Reviews

The story line has been done a number of times before, but given that it is said that there are only 36 plot lines and 6 basic stories the writer and director can be forgiven.

So that issue addressed, we can look at the movie itself. The acting was decent. The camera work gave a feel for a working class but not particularly depressing environment and, for me, had an authentic feel to it. By the way, I am English.

The story itself was predictable and did not explore any particularly deep issues either at a personal or social level, but that is not why i wanted to watch a movie like this.

It was nice way to spend an hour and a half with much more comedy than drama. I have enough drama in my own life so i really do not need to pay to get more!

I just watched Equalizer 3 and enjoyed it. Denzel was Denzel, Robert McCall was Robert McCall, the bad guys all ended up dead and we got some nice Italian scenic shots.

My post is more about the difficulty in rating a film like this where the artistic, creative aspects are straight jacketed by the franchise. I watched it because i was pretty sure about what i was going to see and i was also pretty sure i was going to enjoy it and i was right on both counts.

However, there was a little bit of character development. Denzel was visibly older and his character was also. A retiree ready for a place in the sun (literally) where he could rest and live out his golden years. Enjoy your retirement Mr McCall you earned it!

The science fiction part of this movie is strictly background to a story about three elderly, single people in a small US town. The story was particularly relevant in that I just turned 70 and am starting to be faced with similar challenges to Ben Kingsley´s character. As we are all are as we age.

The crash of an alien space ship in his garden leaves the 78 year old confused more than frightened, 911 are not interested and when he mentions the event at a local council meeting they ignore him.

The alien is a friendly little guy who watches TV with protagonist and eats apples. Of course, the government is looking to locate the space ship but that again is background. The story is about an aging man and couple of aging ladies who find develop a friendship through the need to protect and care for the alien.

A very enjoyable little movie with convincing acting.

I find Only Murders in the Building to be a fun watch. A little over the top at times but that is to be expected if you have both Steve Martin and Martin Short in the same show. It was that casting got me interested although the truth is I did not expect much so i was very pleasantly surprised.

Now lets talk about Selena. There has been a lot of criticism of her limited acting skills and her lack of screen presence. She is certainly a very famous artist for younger viewers who probably do not know the two Martins. So she would widen the viewer net.

However, casting Selena works on another level for me. Almost all the other characters in the show are almost cartoon like while Silena´s character is quite the opposite. Wooden? Maybe, but the casting works for me. I like to see her in a scene, she seems to average out the energy levels of the two male leads.

The movie has a bit of everything but nothing especially good. The story line centres on an afroamerican family who buy a haunted house, but their ethnicity does not have any significant relevance to the story. Which was good from my point of view since i am sick of seeing political agenda everywhere. I want to be entertained not educated.

Other reviews have covered the detailed bases. It is a movie for adolescents, there are a lot of (minor for me) faults and a lot of "seen that 100 times" scenes , but there are also some good bits to compensate.

IMDB only allows a one dimensional rating which is really makes rating a bit difficult with a movie like this. Was it original? No. Was it challenging? No. Were there faults? Yes. Did you enjoy it? Yes.

I could not give more than a 6, but nor could i give it less. So a solid 6.

The background to this movie is very dark. First the horrors of the first world war and then the rise of fascism in the post-war period. Historically, there was substantial support for the installation of a Mussolini like dictator in the UK and apparently in the US too. It is worth noting that a the time of the movie Mussolini was the main fascist man and not Hitler.

The movie, however, takes a very light and comedic approach to the whole situation and i think it works. I refuse to watch depressing horrors of war type movies because they are that - depressing. I know war is bad, i do not need to be reminded.

The movie comments in passing on racism, the way that returning vets were treated, and the horrors of war but is mainly a buddy movie between the characters played by Christian Bale, Margot Robbie and John David Washington. Plus a solid performance by Di Nero at the end as the General who rejected the fascist overtures.

Two hours of action and comedy with no evidence of cost cutting. Very enjoyable.

Not all of the comedy worked but there was enough good stuff to more than offset the bits that did not gel. It is all action and all comedy so you only need to wait a minute after a wet firecracker to get a moment that will make you smile.

Brad Pitt was clearly the big name for the movie and his performance was spot on for a movie like this one. I remember being at a film school workshop where a famous Director of Photography told us that the main instruction he received from the director of the movie (also famous) was to make the female protagonist look good in all her scenes. I have a feeling that Brad Pitt was aided by a similar instruction and it worked really well. He shone in all his scenes.

In summary, two hours well spent. Most of it with a smile on my face and with more than a few lol moments.,

I have commented previously on the fact that modern culture makes it very difficult to make good comedy movies because there are so many things you cannot joke about and so many things you have to ensure to include even if they dilute the comic message.

This movie is a clear result of those factors. It is bland and rarely funny. It presses all the minority buttons and the only real comic interludes are when Fletch makes a mess of speaking Italian and says stuff that translates as vulgar or stupid. However, it is so out of character that i could not work out if the protagonist was doing it on purpose or whether he really was stupid.

In sum, bland.

I had never heard of this movie until I saw the recent US film that was apparently based on the Irony of Fate. The new one was disappointing but i still figured i would check out the original to see if it was any good. I am glad I did.

The Irony of Fate is very theatrical in that most of the movie in filmed in a small Soviet era apartment (basically a stage) and there are repeated knocks at the door as various secondary characters appear and then disappear. Just like in a theater production with people coming on stage from the wings and heading out the same way.

So we are facing a very intimate work with no serious attempt at realism and that is fine. It is a comedy and works on many levels.

There are three main characters. The protagonist (who gets drunk and ends up in someone else´s apartment by mistake. The owner of the apartment (who is the love interest) and the boyfriend of this very attractive but rather sad lady.

It is hard to explain how funny the movie is without giving spoilers so i will limit myself to saying there are various repeating hooks, some physical comedy, a number of musical interludes with deep or dark lyrics and a steady but relentless development of the romantic relationship between the romantic leads.

In summary, a very enjoyable and very theatrical movie.

This is a run of the mill romantic comedy with very few funny moments. It´s major plus is that it inspired me to watch the original Russian movie from 1975. I will make a separate comment on that movie, but suffice it to say it was much better than this one.

In defense of the director and writers, it is clear from comparing the two movies that modern comedy has it´s hands tied behind it´s back because there are so many things that are no longer considered appropriate for comedy in a woke agenda. So it is very hard to produce a comedy that deserves more than a luke-warm review. Hence my rating of 5 stars.

Technically it seemed fine. The general level of acting was like the movie, unimpressive. So my recommendation would be to give this one a miss and watch the original instead.

This is a sad knock-off of a great movie that was made with good actors - Man on Fire with Denzel Washington and Dakota Fanning.

The three lead actors in The Gray Man are just not up to the task and support actor Billy Bob is clearly in it for the money.

They have TWO heroic hand-grenade suicides - his is one of them. One cliche like that is more than enough.

So in one work. MEDIOCRE-

There is really nothing special about this movie although i did enjoy watching it for almost three hours. However it is really like surfing for three hours on the same wave.

Cat woman was a big let down, about as sexy as my aunt Agnes. And where was Robin? Zero LGBTxxx vibe.

This is a long movie, with not much of a story line. Very little dialogue and some beautiful photography. Slow all of the time and confusing most of the time.

So why did i give it a 7? I actually considered an 8, but thought a solid 7 was more appropriate.

A very pleasant way to spend couple of hours on a cool rainy day. I do not think i saw the sun once in the movie rather like the last week here in Valencia, Spain.

Sometimes it is nice to have something to chill to.

2 hours 20 minutes nicely spent on a lazy Sunday morning. When i saw how long the movie was I had some serious reservations, but i retired to the bedroom, put the ceiling fan on and started to watch.

It is a musical which adds a certain charm to what is a rather one dimesional story line, but at least in the end the villain got his come uppance and the heroine became a real girl.

I could make a whole bunch of criticisms if i was in that frame of mine, but as a total work I found it entertaining.

I have watched the 3 seasons of Mr Inbetween and enjoyed them immensely. There are some clear similarities in concept with Ray Donovan (which I also liked) but Mr Inbetween has a very different vibe. There is lots of humour and that separates it from the very serious Ray Donovan.

The thirty minute format is maybe a bit short, but it does keep you from being bored. There are moments of introspection between the protagonist and his buddy that could feel a little like filler but the humour of these moments is a good offset to the violence that you know will ensue sometime later.

I decided to watch this series based on the very positive reviews and, in the end, I was disappointed.

I guess I can only blame myself since when I took a second look at the reviews it seems that the accent used by the actors was one of the main reasons for the high rating and, for the life of me, I do not understand why that is important. Who really cares about the authenticity of a local accent? I doubt very much the majority of people in the US would be able to accurately identify exact area of the accent and no-one outside of the States.

I think it would have been better to work more on the unoriginal story line and less on getting a local accent authentic.

Like many people (it seems) i watched this movie because of the lead, Bob Odenkirk. As much out of curiosity as anything else and i was pleasantly surprised. We are not talking about high art or originality or.tightly written scripts or even more than average acting. However, in spite of this, or maybe because of it, Nobody is a fun movie. Lots of action and not over long.

There are clearly elements of the John. WIck franchise and even a nice cute kitten instead of Wick´s dog. So I think we are talking about John Wick lite or perhaps even a homage. Fun anyway.

I put off watching this movie until the Coronavirus lock-down gave me an incentive to watch it. My initial lack of interest was due to the subject matter. It really did not seem that it would make a very interesting movie. I was right. It is not a bad movie as such. I watched it to the end and enjoyed it enough to rate it as a 6, but was left with two questions: 1. Why make the movie at all? and 2. Why make the way it was made? The movie shows how the media and the government (through an agency - the FBI) combined to try and blame a terrorist incident on an innocent person. That would seem like the basis for a reasonably compelling story. However, the person they are trying to blame comes across in the movie as simply stupid. Now that may have been the case. Maybe Richard Jewell was as naive as the movie shows and the government and the press getting together to frame such a person is clearly bad but there is not enough story in the situation for a two hour movie.

The first season starts like a saxon version of Supernatural (the hero is a monster hunter after all) before morphing into full Game of Thrones mode. I would recommend a bit of patience with the first three episodes as some filling in is done later to expand on what initially seems to be a fairly low budget.and unoriginal production. Midway through the 8 episodes things start to get more interesting and by the final episode things are hopping. i gave the show a 7 because of the slow start but can understand why so many people have rated it higher,

I am not a fan of Comic Book based TV. Most such series are unwatchable for an adult, so my expectations for Pennyworth were low. However, after binge watching the first three episodes I wanted more. I watched episode 6 last night and am still enjoying the show a lot. I think it is key to remember it is a comic book drama using TV as the media rather than print and I do get the feeling I am reading a comic book not watching live theater. So well done director! I just hope the creative team behind this show do not lose their North and start to try and bring 3D characterizations to what is a very entertaining 2D world.

This movie basically sells itself out from the start. There is an underlying criticism of corrupt politicians and billionaires and we know that Charlize Theron´s character is good because she "wants to help the environment". My now deceased father in law had a saying that was something like: "it is too silly to be funny". This one was definitely that. I cannot remember one really funny scene. Too predictable and silly in a childish/politically correct way.

The movie was very enjoyable. Lots of action, convincing digital effects and a likeable heroine. However, the underlying story was unoriginal and the romantic sub-plot totally unbelievable and probably unnecessary - hence the 7 rating. I don´t know if the romantic sub-plot was an integral part of the source anime but whenever the dumb boyfriend appeared my rating for the movie dropped from a 9 to a 4. If it was part of the original source then I think they should have reworked it so it fitted in better with the rest of the movie. Sorry to go on about the sub-plot but it really did spoil what would have been an excellent movie.

This movie brought back some good memories of a few holiday trips I have been on. A sort of greatest hits version. I am assuming that was Seth Green´s intention. Some nice scenery, a bit of respect to Buddhist culture and a Macaulay Culkin that I did not recognize at first. A lot of the time I did feel like I was there which is clearly a complement to the director. For the people that complained that is was like watching a travel show, I am assuming that was intentional. The whole movie was "come and join us on holiday in paradise". How else would it have been filmed?

I was surprised how quickly the time passed watching this movie. It was slow, predictable and enjoyable. Not a lot of belly laughs, but a few, a script that was 100% predictable and, as other commentators have said, a typical wooden performance by Keanu. All in all, what I signed up for. Keanu´s acting skills are open to debate but I end up watching and enjoying pretty well everything he does. Not a big fan, but a fan nonetheless. Ryder´s performance was a little over the top for my liking but anything less would probably not have worked given the "suffering is the result of attachment" philosophy of Keanu´s character. Worth watching and worth listening to the dialogue. It is not exactly classic Woody Allen stuff but pretty good.

I just binge watched the series. I was too tired to see the final episode last night so did so this morning after my breakfast coffee. That says something in itself. There is a underlying theme about mental illness in the family that keeps one uncertain as to whether the house in question is actually haunted (not a spoiler given the film title) and this adds interest to the series. The way this uncertainly is resolved in the final two episodes left me disappointed and, reading other reviews, this seems to be a common criticism. Although not exactly original I enjoyed the way they director showed an initial scene and then much later completed the scene to show that our original assessment of what had happened was way off. I imagine that most people who read or contribute to IMDB are movie buffs and, like me, have seen too many movies/series that start off strongly but end weakly. I have not read the book on which the series was based so i do not know much the directors hands were tied. Normally I would support keeping to the original but in this case I would have been happier with a less Disney ending. With a better ending I would have given an 8 for sure and maybe even a 9.