Reviews

This was my granddaughter's pick for the weekend. I normally like Dreamworks - but they're jumping on Disney's bandwagon. There's a Hollywood trend that children MUST be exposed to sexual identity politics as young as possible. Just plain fun isn't enough for kids' movies; there MUST be lessons taught for entertainment because movie producers know best. But the very worst part - our young heroine sounds like an idiot, which I'm noticing in more and more kid movies. I would like to think that after a decade or so of education, young women can be somewhat articulate? I asked my pre-teen granddaughter, "Is this inane babbling a thing now?" She looked at me like I was nuts and said no with a sneer. Thank god. So - it's okay to push sexual identity issues AND make girls sound like silly twits, while dumping some made-up blue girl's problems on us? Ugh.

Hallmark has appropriated another cozy series ... and ruined it. They inserted their usual stable of blah faces that look nothing like the books' descriptions. With few exceptions, Hallmark performers are C Level at best. This one playing "Goldy" (who - duh - has blond curly hair in the book because of her nickname Goldilocks) has a limited range of facial expressions. Usually a wrinkled forehead to indicate: Fear, sympathy, worry, thinking, basically anything other than the vapid toothy smile. The romantic interest is a slovenly-looking stick with even less expression. Goldy's child has been changed from a son to a daughter. Why? To put another anorexic girl on camera? Marla is yet another blah Hallmark face instead of Goldy's best rich, chubby friend. The ex-husband is not the evil manipulator the entire PLOT of some of the books revolves around. At least Anywhere, Canada, that is a mountain town. This is even worse than what they did to the Hannah Swenson series.

I hadn't seen this Lynskey person in anything because I don't like dumb sitcoms. I especially didn't like 2 1/2 Men, which I guess she's famous for. I had Yellowjackets on my watch list and removed it since she's in it. Maybe the script of this isn't her fault - but I blame her for my dislike of what could have been a fun movie. The plot was thin Nancy-Drew level - but workable. However, the ending and the good-natured acceptance of losing the family mansion seemed more like everyone saying, "Uh we don't really have an ending so let's wrap this stinker up FAST." Overall, the drug use, the alcoholism, the promiscuity, the vulgar language - hey! Fun Stuff!

Oh dear - what have they done. What started as a mildly entertaining, if often preachy, cozy series has gone downhill fast. Without Mrs. McCarthy, Bunty, Lady Felicia, and Sid - it's just a mess. I do like the detective much more than Deam's hammy rendition. I don't even mind Mrs. Devine all that much - except she seems woefully bad at whatever job the parishioners are paying her to do. The final straw for me was the new sidekick. Brenda Palmer. Set aside the leap of credibility the audience is expected to make regarding 1950's race relations, Martinwood is just an annoyingly bad actress. Every line of dialog evidently requires a exaggerated facial expression and low-class British exclamation. Too bad.

There's a difference between a big strong guy and a body builder. This guy playing Reacher obviously spends most of his time at the gym, carefully working each muscle. You can always tell when their arms stick out to the side when they walk - overdeveloped deltoids that don't occur naturally without hours of work. Then they put him is too-small t-shirts to show off his gym muscles. All that begs the the comment of muscle brain - not much there, acting wise. Wooden, constipated, now-where-do-I-stand school of acting. Yet another iconic book character the kids in California just can't get right.

Like so many tv shows now, this is not so much an entertaining story as an exercise in "inclusion." There is a token of each plus the two-in-one bonus of old person/black character. The old person in these shows is always so-o-o-o confused by all that high tech-ness and is usually the Debbie Downer who doesn't let the brilliant kids do everything they want. For all the "diversity," the wooden characters are interchangeable. Taking a successful tv show from the past and inserting these robotic creatures to satisfy a quota may get points somewhere - but the audience doesn't have to watch. Finally, I will not watch shows that have the requisite "non-binary" person who makes the show about THEIR adorable quirkiness.

Anna Kendrick. Ugh. I continue to be completely befuddled as to why she's considered beautiful. Why she's considered a good actress. Why she seems to be the embodiment of millennial wonderfulness. I've suffered through Trolls listening to her and that other guy squeaking - um singing I guess. Her schtick now seems to be twee adorableness interwoven with "accidental" vulgarity. This movie? Cringe-worthy through most of it. Incest, abuse, profanity, adultery - all in front of children. The fact that I've gone along with IMDb's new "500 word rule" to post a review is an indication of how much I wish Kendrick would go back to being the "drama girl" in her hometown.

Along with telling my grandkids they aren't allowed to use some of the language, I also pointed out that just because someone's old doesn't make them stupid. The Rock's impersonation of Danny Devito was to look like a moron with his mouth hanging open; the other one spoke in a slow witless drawl. While oldsters might not know the specific game being played, we DO play video games and understand the concept and don't need the basics explained over and over. Heck - we INVENTED video games. I'm wondering how funny people would think this movie was if they were ridiculing other races, other religions, other genders - along with ridiculing people because of their ages. All that said - switching out characters would require much better performers than were in this movie.

I'm giving up on the expensive IMAX movies. They have become ecology scolds interspersed with a few shots of nature. There are always "experts" and science teams - 52 feet tall - who are delighted they have a forum and attention for their own little interest. We are reprimanded for ruining the oceans, with dire warnings about the planet. Yes - this is all true. But all I wanted to do in this particular case was take my granddaughter to see whales migrating and (hopefully) gorgeous cinematography. Instead - Sylvia Earle doing her best to be dramatic. IMAX is not a good medium to have people on the screen. They no longer have things "coming out of the screen" at us; they're merely large, blurry movies with no closed captioning and lots of stairs.

It's mostly about the "world-renowned chocolatiers." A rule of thumb for me - avoid movies and documentaries that describe the plot as someone's "Journey" with a capital J. In this case, there are three people who mostly love to talk about themselves. The subject of chocolate hardly matters because they're so enamored with all the attention. It was halfway through and they were still strolling around jungles looking at pods and nodding wisely, then of course talking earnestly to the camera about their Journeys. Of course, the only REAL chocolate available is in their shops - nothing we can buy at the store.

Reese never shuts up; Sofia never stops babbling. The constant see-how-uptight-my-character-is was not acting - it was memorizing a bunch of dumb script. Paired with see-how-hot-my-latina-character-is silliness. It was seriously an insult to womanhood - especially the girl-on-girl scene. Here's a note on that - why not just tell the guy you're being chased by bad men and need help. Instead of offering to make out for him. Nasty. What I find most offensive, however, are all the stellar reviews by studio shills and PR flacks. This was not a good 10-out-of-10 movie, even for what it was. It was not mildly amusing; it was annoying.

Weren't they embarrassed by totally ripping off Romancing the Stone? Right down to Kathleen Turner using a convenient pay phone in a jungle village during a fiesta and then dancing with Michael Douglas. The least they could have done is given the Kathleen Turner part a different job than reclusive yet beautiful romance writer; a different locale than the jungle; a different goal than jewels. Yes - I think Bullock was embarrassed. Some of the movies she's in that are just derivative drivel using her to bring in the bucks, she overacts to the point of cringing. Speed 2, Miss Congeniality 2. She can be so lovely, so funny - but the aging zany mega star isn't working. Tatum - meh. Weird face on top of gym muscles.

After a while the constant barrage of vulgarity and profanity gets boring. While it seems to be fun for younger viewers, grown ups hope for some plot, some progress, a little wit, actual comedy that doesn't revolve around dirty words, and maybe a touch of historical accuracy.

By Season 6 we're reduced to the gay curate and his troubles as the plot. Of the entire season. This show suffered when James Norton left and it's circling the drain faster and faster.

I had to quit watching. The narrative could be an accurate look at our life today - including the 1%. The greed of rapacious business. Their toadies in politics. All on the backs of desperate people struggling to feed their families. The tone was disturbingly condescending - "oh look how ignorant everyone was back then that they would allow this to happen." Even with labor laws, 100 years later not much has changed.

I love historical documentaries - especially looking back at my own generation. This would have been a great documentary - in three episodes. The first episode is repeated in entirety throughout the series. Other segments are repeated throughout the series. A few times, I actually stopped the DVD to see if somehow I skipped back to the beginning. How to make Manson more boring than he already was? There you go.

How does broadcast TV get away with this? It's an FCC regulation. Very discriminatory towards the hearing impaired. But reading the reviews, not missing much.

Hollywood just never gets Nancy Drew right. I'm hoping to inspire my granddaughter to read the books - but not inspire her to commit felonies and misdemeanors. Throughout the movie, I kept telling my granddaughter - no, you shouldn't do that! As revenge against a bully, this version of Nancy causes thousands of dollars of incidental damage to the school and seriously violates a boy's privacy. She's rightfully arrested but then starts skipping out on Community Service - a gift sentence considering. Then she breaks into private homes, for some reason thinking she's entitled to snoop around. She's a criminal and her friends are brats. The ultimate fail, however, was there was no mystery.

Kids raised to be superheroes. Hey - my 8-year-old grandson will like that! WRONG. The first scene - a woman in bloody pool water. The next scene - creepy men killing people. My poor little boy looked over at me and asked if this was really a kids' movie. I turned it off - FAST.

The character of Beckett is ridiculous and Stana is a mediocre model/actress. That she would be the "best detective in New York" is laughable. Although I could believe that criminals confess just to stop her shrill, yet monotonous, voice from asking dumb and dumber questions. I watch (actually I'm RE-watching) for Fillion and his family. I know coming up there's going to be a dull romance and silly "my mother is alive" plotting but for now - enjoying the first few seasons before I switch to re-watching Bones.

This movie was as true to the book - the plot, the characters - as any adaptation I've ever seen. I loved seeing characters come to life almost as I imagined them. What's missing, that seems to so pain some reviewers, are things I don't particularly like in the books. The "woo-woo" spiritual stuff and the detailed emotional back stories that are a slog to get through. As a matter of fact, I've taken a pass on the later books because Gamache has become dull and maudlin.

Why is this movie a favorite? There's no plot other than the obvious "everyone loves someone in their own way." Duh. Grant stammering his way through lines, Firth looking glum, Thompson being exasperated, Nighey unconvincing as a sex symbol, Knightly scrunching her face. Same ol' same ol' but without any reason.

Guys will forgive or ignore anything in a woman as long as she has a great body that will make his friends go, "Du-u-u-de!" Yeah - this was 25 years ago but I don't think much has changed. Certainly not in Hollywood entertainment.

While watching with my 5-year-old grandson, imagine my dismay to see trump in this. Yes, he's portrayed as stupid but a nasty shock as we try to forget. But it gets worse as the plot is revealed. Trump brought his dog to breed with the Queen's. The Queen's corgi's adventures begin because he's trying to get away from a highly sexualized and graphic trump dog. The most little kids should see of romance is cartoon hearts and stars coming out of characters' eyes - not ... what that dog was doing. With a different plot and no trump, it would have been a fun movie.

Very little about the actual "cakes" or even the silly desserts. The bulk of the documentary was self-aggrandizing interviews with bakers who are way too full of themselves and eager to be center of attention. One of the "chefs" told the people setting up her workspace at the Met that the air didn't smell right and it would affect her creative process. I was looking forward to a in-depth look at preparing and presenting what seemed to be an interesting dessert concept. Jello molds? Interesting, I guess, but about the same as I do with my grandson now and then. Kind of an Emporer's New Clothes thing.