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Reviews
Maggie Moore(s) (2023)
It's Just Awful
What an utterly nasty plot, with dreadful characters all the way around, and no joy to be had.
I watched it because I saw that the cast included John Hamm, Tina Fey and Nick Mohammed, all fine actors, which should have guaranteed at least a 6/10 viewing experience. But sadly, no.
I'm not sure whether the director or the storyline was to blame, but it was as though various characters wandered in from a dozen different movies and extemporized the dialogue after reading a two-line plot synopsis. Nothing hung together.
Tonally, it was a disaster. I'm guessing someone thought this would be a cute caper movie with some snappy lines, but that idea was impossible to convey given a number of grisly plot twists that undercut any whimsy that was supposed to exist.
Just save yourself the effort and skip it,
Miss Fisher and the Crypt of Tears (2020)
My Hopes Were Dashed
MILD SPOILERS
As a fervent fan of the Phryne Fisher TV series, I had such high hopes for this film. And yet, what a disappointment!
The lovely Essie Davis and her costumers did succeed in bringing back Phryne's quintessential modish look. And there is no question that the film locations used were sumptuous.
But-but-but ... the writers completely failed to capture Phryne's elemental joie de vive and essential kindness, swapping them out instead for a kind of callow recklessness coupled with an extremely mean-spirited plot device for bringing the cast together that does not jibe with Phryne's empathetic nature (and was not explained in a way that gets her off the hook for callousness).
The mischaracterization of Phryne really poisoned the show for me, but there were other problems as well. It is Phryne's task to solve a mystery, of course, but woe is me, the storyline looks like the mutant offspring of a threesome amongst Indiana Jones, The Mummy and Romancing the Stone, having inherited the worst aspects of each.
Is there a menacing cave? Yes. A beautiful lost jewel? Yes. A remote desert location involving picturesque sand dunes? Of course. A mysterious child? Uh-huh. Someone who "done somebody wrong"? Absolutely. Something otherworldly and mystical? Why even bother asking?
But do these too-familiar mystery/adventure film tropes weave together to make an interesting story? Definitely not. You will not care about the details of the mystery or its solution, which are both overly complicated and ultimately trivial.
Will you care about the Phryne/Jack subplot, which is really why we all showed up?
Maybe.
But it's hard to care very much when Jack spends the whole film looking as though he ate some bad hummus and needs to find a bathroom. The chemistry between Phryne and Jack, so compelling in the TV series, is almost entirely absent here, and that was the worst blow of all.
I mean, if you can't watch Phryne and Jack melting the TV screen while lusting after one another, what's the point?
In these days of plague when we're all housebound, this movie is a perfectly reasonable way to spend a couple of hours. It may even be diverting, but it is not likely to bring joy to Miss Fisher fans.
Taken Down (2018)
Watching young girls be tortured is not entertainment
This show would have gotten a zero, except that the excellent actors deserve a nod, and aren't to blame for the awful story.
This ugly tale involves tortured, raped, kidnapped, trafficked and murdered young teenaged girls. It doesn't stint on showing what is done to these children, who are African refugees in Ireland. That this crap is being peddled not only as entertainment, but also peddled in a deliberately salacious way, should shame Irish TV, the writers and societies who think this shameful output is enjoyable to watch. Avoid like the plague.
Marriage Story (2019)
Hated it so much, I quit watching before the end
I would have given this film 0 stars, except the acting by Scarlett Johansson and Adam Driver was terrific.
The story they were serving, however, was gothically horrible.
The film is supposed to be a semi-autobiographical on director Noah Baumbach's divorce from Jennifer Jason Leigh, so what does it say about Baumbach that his characters, including his alter ego, are awful, self-centered, phenomenally undeserving people? I don't need to watch people like that for entertainment's sake; I've dealt with enough of them in real life.
The Truth About the Harry Quebert Affair (2018)
Why did ANYONE like this awful show?
Of all the many, many things I have watched on TV in the last ten years, this one was the rock-bottom worst.
The writing was just terrible from beginning to end. No pieces of dialog rang true.
And that's before one considers the overwrought plot, nasty displays, more false endings than a false-endings competition, and characters who, with a sole exception, were charmless, hollow, sadistic and/or grotesquely under-explained.
The exception was actor Kristine Froseth. Like a diamond shining out from under a slag heap, her luminous acting brought dimension and grace to a show otherwise littered with poorly-drawn cartoon characters, bad actors and ugly stereotypes. It's a shame this show is so terrible that it truly is not worth watching, even to see her excellent performance.
Patrick Dempsey's hair showed up and chewed the scenery, but the man himself was barely in evidence.
Don't watch it.
Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)
Rowan Atkinson is perfect!
This film pits Johnny English, an old-school "MI-7" agent, against modern technology, and the results are a riot! The plot is not really important, except to launch the numerous hysterical set-pieces.
At every turn, English's signature bumbling manages to overcome superior tech and planning, which, of course, is the movie's overarching joke. But for an ace performer of physical comedy like Atkinson, each one of the tech challenges in the plot presents him with an opportunity to strut his stuff with his rubbery, googley-eyed face and nimble body.
Atkinson is 63, with the flexible physicality (and grace) of a 25 year old, which makes his antics most enjoyable to watch. There were numerous laugh-out-loud scenes, as well as a couple of can't-stop-maniacally-laughing bits (the virtual reality sequence in particular is an instant classic). Ben Miller, as English's supportive sidekick, is flawless.
For loopy, silly, and completely enjoyable pratfall comedy, this movie has no current equal. Take the kids - there's no smut at all.