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dallaseleventh
Reviews
Blackbird (2019)
Love is ALMOST everything, In a movie, the script is everything!
Going in, who wouldn't expect an amazing film from such a stellar cast? Seems almost failproof, right? Well, sadly, wrong. Except for one scene toward the end of the film that had me saying, "Thank God, finally, something worth watching," when both daughters decide to confront their mother with the truth of their father's, shall we say, straying ways, the film never finds its feet. Yes, Sarandon is amazing, as always (although at times her physiological depictions of ALS changed, and that was unsettling...like suddenly being able to move a left arm that was supposedly incapacitated, only to remember mid-scene that, oh, yeah, I can't move that arm, or her speech patterns suddenly improving); and Mia Wasikowska offers Sarandon's only authentic connection in the film, save Lindsay Duncan, the best friend. Sam Neil never hits his stride here, which is surprising considering his immeasurable talent. I never believed that he cared much about anything that was happening. It's one thing to appear detached as the character. It's completely another to appear detached as the actor. And tears alone don't necessarily equate with authenticity, Mr. Neil. That's a shout out to Ms. Winslet, too, whose overall grating performance stunned me. Unfortunately, she's in almost every scene. Yes, her character may be really, really uptight, but, could this Oscar winning actress find nothing of nuance, nothing endearing to make us care for her beyond the constipated, one-dimensional figure she scoped out? To say nothing of her horrendously, oh-so-bad take on a mid-western American accent that sounds nothing like anyone else in her family. Anyone ever hear of a dialect coach on-set? She is like nails on a chalkboard, and two hours of that was just too much! Look, I applaud the film maker for taking on an incredibly serious and important topic that deserves not only screen time, but a life time examination by each and every one of us; however, this sad, disjointed attempt to capture magic in a bottle did not work. If you want to see Sarandon shine in a film about dying and death, check out "Stepmom" with Julia Roberts.
Love Under the Olive Tree (2020)
All hail Hallmark for representing the tapestry of humanity in all its beautiful colors.! Oh,wait....
Diversity and Hallmark: oxymoron in its truest meaning. Hallmark has a pattern that they follow, and that pattern excludes vast segments of the real world. I get that they are trying to tap into the Harlequin novel idea of romance, but do we have to eliminate 3/4 of the planet to do that? It's 2020, Hallmark, and given the era we are living in, isn't it long over-due that these tired, exclusionary visages were broken?
The Politician (2019)
Brilliant Season 1! Season 2, series loses nearly all its magic!
The first season is a revelation: Ben Platt, as anti-hero Payton Hobart, is beyond magical; Jessica Lange, always at her best, is a character actor's dream; David Corenswet, um, yes! With one caveat: He's woefully underutilized and nearly completely disappears in Season 2. It's a big mistake because he's the one character that grounds Payton and makes us want to have faith that Payton is worth cheering for! Even Gywneth Paltrow, whom I find exceedingly annoying, passes admirably as a worthy maternal figure to Payton's frenetic energy and ambition. I even cried. More than once. Loved the first season so much, in fact, that I could not wait for Season 2 to grace our screens. And then...it did...with such utter disappointment, it had me wondering if this was the same series. Everything that made the first season so fresh, so beguiling, so noteworthy as to make you want more, is completely lost. And while the brilliant Judith Light and the great Bette Midler-revelations themselves-do their best, they simply could not bring balance to Ben Platt's Payton in the same way that Jessica Lange's Nana did. I spent the whole second season praying for Lange to return. Sadly, Season 2 never recovers from this place of wishing the episode were over: it's trying and it's droll. In attempting to move Payton forward, the story stalled into one implausible, preachy, and boring scene after another. All the charm, gone. I wish they had gone back and rethought this. Season 1 was a rightful launching pad to many more seasons. After watching Season 2, I think this show is done...done...dead. The writers lost their way, and the producers signed off on something that should have never gone forward. It's essentially a huge waste of talent. And there is so much talent here! Had I known. I would have gladly stopped at the end of Season 1 and very satisfyingly called it a day. If you watch Season 2, do it for Platt's musical performances. They are the only thing worth seeing, again and again and again.