Reviews

The premise of a man who shows up in the dreams of others for no apparent reason, and the way in which his life falls apart as a result, deserves a better telling than this.

Nic Cage does a great job portraying an utterly unlikeable shmuck, but the movie could have told a deeper story if his character had some redeeming qualities. As it is, each scene he's in is wincingly awkward to watch, and he's in nearly every scene. It almost seems unfair to the character. For example, many shots of Cage are filmed from behind or the side in order to emphasize his baldness. Congrats to the Nic and the filmmakers for pointing that out so effectively, but it becomes way too much over the course of an entire movie. They've substituted mockery and cringe for what could have been an interesting plot.

As others have pointed out, the movie takes a dumb turn at the end, instead of staying committed to the course it has laid out. An honest ending would have been a better and darker, but the movie was already unsavable at that point anyway.

This documentary does a good job of portraying the events surrounding John Lennon's murder. The interviews with witnesses and other people directly involved in the case are insightful and well done. It also presents worthwhile video and audio from the era in order to provide context and texture.

The show also spends a considerable amount of time on John's killer, which is harder to stomach. Some of this material is actually useful to the extent that it establishes his motive and state of mind. There's also background about his upbringing and life before the murder, which I mostly skipped past. The question of whether he was sane at the time of the killing is addressed in detail, but ultimately doesn't make much difference.

Unfortunately, the documentary also indulges in some utterly irresponsible speculation about the possibility of government involvement in the killing. This unfounded conspiracy theory goes nowhere and adds nothing to the story. I'm honestly a bit surprised that Apple would even allow it on their air.

This movie is so bizarre, I don't even really know what to think of it. It's an absurd sex comedy that turns into a rom-com and ends as a Hallmark movie about friendship. It's super-uncomfortable to watch, but entertaining in trashy, 80's kind of way. You know, back when a 32-year-old being sexually inappropriate with a naive high school student could be considered hilarious. Think Porky's or Fast Times at Ridgemont High.

I have no idea why someone as talented and famous as Jennifer Lawrence would want to appear in this movie, let alone star in it and romp around naked for several minutes, but she does a good job and seems to be having fun. More power to her, I guess?

The first few episodes are the best, since they develop the main characters' relationship. After that, the episodes get more tedious as the characters and plot points pile up. You eventually might need a cheat sheet to keep everyone straight, and, by the last episode, mainly feel relief that it's finally over.

That said, I enjoyed the show, even though it's the kind of straightforward political thriller I've seen a million times before. It's a kitchen sink of tropes: the wrongfully accused hero, his genius sidekick, ruthless assassins, corrupt politicians, shady businessmen, and, of course, the president of the United States.

The male romantic lead is supposedly 15, but acts 25. The female romantic lead is supposedly 25, but acts 15. This is a bad idea and fails from the opening scene on. Beyond whatever ethical questions this premise raises, it simply doesn't work in the script, it doesn't work for the characters, and it doesn't work for the actors playing those characters. The result isn't intriguing - it's just confusing, unrealistic, and stupid.

Even if the viewer is somehow able to get beyond the failed premise, the rest of the movie is similarly unbelievable. The plot (if you can call it that) is just a series of wacky capers that unfold in rapid succession with little context and no believability. Cameos by brand-name actors during these sketches don't make it any better. I think the writer-director was aiming for something like Fast Times at Ridgemont High, but ended up with a movie that's closer to, say, Porky's 2.

Five stars for effectively evoking the 70's in the background, but that's it.

Mindless action/suspense movie that's difficult to enjoy because the plot makes little sense and the acting is uninspired. At least I didn't see the twist coming, because it's so thoroughly implausible. January Jones deserves special recognition for delivering her lines as if she was reading them off the back of a cereal box.

The details of space travel become critically important to a crew traveling from Earth to Mars when they face an unexpected dilemma. Unfortunately, a few of those important details are poorly explained, or skipped over entirely, but that flaw doesn't prevent this movie from working satisfactorily in the end.

We spend the movie with four characters in a confined space dealing with an engineering problem and the moral crisis that it causes. The plot is linear and the characters are fairly basic, but together they are more than able to hold an interested audience's attention because the issues raised are worthy.

An entertaining story, well acted, that requires an ever-increasing suspension of disbelief as it goes along. The setup of a perilous love triangle is well done, but the payoff in the final two episodes is difficult to take seriously, which undoes a lot of the initial tension. Definitely bingeable, but don't expect a dramatic masterpiece.

The most boring sort of cookie-cutter Hallmark movie with all the passion of a Sears clothing catalog. The two leads are unable to squeeze any chemistry out of the laughably basic script: I'm a ____, but you're a ____, and sparks fly because we both ____. I passed the time by trying to comprehend just how depressing it must've been to actually write, produce, and act in this.

There's a lot to praise in this long, ambitious movie - some good characters, some good acting (especially by Nicole Kidman as a sympathetic surrogate mother), but not enough to make up for its glaring flaws.

The setup is intriguing, and held my interest for the first hour or so, but goes off the rails around the time the main character is hauled off to Las Vegas to become (very unbelievably) a middle school drug addict. This deflates the movie, resulting in a climax that has less impact than, say, a typical episode of The Blacklist.

An interesting premise that's well executed. The plot is coherent and imaginative, the acting is fine, and the territory it covers is profound. You can see it as movie about drug addiction, but you can also see it as a philosophical movie about the nature of reality. In either case, it does a good job of being trippy without trying to be "psychedelic" in the slightest, which I think is commendable.

Don't watch this movie if you don't like ambiguity, or if you think that "sci-fi" always means spaceships and superheroes. If you go into this movie expecting to escape reality for a few hours, you are going to be in for a rough time, just like the main characters in the show you're watching.

I enjoyed the first WW movie, but nothing in this sequel works. It's just an illogical, unfun mess from the very beginning. Even if you lower your expectations, you'll still be disappointed. What a wasted opportunity.

This movie is a tone-deaf failure with a boring sitcom plot and actors who don't gel. Even though it reunites Bill Murray and Sofia Coppola, it has none of the charm and atmosphere of Lost in Translation.

Murray looks like he's doing it as a favor for Coppola, but would actually rather be somewhere else. His delivery is strangely affectless and his character is utterly unlikeable. The main character is written to be deliberately uninteresting and charmless - I actually felt a bit bad for the actress who had to portray her that way. She has no chemistry with the actor who portrays her husband, and every time they're together it seems more like an awkward first date than a scene from a marriage. Their two children are super cute but have almost no dramatic role and spend most of the movie with babysitters while the main characters are drinking and eating at fancy restaurants and parties.

The plot is totally pedestrian and can be summed up as: "I think my husband is having an affair. Let's follow him and see if we can catch him in the act!" And then, uh oh, now Lucy has a lot of splainin' to do. Fortunately, the characters are all rich, so they don't have to worry much about the consequences of bad decisions. Viewers are left with little more than an off-putting taste of life in the bubble of New York City privilege and wealth.

I'm a big sci-fi fan, but found this disappointing. The time travel plot itself is very basic and there's nothing in the acting, writing, or production that elevates it in the slightest. Most of my attention went into noticing the numerous plot holes instead of feeling immersed in the story, which tells us very little about either the universe or human nature. Based on this episode, I won't be watching the rest of the series.

What happens if you start with a complex historical/political story that (presumably) makes logical sense, but take out the exposition and replace it with poetic, stream-of-consciousness dialog that sounds intelligent but explains nothing? You end up with a movie that can only be comprehended by someone who already knows what it's about some other way (by, I guess, reading the book on which it is based, or maybe telepathy).

Anne Hathaway is pretty good as a tenacious reporter who gets too involved in a story she's investigating. Before long, though, she's making decisions that seem insanely risky, and then, not long after that... I can't even tell you, because I couldn't follow what was happening.

I wanted to like this movie, because it seemed smart and challenging - like maybe All The President's Men meets Chinatown - but either I'm not smart enough (which is certainly possible) or the movie is incoherent nonsense (much more likely).

This is a one-dimensional movie with little character development. It simply establishes a feeling of dread from the beginning and builds on that. This isn't necessarily a terrible strategy, but it requires a plot that can hold the audience's interest. What we get instead, in scene after scene, is a simple binary choice: Is the main character a hero, or is he crazy? Sometimes it looks like the story is heading one way, and other times it goes back the other way, but these are hardly exciting plot twists. By the end, the writers have boxed themselves in, and neither of the two options makes much sense, so the audience is left unsatisfied.

I'm usually a sucker for science fiction, and time travel in particular, but this movie was underwhelming. The characters are severely under-developed and uninteresting. One of the main characters is so empty that at one point the protagonist suggests that she might not be real, and she has no response.

The time-travel elements of the movie are similarly devoid of interest, and the supposed plot is elementary. I think most of the effort on this movie went into period sets, costumes and haircuts. It certainly doesn't show up in the writing, acting, or directing.