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Jesse Stone: Night Passage (2006)
A Slow Moving, Boring Grind
I become a bit suspicious when I see one good review after another, especially when nobody has anything bad to say. The only thing good about this movie was the beautiful scenery in Maine. Other than that, it had nothing going for it.
Tom Selleck was drunk literally all the time, though it rarely, if ever, seemed to affect him. He was drunk but did not act as though he was drunk, not in the slightest.
Oddly, there was no mystery. The killing and who did it was known early in the film, and the only thing separating the beginning and the end of the film was a bunch of disconnected melodramatic nonsense.
Selleck's only encounter with a woman was oddly initiated and just as oddly terminated when his new lover decided things were moving too fast.
What was really odd about the film was when Selleck put down his dog for not eating and becoming a bit lethargic.
Overall, the movie was a slow-moving grind. The acting was substandard throughout, and the story made no sense.
Oppenheimer (2023)
Too Long, Too Confusing, A disparate mess
The film's excessive runtime of three hours seemed to be filled with an overabundance of information, contributing to a plot that unraveled in a confusing and illogical manner. Detailed portrayals of the protagonist's conflicted wife, neurotic girlfriend, and unexpected child were overexposed and unnecessarily intricate. Furthermore, the use of nudity and sex scenes felt gratuitous rather than essential, detracting from the integrity of the female characters.
It was particularly perplexing to see Oppenheimer carefreely cavorting with his troubled girlfriend in Los Alamos, only a stone's throw away from the tower set to trigger the world's first atomic explosion.
The use of alternating black and white with color imagery was an unsettling choice. Rather than adding depth, it disrupted the film's continuity and created a sense of disarray. The film suffered from a lack of seamless transitions, hopping abruptly from congressional hearings to scientific forums, from festive parties to intense discussions with scientists, all while intertwining themes of construction, detonation, politics, and communism. It felt akin to attempting to assemble a coherent picture from a mix of unrelated crossword puzzles.
The special effects seemed poorly planned and came across as amateurish. Recurrent visuals of billowing flames interspersed with bubble-like entities, a motif that began during depictions of Oppenheimer's youth, were repetitive and detrimental to the flow of the film. And it's as if the sound studio team was impacted by the same radiation emanating from the plutonium.
The film's aesthetics also left something to be desired. Overdone makeup and hair styling, paired with frequent manipulation of film contrast levels, gave an unnecessary air of surrealism.
Moreover, the supposed interactions between Oppenheimer and Einstein lacked credibility, and complex physics concepts, such as quantum mechanics and relativity, were reduced to cryptic symbols on blackboards, with no effort made to incite curiosity or comprehension.
Despite these criticisms, I acknowledge the attempt, even if it fell short. In this instance, the transformation of a written piece into a cinematic narrative unfortunately failed.
However, not all was lost. A commendable performance from Robert Downey Jr. Shone through the chaos. His portrayal was nothing short of brilliant, perhaps even the pinnacle of his career.
Emancipation (2022)
Captivating Film - Well acted.
Smith does a fantastic job as do the other actors. The pace of the film stays quick and doesn't let up from beginning to end. The sets are good throughout - especially the battlefield scenes toward that latter part of the film. The cinematography is top notch. Though not as prolific as the war scenes in Saving Private Ryan, the realism and impact was comparable.
Though a number of the reviewers didn't like the heavily muted coloration of the film, I thought it added to the impact and reminded me of the black and white prints I've seen of Civil War times in the past.
Emancipation reminds us of how low human beings can stoop. I sensed an echo of the concentration camp scene's in Sophie's Choice. Though I did feel that the diabolical nature of the slave drivers and owners might have been somewhat overly dramatized - not in any way to condone the horrors and disgust surrounding slavery.
I think the scene where Peter's wife puts her hand in the cotton gin to keep from being sold was over the line. That plot line should have been cut. It had no place in the film.
Emancipation was a great film and it certainly drew me in emotionally. It gave me a deeper insight of what it might have been like to be a slave, more-so that any film I've previously experienced.
1917 (2019)
Good not Great
1917 captured the beauty of the French landscape and showed how war could transform beauty into a snarl of death, ugliness and destruction.
Special effects, editing and costumes were well done yet acting lacked a certain degree of engagement and I had the experience I'd been watching actors instead of people, especially the Germans who had virtually no depth whatsoever, generically depicted as being stupid, evil and incompetent.
Other reviewers had compared 1917 to WW1's answer to Saving Private Ryan. Nothing could be further from the truth. Saving Private Ryan portrayed depth of story, multifaceted characters, nuance and humor, and it was a film that operated simultaneously on multiple levels, whereas 1917 possessed none of these qualities. With war movies like Ryan, Deer Hunter and Apocalypse Now I left the theater jolted into an altered state; the savagery of war left left me with a gaping hole and it required time to heal. WIth 1917 the echo of war ceased when the projector switched off.
The Predator (2018)
Comedy Replaces Tension
Not Good. Not Bad. Predator-infused, mindless, stupid fun.
Peppermint (2018)
A Study in Gratuitous Violence
Violent and simple-minded extravaganza. Tissue paper characters traversing a tedious plot. Should have gone straight to video at best. Really Bad.
Ready Player One (2018)
Innovative CGI - well done but mind-numbing
Brilliant CGI but over used and overlaid on an unreal real world that while creative made little sense. Trailers stacked upon one another up to 100 feet with fire poles to slide down c'mon.
Now the CGI was good, real good but, again, way too much of it - so much that toward the ending I hoped the film would end so I could get out of there. The storyline aimed at young teenagers. Art3mis' character was smokin' and the chemistry with Parzival was hot in the alt world - even though it played as sanitized puppy love lacking any grit whatsoever other than a tad of snarkyness. Wade and Samantha's relationship in the real world bored me and both actors' talent remained untapped.
I really think this one got away from Spielberg, either that or it was some version of passing the torch to a younger generation. Mediocre real-world acting strangled by hot CGI. Saved by some really good popcorn.
Passengers (2016)
Lawrence carries (just barely) this middle of the road sci-fi yarn.
*** This Review May Contain Spoilers! ***
As far as sci-fi goes, I'd put Passengers in the middle of the road. CGI was passable with some nice eye candy - clearly they spent a few bucks on it. The story, though, was sub par - boy meets girl in outer space, they get in on, they have a fight, and boy has to do something really far out to win girl back. Pratt's acting was not bad, and the chemistry between him and Lawrence was a plus yet I felt that Jennifer Lawrence's presence and acting skills carried the film. And what guy, unless he was gay, wouldn't want to get marooned in deep space with Jennifer Lawrence? I'm certainly in - at least for a couple of weeks
About halfway through the film Chris Pratt had a solo scene, and low and behold, a fly danced around his head - this, of course happening after coming out of 30 years of suspended animation. I rewound a bit and played back the scene to be sure - yep, the little guy definitely flew in for a cameo. You'd think in a CGI extravaganza that someone would have done a bit of touch-up. But I guess they hadn't booked enough time in the editing room.
The pool was killer, complete with a huge dome-like glass window extending out the ship's side revealing an eye-popping starry panorama. The only problem with this picture was that the habitable portion of the gargantuan ship was rotating to simulate earth's gravity and the view through the window looking out from the pool had the stars in a fixed position. Whoops!
Speaking of gravity, when push came to shove near the end of the film, a worsening system-wide power failure killed the power and along with it the gravity. Everything just began floating around in zero Gs. Good for special effects maybe, but the visuals in the film went to great lengths again and again to show this huge habitable superstructure rotating to generate its gravitational field. The power failure shouldn't have had any effect upon the ship's gravity. Either they didn't care or the writer has to brush up on his physics.
Dunkirk (2017)
simply boring
Without a doubt, one of the worst soundtracks ever, continual droning that never stops. NO character development. A series of dark disconnected snippets accompanied by the never-ending drone propels the film into the realm of pure boredom - sort of like air escaping from a balloon until it becomes flat. Though, to be fair, I have to admit - some of the dogfights were pretty cool so I bumped my rating up to 4 stars. To compare this film with the likes of Saving Private Ryan, FMJ, Apocalypse Now, Deer Hunter or Black Hawk Down is simply laughable. The film's best scenes are all in the trailer. Watch it and save your time and money.