winopaul Reviews

Lost Angels (1989)

This is what too much leasure time does to Earthlings

[7/10 · 15 November 2023]

The technologist tribe gave you idiots all this leisure time, from the steam engine to the washing machine to the little glow-box spy-tech phones you glue to your heads. And this is what the privileged upper-class white boys to with that leisure time. Not to learn and explore and care and improve, but to just become wastrels. This is not an entertainment movie but more a documentary about the collapse of American greatness. That old saw, "From rags to riches to rags, in three generations" is evident here. I don't know who is worse, the phony grinding strivers, or their juvenile delinquents.

Yeah, the production values are dated, but this is still a well-made flick. When I lived in Silicon Valley I commented how San Jose did not really have a ghetto, like Cleveland and Detroit, cities I had also lived in. A guy I met at traffic school (the second one run like a therapy session) told me the real wastrels were in Mountain View, the rich suburb. He explained the parents did not raise their kids. They just gave 'em 300-dollar shoes and a car, and told them to not bother them. So the kids ran wild. But since mommy and daddy were middle-class, they could buy their kids out of trouble, unlike in the inner city.

I also saw the middle-class kids trying to be bad, whether it was with Mafia wanna-bees in Cleveland or outlaw motorcycle gangs in Cali. One nice thing is that it is not hard to cast this movie in LA. These nepo-baby wastrels are everywhere. Perhaps the whole acting profession is a form of delinquency.

So a whole lot of this movie rang true, though it is a bit '80s dated. If you can apply the principles to today, the story still holds up. After all, going to a party-school college and taking a party major is just a more socially acceptable form of juvenile delinquency. A solid 7, good to kill time until Astrid comes on PBS at 10:00.

Not Cinderella's Type (2018)

Good except for antisemitic undertone

[4/10 · 28 October 2023]

Note the "wicked" family is named Zimmerman. And the dad is "David," an Old Testament name. And that dad even dissed the Cinderella gal's mom as unfit. So pretty much, the not-so-hidden agenda of this movie is the nice prosperity-gospel good Christian family takes poor Cinderella away from the Jews. Look, I'm not Jewish, but I'm not crazy, and that subtext is definitely there. That is why I rated it four stars instead of five. If you think me wrong, just add a star.

OK, the movie was pretty good in view of its budget. The biggest mistake is the two male leads should have been switched. The chubby premature balding teen should have been the friend, and the other actor should have ended up with the girl. The chubby guy would have been much more believable in the role that Sam Kinison would describe as "the emotional tampon". Don't blame the wicked parents' over-acting on them, there were directed that way. After all they had to be cheap and money-grubbing and clannish and all the phony Jewish stereotypes. I liked the Cinderella lead, I even got a lump in my throat when she said, "Are those pancakes for me?!" The writing was a bit uniform; kids, men, and women all had the same voice and vocabulary. With this budget, who can afford a punch-up writer to separate the character's dialog?

Now this move gets pretty interesting when you realize it is about state-sponsored child abduction in the name of Jesus. Nobody impartial saw Cinderella get mistreated by the wicked family. Most everything bad was just on her say-so. How much more interesting if it was all a big con dreamed up by a spoiled little snowflake so she could shack up with her underage boyfriend? Probably re-cast the wicked mom into a helicopter mom with a busy busy busy schedule. Make her name Lily White, and have crosses all over her house. She uses Jesus as way to control the kids and her husband and Cinderella. And the "nice" Bryant Bailey family bailing Cinderella out of harm's way could be an Islamic ISIS cell that has actually learned to love the suburban American lifestyle. And drop the whole $300k trust fund wickedness. You need that if you want to show Jews as money-grubbing, but it would be much more interesting if Cinderella really was a financial burden. Then you get into the interesting question like if it was right for Supreme Court justice Clarence Thomas to take his nephew away from his mom so he could grow up on George Jefferson's East Side with Clarence and his White wife. I get really squeamish when the government takes kids from their mothers. I know it has to happen now and then, but boy, you have to make sure it is the right thing to do.

Empire State (2013)

Written with an agenda

[5/10 · 24 October 2023]

Chris Potamitis, the "star" played by Hemsworth, was the inside man security guard who financed this movie. He brags he wrote the script but probably just made demands on the listed writer, Adam Mazer, to write with an agenda that made him look like the nice-guy mastermind. He was neither. If you look up the news accounts of the Sentry Armored Car Courier Company robbery, the obnoxious guy Eddie Argitakos (Michael Angarano) was called by the sentencing judge "the mastermind". Note they don't mention his last name in the credits so they don't get sued for character assassination. He was an accountant and travel agent and a year younger. The Chris Potamitis (Liam Hemsworth) guy was a failed policeman, like in the flick. There was a third guy that came through the roof, George Legakis, 21, of Brooklyn, a part-time cook. Eddie's dad Steve was caught with 2 million, and did 4 years. The others did 10 on 15 years. There was a fourth guy that got acquitted. The cops arrested the Helmsworth guy and Legakis. They caught up with Eddie later. I doubt Potamitis or Legakis snitched Eddie off. It would not be too hard to find his running mates. There are news reports that they found 60 pounds of cash with Thomas Skiados, father-in-law of the chief suspect in the heist, Demetrious Papadakos. I guess they both skated, they were not sentenced. Three weeks after the robber, Sentry want out of business. The executives were crooks too and got busted, and there was $225k more stolen week later, and many other discrepancies.

OK, fixing this mess is easy, you have the talent. Helmsworth plays Eddie, and Eddie is not an obnoxious jerk but the lovable mastermind and the star. The guy that played Jimmy the Greek (Jerry Ferrara) now plays Chris Potamitis. The obnoxious actor, Michael Angarano, plays Jimmy the Greek the same obnoxious way. That way, when he gets shot, we will all cheer. We need to have Chris Potamitis's dad become Eddie's dad, so we have the drama of him being caught with a couple million bucks.

I am pretty sure that Potamitis made the writer characterize Eddie as an obnoxious creep, because, think about it, Eddie had the money. That is why Eddie's dad had some. I suspect Eddie was not generous enough cutting in Potamitis, so there is bad blood. I assume Eddie promised Potamitis a big payday for keeping quiet in prison, and maybe stiffed him or probably Potamitis wanted more than the agreed amount. Potamitis looks like a wild-and-crazy Greek narcissist if you watch the special features interview. Note that Eddie never knocked Potamitis out, Potamitis just handcuffed himself after the robbery. So Potamitis not only ruined the robbery, he ruined the script by having to be the big man mastermind. This is so tragic. He had a good writer. He had a good director. Only his enormous ego made him botch what could have been a great story.

After Earth (2013)

Sad all around

[4/10 · 16 August 2023]

Yeah, it's bad. Poor acting, direction, and writing abound. Thanks to other reviewers for pointing out the bad editing, and I already saw all the plot holes and implausibilities. As if in the distant future our weapons will be double-sided swords.

OK, Jaden is not as bad an actor as people say. He is just woefully miscast. Would you have Urkel as an action movie star? Or Chris Rock? Maybe Will slapped Chris Rock since deep inside he wants to slap his son. Transference. Then again, maybe his kid is a real jerk, insisting that dad make him star of a movie, and a big-budget action movie no less.

I dislike Shyamalan, so I have to put a lot of blame on him. Not for his direction, but for convincing Smith to take his story of a father-son camping trip and making it into a science fiction spectacular. Was Shyamalan getting paid a percentage of the budget?

The movie would be a 6 or 7 except for the subtext. What kind of sociopath dad casts his own son as a weak pansy that is a constant disappointment? I kept thinking of how much Jaden's friends must have teased him. Then again, maybe Jaden is the jerk, and dad did this to give him a comeuppance.

Why recap all that is rotten when we can just do a re-write based on Smith's original idea? OK, so a father son camping trip. With Will working cheap, this can come in for $25 million easy. And no, don't make the son a candy-assed pansy. Make dad the wimp, scared of his own shadow. I assume Smith stayed out of the frame so as not to upstage his kid. Sorry, he needs to be interacting over more than a Zoom call with the kid.

Now the kid, make him what he looks like, an upper-class nepo baby introspective kid who plays video games. But let's have him be an Eagle Scout as well. He has read all the Foxfire books, and the Survival, Evasion, and Escape Army field manual. He drags dad out to the woods. I suppose a flash flood would be the most realistic disaster, so that's it.

But we need more, especially with Shyamalan, so we gotta put in a twist. Sure the kid takes charge, and leads his wimpy dad to safety. They both respect each other a little more. Then they come across a prepper family living in middle of the forest, where nobody goes, but the flood chased Will and Jaden there. Now we got conflict. The prepper dad does not want people to know he is there, so he plots to kill Will and Jaden. And there can be a prepper teen girl as a love interest. She really wants to be part of the makeup-jewelry-perfume nepo-baby world, but dad is a jerk. And for more conflict, and some symbolism, let's have a prepper son. And he is the proto-biker swashbuckling action type that Will Smith must wish his son is in real life.

Send in the writers. Jaden outsmarts (NOT out-fights) the bully son and takes the teen daughter back to civilization. Will stops being a candy-assed pansy and fights for his son, something Jaden notes and realizes his dad does love him. Awwwwww. I don't think we can have Jaden do a dead-drop and kill the preppers, but he uses his cleverness and imagination to distract them as he escapes with his dad and new girlfriend.

And there is so much "heavy drama" we can put if we feel like it. Jaden can reveal he was repeatedly sodomized by his scoutmaster, which is why he hones his survival skills. The prepper daughter might have been raped by her dad and brother. Maybe dad took a pint of LSD to the woods, so we can dial in as much crazy as we need.

So there you have it, coming of age, teen love, father-son bonding, conflict with nature and Man, and a happy happy ending. 85 million domestic gross easy. Does the DEA still pay for anti-drug movies?

It is interesting to note that After Earth bombed domestic, half the $130M budget, but did OK internationally, almost twice the budget. I put this down to having subtitles so the foreign audience did not know that Jaden talks lazy slob LA nepo-baby talk, where you cannot understand him Take Ed O'Neals advice to the kid that played Manny, "If they don't understand you, you've lost them already." So get Jaden a voice coach and while he does not have to talk mid-Atlantic TV newscaster, he should at least enunciate.

Sad fact is it's 2023, ten years after the movie came out, and if Jaden played it now, he might have done better. This was like watching Spanky walking into Starship Troopers. Lighten up people, he was just a kid.

OK, I am finally going to the library for DVDs. I am on the "A" shelf. This week it's thumb's up for Almost Famous, thumbs down for After Earth, and Admission with Tina Fey is cued up with its infectious main menu theme playing over and over. I assume it will be a thumb's up, since I fantasize about a 4-way with Tina Fey, Kate Middleton, and the character Annelies Donckers from the original Flemish 2015 Professor T.

Apartment Troubles (2014)

Delightful, thought-provoking take on modern Millennials/Gen X Y Z, and the world they inhabit.

[8/10 · 19 July 2023]

I loved this movie. It so captures the empty soul-searching life of modern pampered Americans. I was impressed by the writers capturing the whole New York artiste vibe, and then I learn the two gals are the writers, as well as directors. This made the movie go from funny to hilarious. Such perfection in self-parody we have not seen since Tropic Thunder. It's an exercise in self-absorption that is making fun of self-absorption. Crystalline fractal perfection.

They had the whole East Coast/West Coast thing going on too. I was reminded of that Woody Allen line about how, "People in LA just eat dinner and watch movies." Wouldn't that be the perfect way to format the LA Times newspaper? Two big columns, one for movies, one for restaurants. In more unintentional self-parody, in real life, the brainier-acting gal did end up moving from New York to LA. In real life, the blond writer/director/actor (a super slashie!) just hung around until she spawned and had a kid a few years ago. Welcome to reality, blondie.

The film is an anthropological delight. As a tech worker, my tribe has given you Earthlings a life better than any 19th century king or queen. So I am fascinated by the huge bulk of people too lazy or scared or narcissistic to get a useful job. You know, something like brick-layer, scientist, historian, lawyer, doctor, AC repairman, or grocery bagger. Oh, you enjoy the fruits of my tribe's labor, while making fun of us, as it's been from Junior High to sitcoms like Big Bang Theory. And now you sit around basking in leisure, only to end up not only being useless, but enshrining uselessness.

And the feelings, oh the feelings! It is wonderful to see people who operate purely on feelings, with nary a rational thought clouding their judgement. Getting evicted? No problem, take a private jet vacation, while pouting that mommy and daddy don't love you. And what aspirations. Not making the world the tiniest bit better for humanity or farm animals or plankton. No, one plays pretend in an insurance commercial, while the other one fills prophylactics with sand, and declares, It's Art!

Speaking of art, more multi-level joy with the LA performance piece, which was, you have admit, pretty dang good. It lacked the stark simplicity and ennui of the performance of The Dude's landlord in The Big Lebowski, but it was still excellent. I am not being sarcastic. Let's see you come up with something so smart and fun, and then do it in front of other human beings. The trash-bag art and fashion also evoked images of the tremendous Derilicte campaign in Zoolander. It used things well-done to make fun of things poorly done, only most people can't tell the difference. Check out Welcome Home Roxy Carmichael to see more slagging of LA culture and movie star aspirations. As a bonus, the blond in this movie looks like a cross between Paris Hilton and Winona Ryder.

Which might provide a good juncture to note just how good the acting in this movie is. That these two gals are not A-list superstars highlights the exigencies and vicissitudes of the acting profession. That and not being a nepo baby. It's too bad, but they are still young, so maybe future glory awaits.

And now I have to read Chekhov since he was name-dropped in the movie. And yeah, even I knew they were not talking about the Chekhov in Star Trek. Chekhov's play, The Seagull, is free on Project Gutenberg. The gals intentionally mangled the Chekov quote, so here is is, since you are too lazy to check it out yourself:

"All men and beasts, lions, eagles, and quails, horned stags, geese, spiders, silent fish that inhabit the waves, starfish from the sea, and creatures invisible to the eye-in one word, life-all, all life, completing the dreary round imposed upon it, has died out at last." Anton Checkov

Which gets you thinking, Hey, maybe the whole purpose of technology is to support the arts?

Amsterdam (2022)

Bounding between glib repartee and inane bickering

[3/10 · 15 July 2023]

It was the dialog that turned me off. The movie was chopped up and resorted to voice-overs, the last refuge of bankrupt writing. But that might be tolerable if the actors were not speaking in perfect Hollywood cocktail party repartee. It was so obvious that this was your High School drama club dressing up and playing pretend. Nobody talked like this in 1919. Nobody but preening Hollywood people talk like this, even now. It was half trying to be a comedy, but was interspersed with truly horrific scenes, images, and situations.

I know, 400 years. So it is great to put in a lot of parts for Black folks in movies. But that Black regiment fighting in WWI was more likely staffed by illiterate farm boys, not upper-middle class elites with a Master's from Oberlin.

Every single scene came with the feeling of standing with the scrum of crew surrounding the actors. I am sure they all high-fived at their great natural delivery, and laughed and had a jolly good time before hitting the craft service table.

Equally distressing was the first-world-useless disposition of the characters. Oh, they danced, oh, they laughed, oh they had an uproarious good time. How about raising some kids, or taking care of a grandparent with Alzheimers, or deciding whether to get your spouse a pair of shoes instead of paying the rent? It just exuded this careless upper-class Hollywood pretension, where nobody has to work for a living, at least nobody that is anybody.

As others have noted, cinematography is top notch, as is set design, lighting and the rest. That gets it three stars. This proves working-class Hollywood still knows what they are doing, even if the producers, directors, and writers are in some magical-thinking fantasy-land.

And please, could we move past Nazis as the boogeyman? How about making the three evil businessmen Black, trying to institute a racialist dictatorship where they can hand out reparations and pay off just the Black student loans? Don't hold your breath, too brave for Hollywood, even if it would give three more Black guys SAG cards.

That this movie bombed so badly gives me hope for humanity. If my fellow citizens can see this is shoddy senseless work, well maybe common sense is really more common than I thought.

Summer of Soul (...Or, When the Revolution Could Not Be Televised) (2021)

Finally, a good movie

[8/10 · 15 July 2023]

After giving Triangle of Sadness one star, I feared I was becoming too negative. It never occurred to me that most new movies are crap. Not this one. They had perfect audio to go with the perfect filming, including croud coverage shots. Well, this is too good to be true.

They say the film sat in a basement for 50 years. I wonder if it was largely forgotten, or that getting the music rights to play the songs is what made this un-producible. Either way, there is a great analogy between Tony Lawrence, the DJ and lounge singer that put this great bill together, and Questlove, who managed to secure all the sync rights and assemble a brilliant exposition of the 6 separate performances.

I loved that he put in the Gospel stuff, and BB King in 1969 is too groovy. I still regret not checking him out at Ethyl's Lounge in Detroit in the 1970s. I grew up on top 40, got into rock for a while, then moved West and picked up the Blues, Country Western, and Gospel. When I lived in Detroit, I loved the Temps, and all of Motown. Very interesting seeing David Ruffin on his own, after he got kicked out of the Temps.

When the 5th Dimension did Aquarius/Sunshine, I got a little choked up. I had to think of Hunter Thompson when he talked about the tide of the 60s cresting, and then rolling back to leave the same old war and oppression.

Not surprised nobody at the Festival cared about the moon landing. Look up "The Freedom Budget". We could have eliminated poverty 50 years ago if we didn't do Vietnam and NASA. NASA was/is just another military project, taking the high ground always wins wars. We give trillions to the military contractors, and we still have kids that can't read and who go to bed hungry. It was so nice to see the optimism of this festival, and things have gotten a bit better on civil rights, but all of us are getting worse off every year, no matter whether the Red or Blue crony whores are in power.

Triangle of Sadness (2022)

Elipsis of pretension

[1/10 · 15 July 2023]

This movie is worse than Plan 9 from Outer Space. It is worse than The Room. Indeed, both those flicks had better pacing and momentum. It tries but lacks the soulful ennui of The Room.

There is Marxism, and there is Claptrap Marxism. With straight Marxism, you can argue the fundamental false premise shared by Ricardo and Adam Smith, the labor theory of value. You can note the oversimplification of a complex system into a digital binary dialectic.

With Claptrap Marxism, well, it's a feel-superior pretension of infantile simpletons. All business is bad, like that Down and Out in Beverly Hills flick that showed complete contempt for the dad who owned the coat-hanger factory. Yeah, businessmen are such low-life pigs, employing all those proletariat, and paying all those taxes, and lifting us out of savagery.

This movie descends us back to the savagery of the phony intellectual. It is just so predictable and lame. That people gives it awards and accolades is indicative of how bankrupt and corrupt our elite are. I wonder if they have to remove the first-world silver spoon from their mouth when they look down their nose at us.

The over-repetition shows how little respect the filmmakers have for us. It's like the worst Seth McFarland skit with Stewie saying "Cool Whhhhip" 20 times. It was a chuckle the first time. It is morons doing filler after that. Like the reviewer for Snow Falling on Ceders said, I wanted to stand up and shout "We get it!"

I waited a week to do this review, since I was so angry after watching this abomination. Bad enough it cost me one of my Kanopy credits, I fell asleep and had to re-start the "film," costing me a second Kanopy credit. I could have re-watched Parasite and Glen Gary Glen Ross with those two credits.

And full disclosure, it was so bad, about half-way through I tried speeding it up to double-speed, then gave up and just hopped ahead 10 minutes at a time. I could tell it did not get better; it got worse. I wonder about all those people that rave about this crap. I guess they have the same opinion of the human race as the filmmakers, which by implication makes them feel superior to all of us bourgeoisie peasants that "don't get it." I will close with Zappa, "If there is a hell, it waits for them."

Island of the Lost (1967)

A gem from my misspent youth

[2/10 · 12 July 2023]

I saw this on late-night television when I was a boy. I remember telling my older brother that the only realistic actor was the wooden sailboat at the beginning. He laughed and said there must be something good in the rest of the film. I replied, "Well the sailboat makes a brief reappearance, as wreckage." In the many decades since, I had long forgotten the name of this gem. A decade ago, much like looking up a High School girlfriend, I searched Google, probably using terms like "Wrecked sailboat movie". That gave this title as a likely candidate, but I was not sure. And today, on this fine day, I looked up the title and found a bootleg on the intertube. What joy, this is that same rotten film from my youth. And it's even worse than I remembered. Interesting to see it is "outside art' from the Flipper TV show people. It gives me some appreciation for Roger Corman and the Troma gang. Maybe living in LA lets some talent in by osmosis, there was not much in Florida or the Bahamas, at least not in 1967.

I have always had an affinity for movies. I would always watch them to the end, even the bad ones. This movie was so bad, I finally learned some movies are unwatchable. Indeed, just a couple days ago I switched off Triangle of Sadness, which is far worse than this movie.

When I was a boy, you had to wait until 3:00 AM to see a low budget movie. Now they are just a click or two away.

Remember the Sultana (2018)

Very well done

[9/10 · 3 July 2023]

This documentary is less about the technical reason for the boiler explosion and more about the human stories. Unlike another reviewer, I loved the background on the Civil War. The description of the prison camps was heart-rending. It helps you understand the mental and physical state of the soldiers aboard the ship. The film did not shy away from the corruption that put a couple thousand soldiers on a rickety old boat. There were so many touching stories about the rescues that followed the sinking. I knocked off a star for the lack of explanation of the boat wallowing and causing a flash steam explosion. Note there was no Confederate conspiracy. The History Detectives did a show that debunked all this nonsense. Some people claimed there was a firewood log filled with explosives. Thing is, the Sultana was fired with coal. Check out this soldier's description of the prison camp at (8:24): "Oh the suffering from cold, hunger, and the petty tyranny of cowards clothed with a little brief authority." I wonder if a soldier today could compose something so moving.

Broken City (2013)

What a mess

[1/10 · 26 June 2023]

So much did not make sense here. Sometimes that was temporary. Like when Wahlberg is choking some guy, then a few hours later is at a crime scene and maybe I am face-blind, but I thought that was the dead guy. And boy did he sober up fast. And that gets to the confusion I am still struggling with. Why the heck did Wahlberg's secretary get called over the guy that got killed, and why was Wahlberg whisked to the crime scene, and how did he sober up, and why was he present for suspect questioning, and why are people telling him all kinds of facts lies and secrets? Next is why the video tape that incriminates Wahlberg is in possession of the mayor? It's existence was known to the police commissioner, and he is supposed to hate the mayor, so why did he give the mayor the tape, instead of keeping it for his own use, or burying it, just for the blue wall of silence? Oh, pro-tip to all the coked-up writers who created this mess. Don't make the hero be an extra-judicial killer. That might play in your drama-school cocktail-party Hollywood-addled brains, but most Americans think it makes Wahlberg a rotten creep scumbag. Then there was the stupidity of having Wahlberg's wife get written out of the script half-way through. Did they run out of money to pay her? So the A-list actress goes, and yeah, the young talented pretty new actress was fine, but she should not have been in the movie at all. Have Wahlberg pick up a wino hobo to do collections and save him at key points. The little fluff babe was a distraction and a confusion-- she did nothing but provide the risk that Wahlberg would cheat on his girlfriend, much less murder perps. And look at George Carlin. Everybody loves a recovering wino. So Wahlberg should have been an alky at the start, then when his girlfrend went to leave him, he would sober up. And get her back. Also weird was having the rape victim be his wife's sister, but I guess I could see that. Oh, what the heck was the scene with the girlfriend's parents for? Was it to hit some diversity number that the studio insisted in? Yippee, two Hispanics get SAG minimum, the world is now a just place. I will sleep better tonight.

Happy Valley: Episode #3.5 (2023) Season 3, Episode 5

Talking and feelings and talking and feelings and talking and...

[5/10 · 1 June 2023]

I agree this is a gyrrl-power series where not a single man is portrayed in a positive light. I also agree it is wildly implausible. People don't have this stuff happen and if they did they would not behave this way. Some shows are drama porn, implausible situations strung together, trying to hold our interest. This is more like feelings porn interspersed with talking porn. Blah blah blah; ohh ohh ohh; blah blah blah. Some gal-child writer at the Atlantic Monthly raved about this show so I just binged-watched the second and third seasons. It's not bad, but it is nothing to rave about. It shows how far The Atlantic has fallen. To confirm how dreary and slow this whole mess is, I re-watched an episode of NYPD Blue (S08E17). Whew, like cleaning the pallet with club soda after bad frommage. OK, this Happy Valley episode is over and the grand finale episode just started. I will watch it, not so much to see what happens, but to be glad that neither I, nor my friends, nor my enemies, nor any person I have ever met, behaves like these characters. NYPD Blue S0818 await, the episode where they write Diane out of the show, yippee! PS: the final Happy Valley episode looks to be more ridiculous and absurd than I feared.

Star Trek: Picard: Monsters (2022) Season 2, Episode 7

Hodgepodge slob writing

[1/10 · 30 April 2023]

I like the guy that pointed out this was done in the pandemic and it shows the lack of a writer's room. Everybody had their say, so there is no cohesiveness nor narrative drive pushing things forward. I get the old "back to the 21st century" trope. It is a great way to save on set budgets, and it has been used for decades in this franchise. I am glad to see all the other 1- and 2- and 3-star reviews. I thought it was just me that did not like fantasy and the supernatural injected into a science fiction franchise that is supposed to represent a future truth. Oh crap, I am 24 minutes in, and now I hear monsters growling. No wonder season 2 is free on Pluto.

Let's recap. The franchise has the whole universe as a set. They can transport and tractor beam. They have awesome weapons. They have entire alien races as enemies. Though I don't like it, they can scoot around in time as easy as tuning a radio dial. And this, THIS, is the best they can do? When the woman got dragged off set by the ankles, holy mother of mercy, that is a C-movie horror trope. WTF?!

Remember Amadeus, when the Emperor said "Too many notes?" Oh crap again, hang on, I need a air sickness bag, the monster growling is back. OK, I've recovered. Yeah, too many notes, as in too many characters, too many sets, too many times, too many dream sequences, too many everything. Think of a naval analogy. A ship goes to a strange new island. Stuff ensues. Other ships perhaps. And natives, there must be a new batch of natives. That is all you need, not a bunch of disparate clowns inventing drama where there is plenty of drama just in the premise of the franchise.

OK, now I can go back to reading all the 1-star reviews. It makes me feel less alone and more understood, unlike this episode. Oh wait, 35 minutes in, and there is a twist. So on top of all the crappy writing, we get a Shyamalan. Thank gosh there is a writer's strike coming up. Someone has to stop these hacks.

39 minutes, and we are in full soap opera relationship mode. And not showing relationships by action. No. Talking, endless talking. When my mentor moved to California, he noted that the women talk about sports and the men talk about "Suzy says I am really internalizing..." When they insert these "talking about our relationship" scenes, I start singing "Feelings.... nothing more than feelings... feeling how you felt when you were feeling about feeling so many feelings that you felt when you were feeling those feelings." This episode allows for several verses, (first verse, same as the first!).

41 minutes, and it's another song-- can this crap get any worse? I fear so. 45 minutes, and I do another robust chorus of "Feelings, nothing more than...."

The one star is for Q coming in, as well as Data as the scientist. I hope they paid both of them well for the shame they must endure for the next century. I heard Whoopi complained about being left out of some movies or maybe the first season that I have not seen. So they cameo-ed her here. I assume she must be hard to work with, because now they have her as a younger self, played by a different actress. I am sure the new gal works cheaper than EGOT Whoopi.

Craptastic craptacular, its the 53 minute cliff ending, and yeah, it did get worse. Feynman save me, please save me. Cargo cult Star Trek. It's like that Sherlock Holmes movie that made him an action hero. The next episode is titled "Mercy". I guess they know that is what we need, but I don't expect any mercy from these idiots. Pro tip for the producers: When you have expensive sets and SFX, hire playwrights, not screenwriters.

Who they really need to bring back is. Marina Sirtis. She could look straight into the camera and say, "I got a baaad feeling about this."

Con Man (2018)

Actually, pretty good for a TV movie

[7/10 · 29 April 2023]

I have to believe the negative reviews are from people that hate Minkow, and therefor have to hate the film by some weird transitivity process. He is a monumental scumbag, and this film was partly financed with money Minkow conned from his church. The delightful thing is the postmodern nature of the movie. The A-list actors and Minkow playing his older self were shot and in the can. Then in post, the producers found out Minkow was not only doing a "short and distort" scam after getting out of prison, and then, to top it off, he scammed a few million from his church and millions from the parishioners. So in post the producers changed the ending and I am pretty sure they added some "4th wall" stuff like the guys talking about Minkow playing himself in the movie you are watching. So cherish the irony. What started out as a hagiography about a con man that found Jesus in the joint, has to change to be about a con man that got even better at conning in prison.

Check out Minkow's Wikipedia entry. I learned the story from an article in the The Hustle website titled, "The secretary who helped uncover one of America's strangest Ponzi schemes". That will give you the context of this movie, and why it is a bit chopped up and off-putting with the voice-overs and 4th wall stuff. It's quite fun hearing the dialog written and filmed under the impression Minkow was a reformed con artist and a good Christian. Then you can see all the little patches they put in to make clear the guy was an even bigger scumbag than what he went to prison for the first time. I hope this is not a spoiler, but Minkow got convicted three times and did three prison sentences, just getting out in June 6, 2019. He might be doing a quad-fecta, since he now claims to be reformed and is promoting a 2023 Discovery+ docu-series "King of the Con". Pro tip: don't believe it.

As to specific criticism here, well, I thought the young actor playing Minkow was great. OK, he is in his 30s playing a 16-year-old at the beginning. But they did need a good actor, and one that had some big guns to match Minkow's biceps in the second half of the film. Minkow's acting is lame compared to the A-listers, but still pretty good for a newbie. Everybody else was great for what ended up being a TV movie. The A-list actors did a good job and the camera and sound were OK. I didn't find the soundtrack deficient.

Con Man is free on Amazon's FreeVee streamer, so check it out. It's pretty solid right from the beginning. If you can like the beginning and are not too put off by the chopped up aspects after the producers found out he was still a scumbag, you won't regret watching.

Alone in the Dark (2005)

Drama porn

[2/10 · 12 April 2023]

Yeah, it's a bad movie. It was not really a story or a plot. It was a half-assed mashup of dramatic situations implausibly strung together with no rhyme, reason, or sense. Written and directed by people that have lived in make-believe land their entire lives. Professor Richard Feynman would call it cargo-cult direction. Uwe Boll went through the motions without really understanding his job. Unfortunately, it is inside the Overton Window of bad. It's not Plan 9 bad, so bad it's good, it's just bad bad, certainly in the context of its big budget.

The ADR (additional dialog replacement) is bad, flat and no time spent on it made the mediocre acting come off as bad acting. If you are stuck with Tara Reid, make her a non-verbal autistic so she does not sound so stupid. Use sampling to lower the pitch of Christian Slater's voice by at least two tones, if not an octave.

Free with commercials on Amazon, the drama porn synopsis: VO. Kidnapping (x20), car chase, mano-a-mano, foot chase, mano-a-mano, gun play, zombie mano-a-mano, murder. Whew. Mystery packages (2), airhead scientist, zombie time, marine mayhem, mystery artifact. Flip-phone! VO. VO. Airhead scientist, mall cop mayhem in the museum. Monster murder. Foot chase, SFX, Military from nowhere, monster hunt, clear. Whew. Testosterone, ME CSI, a Stargate goa'uld. Mystery codger monster blood junkie, James Bond Q. VO. Whew. Airhead scientist, Murder, a Stargate goa'uld. Airhead, DaVinci Code, spooky time. Zombies _and_ monsters. Handy full-auto AR-15 laying around. Heavy metal gunfight, bodies everywhere. Mano-a-zombie. Zombie battle. Whew. Penelope Garcia except hot, black, and nasty. Zombie hunt, punji stakes. Monster SFX. Zombie explosion, monster firefight, SFX, money shot. Alien meets goa'uld. Monster mayhem, fluff-babe. Kill a monster. A very interesting commercial about the new Range Rover 2023 Defender, the update of what Vera drives in Northumberland. Mine-shaft factory monster quest, Alien monster killing, Fellini Satyricon walking in front of walls. A twist. DaVinci Code, Raiders of the Lost Ark mashup. Monster lair, more walking in front of walls, sacrifice, roll music up and over, wait, he lives! Dead nun. Whew. Nissan commercial. Centrum, Little Caesars in Spanish (!), xFinity. Music up and over, VO, tease ending. Roll credits.

Bosch: Chapter Nine: The Magic Castle (2015) Season 1, Episode 9

This is when I bailed

[5/10 · 19 February 2023]

The phony drama of one lone cop going into a sex dungeon exceeded my threshold for nonsense contrived situations. I was a little put off by the previous eight episodes using soap-opera writing, doling out little tiny plot advancements with the next show to clear up some contrived mystery. I agree with a reviewer of a movie that got me here. He or she said that the lead was terribly mis-cast. He or she had read the books, and I have to believe they were right. I did think it was absurd that a 60-year old actor was supposed to be in a relationship with a hot young redhead. I guess I will watch the final episode before Sunday night's Father Brown comes on, but no more seasons for me.

Morgan (2016)

Sorry, I liked it.

[7/10 · 18 February 2023]

I am baffled why this film bombed so badly. Sure, it was the old B-movie monster plot. The scientists want to save the monster, the military (or corporation in this case, same thing really,) have to destroy it. One reviewer noted the trailer made the movie seem more like a fantasy spiritual thing, so that was a marketing error. Now I will admit the movie is terribly misogynistic. It's nonsense that the emotional AI will turn into the sociopath, much more likely that the heartless AI will go postal. So you have to ignore the misogyny and just enjoy the good acting and lively plot. When the cook did not shoot Morgan in the head and let her get the upper hand, yeah, I started screaming F-you! F-you! At the screen and tried to stab the close button, but I was too spastic to hit it, and ended up finishing the movie.

I note the writer did All Nighter next, and that too is free on Amazon, so I will check that out. I am pretty sure this flick killed his career. I think he is brilliant. The scene where Giamatti eggs the AI on into attacking him was just fantastically well-written. Sad fact is, if you don't make money for the overlords, you don't get any work. C'est dommage.

The director is a nepo baby and I thought he did fine. Either that or the crew and studio knew he needed help and did all the work. Or maybe his dad spent long hours after work explaining what he should do. It really was a fine job, though he should have demanded a re-write before he took the work. Just like that Ex Machina movie would have been good if the AI was the scientist and the scientist was pretending to be the AI, a simple script change could have made this film much better.

Now, the outlaw bikers have a saying, "If it has breasts or wires, sooner or later, it's going to give you trouble." Only they don't use the word "breasts," they use the vulgar expression that rhymes with "hits." This movie has the same hateful disposition. So the rewrite is simple. Let the emotional AI be the hero, just like women in real life do all the civilizing and intelligent behavior while us guys tinkle in the corners and butt heads. We can save all the footage of the white male cis corporate overlords, they are cast perfectly, and are perfectly despicable.

Ten, even five years ago, the re-write would be trivial. The new emotional AI would still present as feminine. The "get er done" heartless Asperger AI would present as male. The female scientists would be on the side of the emotional AI, the men characters would take the side of the heartless AI. Unfortunately our "owners," in the George Carlin sense, have realized that if they can create racial and gender wars, it will take us peasant's minds off the fact that our elite are looting our labor and wealth, no matter what color or gender you are. So now we have to tread so very lightly. OK, if you can ignore the inherent misogyny in this film to enjoy the acting and plot, you can ignore the gender norms we have to break in the re-write.

In fact, lets go for an Oscar, perfect for an $8-million budget film with A-list actors. So now the emotional AI will present male, and the heartless one will still be a girl. Oh, the symbolism, oh, the meaning. Yes, gender is not inherent, it's simple programming. So that is Best Picture, and Best Screenplay. Sure the emotional AI will have "teen problems" that gets the plot moving. Read the book Raising Ophelia for ideas there. But then we can give the actor (he's a guy now remember) a developing role that actors love. He starts out kinda Mean Girls but ends up like the gal sheriff in Fargo. Remember, all gender is switcho-chango if we want those Oscars. How do you think Shape of Water got 14 nominations? Platonic theoretical claptrap, that's how. Dig in.

As a side note, and to harvest those delightful down-votes, I will note that as a youngster, when we came across an injured bird in the playground, all the girls said, "Let's make a splint out of a Popsicle stick and save it!" All the boys said, "Let's crush its head." When these neo-facsists order me to use poor grammar and refer to them with a plural pronoun, I will remind them we have a perfectly suitable singular gender-less pronoun, "it". Do you know what sex the baby is? No we don't know what _it_ is but we just hope _it's_ healthy. At least this movie got that right. Of course, to get those Oscar nominations, half the cast will be they/them, and there has to be at least one transgender character, and several lesbian and homosexual relationships. As they noted in Tropic Thunder, "Hey, it's Hollywood. Everyone's gay."

Lawless (2012)

A nice straight-ahead conflict flix

[8/10 · 18 February 2023]

I guess the Tubi algorithm sensed me skipping ahead during the execrable Out of the Furnace. So Tubi served this better film up next. Just like Bill Clark kept the coke-head writers of NYPD Blue authentic, the source book for this film gave the script a more true sense of hill folk. The characters are more genuinely social and interactive. The family bonds are much more believable than in Out of the Furnace. That film thought country working-class folks were simply Brentwood sociopaths with a twang. This film has the typical drama points and moves along OK. I liked the actors, I assume this is the new batch of A-list stars. The trivia says the religious. Girl almost walked of the set due to the drunken antics of her love interest. If that is true she is the best actor on Earth, she looks so comfortable around him.

Out of the Furnace (2013)

Slow and tedious.

[2/10 · 18 February 2023]

Pauline Kael wrote about Fellini's Satyricon, "... most of the time one has the feeling of a camera following people walking along walls." So watching Out of the Furnace, one has a feeling that most of the time, you are watching A-list actors staring off into space. Thanks to Amazon's "More watch options," you can find out that you can see it for free on Tubi. It's two hours long. There is about 30 minutes of plot. The great thing is that Tubi lets you jump ahead 30 seconds. After suffering for half the movie, I started using the jump feature to improve the pace.

I hated this movie. It starts out with an unrecognizable Woody Harrelson being a jerk at a drive-in movie. No connection to anything, and his character does not get really introduced until a half-hour later. The fundamental problem is that this is a representation of working-class people as imagined by a bunch of privileged bubble-dwelling Hollywood elites. Unlike in Hollywood, in West Pennsylvanian, people are not insular and alone. They are social and interactive. Watch Welcome Home, Roxy Carmichael to see how aloof, provincial and alone Hollywood people are, and how connected and involved and loving the country folk are. Right now the scene just came up where Christian Bale seems to lead a SWAT team into a house. Does anyone with an IQ over 60 think any SWAT team on Earth would allow an amateur ride-along? OK, it's 1:32:35 and it looks like the movie, or half-hour TV show to be precise, is starting. More staring off into space, OK, back to the 30-second fast-forward.

A few minutes ahead, and the plot goes from boring to absurd. Is this how Hollywood writers really think human beings behave? If you want boring and dumb, this movie has it all, and well-acted boring and dumb at that. That is why it bombed, and that is why you can watch it for free on Tubi, thanks for the tip Jeff Bezos!

1:41:41 and I am thinking "Why are you punishing me? Who wants to watch such BS?" My only hope is that each and every character in this flick ends up dead or in Federal prison. The writers, producers and director have a special place in hell reserved.

And...... it's over. The ending was even stupider than the rest of the plot. The closing shot was inexplicable, just like the opening scene, I have no idea or what I am looking at. By taking a screen shot, pasting into IrfanView, and using the gamma to get some brightness in the shot, I can see some post office boxes on the left, and a phone and recorder on the table. Was that where Forest Whitaker was taking a statement? Was the whole killing scene a meth-spun fantasy? OK, now I am pissed. This movie is an homage to sociopaths by a bunch of sociopaths that like to hurt people. I will never watch a Cooper movie again, now that I know he is such a pig.

The Post (2017)

An inadvertent expose of the crony class

[9/10 · 11 February 2023]

OK, this is an inspiring movie, right up there with The Amistad. Anatole France said, "The law, in its majestic equality, forbids rich and poor alike to sleep under bridges, to beg in the streets, and to steal their bread." Well, this movie is not about the poor, that is for sure. While the characters threw cocktail parties and did dinner soirees, my pals were crawling in the mud in Vietnam. A similar batch of cronies were doing the same thing when my dad was freezing his kneecaps in the Hürtgen Forest 79 years ago. There is a yet another batch of cronies cheerleading us fighting Russia to the last Ukrainian.

When the Post wanted to keep their pipeline to government open, there were right there promoting the buildup to Vietnam and all other wars. When it gave them status and money, they published against the wars.

Note that not one single tiny thing has changed. Our wonderful media has conned us into Vietnam, then Kuwait, then Iraq, then Afghanistan, and now Ukraine. They watched and approved as we sent all our jobs to China, and while our "owners," in the George Carlin sense, looted the economy for their own benefit.

The rich and privileged class just buys the politicians and media they need, and then proceeds to transfer tax money away from the middle class, to their cronies, and directly from the middle class, to their cronies.

This movie is so perfect. It's your high-school drama club dressing up and playing pretend about your high-school newspaper, which is writing about your high-school student council. All of them bums, who see themselves as just too important and special to do real work, like pipe-fitting or grocery bagging. The movie also shows how provincial they all are, more so than any feed-lot employee in Kansas. In 1971 there were car dealers with more revenue then the Post.

And boy is this crony class full of their theories, with no practical experience. So they undertake imperialism in the '50s, socialism in the '70s, globalism in the '90s, and social justice in the 2000s. All BS. When these self-involved dorks finally realize their precious theory is all wrong and disastrous, they publish their exposes and congratulate themselves, while staying firmly in power. From the Pentagon Papers to Wikileaks. From the Panama Papers, to SIGAR. I am sure Biden is reading equally grim things about Ukraine. That is probably why he has not started a nuclear war yet, bless his heart.

This movie catches the US elite right when they were transitioning from a WASP elite to an Ivy League elite, as Michael Lind has written about. Both gangs are just as self-assuredly stupid and undeserving of their privilege. We are doomed. Read Griftopia.

Yes, democracy dies in darkness. The Post and their pals have been peddling darkness as their prime product for decades. Look how well they peddled the myth of RussiaGate, where the DNC fabricated lies, and then got the FBI and CIA to do free opposition research. Talk about a constitutional crisis. No Post expose on that, though. Indeed, this 2017 movie was directly inspired by the DNC losing power and is a not-so-subtle opposition smear. I can just hear Steven and Meryl whining, "Oh god, we have to do something!"

So yeah, watch the movie. Get choked up when Katharine Graham bets the company, to do the right thing. Get choked up during the Supreme Court scenes, just like in The Amistad. But remember the whole time, this is just a nice PR job about one thing the paper got right in 100 years. And how appropriate that you can watch it free on Amazon and Jeff Bezos owns The Post the way you or I own a pack of chewing gum. How handy that exploiting loopholes in state sales tax laws let him become a billionaire, huh?

Rob the Mob (2014)

Great story, great acting, great production.

[9/10 · 10 February 2023]

Finally a modern movie that does not end up like a first-person shooter video game. Nice pacing, not all front-loaded, and not so that watching the trailer is the better than the whole movie. People say it's no Scorsese, I disagree. In fact I think it might be better. More truthful and factual, and less mob mythology. The other difference is the actors are less well known. I did not say they are less talented, perhaps other than those few seconds when Martin Sheen was breaking up the fight in "The Departed." But stick with the film, and pretty soon you realize just how brilliant all the actors are. Ray Romano is no surprise, you expect him to be good, but everybody was outstanding. The two leads and all the others.

Now I met a biker that used to rip off drug dealers on the same principle, they can't go to the cops. He was more of a sociopath, and way more venal that the lovable couple in this film. So maybe they mythologized the real-life couple, but who knows. The quality of the script at every level just amazed me. The overall plot and exposition were great. The dialog was fantastic-- what an ear the writer has, and what talent the actors have.

This is a real gem, these days free with ads on Amazon, so be sure to check it out.

Slovenian Girl (2009)

Slovenly Slovenians

[2/10 · 30 December 2022]

Firstly, despite Tubi changing the title to "A call girl," this is not the 2012 foreign film about Swedish politicians doing an Epstein. If you're looking for Olof Palme getting busy with teenagers, that is another movie. This movie sucks. It is one of those naturalistic slice-of-life art films. Former communist countries are like upper-class artsy Americans. Both are so shielded from the reality of having to make a living, they find watching a couple hours of misery and degradation entertaining. Normal people watch this crap and are needlessly reminded of the nasty brutish and short reality we deal with every day.

The call girl is despicable. Like Mary McCarthy said about Lillian Hellman, every word she says is a lie, including 'and' and 'the'. I wanted to smash a grapefruit into her face. Her dad is better, but having visited Eastern Europe, people tend to look slim, not morbidly obese like her dad and his pals. The film is dreary and horrible except for the very end, when the call girl's dad gets his band doing a cover version of Frank Zappa's "Bobby Brown".

PS: The etymology of slovenly has nothing to do with Slovenia.

Imagine That (2009)

Imagine paying for a kid's movie and getting this

[3/10 · 13 November 2022]

Any parent is annoyed if they sit through 1 hour 47 minutes of a movie that has zero interesting things for their kid. Now imagine you are Paramount and paid 55 million bucks for this mess. Talk about annoyed. Maybe the Nickelodeon division is full of alcoholic coke-heads. Maybe Eddie Murphy insisted on doing a kid movie since maybe he has some kids. Maybe some dead-beat relatives needed jobs. But now you are the Paramount exec that has to release this jumble of nonsense. OK, re-shoots for sure, but how can you save this? First, you assign the entire 55 million budget to Nickelodeon as a dead-weight loss. Take that, kiddie people.

OK, it is in no way a kid's movie, so let's go edgy art-house. I think that is the white flying horse division, but whatever, Paramount must have some gang of misanthropes they can assign this to. Oh gosh, it's playing on Bounce TV as I write-- the big ending. This sucks way worse than even I thought. So now, we keep the adult structure of a stock picker fighting a phony corporate climber. Conflict: check. The aspect where the phony Indian is unmasked was great and can stay in. Justice: check. But instead of an 8-year-old doing completely inexplicable stuff, let's have it be a hooker that Eddie Murphy gets his stock tips from. Sex: check. Maybe we can re-cast the wife for this. The kid is written out, but I assume they did not have to pay her too much anyway.

Now the hooker could be a sex therapist, maybe have Eddie fail in bed to get the yuks started. It's complementary to his downward spiral at work. The hooker can come across as a real air-head, and the big reveal is she really is a genius and just plays dumb to keep from being threatening to her clients. The purple blanket is now a sex blanket, plenty if yuks in that creepy thing getting tossed around the office. Now the easy job is to cut down this thing to 90 minutes. That means there is plenty of room to cut out the kid, the wife, and the wife's boyfriend. If the wife is under contract maybe you can get her to change to the roll of hooker for cheap, otherwise cut her out too, and cast some new gal for cheap.

Now remember, you dumped the 55 million on Nickelodeon, so going into re-shoots your cost basis is zero. If you cry to the actors, maybe you can get the re-shoots done for a few million. If the Nickelodeon lawyers are better than their producers, writers, and directors, then there might be clauses in the contracts to do re-shoots for free, and then you have it made.

By revealing the hookers stock picks when she inadvertently moans them out during sex, well, that should get the box office closer to the 55 million the idiots at Nickelodeon vaporized.

Guilt: Episode #2.2 (2021) Season 2, Episode 2

Can this be fixed?

[2/10 · 30 August 2022]

OK, in the Ep 01 review I slagged pretty hard on the writer, director, and producers. This one is more positive. I figure we can have fun playing producer, sending this convoluted complex mess back to re-writes. I only watched the first two episodes, before searching "Guilt recap season 2 episode x" to find recaps by WTTW and Real Mockery. That convinced me not to waste my time on episodes 3 and 4. Yes folks, the confusing coincidental convoluted incomprehensible plot only gets worse. Way worse.

Ep 3 and 4 spoilers coming as well.

The first problem is every single character is despicable. OK, so instead of Max being a crooked lawyer turning into a vengeful sociopath, let's have him be an innocent patsy that was framed by Roy to take the fall. Max does not work for Jackie, she is written out, as well as all the baggage she will bring in ep 3 and 4. Max's brother is written out, this is not a Russian novel with a 1000 characters. KISS. Rather than dozens of improbable coincidences bringing the characters together, let's try to give them some agency. Even with the as-written plot, Roy would not in a million years go to Max for something corrupt. So Max is trying to redeem his good name and get his law license back, with a minor revenge on Roy. So sure, he goes to Kenny the former acquaintance to get started in a small office. Kenny is not a lame lawyer doing wills, he is a crack private investigator. They do start doing wills and paralegal stuff, to support themselves, but now Max is on the hunt to clear his name.

Now Roy, he has not gone straight a la Malcom Gladwell's book Crooked Ladder. He is still rotten to the core, and it was he that framed Max and got him sent to prison. Roy's daughter Erin has all the same murder scenes. She is not a nice girl who hates her corrupt dad. She is even more corrupt than Roy, and willfully and happily calls him in to clean up the mess. She insists on getting the money. Roy is not so stupid to go to Max to launder the money, Max is honest remember, and they hate each other. If we have to have stupid coincidences, let's have Roy go to Terry, Max's old cellmate, to launder the money. This is how things might get back to Max. Or maybe Terry just hears things on the street, and knows Max would be interested in Roy laundering money. They were cellmates and Max told him how rotten Roy is.

Rather than everyone being broken, Kenny knows beautiful black Yvonne the cop. She is not at AA and neither is Kenny. They know each other since Kenny is a PI and works with the police. OK fine, she got passed over for promotion, and her boss is still corrupt and working for Roy. Yvonne's boss might have planted evidence against Max that sent him to prison. Now Max wants to get dirt on Roy, and enlists Kenny, who enlists Yvonne. OK, three good guys and three dirtbags, we have a show.

I see no need for the little land developer sub-plot who supplied the money that Erin's husband stole at the casino. If the priest needed bribing, then Roy would have just done it directly, no need for invented third parties. I say we just let the bag of money exist, and drop the whole tracker chip subplot. Or maybe let's have the priest send the guy to the casino with the money so god can double it for the congregation. That can tie the priest and Roy together and explain the big bag of money, and then we can leave in the tracker chip, and let that get Max, Kenny, and Yvonne back to the priest. We would have to have Erin go to launder the money then, since Roy would recognize his own bag of money. Details.

We have to give awareness of the murder to the good guys. So maybe Yvonne gets the crap job to investigate the dead guy. She notes his death and the missing person of Erin's husband are the same day. That leads her to the dead husband, and she mentions this to Kenny, who tells Max, since he knows Max wants dirt on Roy. The three good guys now go to work to uncover the murder, but before that, they see the corruption. The whole land deal McGuffin is fine I guess, but I don't know what to do with the priest. Maybe just a nice guy that Roy can abuse or kill so we can hate Roy even more. Trying to save the priest can add an element of suspense, but then I say we let him die, he is going to heaven after all.

Good, now the rotten mother of Erin twist is fine, I am not sure we have the mother and Roy estranged, or have all three as the rotten family unit. I guess we need hidden land deals and all that so Max has something to figure out, while Kenny and Yvonne figure out the murder angle. If I got it right, we just can't have Terry be both Max's former cell mate and the brother of the dead guy that Erin killed. But a vicious cellmate is good drama, so let's have him in it, but maybe he can end up killing Roy as a favor to Max, but of course, Max never asks Terry to kill Roy. Max is a good guy, remember. Let's say he used his law skills to get Terry an early release, and Terry feels he owes him one.

OK OK, keep spitballing with me here, maybe Roy and his wife are estranged. Maybe Roy and the wife got estranged over the land deals, she is holding out and scamming him, this is the scumbag family after all. Then the murder can bring them all together as one happy rotten corrupt scumbag family unit. Then thanks to Max and the good guys, Roy ends up dead, Erin ends up in prison, her mom ends up penniless, and the Yvonne's corrupt boss ends up indicted. Fade to credits.

Guilt: Episode #2.1 (2021) Season 2, Episode 1

Confusing, complex, and convoluted

[2/10 · 30 August 2022]

I watched the first two episodes on PBS here in the States. I found the plot convoluted and confusing. The poor direction, where it was not made clear who was who and what people were looking at, did not help. Reading recaps for episodes 3 and 4 encouraged me to not waste anymore of my time. Use "Guilt recap season 2 episode x) as a search term and you get recaps by WTTW and Real Mockery. As I feared, it gets way worse in the third and fourth episodes. Read the comments on Ep 4 on realmockery and you get an idea how confusing and poorly done the show really is. I left a similar review there, but it contains spoilers.

It is obvious it requires about 3 or 4 re-watchings to even have a dim comprehension of what is going on. When the Eo 3 and 4 recaps alluded to absurd situations and even more convoluted nonsense, I knew not to bother with this show.

As to what drug the writer was on, I first thought methamphetamine, but it really didn't have that "Some Call it a Slingblade" clarity, so my bet is alcohol and cocaine. That famous painter said his painting was not done until he had nothing more to take out. This writer felt the screenplay was not done until he added even more unbelievable coincidences, implausible behaviors, and incredible motivations. The writer is a sociopath to do something like this. I am sure he goes to his Edinburgh cocktail parties and brags how is scripts are "abstract" and that the viewer has to invent his own interpretation, which makes the show special and invests every viewer a different way. I think he is lazy and too incompetent to tell a coherent story, and he was indulged by the producers.

The notable thing about this SE02 series is that every single character is despicable. I see a lot of British screenwriters that are misogynist, but this guy hates everybody. I wanted to take a cricket bat to everyone but Jackie's dog. I guess if you live in privilege and don't really know any real people and real situations, you can write stuff like this so you can amuse yourself looking down on the human race. I need something a bit more uplifting, sorry.

As to the people who liked the show, I see it as a form of Stockholm syndrome. You were kidnapped by the superb acting and good dialog. Then as the continuous confusion abused you, you felt you deserved it somehow, and it was actually a good thing. If the producers reined in the writer on the absurd plot and execrable exposition, he was capable of doing great dialog. It is a case of great tactics and lousy strategy. Kind of like the wars in Vietnam and Afghanistan, or letting a sergeant replace Eisenhower in WWII. I suspect this show will not do very well in the ratings, and would only get a third season if the producers are as disconnected from reality as the writer and director.

If you want a great show with straightforward exposition, watch the Australian police procedural City Homicide, maybe start with The Return, S01 EP04 (free online at Tubi and YouTube and maybe IMDb for all I know). You always know who is who, but there is still a mystery to be solved. I rate this show up there with NYPD Blue, made great by former cop Bill Clark, who kept the screenwriters honest.