JTegeur Reviews

Emma. (2020)

Bill and Miranda Need Redemtion

[27 July 2020]

Bill Nighy and Miranda Hart must be having a sit down with their agents getting them mixed up in this production. It really is tedious. I have nothing good to say and don't want to review the bad so I will stop here. If you want to see it be sure you see it for free.

Breathless (2013)

Fantastic Garbage Soap Opera

[9 September 2014]

If you waste your time with this lousy soap opera you deserve to be totally disappointed. Who wrote this? Clarance the clown? It is bad. It is really bad. It is that bad. Repeat, this is crummy, lousy and bad. Luckily I had it on DVR and could fast forward through this garbage to see if any smidgen of worth would appear. It did not. This isn't the actors fault. The fault is with the persons who wrote this despicable script. Unwin and Grimesdale. Mark those down and never watch anything they write. Grime for Grimesdale. Geez what tripe. Oh, poor Tommy. Oh, poor old daddy. Oh, a marriage to make up for a night of drinking. Oh, a desperate Chief Inspector who is in reality a dirt bag. Oh, another doctor cheating on his wife only to see his mistress expire to cancer. Oh, a doctor who breaks the law on some personal principle. Oh, another doctor who can't let loose and take a great job offer while his blowzy wife is left in the dark. Geez, could it get any worse. Yes, it can and does in the end which I won't give away if you are crazy enough to waste your time with this sad sack joke of a soap opera.

Fargo (2014–2024)

One Too Many Episodes

[11 July 2014]

For the first nine episodes this was first rate. Thornton was Thornton which is always a treat. There were a few loose ends. Example - What was the job Malvo was on at the beginning of the first episode. There are many more of these flaws. Martin Freeman was lame perhaps because I remember him from the British series Hardware where he was really really lame. Colin Hanks was barely average. Allison Tolman rated up there with Thornton. She was excellent.

The ending in the last episode was junk. The mailman(Hanks)shoots an unarmed man multiple times and is then hailed a hero. Crap. Yes the unarmed man was scum but come on the mailman's deputy sheriff wife was so intent on upholding the law why would she accept this obvious case of cold blooded murder by her husband. It is really too bad because it ruins the entire series.

The Story of Film: An Odyssey (2011)

A Monotone Narrator In A Shoddy Production

[11 September 2013]

This is really a shoddy attempt at the history of film. Past that I have two questions. Frst, why would anyone use the worse narrator in the history of documentaries to speak in an endless monotone for this catastrophe? And second, why would TCM lower themselves to show this shoddy work for fifteen weeks in a row? It really says quite a lot about TCM's desperate need for content. Now that is really all I have or need to say but of course IMDb requires more lines, as if more words will change anything previously said. They won't but to continue to make the post possible many less words (a lot less believe you me) from the horrid narrator would have gotten this sad sack production one more star.

Love in the Afternoon (1957)

Very Old Man and Young Girl

[15 November 2012]

This is totally improbable. Today I suspect this movie would not even be made in the US. Cooper looks like he is approaching seventy and Hepburn appears as a teenager. Their relationship today would be considered totally inappropriate. The scene with the husband ready to shoot Cooper is an obvious weak attempt at comedy but comes across as bad farce and is so unbelievable you wonder how the director accepted that part of the script. From there it drags on and on waiting for the final match up with Cooper and Hepburn and the totally unrealistic outcome of marriage. Maurice and Audrey give rather good performances, Gary as usual acts like a wooden door.

Girls (2012–2017)

Example of the Decline in Quality of Some Series on HBO

[24 April 2012]

What a sad attempt to portray stray girls in the big city. This is a huge disappointment that fits in with the declining quality of many HBO series. If you want to see uncaring sex there is plenty of porno that is a whole lot better and readily available.

There is nothing noteworthy about these "girls" except they are all fairly doleful and apparently adrift. It is a gloomy indictment of current society if most young women living in a big city are in this blighted state. The melancholy of it is really the only thing that makes them sympathetic.

The acting is atrocious and borders on the junior high school level. Stone faced they read their lines in a near monotone. There is better acting from children on Nickelodeon. Hopefully it will improve over time.

Titanic (2012)

More Accurate Portrayal Of A Derelict Captain

[24 April 2012]

The best part of this series is that it shows the true villain of the disaster, Captain Smith. It was outrageously irresponsible for this supposed Master to steam 22 knots into a known area containing ice bergs with a ship that large and slow to turn. Additionally he apparently knew that the sailors in the crows nest did not have the binoculars that they needed for adequate lookout. It was total dereliction of duty by Captain Smith. He should have slowed the ship to a crawl or stopped dead in the water until daylight.

I would have to agree with other reviewers that the contrived stories were unnecessary when we now have real accounts of survivors of the disaster whose stories are far more interesting than the apparently fake Earl of Manton whoever he may be. (There was a Baron of Manton, but he was given peerage in 1922 years after the Titanic went under.) Then there is the obligatory cameo of Molly Brown and of course we saw way too much of the adulterous Benjamin Guggenheim, whose mistress was rescued.

All in all more accurate than we got from James Cameron.

Broadway Limited (1941)

Nutty Comedy That Is Lots Of Fun

[20 April 2012]

Patsy and Zazu were made for each other. This is a crazy comedy where things turn, then turn again, and then again, and again. Interlaced is silliness that is just the ticket to relax and wind down an evening.

Don't expect any deep themes in this show. But everyone plays their part, or overplays it, to perfection. Just enjoy.

Mix in a producer, a star, a former lover, a secretary, a train engineer riding as a passenger, a radio show enthusiast, plus a baby from somewhere and you have non stop screwball. Almost the entire movie takes place on the Pennsylvania Railroad Broadway Limited running from Chicago through Philadelphia to New York. While the real turns take place on the train they have even tossed in some train trouble, which of course Mike the engineer solves, as a tiny subplot.

Downton Abbey (2010–2015)

A Look At The English Class System

[13 April 2012]

An interesting look at the dubious lives of the British "aristocracy". The mostly television and character actors give good to excellent performances in bringing the wearisome life of the wealthy English and the poor lot that is their servants into perspective. Perhaps it goes a bit generous with the magnanimous attitude the Lords and Ladies show to the "help", but after all, it is TV. The sets are magnificent with the smallest details well attended. The clothing appears near flawless for the period.

The writers deserve extra credit in sustaining the Lords and Ladies who do little except eat meals, change clothes multiple times a day, gossip, drink kettles of tea, attempt suitable marriages, and toss verbal barbs to each other? The below stairs servants though are the highlight. They give the best performances and bring shine to the show.

The Vanishing (1988)

Not A Scary Movie

[7 February 2012]

It is not thrilling. It is not scary. The only conceivable disturbing moment is at the very end. And that comes with just a few minutes left in a long tedious film.

The scenes where Lemorne is unsuccessful in kidnapping build no particular tension and could come from any B movie.

Sure the girl is a kidnapped and something happened. But who could be so insipid and dimwitted as boyfriend Rex Hofman? We are asked to believe that three years later Rex allowed the known killer to knowingly drug him and do him in too. Please, that premise is pedestrian, trite and distressingly shallow.