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The Right Stuff (1983)
Flawed, but fun
The movie version of "The Right Stuff" captures something of the over-the-top expression and attitude of Tom Wolfe's book, though it plays fast and loose with the facts and veers very close to being farcical at times. Viewers who are familiar with the the history of the American space program will recognize the highlights of events portrayed, from the flight test program at Edwards Air Force Base in California to the media craziness that accompanied the advent of the Mercury program. I found it kind of fun to see some interesting foreshadowing regarding Gus Grissom's issues with the hatch on his capsule - which is surrounded by controversy to this day.
Little Fauss and Big Halsy (1970)
Painful to watch
"Little Fauss and Big Halsy" is fairly typical of its era (released in 1970) as a film that portrays quirky characters from the fringes of society. Redford actually gives a fine performance as the fast-talking, womanizing sleaze-ball Halsy Knox - he's kind of like a bad car wreck that you know you shouldn't look at but you can't tear your eyes away from. Michael J. Pollard's Little Fauss is something of a half-wit idiot savant - he knows motorcycles mechanically, but his social interactions are tone-deaf and painful, especially as we see him being taken in by Halsy's BS. Most of the rest of the characters in the film are clichés, including Mom & Sealy Fauss, Little's oddball parents.
The motorcycle racing scenes are painful to watch for anyone who is familiar with that world at that time. They are shown racing the wrong kind of bikes for the types of races and tracks, in the wrong classes (for example, in one race the starter is explaining that they will be running a 250 to 650 class race, which is totally incorrect; bikes of such a wide range of engine sizes never ran against each other.) The race action is badly faked, with cheesy-looking staged accidents and a host of incorrect technical details. (I raced flat track and a bit of motocross in California's AMA District 36 in the 1970s, so I am speaking from experience here.)
The storyline is incoherent - one minute they are broken down by the side of the road, and the next they are at race. How did they fix the truck and get to the race? Then out of nowhere Halsy has a road-racing sidecar rig, and a co-rider; later he has acquired a Yamaha roadracer that he is racing in the "North American Grand Prix" at Sears Point - and all the while he has the same box-stock Yamaha DT-1MX in the bed of his truck. Where did these bikes come from? Where is he getting the money to support his racing habit and his girlfriend? Little details like that were obviously not important to the screenwriter or the director.
I wrote this review after watching a Blu-ray copy of the movie that I bought a while back (good-looking transfer to disc, by the way), mostly out of curiosity to see if this movie is as bad as I remember it being when I saw it in a theater when I was in high school. It is.
The Marvelous Mrs. Maisel: Let's Face the Music and Dance (2018)
Abe becomes a real downer
This is the episode in which Midge's father, Abe - who has always been kind of low-grade annoying - becomes a real jerk. Yes, he's upset after learning (the hard way) about Midge's comedy career, but his behavior when his son comes to Bell Labs with him is ridiculous. His preening self-importance, and disappointment when he learns (a little of) the truth about Noah's work, is overblown. I understand that both Abe and Rose are intended to be caricatures, but this episode is, to my mind, the point in the series where the writers start to take them too far (Rose will get her turn soon enough.)
(As an aside - during the season-ending employee show Midge orders a "gin martini" at the bar. A proper martini is made with gin - if one is ordering a variant, such as a vodka martini, then specifying the liquor base of the drink is appropriate.)
The Grass Is Greener (1960)
A silly and unsubtle waste of its stars' talents
Cary Grant was terribly miscast as the husband in this silly, if somewhat innocent sex farce; Rex Harrison, who was originally cast as Victor Rhyall, would have been a much better fit. The beginning of the relationship between Hilary and Charles is unbelievably posed and rather clumsily handled, and the cute little double-entendres (such as the cuckoo clock) are unsubtle. Jean Simmons' character Hattie is just madcap enough to lighten the tone, and is quite the saving grace for the film - I was about to turn it off before she came on the scene.
All in all, "The Grass Is Greener" falls wide of the mark, even with such a stellar cast.
The Witcher: Blood Origin (2022)
Weak storytelling always shows
Weirdly named characters with pointy ears seem to be the prime ingredients for fantasy stories these days, substituting for the original concepts and strong storytelling that no one seems to be capable of coming up with anymore, and this weakly conceived and poorly written series exemplifies that. For example: two characters, consumed by a forbidden love - "We mustn't get caught!", he says. "We won't", she says - then they proceed to do the deed without locking the door. Reader, they got caught. Shame, banishment, etc., etc. Follow in the wake of the act - and that was when my interest began to wane.
I watched on for a bit, but it never got better...
The Musketeer (2001)
Not even the one or two excellent cast members can save this ridiculous remake of the classic swashbuckler
I'm not averse to mildly revised remakes of the classic adventure tale, but this chopped-up version is a terrible mess. The troubles start with the former male model who makes a feeble attempt at the portrayal of the western world's greatest action hero, D'Artagnan, and continues with Tim Roth, who lapses into the regrettably one-dimensional bad guy he has so often portrayed. The three actors who portray Athos, Porthos, and Aramis are the worst I have ever seen in the roles, and not even Catherine Deneuve and Stephen area, as the Queen and Cardinal Richelieu, can save this execrable excuse for a movie.
Deadloch (2023)
Bit of a train wreck, but there is gold amongst the dross if you persist
I almost gave up on this show after the first episode, but I was so impressed by the performance of Kate Box as Sr. Sergeant Dulcie Collins that I hung in for the entire series.
Sgt Collins is a former big-city mainland Australia detective who moved to the small Tasmanian town of Deadloch to try and achieve "work-life balance" and thereby keep her demanding and amazingly self-centered veterinarian wife Cath, played by Alicia Gardiner, happy. Collins is the sole competent but character in a town that apparently consists of every village idiot in Australia, with the biggest idiots of all constables working under SSgt Collins.
A series of murders of local men turn the town of Deadloch on its ear on the eve of the annual winter festival, which has been transformed by the new mayor into a celebration of the lesbian lifestyle.
The humor is broad to the point of slapstick, and generally tries too hard, especially in the first couple of episodes, and the language is raunchy, but these negative aspects of the show are toned down in the later episodes, making them more bearable.
Kate Box's SSgt Collins is a small quiet point of sanity amidst a swirling vortex of oblivious self-centered townspeople. Everyone has a theory about who the murderer is and why the victims have been selected - and they all trample on and impeded the investigation, much to the growing frustration of SSgt Collins. The out-of-town detective who is called in by senior police officials to oversee the case is one of the worst offenders, but she (the character is a gender-twisting take on the clichéd overbearing-misogynistic-male-cop trope) settles in as the series progresses.
Sometimes the feminist humor is played too broadly, and I think that the writers push the bumbling-incompetent-cops-and-townfolk button too hard much of the time, but taken as a whole there is much to recommend here. I hope that, if there is a second season in the works, the writers and director apply lessons learned from the first season, keeping the framework but toning down the idiocy. SSgt Collins, as played by Kate Box, is too good a character to disappear from TV screens after only one season.
Marlowe (2022)
Not bad enough to be a parody
With a cast of actors who should have known better than to get involved in such a half-baked attempt at tough-guy 'L. A. noir", and who shouldn't have the excuse of needing the money, this movie fails spectacularly at trading on the "Phillip Marlowe" name.
The plot's premise - rife with Hollywood power brokers, rich heiresses, and the vices of various flavors that waft along the back alleys of L. A. as well as its corridors of power - is old and hackneyed. It has been worked with by better writers and directors, with much better success, than the pretenders who foisted this concoction of mysterious dames, tough-talking cops and noble private dicks on an unsuspecting public.
This movie would have to be much, MUCH, better than it is to be able to look the earlier versions of real Phillip Marlowe stories in the eye, and if it were just a little bit worse than it is it could be considered parody. As it is, it lives in a shadowy half-world, neither one nor the other; which is kind of sad, really.
Luther: The Fallen Sun (2023)
More horror than police procedural
The "omnipotent madman" trope is old and tired. With the exception of Andy Serkis, who is just annoying, the entire cast of this film deserve better. The story and overall plot are unbelievable and the characters are unrelatable. This film was the waste of a Saturday evening - time that I won't get back.
This is the second really bad movie that Idris Elba has made recently, after "Beast" - a truly execrable film that had such promise in its concept. It's very disappointing to see an actor who has done such stellar work in the past, notably in the "Luther" tv series, get involved in such mediocre and unsuitable projects.
Beast (2022)
A real letdown
I've been a big fan of Idris Elba for years and was really looking forward to this movie - only to be severely let down when I tuned in.
Nate (Idris Elba), a widowed doctor from New York City, is visiting an old friend, Martin, in South Africa with his two teenage daughters. Through a series of stupid mistakes they are stranded in the bush with a rogue lion on the rampage. Pretty much every character in film is a blathering, reckless idiot. Martin wanders into the bush, alone, and is, of course, attacked by the lion. The lion attacks Nate and his two idiot daughters in the truck. The older girls drives them away but crashes the truck. The two girls never stop talking and complaining and never listen to what the adults tell them or follow directions. In fact, no one in this movie EVER listens to what anyone else says - everyone talks over everyone else without listening to what anyone else is saying. Forty-five minutes into the movie I was rooting for the lion to eat them all - especially the two stupid girls.
Hope Street (2020)
Serious Sophomore Slump
Season 1 of this show was well-written and well-acted, but in Season 2 the focus shifted from the crime storylines to a series of poorly written soap opera scenarios involving virtually all of the characters. There is hardly a single character in the show that is likable or relatable. Concepta O'Hare is a singe-minded busybody who is maddeningly intent on getting her son, Inspector Finn O'Hare, back together with his cheating wife; Nicole, the co-owner of the pub where everyone seems to hang out, is a thoughtless nitwit who is obsessed with having a baby; and Finn's children, Niamh and Shay, are cliche self-involved teens - the list goes on and on.
I bailed out with two episodes left in Season Two because the way the writers have treated the Finn O'Hare character is criminal. I only stayed in watching it as long as I did because my wife likes the show, but I have hit my limit.
Wanted (2016)
Starts strong, drags on too long
This series starts strong but loses its way as it goes on. Too many bad decisions by the protagonists that are just story props to keep the series going, too many crooked (or just incompetent) cops-after awhile you start wondering if they are ever going to wrap it up.
Ihaka: Blunt Instrument (2000)
Aussie TV has come a long way
Temuera Morrison and Rebecca Gibney do a lot with a little in this made-for-TV cop movie. Story, direction-and some performances-are a bit rough, but the two stars have the chops to carry the story.
London Kills (2019)
Interesting stories, but weak on procedure
This show combines interesting episode-by-episode stories with season-long story arcs, but is woefully weak on technical detail and police procedures.
High Road to China (1983)
Not as good as I remember
I am sure that I saw this movie when it was first released to theaters, and I remember liking it. I put it in my Netflix DVD queue on a whim and upon watching it again I wonder what I saw in it before. The storyline has promise, but the production values are poor, and the acting and direction are abysmal. Bess Armstrong and Tom Selleck spend most of their time onscreen yelling at each other stridently, as if trying to outdo each other in a "high, whiny voice" contest, and Wilford Brimley's "Bradley Tozer" comes across as more caricature than character. It's hard to believe that this film was directed by the man who directed "Kelly's Heroes".
New Girl (2011)
A low-rent version of "Friends"
"New Girl" is basically a cut-rate knockoff of "Friends", but without the charm, wit, humor, great writing, and great performances. Zooey Deschanel plays her role lines she's been off her ADHD meds for a week - and she is the best of the group.
Flesh+Blood (1985)
Ren Fair in an insane asylum
This is a mess of a movie, rife with technical errors, historical inaccuracies, and just plain bad acting; it comes across more like "Renaissance Fair in an insane asylum" than an historical drama.
Camelot (2011)
An unworthy addition to the Arthur legend pantheon
I watched Episodes 1 - 4, then put Discs 1 and 2 (unwatched) in the mail back to Netflix and cancelled Disc 3. While there's always room for creative license when interpreting the Arthur legend, the screenwriter(s) for this series just went too far, in my opinion.
Despite some interesting nods to history with mentions of the Roman occupation of Britain, they went overboard with some of their other changes. They totally rewrote the "sword in the stone" narrative, turning it into an unrealistic quest; flipped the classic Arthur-Lancelot-Guinevere love triangle on its head, portraying Arthur as a combination of lovesick puppy and selfish, entitled monarch; and worst of all, totally mangled the Excalibur story (I won't go into details because it would involve spoilers, but trust me-they really screwed it up.)
Plenty of gratuitous nudity, and a bout of acrobatic lovemaking between Morgan Le Fay (Eva Green) and King Lot (James Purefoy) which presages Eva Green's performance in 2014's "300: Rise of an Empire" provide some visual thrills, but it's not enough to carry the shortcomings in story and characters.
Sex Education (2019)
Unsuccessful mashup
The attempt to present an English public school with an American high school vibe is spectacularly unsuccessful.
The Fall (2006)
Visually stunning, but fails as a story
This movie would have been a waste of two hours of my life if I had bothered to watch the whole thing. If you like weird, disjointed, nonsensical films - this is the movie for you.
Less Than Zero (1987)
Interesting '80s time capsule
While this film is an interesting look back at the decadence of 1980s L. A., the situations seem a little far-fetched for kids that are just out of high school.
Beatriz at Dinner (2017)
Does my review count if I couldn't finish the film?
I couldn't get past Beatriz complaining about her neighbor hassling her about her goats. The plaintive tone she set was more than I could take.
Wild Things (1998)
Bad on bad
The only thing worse than the script and the directing are the performances by pretty much every member of the cast.
The Big Town (1987)
Slick and soulless
"The Big Town" has an unpersuasive story, flat performances, and an overly slick look. Matt Dillon never convinced as the small-town kid who sets off to Chicago to be a big-time professional gambler, nor is the gambling syndicate trope convincing. Several much more accomplished actors (Lee Grant, Bruce Dern, Tommy Lee Jones, and Diane Lane) are wasted playing one-dimensional characters under uninspired direction.
Clue (1985)
Weak story, incompetent direction, and stilted performances
All I can say is, the cast of this film must really have been desperate for cash to sign in to do this turkey.