dtaylorii Reviews

The Holdovers (2023)

Full of hope for the future ...

[5/10 · 21 November 2023]

... but ends with the protagonists just a tinch up off the bottom.

We went to see this movie looking to be uplifted and happy. We left content the three leads were over the bad spots in their lives, but just barely. This is a great Hollywood art film, great acting, great directing, good plot development, twists and surprises, sadness, tragedy, verbal abuse, snide comments, zero warmth at first, even something naughty, and tepid warmth at the end. We have hope that maybe, likely, but maybe not all will ultimately come out well for our three new friends.

But we are bummed out they have had such tough and almost loveless, friendless, humorless lives. Yes, they have gotten up off the floor from their latest knockdowns, but what will the future bring?

The Protector: Episode #1.1 (2018) Season 1, Episode 1

Not bad

[9/10 · 29 March 2023]

The photography, the location, the acting all pretty good. Very entertaining series. We arequite happy with it.

We watched dubbed in English: amazing! We also watched with the English subtitles, and they were quite clumsy in comparison. Often the meaning of both was off, but the flow of the spoken English was great. The voice actors and the merging with the background sounds seemed original (if the lips had been syncing.) Bravo to the English dubbing.

The plot in this first season was quite reasonable. The primary actor's actions were pretty good, but sometimes almost comically childish. The other actors parts were primarily reasonable.

Hard Kill (2020)

Silly, Improbable

[4/10 · 25 November 2020]

Silly, improbable plot, ridiculous tactics and action, poor character development, stilted dialog, clumsy and impossible situations. Bruce Willis, how could you take a part in this thing?

The Last Full Measure (2019)

Superbly written and portrayed

[10/10 · 26 January 2020]

Yeah, to you ultra critics, there were uniform and equipment inconsistencies. It was in bright, sharp colors, too, which was also impossible for the day!

So who cares about the little details. The story was amazingly, movingly, beautifully portrayed by a great crew of actors. The whole audience-mostly men-were tightly holding back tears. You could hear them being choked back. It touched all the nerves of anyone who cares about commitment, honesty, responsibility. The treatment of Vietnam then and now; Washington politics; intra-Service sensibilities; PTSD was superb.

This is without a doubt the most moving, and certainly one of the best made films in cinematic history.

Go see it. You won't regret it if you care about the three things I talked about above. THIS deserves an Oscar, a real Oscar, not the degraded, artsy-fartsy, how-depraved-can-we-make-it things they award today.

Cats (2019)

What????

[10/10 · 29 December 2019]

I have never read a more inaccurate series of ratings in my life! The movie Cats was a wonderful movie of a high-quality Broadway or London theater musical. It was not a movie like Star Wars or Aquaman. It wasn't supposed to have a big plot, it was a MUSICAL: song and dance for those of us who can't easily get to New York and London productions (and prefer comfortable seats while watching for those of us who have! 😉) What made it even better was that the cat costumes really moved and close ups of the singers really looked like the singer AND a cat.

Geez, folks! You really need to retract all your low ratings and rate this wonderful production for what it really was!

The Shack (I) (2017)

A touching, warm movie of life, love and forgiveness

[9/10 · 3 March 2017]

My wife, friends, and I loved the movie. It was a touching, warm, beautiful tale of life and its beauties and tragedies, of love and hate, of healing forgiveness and corrupting vindictiveness. Heartwarming with a beautiful lesson for any human being.

Thanks to the directors and the screen play writers for a great job bringing this to life, and to a wonderful crew of actors for their skillful presentation.

Spoiler: Mac learns to forgive God for the evils of life, while living, seeing, and experiencing the gamut of these emotions in His/Her/Their presence.

The Hateful Eight (2015)

A Well-Crafted, Totally Depraved, Sick 3 Hours

[1/10 · 5 January 2016]

I wish I'd read the reviews much more extensively. After an intriguing beginning, the filth began to flow out of the mouths of a woman, white man, and the black man.

If you are willing to watch a limitless, unbounded extravaganza of unreal gore and depravity; that violates all standards of moral behavior; that repeats racial, ethnic, and sexual epithets ad nauseum primarily for their shock value; that obliterates heads and bellies; that rips off limbs; that describes the complete and utter degradation of a human being by another--then actually shows it; this is your movie.

Yah, it was very artistically filmed, a gripping mystery full of surprises. The acting was great. The cast was cool. . But it also was a limitless.... As I said above.

I wish I'd never gone. I feel unclean. This is Nero's Coliseum on Obama's Silver Screen.

Sad, dirty dreck.

Noah (2014)

A Fantasy Tale of Magic, Wizardry which Misappropriates Biblical Names and History

[1/10 · 10 April 2014]

I just saw this. Initially I was looking forward to it, but then I read the almost universally awful reviews by normal people. I decided to go anyway. I understand, now.

It's a pure fantasy tale which has had the extremely bad taste to use Biblical names and history, then interweave mystical/magical and definitely anti-historical material.

In the beginning, there was NOTHING?? Semi-divine rock monster fallen angels?? Noah feeling driven to infanticide of his own grandchildren?? Magic fire crystals? Methuselah makes Shem's girlfriend fertile? The land a modern-style eco disaster, barren of food and plants due to technology and mankind run rampant, so a forest has to spring up from a magical seed in moments so the ark can be built? Noah's sons are wifeless? (Although this bit of un-history allows the director's contrivance of Noah imagining his creator wants his family to die out as his boys are young, therefore wifeless, and there will be no more available females to father children with, so he can later defy and fail in the infanticide he has imagined his creator desires of him.) Jubal Cain a stowaway on the ark??

What a disturbing load of crap. Disturbing as many folks will imagine this is a real depiction of Noah as reported in the Bible, and only a few elements scattered through the crap are accurately pulled from the history.

I wouldn't object so strongly had this film left out the Biblical names and situations, and merely constructed something purely of fantasy.

Why do what was done? To confuse and obfuscate--a shameful role for our entertainment industry to take. Shame on Aronofsky for purveying it, and on Russell Crowe for participating in it!

300: Rise of an Empire (2014)

Hooahh! but not very believable

[7/10 · 16 March 2014]

I enjoyed it; stirs the blood--Hooahh!

But was disappointed in how inaccurate it is historically:

-- Land fighting tactics: no phalanx, not even a shield wall, ever, just a wild mêlée. (Of course, that was a fault in 300, too, but about the only fault.)

-- Gimme a break, a Spartan queen as a warrior? never was allowed to even come close. Outspoken, yes, warrior, no.

-- A female general/admiral in Persia? Ridiculous. She was queen of a Persian ally, and supplied 5 ships.

-- The marine battle with a HORSE?? geez.

However, it was a rousing total fiction that covered at least somewhat accurately a critical phase in history--the Greeks hold off the Persians and thus are able to so strongly influence the future of Western civilization as we know it.