second rate, the suspense non-existent, and the dialogue . . . well, let's not go there. The one and only reason to watch this show is because Aaron Spelling put three of the most beautiful women ever to grace a television screen into one show, and managed to have them come across as successful, surprisingly intelligent professionals. Had he gone the pure jiggle, airhead bimbo route, this would have never lasted a single season. If you find Kate, Jaclyn, and Farrah to be attractive, the show becomes addictive and impossible to turn off. Casting Cheryl Ladd to replace Farrah was a truly inspired move that saved the series, though Shelley Hack was a good but less successful replacement, and Tanya Roberts made the final year all but unwatchable. Wives will never ever understand why their husbands keep watching!
Universal HD recently took the old standard definition episodes and converted them to High Def. The effect is simply stunning. The Angels, while beautiful in 1976 on an old 24" set, really come alive in HD. It's like having old friends step out of a time machine and into your living room. Some scenes were originally a bit out of focus, which wasn't noticeable then, but becomes painfully obvious after the conversion. For the most part though, everything is razor sharp, well-lit, and easily up to today's standards. The picture is cropped to fit, not stretched, so things retain the proper perspective. The occasional skimpy outfits, attractive in SD, and traffic-stopping in HD. One downside is the audio; the original was mono and the broadcast is in stereo, but with two identical channels. So, you have to live without surround sound, at least until some genius comes up with an easy way to do that conversion as well.
Forget the Charlie's Angels movies, stick with the TV series in HD for a wonderful trip back to the 1970s.
In the Valley of Elah (2007)
Feel-Good Flick for the Blame-America-First Crowd
I caught this on cable and had absolutely no preconceptions or expectations, having never read a review or checking IMDb. I saw it had Tommy Lee Jones in the cast, and that made it a must-watch movie for me. At first, it seemed like a gripping crime drama, but quickly started showing its true colours. This is a movie about, not the U.S. Army, but the Hollywood Army; that is, the Army as Hollywood has seen it since the 60's. It takes the stereotypical, screwed-up Viet Nam vet, and puts him on steroids for the new century. Having spend 28 years in the Air Force, and having friends serving in Iraq, Afghanistan, and other fun spots, I have some idea what I'm talking about. Here's what I learned about the "new" Hollywood Army (HA), as opposed to the real, U.S. Army (USA).
- When you retire from HA, if you were a military cop, they let you keep your badge. And active duty ID card. In the USA, they take the badge and give you a retiree card.
- Having spent a career as an HA cop, if you're chasing a Hispanic suspect, you will shout every racial epithet you can think of and then beat him senseless as soon as you catch him. The USA hasn't eliminated prejudice from the ranks, but has done a pretty darn good job of trying. Unless you lived through the barracks riots and de facto segregation of the 60's and 70's, and seen the difference now, you really can't believe how far we've come.
- In the HA, power corrupts, but Army power corrupts absolutely. The HA, realizing there's no easy way to take Nintendo-generation kids and turn them into effective soldiers, strips away their humanity and turns them into stone-cold emotionless killers. So much so any soldier can take a good friend, chop him into little pieces, burn the pieces, and then go out for a bite of fried chicken. The USA is a far cry from the Boy Scouts, but I guarantee that your average soldier has a far straighter moral compass than your man-on-the-street American. Yes, Abu Ghraib happened, but it was an anomaly, not business as usual.
- HA soldiers do drugs. Every last darn one of 'em. It's considered odd to expect that anyone doesn't. They try to avoid hard drugs, at least when outside of a war zone, but otherwise, jokin' and tokin' is de rigeur. In the USA, there are still drugs, but there is on-going program of random testing, and if you do drugs you *will* get caught.
- Returning HA soldiers are ticking time-bombs, just waiting to go off. It's not a question of "if", it's "when". In the USA, there is indeed post-traumatic stress and its consequences, but it's a problem that's treated, not ignored or swept under the rug.
I could go on, but that gives you the gist. On the plus side, Tommy Lee Jones gives a tremendous performance, and for the first time I realized just how good of an actress Charlize Theron truly is. Susan Sarandon is thankfully relegated to a minor role with minimal screen time. The overall message here, however, is despicable. It's an anti-Army, hate America kind of movie. It's amazing that so many reviewers here think this reflects reality. They obviously haven't been in the military, and are probably the kind of people who would cross the street rather than say "good morning" to somebody in uniform. Jihadists everywhere will love it; anyone with a shred of patriotism will find it to be total crap.
Leatherheads (2008)
Cinema 101: How *Not* To Make a Screwball Comedy
A lot of the negative reviews here concentrate on the historical accuracy of this film. OK, it had about as much to do with the actual NFL as your average war movie has to do with an actual war, or a Western has to do with the true "old west". So, I think we should give them an artistic license pass on that one.
The problem here is, the director (Clooney) apparently thinks that making a screwball comedy means a) do stupid things, b) mug for the camera, and c) take stupid scenes full of mugging and stretch them out way too long. Screwball comedies need a fast pace, not necessarily frenetic, but moving briskly along at all times. Here, things drag, and drag, and drag. After you watch this movie, it will make you appreciate how brilliant Mack Sennett was when he pretty much pioneered the genre with his Keystone Cops. After 90 years, you would think that directors would have studied the old masters and learned a thing or two, maybe even improved on things a bit. But no, it's as if someone had watched an automobile pioneer build a Duesenberg, and nearly a century later, paid homage and "improved" on the concept by cobbling together a child's wagon with square wheels.
I've enjoyed several of Clooney's movies, I consider him a gifted actor. But very few actors can competently direct themselves; Clint Eastwood notably took a while to get the hang of it. Clooney is clearly at the bottom of a very steep slope. The movie becomes more watchable during the very few times he is out of the frame, but when he's in the picture, he makes himself the centre of attention. In the fight scenes, his mugging is so obnoxious you wish somebody would thump him for real.
If you are making a screwball comedy and want some romance thrown in, you need to develop some chemistry between the male and female leads. Clooney and Zellweger have all the chemistry of pair of dumpsters sitting in a parking lot. No spark, no sizzle, not even a post-mortem twitch. Zellweger, who has also turned out some pretty good movies, must have traded her botox injections for oak tannin, giving a stunningly wooden performance. She might just have pulled off the "tough broad in a man's world" act if just once, while trying to out-testosterone the guys, she had looked into the camera with a little half-smile and twinkle in her eye. But no, she kept her jockstrap cinched up tight to the very end.
Of course, the biggest sin here is that the movie simply isn't funny. Doing stupid things is not the same as slapstick. Doing stupid things very inventively, like the Stooges, or very athletically, like Buster Keaton, can be hilarious. But otherwise it's boring and, well, stupid. I think I got one good laugh out of the entire movie.
Avoid this one. I saw it for free on cable, and still wanted my money back.
Isle of the Dead (1945)
Here Be Monsters
There are some excellent reviews here already, and I don't want to re-cover any well-plowed ground. I do want to point out something interesting that I didn't see previously noted. Since the '80s, how many horror (usually slasher) movies have you seen where the designated victims are warned early on to "stay away? Usually this advice comes from some old coot, looking rather backward, uneducated, and sounding like a reject from Deliverance. The party, usually young and quite full of themselves, scorns the advice, often insulting the adviser, and hurries off to their doom. You, the viewer, are invited to shake your head and mumble, "Why didn't they listen? That old guy has been around forever, and obviously knows what he's talking about!" (Spoilers here.) In Isle, the coot is Madame Kyra, who formerly owned what appears to be the only house on the island cemetery, and has stayed on as housekeeper for the new owner. She is obsessed with the thought that there's a vorvolaka loose, and tries to warn the others before it's too late. Unlike modern movies though, the chief authority figure here, General Pherides, takes the advice to heart. Unfortunately, the General has been pushed a little too close to the brink of madness, and his sickness only twists his judgment further. With corpses missing and the dead returning to life, who can blame him? What really is going on here? You don't know for sure until the end! This isn't the best horror flick, but it is highly watchable. Val Lewton couldn't possibly have anticipated how overdone the "old coot" device would become 40 years later, but nonetheless beautifully skewers it here.
One final note. Several reviews have disparaged this as not really being a horror movie. Apparently they think horror means creepy monsters and buckets of blood. But horror begins in the mind, where the worst of all monsters live. And a film that features a monster unseen, possibly unreal, but believed in certainly qualifies as horror.