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Reviews
Mayfair Witches (2023)
When I heard about the project I knew that AMC would screw it up.
This was just as bad as the interview with the vampire reboot. Overproduced, crappy writing that has nothing to do with the original story, an overwhelming plethora of extra subplots that were never in the original books, a disastrous miscasting... Lasher is supposed to be handsome and seductive, not bland and forgettable. What were they thinking? The actress playing Rowan acts like a self-doubting first year intern in the operating room, rather than a strong willed brilliant neurosurgeon. The only cast member that was well chosen was the bartender, who was very representative of the big rough-around-the-edges guys Rowan likes to take to bed. Her adopted mother is supposed to be a blonde, very Californian Ellie Mayfair, with a cheating husband. Where is Michael? Members of the Telemasca? Where are Carlotta's mousy sisters? This trash is truly disappointing but totally expected. As a fan of New Orleans, I fell in love with Anne Rice's books in the early 1990s, and it was wonderful being able to walk Garden District with a camera, hanging out on the broken sidewalk under the big trees across the street from Anne Rice's house, where she used to keep a big fake dog on the upper balcony. I really have to wonder what her son Christopher thinks of all this crap. You can be sure that he knows his mother would be devastated to see what they've done to her books. Once again AMC has managed to piss off a whole lot of fans. Read her books instead. I probably have read the Mayfair trilogy at least 15 times, and it's truly addictive if you like history and culture. God knows who they will cast as Mona Mayfair.
Airspeed (1999)
Who wrote this trash???
That sounds to be one of the most asinine scripts ever written. Definitely the low point of Joe Mantegna's career. His speech about the $1000 dollar a head dinner, spoken like Hamlet's soliloquy, reminds me of the stupid clichés used in movies, like the establishing shot in every movie set in Paris, with the Eiffel tower in the background. I'm glad the air traffic controllers at O'Hare don't remove their earpieces when they're frustrated! Can you imagine an aircraft designer creating a plane with only three seats, in the middle of the floor, with a high ceiling? It's only missing a baby grand piano. Having the secretary survive a slow descent from cruising altitude, with no oxygen and no brain damage, was unintentionally funny! "Oh, it's cold in here!"
Alex Rider (2020)
James Bond, Jr.
This was a fairly addictive series, especially so because of the almost nonstop action and lack of silly clichés and gadgets (other than the ubiquitous evil billionaires). The writing is good, the characters are well developed, and some of the cinematography was absolutely spectacular, although of the use of a blue filter on almost all of the night scenes became a little bit annoying.. I truly hope that the producers consider making more seasons, because I could definitely see this as a new genre, replacing some of the happiness and silliness of the James Bond series. There were not many holes in the plot, and only a couple of real implausibilities.
Kingdom of Heaven (2005)
It's not bad if you turn off your brain
Kingdom of Heaven is an exciting action movie, and fairly well produced. However, the script writers played very fast and loose with history, turning parts of it into a stereotypical bodice ripper. It's OK if you can turn off the logical part of your brain. Balian d'Ibelin was born, lived and died in the kingdom of Jerusalem, the third son of Barison d'Ibelin, Lord of Ramlah. Balian was not from Italy, not a blacksmith, and not illegitimate. He also did not have a wife who committed suicide. He was married to Maria Komnene, a member of the royal Byzantine house, whose first husband was Aumary I, King of Jerusalem. Although they both are considered Crusaders, neither Balian nor his father Barison were Templars. Two of the most important rules in the Templar rule book were poverty and celibacy. They both were important Lords with landholdings and very involved in the government of the kingdom of Jerusalem. They both were married...and married men could only become Templars with their wive's permission and were not allowed to wear the mantle. The movie is not as silly as The Conqueror, which starred John Wayne as a mongol warlord, but the script writers threw in an awful lot of "literary license."
Affair in Trinidad (1952)
A cross between Gilda and Notorious without the glamour of either
For someone who dances in a nightclub and whose husband sells cheap tourist paintings, Rita Hayworth has an awfully expensive, glitzy wardrobe. She can dance up a storm, but I guess her singing voice was subpar, as the studios used a professional to dub her songs, in several of her films at least.
Blooper: As Glenn Ford explained to Rita, he had veen a B-29 bombwr pilot during the war. He said that he was so excited to be flying home to Chicagi from San Francisco that he almost swt the plane down "on Michigan Boulevard." As most Chicagoans know, there is no Michigan Boulevard (at least not in the 1940s) - it is called Michigan Avenue. Michigan Avenue HAD been called Michigan Boulevard at one time, but not since 1871 - before even Ford's parents had been born.
Queen of the Damned (2002)
Anne Rice must have had a fit!
How could a movie with such high production values get so much wrong?
1. With exceptions of Mahatet and Akasha, the entire cast was, well, miscast! Lestat is constantly described by Anne Rice as tall (got that right), with long full blonde hair (oops!), and was French (oops again!) Lestat was turned into a vampire not by Marius, who was described as being very tall (oops!), with long flowing blonde hair - the Kelts that kidnapped him in the book kept him captive until his hair grew long. He was the illegitimate son of an Italian father by a Keltic slave woman.
2. Lestat was actually turned into a vampire by an old (as on he was old when he stole the blood from a vampire to make himself immortal) vampire, told Lestat a few basic things, gave him his wealth and a tower in Paris, then promptly killed himself by going into a fire. Lestat was now alone in Paris, having traveled there with the son of a rich merchant neighbor, Nicolo, who played the violin.
3. Lestat learned to love and play the violin, not from a random gypsy he met on a beach, but from watching and listening to his beloved childhood friend, Nicolo.
4. Lestat met Marius, not on an island as the vampire who brought Lestat immortality, but in Egypt, where Lestat had eventually wandered with Gabrielle, his mother, whom he had rescued from near death from consumption, turning her into a vampire as his companion.
5. Akasha was killed, not by Maharet drinking the last of her blood after Akasha had been drained by the other vampires at Maharet's compound, butby Maharet's tongueless, mute twin sister, Mekare, who tore Akasha's head off, taking the demon spirit into herself, not into Maharet.
I can understand changing around a few things in a movie to make the plot run more smoothly, but to get so many things completely wrong, is just plain wrong! Blonde hair versus dark brown hair may not sound like much, but Lestat was known to be very vain about his appearance, and big brautiful fluffy long hair seems right - aside from the fact that Tom Cruise had long blonde hair in the prequel to this (albeit he was almost half a foot shorter than Stuart Townsend), and I doubt that list start would have died his hair brown every morning after having had blonde hair for so long! Another messed up element is one of Lestat's sidekicks, Louis, who was nowhere to be found in this movie. In her book, Anne Rice had Louis spend the night before the concery with the band at Lestat's secure compound in Carmel, California, and rode with them to the concert, which took place not in Death Valley but in San Framcisco. In her book, Marius is described as being of a towering height due to his Keltic forbears, even taller than Lestat's described 6 foot height. I don't know who wrote the script, but it wasn't Anne Rice...at times the actors seem to be speaking lines straight out of a bad soap opera. The movie us, at times, a fun one, but it would have been 10 times better had the scriptwriter kept to the story and to Anne Rice's characterizations. I was expecting so much more, but I was truly disappointed!
Walking with the Enemy (2013)
What other liberties have been taken?
I only watched about 20 minutes of the movie, before I finally quit. Why is it that directors and producers take such care with costumes and with women's hairstyles, then botch the whole thing up by having the men wear 21st century haircuts? The only men who had long hair in the 1930s and 1940s were those who were in no condition to do something about it, like those in concentration camps and in prison. Men did not wear long hair, did not wear their hair thick on their necks, and not touching their collars. But I see it time after time in modern WWII movies. Just look at photos from that period.
Operation Crossbow (1965)
Not bad for a WWII espionage movie
I have always loved watching World War II movies, and this one was one of my favorites from my childhood. The storyline is not bad, although there was a lot more to the original story and history than the movie script allowed. At one point in the movie, right after Sophia Loren has shown up at the hotel she and George Peppard begin a conversation in German, but then she says,"my German is not very good" in German, then begins to speak to him in English because she had heard him speaking English to Tom Courtenay. What was funny was her German was much better than George Peppard's (although it was obvious that he had takem pains to learn his German lines well)...he spoke German with a decidedly American accent! Even Anthony Quayle's German was better. This is one of those better sit-on-the-edge-of-your-seat spy movies - at least the first time you see it. One eyed know that I found was to watch Anthony Quayle playing a bad guy, since he is ordinarily known better for being a good guy in most films. One frighteningly true fact came to me a few years ago, after I had seen a special on cable about how the Germans had already been experimenting with a nuclear dirty bomb in Eastern Europe. Remains of a the people of a Jewish village were found buried in the forest, and their remains had been radioactive when they were dug up, I believe, sometime in the 1990s...few people today realize just how close we came to losing the war.
Hanover Street (1979)
Some things never change
I have never understood how directors and producers can pay so much attention to female costumes and hair styles, and then have the guys wearing their hair like they did the year they were hired. This movie is literally filled with sideburns and hair that is way too long! Thinhs were hectic during wartime, but the military still required its soldiers to get haircuts, and guys did not wear their hair touching their collars and ears. In a more technical mode, I believe that flyers on bombers used neck microphones that required them to press on buttons, including the pilots. And I usually like Harrison Ford's acting, but he seemed to be stuck in a sarcastic Han Solo mode.
Jezebel (1938)
Great classic which almost rivals Gone With The Wind
Beautiful production with a great ensemble of actors. The costumes and sets are wonderfully authentic-feeling, with the one exception that I do not believe that its designer ever visited the Big Easy during a summer rainstorm or St. Louis Cemetery #2, or he wouldn't have designed a hotel in the French Quarter with a beautiful bar that is accessed via a two-story descending staircase - 20 feet below street level! Oops! Aside from being below the very high water table (even though the Quarter is the highest point in New Orleans at 3 feet above sea level), this gorgeously designed bar would fill with water just from the standard summer thundershowers! However, I highly recommend this movie for all classic movie fans. Bette Davis was among all those actresses considered for the part of Scarlett O'Hara in Gone With The Wind (along with Lucille Ball, Joan Crawford and Katharine Hepburn, along with hundreds of others.) Yellow Jack, or Yellow Fever, also known as the Saffron Scourge, was finally practically eradicated by the year 1905 after the discovery of the cause of the spread of the disease - mosquitos, which the Federal government finally helped the town fumigate against. Yellow Fever is still found in South America and sub-Saharan Africa, and there exists no known cure for the disease. Entertainment and history are beautifully wrapped up together in this delightful classic.