Reviews

I would not have predicted that a screenplay that blends elements of a horror / supernatural genre film with a same-sex love story could work very well as either. But I was pleasantly surprised.

Set in Egypt though largely filmed in Lebanon. The picture is atmospheric and immersive. The scenes intended to provide tension are effectively filmed and provide the suspense expected in a horror movie.

The setting, in a repressive society, puts constraints on the romantic scenes which the actors skillfully handle. The dazzling Junes Zahdi plays the focal character, Mo, with finesse. I was not familiar with him and will be interested so seek out his other work.

The picture has a vast following of passionate fans, and deserves its fame.

I've watched it numerous times and enjoy the snappy, quotable dialogue every time. Several of the performances are really strong. As I've re-watched it Adam Baldwin's work in his supporting role impresses me more, each re-viewing.

The actress in the role of River did the best she could, I'm sure, but the writing gave her little to work with. The snappy bits of dialogue went to the other characters.

Yes, it's formulaic and includes a fair number of the cliches that I expected. Short on characterization, that's a fair complaint. But I found the picture very well photographed and atmospheric. The violence is pretty graphic but the subdued color palette of the picture tones that down, so to speak.

I really don't have more to say; I just dropped by to up-rate the picture, a little.

The fight choreography is good. The lead actor is fine. The Asian girl is allowed to defend herself part of the time but does need a lot of rescuing, for a trained fighter. Judged strictly as a genre film I might have rated it higher except it is SO full of cliches. Even the plot points that don't make sense (which other viewers rightly complain of) are less annoying than the everlasting sequence of scenes we have seen before. It isn't a terrible film, it's slick and fast-paced.

The singing is all superb. Not just Miss Price, but Fiorenza Cossotto as Amneris (especially in the last act), Simon Estes in fine voice . James McCracken was an excellent Radames, especially in the scene with Amneris before he is judged. He had good diction, too. The audience came with flowers for Miss Price, and she earned them - but they threw flowers to Cossotto, too, at the curtain calls. A moving experience, to see Leontyne Price sing her best role for the last time.

Little to add to the reviews already posted except that for me, the performance by tenor Marius Brenciu in the role of the poet rises well above the rest of the cast, famous as some of them are or became later. He is an excellent actor with an expressive face, wears the period costumes well, and sings the opera's best number in the first act before the melody is handed on to the soprano.

I didn't watch the series when it originally aired. I've been bingeing and have seen all 4 seasons now. I really wanted to like it because some actors that I like were in the cast and the premise seemed intriguing. Season One starts well, takes its time to establish the characters and the premise of the show. But the showrunners make two consistent mistakes as the series continues. They keep adding characters, potentially interesting characters, but killing them off before they've been given very much to do. There's little character development for most of the characters introduced after the first few episodes.

The second mistake is the sloppy writing. Sudden plot twists, many improbable even in the supernormal-tinged world of the show, keep multiplying. Characters who have been shown to be untrustworthy are implausibly able to impose again on other characters they have already tricked once before. It gets irritating. The plots within plots start to be reminiscent of weird conspiracy theories in the real world. It's tedious and it reflects writers who couldn't be bothered to generate plot ideas out of the characters as they were written. Lazy writing.

Unlike some of the other reviewers I did watch the whole series. I up-rated it a little because I use a slightly lenient scale for sandal epics and fantasy. Most of the acting is perfectly okay. Sets, costumes, and props are good. The plot twists are predictable, but standard fare. The consistent effort to provide a setting that's coherent (sets, costumes, etc.) made it work, for me. If you don't expect it to connect with the famous epic, there's less to complain of.

I wanted to like this movie. I like sandal epics and swordplay movies set in remote historical eras or fantasy landscapes based on myth and legend. I have relaxed standards about the screenplay for movies in this genre and can tolerate a certain number of clichés or hackneyed stock characters. I am easy to please.

This movie started out with some pluses. They spent good money to get experienced actors, and the screenwriters crafted at least a few lines of dialogue for them that gave them something to work with. The half of the movie that presents human beings talking to each other, or fighting, would have been a pretty good movie by the standards of the genre. But the storyboards full of CGI-driven special effects and supernatural nonsense refuses to get out of their way and let us engage with the characters.

It's a shame, really. There's a good movie buried under the surface of silly monsters and explosions, here.

Fans of Game of Thrones may delight in a small appearance by Lord Bolton, in a supporting role. Lord Baelish is in it, too, but they didn't write to that actor's strengths.

I haven't read the books (I gather there are 8-12 of them) but I enjoyed the movie. I was surprised at how well Dylan O'Brien did in the lead role. I wasn't too impressed with the Maze Runner series as far as acting goes, though O'Brien did well in a supporting role in Deepwater Horizon.

The dialogue is nothing special and the plot line is formulaic, but it's well-paced and held my interest. Another reviewer complains that the fight choreography is exaggerated but maybe that person hasn't watched the John Wick movies. This is mild, compared to those.

Someone who's read the books will have to comment on the strained mentor relationship between Rapp, the assassin of the title, and the character played by Michael Keaton. I wasn't sure where the dynamic there came from, or was headed.

I rated this 9, for sporadically brilliant dialogue, some fine-tuned performances, and a bevy of attractive actors of both sexes, in their prime. Viewers who didn't like it because the plot line isn't linear? Y'all missed part of the point.

Jan, walking into her apartment where a party is in progress: "What's that noise?" Eleanor: "My life."

I agree with an earlier community poster who remarked that the only good acting in this dreadful opus is by Liam McIntyre, who plays the hero's sidekick. It is sad to think that they had him on hand but it didn't occur to them to offer him the title role. He would have been so much better. He infused some life into the scripts he was given when he played Spartacus, in a mini-series. The script for "Legend of Hercules" (2014) is so full of clichés that it's a wonder anyone was willing to accept a credit for it.

Once again Chris Evans demonstrates that he is a much better actor than he can show in comic book movies. I gave this picture a 9, based mostly on his performance. Several of the supporting roles are well played and the reviewers who remark that some of the scenes are beautifully photographed are quite right.

The movie is one more exemplar of Tolstoy's famous remark that all unhappy families are unique.

I really could never have imagined that it would be possible to make a movie adaptation based on the Mary Norton books that would be so completely devoid of charm. When the estate licensed this adaptation, they made a terrible, terrible mistake.

It's vile. I would have rated it a zero, but the scale only goes down to 1.

Kenneth Branagh's Romeo & Juliet, broadcast from the Garrick Theater, London, a performance recorded summer, 2016. A lot of bad ideas. No single one of them would have killed it but the concatenation drove me out of the theater. It isn't necessarily a terrible idea to update the production to the 1950s (after all, what else is West Side Story?). It seems unnecessary to try to make the production visually reminiscent of an Italian film, but I might have gone along if the effect had been persuasive. Snippets of dialog in Italian, okay (but why bother?). Song and dance numbers, again, we've already got West Side Story in the repertory. Casting one of Romeo's posse with a very much older actor than the others: I don't reject it. Folks of different generations can indeed be friends.

The problem was that it was Derek Jacobi, and he was determined to be irrepressible. Branagh evidently lacks the directorial gravitas to be able to say to an actor of that standing, "Stop that. Stop doing that. Stop doing that, too. Tone that bit down, the line is good enough without so much mugging."

The production might have survived all the above but two further errors exasperated this listener. The first was that the telecast of the performance was preceded by 10 or 12 minutes of pre-taped interviews with contemporary London teenagers, asking them questions about the play itself and about what life as a teenager is like. The purpose of this was ham-handedly to remind the audience that the title characters are very young. But surely that is the business of the actors?

The other irritant was the decision that the telecast should be in black and white. Obviously the live audience, in the theatre, were not seeing the play in black and white. The sets and costumes could not be equally effective for an audience seeing them in color and a simulcast audience seeing them in black and white. The idea was artsy and artificial, and it never became clear (to this viewer) what the effect was supposed to be.

I stayed through the love scene, curiously devoid of romantic appeal, and fled quietly.

Meera Syal demonstrated once more that the role of the Nurse is the best part in the play.

There's a lot of competition for Worst Movie Ever, so this one wouldn't be in the running. But it's the worst first-run "blockbuster" big-budget movie I ever saw in the theater. Disappointing isn't the word. This movie is so full of tired clichés that the screenwriters should be ashamed of themselves. It's full of re-worked scenes from older work - if, against my advice, you decide to see it, you'll recognize them.

The acting is mostly terrible. Logan Marshall-Green did okay as the eye candy jerkwad scientist. Some of the special effects are nifty, but nowadays, that's not enough. Every summer movie has elaborate special effects and stuff blowing up. This one just strings them together with a filigree of Greater Meaning that would still have been pathetic even if they had wasted more screen time trying to develop it more. A few of the sets were worth looking at. But the script should have been sent back for many, many re-writes and even then, they should have hesitated to make it.