cornwall_7 Reviews

Don Jon (2013)

The Movie that Gets Love Right

[8/10 · 28 April 2014]

I gave this interesting and funny satire an 8 rather than a 10 because it was a little too repetitious and dragged out a single theme a little too long. I'm not quite sure if those are even the real reasons that the movie did not feel like it had enough dramatic excitement to it.

However, perhaps, this movie did not need any false dramatic excitement added to it. Love and sex relationships are not really very dramatic. They're just pretty basic calculations. Either you and your partners personal desires to maintain your personal habits (e.g. Don Jon's desire to continue to clean his own house conflicting with Barbara Sugarman's demand that a housecleaner do it; Don Jon's continued desire for porn versus Sugarman's demand that he be abstinent of porn) exceed your mutual desire for sex, or they don't.

What I love about this movie: it did NOT make porn addiction seem like the most evil habit in the world. Yes, it shows how it could inhibit one's life, somewhat. But this movie was anything but preachy. It did NOT preach that those who watch a lot of porn have completely shallow relationships - sexual or otherwise - with other people.

The movie also got it right, showing the insanity of the cult of catholicism with its meaningless rituals designed only to rob stupid people of their money and make churches rich.

JGL's acting was deceptively subtle: designed to appear over-the-top 1- dimensional: a man concerned only about scoring with women. But the dialog was witty and detailed.

Rocky IV (1985)

Best Rocky Ever!

[27 April 2014]

Best training montage ever!

Best theme song ever: "Hearts on Fire"!

Best speeches ever! Speech after speech after speech. Apollo's speech about how they (Rocky & Apollo) have to do what they were born to do. Adrian's speech of love & concern to try to talk Rocky out of a potentially suicidal fight.

And finally, Rocky's concluding speech after defeating Drago about how we can change, we can all change. Yes - that speech made me cry.

I have been a longtime fan of Russian history, communist history, socialist history. As an American, I found nothing insulting or excessively jingoistic about this movie. If anything, it pokes light fun at the over-the-top excesses of nationalism (James Brown doing "Living in America").

Rocky, the most humble of hero ever put on screen, has the final word.

Rocky V (1990)

Very Good Movie!

[8/10 · 23 April 2014]

People seem to forget that in the entire Rockyverse, Rocky V is the only one to have these important new elements:

1. A serious look at the brain & neurological damage which boxers suffer. In the opening 5 minutes Sylvester Stallone scared me with his frank stark portrayal of the brain damage & hallucinations fulltime boxers can suffer as a result of their sport.

2. Rocky mentoring a new boxer.

3. A street brawl, rather than a standard boxing match in the ring, for a finale. The only slight downside is that this street brawl at night could not possibly have the same dramatic tension & triumph as a professional boxing match.

4. The sleaziness of some boxing promoters, as personified by George Washingoton Duke.

I admit: I felt that the plot device of having Paulie accidentally lose all of Rocky's & Adrian's assets by giving some lawyer or accountant full power of attorney felt very contrived and very inconsistent with the streetwise smarts of the character Paulie.

But this plot silliness was nowhere near enough to damage the overall drama of the movie.

Rocky III (1982)

A Perfect Story

[10/10 · 23 April 2014]

This is a near perfect story. How many boxing movies portray 3 different matches? (even though the first one was a boxing-wrestling exhibition match for charity)

The most inspiring part of this movie is the speech delivered by Adrian in the middle, on the beach, to Rocky Balboa, to motivate him again to fight for what he really wants, for "you, only you, and nobody else". Adrian's speech had me in tears, and Talia Shire has finally, in the serious, ceased being this annoying little mousy wallflower as she had been in the Rocky series prior to this moment.

Stallone's and Mr T's physiques were incredible. I have no idea how Sylvester Stallone stars in and directs these amazing, extremely fast boxing action sequences.

Mr T's portrayal of the always-hungry metaphorical "tiger" deserves many accolades for acting.

The Benny Hill Show (1969–1989)

Greatest Show Ever

[10/10 · 21 April 2014]

Never has a comic genius of such magnitude, diversity of skills, and generosity with the cast and audience ever graced television or movies. Truly the greatest recipient of the Chaplin Award for Comedy, Sir Alfred Hawthorne Hill made us laugh, made us sing, made us ... horny.

Benny Hill's creativity with choreography, jokes, music, lyrics was endless. Even when he repeated bits, he would always add a new twist each time.

Such a shame that Benny Hill was never knighted. Such a crime that he was never elected Prime Minister. He would have done an infinitely better job of running England than any PM since Churchill.

As a feminist male, I applaud his genius for interweaving respecting women with his slapstick comedy. It was always the goofball men in the skits who were made the buffoons. But, clearly, he allowed the incredibly talented women on his show (most notably Louise English and Sue Upton) to stretch THEIR comedic acting in skits (Wonder Gran).

Benny Hill could play harp, play guitar, play whatever instrument he needed to for a skit, in full drag or costume, write the lyrics for his simple yet interesting tunes.

He could do completely silent physical clown routines flawlessly. His skits were never insulting, never condescending, to anyone in society. His emphasis was always on his silly over-the-top characters being goofy. And, of course, nothing was funnier than his relentless ribbing of the always-turned-on heterosexual male sexual desire for women.

Archer: Archer Vice: Palace Intrigue: Part II (2014) Season 5, Episode 11

Monotonically increasing in quality!

[10/10 · 8 April 2014]

This show just gets better and better.

Crazy wild plots, with a good equal balance of ALL the main 8 characters, including Pam and Krieger.

Minor preference: in some ways, this episode was like watching a stage play, with the characters just standing around too long. My preference was in no way large enough to drag down my vote a point from a full ten. But, for Palace Intrigue Parts 1 & 2, I kind of wish the action skipped ahead a little faster. i.e. they don't HAVE to dwell so much on long back and forth side banter (banter relevant to the plot, as hilarious & awesome as it is). So, for example, I had hoped that by the end of Part 2, that the rebels had fully taken over San Marcos and the ISIS crew would have escaped, or perhaps done stuff with the new Communist leaders.

I just hope Krieger has something totally crazy planned to "screw up" the works in the final 2 episodes of this season.

Cosmos: A Spacetime Odyssey (2014)

Unoriginal & dumbed down, although 100% true

[5/10 · 31 March 2014]

Of course we see the religious Christian terrorists with their professional victim complex scream "bias" whenever the accomplishments of an atheist scientist or even a Soviet communist scientist are acknowledged & praised, or when their comic book fairytale "god" isn't instantly inserted into every show on television. These mental inferiors need to be taught logical consistency: anyone can play at their stupid game. I encourage everyone to demand the cancellation of shows or movies that do not perpetually talk about communism in a positive light, or animal rights in a positive light. Any show or movie that does not actively promote animal rights or communism is clearly extremely anti-animal rights and anti-communist.

The problem with this show: it's all flashy CGI and words. You cannot describe the real world, at any level, macroscopic or microscopic, with ordinary natural human language. Only the superior language of abstract math can properly describe everything.

This show should instead go full-throttle showing the physical consequences of partial differential equations and super-symmetric spaces and continuous transformation groups.

Too bad for those who cannot keep up. Shouldn't have wasted your life doing other things.

At least Cosmos does a good job of discussing the history of discovery and the struggles of the individuals who made these discoveries.

As with all science shows, I would like to see a lot more history of the engineering of the physical tools that allow discovery be made. How was metal discovered in the first place? How did someone think of grinding and polishing lenses for telescopes & microscopes? How and who first constructed a particle accelerator? Show us the machine-tooling that went into that.

An Inconvenient Truth (2006)

Excellent Analysis, but flawed narrator

[8/10 · 9 November 2013]

This documentary shows why conservatives are destroying nations, destroying the economy, destroying civilization, overbreeding, murdering animals by eating meat, which is the (spoiler!) biggest contributor to CO2 emissions after transportation.

This documentary shows that the only fault of liberals is that they have not been aggressive and radical enough, and get diverted on non-issues such as sexist & racist comments. "An Inconvenient Truth" would have gotten its message across better if told by those heroes on the frontlines in this war, such as Dr Michael Mann or Dr Benjamin Santer, or true patriots like Ralph Nader who have actually sacrificed for the USA, not conservative cowards like Al Gore. Even actuaries, discussing the insurance risks of continued overbreeding, meat-eating & refusal to get off fossil fuels, or generals in the army and navy, would have made better presenters than Gore.

The USA needs true leftwing radicals running it, who advocate going to war against fascist Arab countries like Saudi Arabia and against the fossil fuel industry, defending & building up the solar and wind industry. Not these anti-war conservative isolationists who oppose war no matter what the reason.