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Reviews
Toxic Puzzle (2017)
One critical piece of the puzzle is missing
This documentary gives an interesting overview of the coincidence of the presence of cyanobacteria/BMAA in the brain tissue of some people/vervets who have ALS or Alzheimer's disease, but fails to address the more critical question of whether the cyanobacteria/BMAA actually is a cause of these diseases, the real "holy grail" of finding a cure for them.
Mad Max: Fury Road (2015)
Disappointing, but worth seeing once
Mad Max: Fury Road is an exciting movie, but for long-time fans of the series, this latest effort is simply the last twenty minutes of The Road Warrior expanded into a two-hour time frame, and the number of bad guys increased by a factor of ten! And Max is not even the main character! It should have been titled "Furiosa: Fury Road". Worth seeing once, but not a classic like The Road Warrior. Charlize Theron does a credible job, but Tom Hardy is very disappointing as Max. This is probably not his fault; Hardy is a decent actor but does not have the imposing and threatening presence of Mel Gibson. George Miller and the other writers haven't written enough of the character into this script.
Texas Rising (2015)
A Total Disaster for the History Channel
This series has completely and totally destroyed my opinion of the History Channel. How a respected organization which purports to inform its viewers about 'history' could associate itself with such garbage is beyond my comprehension. And to back a director whose last film of any notoriety, the poorly-rated The Scarlet Letter, was released twenty years ago in 1995, and writers of virtually unknown films of total insignificance also from the 1980s and mid-90s, shows a complete absence of judgment. The true history of the Texas Revolution has real drama and excitement which does not need to be corrupted by the introduction of fictional sidebar characters, apparently for "comic relief", and total lies such as the supposed dalliance between Sam Houston and Emily West. I can only assume that the viewers who rated this series higher than 5/10 are paid hacks of the producers or members of Brendan Fraser's family.
Picnic (1955)
Life is no picnic
I first saw this movie as a teenager in the 1950's and remembered it fondly. Watching it again fifty years later and reading a number of reviews of both professionals and multiple viewers, it seems to me that many are missing the entire point of Inge's play and the movie. While the music score, the melodrama, and over-the-top-acting, especially by Holden, certainly make the movie look dated, there is great irony in the contrast between the carefree, fun, happy atmosphere of the Labor Day picnic and the anguished lives of a mother whose husband left her to raise two unhappy daughters, a spinster whose entire life appears to have been spent caring for her aging mother, a love-starved schoolteacher who is terrified of living her own life out as a lonely old maid, and especially Hal, the child of a broken home of an alcoholic father and an unloving mother who was abandoned by both parents in his teens and who realizes that there is no future in store for him. Real life is not a picnic.