Reviews

Well, not always, but THIS prison is awesome. I've been to real prison in Ireland and England and spent a few months in jail in southern France. Not long terms, mind you but enough to get a good first hand understanding of what life is like behind bars. If I had to be locked up for 20 years I don't think I'd mind being in Shawshank. You make lifelong friends, get a little beatdown action with the guards, drink some tasty cold brews on the roof with your buds, build a library, listen to Italian opera and go to movies with the guys, dig holes for escaping. It's the schit. Shawshank fukken rocks bro. This is possibly the best film I've ever seen.

I hope if I ever go back to prison (and chances are good) I hope it's exactly like Shawshank, only I'd want to have some chicks so it would be like a co-ed prison. Maybe a chick warden too. Mmmm. Yummy wild ass prison bictches. Haha bro. I'm actually looking forward to my next incarceration.

Writers did a good job getting Claire back to Jamie and I enjoyed the Batman scene when Claire was making her 18th century clothes.

Didn't enjoy the typical childish outbursts of both Claire and Brianna on Roger. (i.e., Brianna opening the door and yelling, "WHAT???!?" when Roger rings... what a stupid little root-hog) He really is a sweet guy and has to put up with a lot from these two pigs. He should have given them a taste of drunken Scottish football hooligan for their ill treatment. Both of those chicks need a fresh one across the chops to settle their wild asses down, if you ask me.

Did anyone else notice the focus on the shop bell when Claire entered Jamie's shop, followed by the shot of the book and candle? "Bell, book and candle" is a well known reference to witchcraft, and of course Claire is a witch. Maybe it was a coincidence but I don't think so.

Finally, why does Jamie have what is obviously a fake orange tan on his cheekbones?

Unbelievably bad writing. Horrible, horrible, horrible acting, worse than amateur grade school acting, saccharine sentimentalism. Ugh. Just pure fukking dreck from start to finish. I gave this film 2 stars instead of one because the mom is a former pretty whore and the daughter (SPOILER) runs off to become a whore and she's really hot. God knows we can always use more whores. But seriously, most of the characters seem like They're half retarded.

Move on past this one boys 'cuz there's much better whore movies to be had. If this film were a person I would punch it in the throat and shove it in front of a train or strangle it in its sleep.

I gave this series three stars because I actually think the casting and a good deal of the acting is superb. Also, whoever manages the horses has truly gone out of their way to cast beautiful animals in this series. The scenery is breath-taking and the cinematography is excellent. The show treats values such as honesty, loyalty and honor in a way that makes us hearken back to the good ol' days that never really were, calling to our higher, better selves. Sam Heughan's Jamie is certainly the kind of guy every man probably aspires to be and Tobias Menzie's Jack Randall is so evil he'd scare the hell out of Freddie Kruger. All of this is wasted, however, because the overall story line derives at best from the silly love fantasies of a 13 year old girl, and at worst from the author's twisted rape fetish. So, if you dig brutal rape, you're gonna love Outlander. Why, it's a virtual rape-roaring extravaganza. We got man on man prison rape, the kind that happens after a sexy hammer fight, semi-consensual captive damsel rape, and of course, we got your garden variety alley rape. Haven't seen any goat rape or sheep rape yet but to be fair, I haven't read past the third book, so perhaps there's still time.

I have to add a disclaimer here... I grew up in era where our mantra was "sex, drugs and rock and roll" and "Do what thou wilt shall be the whole of the law" summed up the hedonistic ethic that informed many of our life choices. In my middle years now, I still hold to the idea that, so long as everyone involved is a consenting adult, pretty much anything goes, sexually speaking. I don't practice any religion and I enjoy porn. I've lived a life of debauchery and I'm not ashamed of it. But even I draw the line at fetishizing rape. Having read a few of the novels, it's painfully obvious the author has an obsession with rape. It seems almost every character is raped at some point. I'm no historian but I doubt every living person in the 18th century was raped at some point in their lives, and even if they were, you have to wonder why, in a fiction novel, the author must subject all of her characters to being raped. One is reminded of the video news interview that went viral a few years ago where a local man who stopped an attempted rapist from assulting his sister commented, "Hide your kids, hide your wife, hide your husband, cuz they rapin' everybody out here!"

Sometimes in a work of fiction, a theme appears and we notice odd patterns that reveal the author's peculiar predelections. Usually they're not harmful, but this fetish is just sick and disgusting. Better hide your goats and your sheep too, just to be safe. Cuz this author and the show runners are raping everybody out here.

First of all, if you haven't watched this film yet, don't. But if you won't listen to reason, and you think you might watch it despite my clear direction not to watch it, at least stop reading now and get out while you can because my review is full of spoilers and other useless comments.

I gave Don't Breathe three stars because (spoliler here) the cool blind badass dude shoots some fukcers. And he can smell a stranger's shoes in his house. And he has a cool dungeon. But then he gets all emo after he shoots the chick that killed his daughter. Waaa. Shut the eff up and shoot some more people, blind dude or I'm changing the channel.

Others have articulated the huge plot holes, like, how did he manage to get the chick into his dungeon without a proper staircase? Who knows, maybe he wasn't blind when he kidnapped her or maybe he has moments when he's not blind or maybe he's not blind at all and he's just stumbling around cuz he's clumsy. Iwas willing to look past all that because, you know, old scary house and the owner has a gun so let's to the action. Boy was I disappointed.

I think the thing that bothered me the most was, WTF - dude serves his country and goes blind, then this entitled white beeyatch steals his cash and we're supposed to say, "Oh thank god there's a happy ending."?

I wish he had effing plugged them all and eaten them. THAT would have been a happy ending. Blind dude and his dog kill the intruders and eat them, then we see that this has happened many times. Why can't filmmakers have some original ideas? It took me exactly one minute to think that up and type it. Boom. See it's not that hard. It's called Vision, dudes. I thought of it drunk so what's your excuse? Lazy filmmakers. You're worse than the lazy old people who live in my mom's boarding house.

Claire is selfish and we get her typical whining, displaying jealousy when she has no right to judge Frank. Then of course we have drunken Frank, played superbly by Tobias Menzies, who deserves an Emmy. Frank is sexy when he's drunk, just like my dad.

HUGE SPOILER COMING...

I gave this episode six stars for the momentary glimpse of Sarah MacRae, who plays Sandy/Candy - Frank's love interest. I'm hoping they can still explore her character now that Frank is dead. Perhaps she can also travel through the stones and she'll follow Claire back to Jamie's world and give Claire a run for her money! She's way prettier than Claire and it would be interesting to see Jamie's reaction to meeting a real 20th century beauty. Let's face it, of course Jamie thinks Claire looks good... compared to the unwashed, illiterate, toothless hillbilly shleppers he's used to. Just imagine, all he knows are smelly scullery wenches complaining about their open boils and farting while they work in the kitchen, filthy Pictish housemaids with long wirey hairs growing out of their ears and nostrils and halfwit gimps limping down the crag with their hand out (the other one amputated) begging for coin, talking like football hooligans and throwing up in the gutter... it's no wonder Jamie is constantly asking random British officers to shoot him. I imagine any chick with more than four teeth would look good to him! Candy/Sandy would probably make him forget all about Claire.

If the showrunners are reading this, do us a favor. Send Candy back to 18th century Scotland to murder Claire and Leoroghuiery (never can remember how to spell the name of the woman whose name sounds like Leary).

Also giving six stars because the show does a great job of creating fictional language out of thin air, much like GOT where they invent new languages for the show's fictional countries. I know there used to be a real country called Scotland, I think it was somewhere near England or maybe somewhere in France, but in the show they speak a fictional language called Kallick. It's like a funnier version of Dothraki. Kudos to these guys for pulling it off!

I'm getting to the point where I just want these pieces of $hit get whacked and end this. They murder innocents and intentionally destroy lives to further the goals of their beloved USSR. They do this while knowing that they serve a soulless bureaucracy. Phillip has a conscience but it doesn't impact the couple's trajectory, so why do the writers write him with a conscience? The lie to their daughter about the US government's effort to develop a pest resistant wheat strain when there doesn't seem to be a reason to lie. The protagonists seem to have no direction or compass so it's hard as a viewer to suspend disbelief not understanding the character motivations.

The showrunners supposedly want to portray history from the vantage point of people who are traditionally excluded from the history books, namely women and people of color. Thus it is highly ironic that the most powerful women of the Tudor period are depicted here as witches, schemers and child murderers.

Margaret Beaufort is particularly maligned as a frigid, one-dimensional religious nut, monster mother in law and a homicidal maniac who is more than happy to murder small children to advance her political agenda. Sort of a medieval Frank Underwood.

In The White Princess, we are treated to a regurgitation of George Buck's bigoted and misogynistic fiction, written more than a hundred years after Margaret's death. In reality, Margaret Beaufort was a formidable woman - a survivor in a very dangerous world. Married off at the age of 12 and a mother at 13, she navigated her environment better than most of us would and she did so in an age when women were not considered important politically, rather they were little more than breeders, whose job was to produce male heirs. Instead of treating her with the respect we would afford a modern woman, the show (based on Phillipa Gregory's novel) paints her with the same brush as did George Buck in the 17th century.

Comedian Chris Rock joked that: Women are smarter than men. They would rule the world if they didn't hate each other so much. Show runners take note.

I give this dreck two thumbs down.

SPOILER WARNING - This review is pretty much going to be all spoilers, so if you haven't watched the film, you must stop reading now. Seriously, this is the last warning. You shouldn't still be reading at this point.

So for those of you who saw the film, I appreciated some of the plot developments and had high hopes for the movie up until the point when grown up mask-wearing Brahms crawled out of the wall. For me, that was the moment where it seemed like the filmmaker brought in a new crew of writers who were unaware of anything that had been written up until that point. Sure, it was awesome seeing big ol' not-dead Brahms murder Cole, but aside from that the movie no longer makes sense. Consider this:

1. First of all, if you see a big psycho killer bust out of a wall, wearing a scary as $hiznit mask, how long would it take you to reach the exit? Right. Me too. I would outrun a cheetah.

2. Seeing a masked killer crawling out of the wall in and of itself would scare the hell out of Freddie Kruger, but if the killer proceeded to attack a dangerous, violent stalker, would your first reaction be put your life on the line to defend the stalker? NO! Did Malcolm and Greta forget that Cole is dangerous and would likely kill them if he hadn't been interrupted by this new development? This was their chance to get out of that house and get away from Cole, and yet they stay and fight. Ridiculous.

3. Why did the lights dim and the walls shake when Cole broke the doll?

4. Since Brahms didn't die in the fire, what was the purpose of the doll if it was not housing the spirit of Brahms?

5. If the old couple knew their son was alive, living up in the attic, why did they become so attached to the doll, treating it as though it were their son?

6. In the end, why is Brahms putting the doll back together? What's the point?

7. Greta stabbed Brahms in the upper abdomen twice with a long screwdriver. Those are mortal wounds. I'm not a physician but if a person has any chance of surviving such a wound I believe they would need immediate skilled medical assistance at a state of the art facility. The film established that the house was in the middle of nowhere, so are we expected to believe that Brahms just "got better"? What... he just bucked up and walked it off? Please.

In summary, it was well acted, Greta was hot, and honestly, the old broad looked pretty sexy in her tight skirt. I definitely got some visceral oedipal vibes. Her psychosis and stern demeanor only added to her allure, and it's a shame they didn't explore this at all. Other than the sexy ladies, this flick was a loser.

It's high time a black filmmaker called out the insidious hypocrisy that is continuously foisted on us in the US: So-called liberal (mostly privileged and white) racists posing as progressive, enlightened guardians. These false liberals believe people of color (whom they view as noble savages) need a caring white hand to guide and protect them. They preach and lecture the rest of us about the evils of racism while they themselves are hateful, hungry predators who foster a culture of fear and despair amongst people of color in order to promote themselves as the great white saviors. Hollywood is addicted to the fantasy of white people playing the role of savior to the fragile, lost black man. (Think Blind Side, A Time to Kill and every film about heroic white teachers who inspire children of color to forsake their criminal milieu and become A students). Get Out exposes these false liberals for the exploitative predators they are. Sadly, reading the reviews here, it appears many missed the point entirely.

I have to start by saying that Sally Field's performance is truly Oscar-worthy. In fact, all of the performances are stellar. The main character, played with perfect pitch by Field, is truly disgusting and frightening. Oddly, the film portrays this lying, manipulative hoarding stalker as a sympathetic character, which she is not. (The following editorial contains spoilers as it summarizes the fate of Doris)

Doris should have been punished for being a hoarder and for interfering with her co- worker's personal life. The writers should have shown what happens when destructive, dangerous stalkers bother normal people. I would have given the film a 10 if John had given her a harsh beat down or even murdered her for her transgressions. I think in New York it might be legal to shoot a person who cyber stalks you. Don't take my word for it though as I am not an attorney. I was disbarred years ago and am not at all qualified to give legal advice. For all I know it could be totally illegal to shoot people in NY unless you're a drug dealer or a police officer. Word of advice to the filmmakers: In the real world, John would only be interested in a crazy cat lady lying stalker if he himself were seriously disturbed, so in a sequel it would be good to explore John's dark, perverted, cat lady fetish having, murderous side.

Also, I believe it is irresponsible to send such a dangerous message to unbalanced viewers who may feel the film validates their delusions. The Dangerous message is: If you lie, cheat, stalk and steal from your victim, he will love you, even if you're a filthy, smelly unbathed pig who lives in a garbage house. Why? Because you are the center of the universe and others are just props in your play. The more responsible message would be: People like Doris are dangerous and stupid and deserved to be pushed in front of a subway train.

Finally, am I alone in my perception that the film strongly implies Doris killed her mother?

Spoilers are in the first paragraph so if you want to avoid the spoilers, you should just read the second paragraph. This film was excellent. So much emotion and so much to say about fathers and daughters. The little girl's relationship with her dad was sweet and that story is very nice, even when (spoiler coming up here!) the guy from Gladiator whacks his head on the bathroom thing and dies. It's sad but still, life is like that and you just think the little girl will probably get a new family and she's young so she might not even remember him. But what is important is it was good while it lasted. Life always has phases and sometimes it's sad to leave one phase even though a new one might be more exciting. Too bad we never get to see how it works out for her.

But mostly what stays with you is how in the other part of the movie there's this blonde chick just can't get enough action. I was never able to figure out why it's like two movies in one because you never see the writer guy and the little girl go into any of the scenes with the dude from Breaking Bad and the hot blonde chick. But it was so hot how she was like the most promiscuous chick you ever could imagine. She's like one of those chicks that has a good job helping orphans during the day and after work she like cheats on every boyfriend because she's a raging wh*re 24/7! So hot. I recommend this film due to the hot cheating action.

The only reason I give this film two stars instead of one is the fact that the wife and daughter were nice to look at. There was a funny line where Carl says "lt feels like we're in a horror movie!"

The story is rambling nonsense, acting is terrible and the jokes fall flat. The writing might be the worst I've ever encountered. In fact, it almost seemed like there was no writing, that the actors just made lines up as they went along in every scene. Almost like improv gone bad.

The white villains express their racism with the most ridiculous comments. Yes, that's right, ridiculous even by racist standards. References to "Willis" from Diff'rent Strokes, New Balance tennis shoes. Ugh.