Change Your Image
modernart
Reviews
Première affaire (2023)
So many problems with this film.
This film drags interminably and meanders away from what little story there is. What are the stakes? The boy in jail seems happy, there and he's going to ask if he can do woodworking while he's there. No stakes. The lawyer asks permission and is granted it to do the case but just as a side deal while she still focuses on her financial cases. No stakes.
Scripts and films need to always be moving, like a shark. You can't have downtime or you lose the audience, and this film has downtime every five or 10 minutes. What's the story about? If it's about the kid, why do we go away from him for 20 minutes to see the cop and lawyer, almost having sex in the car twice? How does that relate to the story at all? Who are all these peripheral characters that don't seem to have anything to do with a story, the mom, the sister, friends? Find a story and stay focused on it.
And the shot choices became frustrating. Three people in a tense standoff in an interrogation room, and all we do is bounce between the same monotonous, undramatic singles for each? How about a wider shot, a three shot, or at least a couple two shots?
And where are the twists? There are none, it just meanders forward with everyone (still living) fine. No stakes=boring. You could cut thirty minutes from this cut and not lose the story (whatever it is, I honestly couldn't find it. Where are the character conflicts, the characters' desires and the barriers to getting them and how the characters react to those ?). Felt like a modest student film.
My Dad's Christmas Date (2020)
Great acting but no ending at all, none.
Absolutely baffling. Jeremy and Olivia were both surprisingly strong. There were a few major character/script problems, like the main character going a bit nuts on a potentially really wonderful woman from his past near the end, but the larger issue is: there is no ending. Who the hell approved this for release? We get to this potentially heart lifting ending, dad seems to be meeting someone new (did the daughter set it up?) and the daughter tells him she loves him, but where is the ending??? Next scene is dad and daughter doing some odd awkward dance in some completely unknown and random spot by themselves with no dialogue nor closure. I have actually never seen an ending this dropped or incompetent. Preston Sturgess would not have allowed this to be released...
Ilana Glazer: The Planet Is Burning (2020)
Just so completely awful
Not sure why but she is just completely unlikable and unfunny. A bit shocked that this ever got made or onto Amazon.
Godzilla: King of the Monsters (2019)
Doughtery blows $170M on a shockingly bad rendition of Godzilla
You have to lay all blame at Dougherty's feet as he wrote and directed this complete failure. Let's start at the end and go backwards. It is supposed to be a poignant moment when the mom dies. We are supposed to care YET we don't at all because 1) Vera was horribly miscast in the role and 2) The script was sooo bad, the dialogue so wooden and cliche, that the audience actually hated her and thought "good riddance" when she died.
Kyle was also a horrible casting choice. Almost no stage presence, at least in a
CGI "blockbuster" like this. I can't say enough about how bad the script was, the dialogue so simplistic, unimaginative, so borrowed from every other bad movie that Michael might have been kicked out of film school if he had submitted the script then. Pacing was completely off, continuity and color and sound issues throughout (why is Kyle looking in the wrong direction throughout all the closing scenes on the helicopter as Millie looks in the right direction?)
Almost no character development to speak of other than junior high character tropes. If this is the best you can do with $170M then you are unqualified to be a film maker or screenwriter. I assume most was wasted on the CGI. The film would have benefited greatly from a few longer, quieter character development scenes (with some more human and creative and heartfelt dialogue) and those in real places, real settings. Seemed like other than a moment here and there of b roll footage of china and antartica, etc that ALL the dialogue was done on sound stages. That became terribly monotonous and boring. Indeed the initial command center and the one on the plane and the one in the sub, etc they all looked the same. You need distinction between scenes and sections of the film. Why not have had more scenes in a real setting like the kitchen scene between Emma and Madison?
You only cast a single actor who could have carried this movie and that was Millie Bobbie Brown but then you barely used her. She should have been the center of the entire movie. Once you saw the early dailies you should have rewritten the entire movie around her. Then you do a bunch of "cute" things that just distract from whatever storyline you perceived was there. Bradley making ridiculous wise remarks after every scene (and not very well written ones unfortunately). Why exactly with presumably hundreds of millions of people dead would he be calm and smiling and making stupid jokes? The volcano type scene you tried to channel Vesuvius, you threw in a second Asian woman who looked just liked the main one but never did anything with that (and why was a Bill Cosby doppelganger hired to go out and look for her??). The final scene with Godzilla standing as king of the hill (and which hill is that in Boston near Fenway exactly?) was unspeakably unimaginative. That's the best you can come up with to end the film? Even if you went cliche and had Madison and her father standing on the edge of Boston harbor as the sun was rising and Godzilla disappeared off into the water and then a touching moment between them that would have been infinitely better.
Holy cow, what absolute utter crap that was.
Another Life (2019)
As bad as tv gets
Horrible dialogue, ridiculously inappropriate cast (astronauts are now all dingy faux good looking angsty 20 year olds?), major continuity and storyline problems, pacing is just all wrong at every step. Who green lit this crap? Is Netflix completely falling apart or what? There are good young writers and directors out there. Seriously?
Elementary (2012)
Great show but why can't Lucy Liu act at all?
It is just shocking to me how frozen Lucy's face is. Even in the most shocking moments her face stays completely deadpan. Kitty says it is Lucy's new boss who abducted and raped her? No reaction at all, nothing, nada. Drives me absolutely crazy. I love the show but Lucy act! React! A couple of times, like on a date you have smiled and seemed like a real person, but with Sherlock or the police or clients there is NOTHING. C'mon....
Thanks for Sharing (2012)
Self-indulgent waste of digital celluloid
I had high hopes for the movie, liking several of the actors. It was a complete and total disappointment. Seemed some personal and completely self-indulgent exercise by Stuart Blumberg. Maybe he is an addict and did this hoping it would be personally cathartic or helpful. Was not at all pleasant to watch. Poorly written. The story arc actually went nowhere, almost literally starting the main character back exactly where he was at the opening. Actually worse off. So no character progress, no humor, no wit (what could Jane Austin have done with the "story"?). No redeeming qualities whatsoever, no take away, nothing worth remembering.