Reviews
A Deadly Threat to My Family (2024)
Another silly Lifetime movie...
Another Lifetime dumb, badly scripted, badly acted, badly directed movie.
Sometimes I watch these because you don't really have to look at the screen. You can play on your phone while it's on.
Anyway, this one was especially annoying enough to make me write a review about it.
Usual tropes: wife is concerned and is poopoo's over everything, she's saying by hubby, who ignores all the red flags. And wife goes along with it. Dumb teenager who thinks they know everything and Mom knows nothing. Dad's always gone so he's not there to pay any attention whatsoever and protect his family and ignores his wife's concerns.
The sister is nasty and arrogant and, bottom-linem she would have been out of my house and on the street within 5 minutes of her being rude and nasty to me in my own home.
I found that particularly frustrating as well as the dumb, clients, useless husband.
Big Little Lies: You Get What You Need (2017)
The Celeste and Perry Story...
...Angered me so much. Kudos to the actors, I guess? Besides him actually beating her. The forced, I'm so attracted to you, demanding sex all the time has nothing whatever to do with sex.
It was about submission and control and power. Everytime he initiated sex, I would get angry. I wanted to scream at the screen, can't you see what all this is about? The poor woman couldn't even shower or have an evening home alone without him raping her, even if she seemed to be participating.
Of course he's a rapist because rape is not about sex, but about domination.
And the manipulation! Calling her Sparkles, and making up to her, rinse and repeat and she an educated woman capable of earning a good income sticking around for the kids' sake and her thinking he'd NEVER hurt the kids? Arrrhgghhh! Of course he would! To hurt her. Get back at her! How dare she leave him. He'd show her!
Narcissists get revenge!
And of course the kids knew, especially Max. He knew about their disgusting sex, too. That wasn't love-making. It was raping. That's why he knew what to tell the little girl he was hitting. I hope those cute kids get therapy.
I guess it was a true to life portrayal of DV and the manipulation and control and lies of men who abuse and the lies women tell themselves, like it's their job to fix grown men!
Oh yeah, I was triggered!
Magazine Dreams (2023)
So many emotions
Saw this with my husband in the afternoon. Really playing on only one theater, AMC.
I thought it was a movie about boxing and I've always liked heavy weight boxing. Nope, it's about bodybuilding, but way way, way more than that.
It's a movie about the human condition - mental illness, marginalizaton, depression, uncontrollable anger, living with overt and subtle racism, societal class warfare, poverty, desire, ambition, sexuality, sexual dysfunction, the human need to matter, to be heard, to be seen.
About being socially awkward and weird and not understanding how your intensity frightens people, but also knowing and seeing that a big black man scares a certain segment of society.
The main character wants human connection, but clueless how to achieve it. He's ruining his body trying to achieve greatness. He wants. He wants. He wants. And then when he gets what he wants, he freezes... is taken advantage of, but he still reaches out.
Without spoiling the ending. I'm glad it ended that way. I really don't think I could have taken it otherwise. Way too deep and emotional and intense of a movie.
Jonathan deserves and Oscar!
Sharp Objects: Milk (2018)
Some Questions Answered Here
Yes, Amma with two accomplices killed the girls. She also killed the new friend. Motive was jealousy of any attention given to someone else other than herself either by her sister or her mother.
The mother had a really bad relationship with her mother and in her need for constant attention and adoration he sickened her daughters to feel needed but also to get attention from care providers. Mom actually kept a diary of her interactions with the nurses and the staff and talks about getting all dressed up and baking goodies and things and enjoying the attention.
Mom actually had an arsenal of drugs and poisons that she used on her daughters. Way more than mentioned in the movie.
The reason why Camille ingested the food and the medicine was to gather evidence as well as pull attention away from her half-sister. She always regretted not saving her other sister and so she was willing to sacrifice herself to save Amma.
She does report her find to the police and her sister is put in prison for the murders of the girls while mom goes to prison for attempted murder. It was not really addressed in the book whether or not mom also gets a murder conviction for killing her first daughter. No mention of whether or not the father suffered any consequences, like a homicidal neglect or manslaughter for not realizing or for willfully ignoring the fact that his wife was slowly killing her daughters.
Strangling was Amma's preferred method of murder.
The Undoing: Do No Harm (2020)
Two Characters Pulled Out Their Money Privilege
Good episode (watching with hubby who looked bored the first episode and is now all in! Lol!
This episode, we see the entitled and unlikable side to both Grace and her Dad.
Dad gets on his high horse and sneers at the lowly cops and Grace tries to intimidate the husband. Not only that she's talking about HER feelings, while ignoring the fact that this man -who doesn't have a lot of money - is raising her rich husband's child, his little boy who had cancer, and whose wife was raped and is now dead, beaten to death. And she declares that she's not taking anyone's crap, while giving it to a bereaved husband and father?
Then she goes running to the cops to declare that this man is *stalking* her when she was the one following him first. And the times that she's seen him, he was actually near the school - only to have the cops show her near the location of the murdered woman. She got her comeupance and she deserved it!
Not only that, she goes to the doctor who is risking his career because he signed a no disclosure statement to ask him questions about her husband and then proceeds to argue with him - instead of listening. The man is telling her who her husband is, a side he has observed in the workplace that she hasn't and she doesn't want to hear it - only her voice.
Plus, she's going around disparaging the poor dead woman who also has a son, just like see does. And just like she wants to protect Henry and she wants to find her husband innocent in order to protect him she doesn't give a wit about someone else's child's feelings or someone else's feelings about their spouse - again, it's all about her and her family not about someone else and their family.
Rich, entitled, privileged, self-centered demanding things go her way. I going the character throwing her weight around very unlikeable in this episode.
Grace isn't so kind and nice afterall and things she knows everything - yet she never suspecting her husband's cheating!
Devil in the Family: The Fall of Ruby Franke (2025)
Completely unbelievable!
First a bit of a rant: Boy was this hard to swallow! So, obviously, we have several manipulative, narcissists - greedy, money hungry exploitative dad trying to look innocent and like a victim, mom who's, basically, bats* crazy and believes in her own omni-potency and an outright childabuser, and Hildebrandt, a malignant greedy narcissist, who saw a bunch suckers.
And then you have a community of stepford women and stepford men, who believed the nonsense of a guy who was obviously a con artist and created a religion, which out of many world religions sounds like something a 13-year-old boy would make up if you asked him to make up a religion.
And these are the adults.
The kids are innocent.
Of course, like always, religion was used to manipulate the children, to manipulate the YouTube audience, which seemed to have finally caught on, a bunch of brainwashed women and sad-sack testosterone driven men, and, as always, used to create whatever narrative the narcissist / cult leader / priest / preacher/minister /power hungry individual can pull out of their nether region.
Everything is super clean and light and bright and fake and artificial and the only one who seems to have caught a clue was the sister, the daughter.
I mean, are sane, rational adults expected to believe that people in the 21st century actually believe there is a living devil? Well, we've seen time again they actually do exist - the people -not the devil.
So this lonely greedy, narcissistic charlatan, came into their lives and took over and took over their daughter's bed, told the husband to get out, and could do just that, because we have adults who don't want to be adults. So many lonely, gullible people out there hoping that someone will tell them that they will solve all of their problems and make all the bad things go away.
As long as we have adults who are not adults and want a sky daddy or anyone who comes along and starts telling them that they can solve all their problems, the world problems, and have all the answers, etc., will we as a species continue to have the hot mess that we have going on in the world today.
Rant over - so we have a lot of random video shots, which does add to it. But it would have be nice if it was in some sort of chronological or coherent order.
Thank goodness they had the common sense to blur these children's faces and hopefully not exploit them any more than they have been - I hope any money made from this is going to college funds/therapy.
I'm not a religious person and the reason why I'm not is because when I was 8 years old and I was being taught the Bible I understood that it was a bunch of nonsense and I couldn't believe that grown-a* adults actually believed it. I'm fairly sure my parents didn't, but they thought - religion, can't hurt, might help.
Well, it can hurt a lot! As we've seen by the stories that make the news
So I'm sitting here watching people stocking up on food and interpreting natural disasters as the wrath of God and that the Earth is coming to an end any day now,
Apparently, that prediction has been made since forever and STILL it doesn't stop grown people from believing a so-called prophet, who claims to be talking to God (the unknowable), who tells them that the Earth is coming to an end and so they have to kill themselves to go to another planet or torture their children. You can't make this stuff up!
Well, this is why the world is in the shape that it's in today. Decent production values, actual videos and the outtakes or the "b-roll"; because, you know, Mom was such a movie director. Giant eye roll. But it felt like it could be a little more coherent.
Edit: I just watched the 3rd episode (I wrote my review before doing so.) I'm so angry at the the so-called man and father. Never once asked about his kids. Supposedly loved his kids but I don't think he actually did. He just loved that evil woman. Claims he didn't believe anything the police were saying. Did not know what the word "emaciated" meant. Basically, he's a din't do nothin', don't know nothin', waste of air we all have to breathe. How about you might have had a clue if you didn't block your own children from contacting you? Or if you stood up and told Jody to hit the road and worked on your marriage and not stood around while your wife abused your children? He should be under the jail! I have law enforcement Caesars documentary and reopens the case.
Willful child neglect! Something! There's got to be something on the books!
Severance: Chikhai Bardo (2025)
Small Moving, But Some Reveals
Okay if people were paying attention and I can understand why some people weren't, because this was very slow moving - we do learn at least one thing.
While it was very moving at the very beginning to see how they met and how much in love they were, I felt like a lot of others, let's move this on! We only have three episodes left and with two years between the first season and the second season, I'm not sure enough people will stick around if a third season takes that long to produce.
Okay the biggest reveal here is how they got her DNA - Spoiler below:
Well, from that IVF clinic of course! They would be taking her blood and they also would be taking her fertilized egg, and unfertilized eggs. From there all they need to do is a little extracting.
That's the only thing, I learned from this episode - I guess I'll have to sit through it again to see if I can find some more clues.
Of course, another question would be why would they do that.
And the simple answer would be, because they can.
How I Escaped My Cult: Tony Alamo Christian Academy (2025)
Very Typical
I'm probably not going to watch more of these, not because of production values, but because they anger me so much.
How many times in history and in the news do people need to hear about these cults and then go right ahead and subject themselves and their children and wives to them?
Nearly every one of them ends up in child sexual abuse and worst.
How many times people are going to walk right into the spider web? I don't get it. How pathetic are people's lives that they are willing to believe one person on the planet is the solution to all their problems?
How many times are they going to believe that God or Jesus is talking to this particular individual.
If God exists - and I don't believe it does - it doesn't talk to anyone. If a man named Jesus existed, he was killed 2,025 years ago and he's not talking either.
The Outsider (2020)
People Whining About Ethnicity...
First, I've been reading Uncle Stevie since the early 1970's (50 years!), when he first published - Carrie, Salem's Lot, The Stand, The Shining - classics. Scared the bejebus out of me.
But Uncle Stevie has a little problem with writing certain characters in a nonsterotypical way - black people are "magical"/jive talkers, southerners are poor ignorant hicks with lousy grammar and utter ever cornpone hillbilly saying they can muster, old people are clueless and rambling, gypies are exactly like they've always been depicted, etc. Little kids, though, are usually wise beyond their years.
Didn't stop me from eagerly awaiting his new book every year. And when I discovered his Bachman books literally 40 years ago, I was ecstatic! He was literally the only author or nearly the only author I read for a couple of decades.
And then I started finding myself unable to get through his bloated, too long books (starting with Under the Dome, Insomnia). Now I'm playing catch-up after finally embracing audio books.
Okay, fine, more to my point - the characters in this book were just god-awful and I was listening to one of my favorite actors (Will Patton) reading it. I wanted him to just shutup! But that's the material he had to work with, so....
My preamble was to let anyone reading this to know I'm a HUGE Stevie fan since day one - watching the movies that were always worst than the books like Cujo (I named my cat after) and reading every book of short stories, series, new book as soon as they were out - except his collabs with other authors they just didn't have Stevie's voice.
Anyway, Sablo the Latino Det. Spent half the book talking in a stereotypical accent and saying stupid, eyerolling things about his heritage. The old lady that saw Terry in the parking lot - was basically the same old crone like the mother of the club worker. Every other character was a dumb illiterate hick. The Indian cab driver? A drunk who literally talks about pow-wows?! WTH? The dead boy's mother was a fat slob who died facedown in a vat of lasagna. I could go on and on.
And if anyone thinks this series was dragged out, after nearly 18 hours of listening to Stevie's characters repeat themselves, drone on forever or go on tangents completely irrelevant to the story, which had zero scares in it, and the weakest ending, ever this production was absolute genius making this story even watchable.
The characters, the ethnicity be damned, they were actually given the dignity that Uncle Stevie never gave the characters in his book. Trust me, you really don't want 10 episodes of Det Sablo talking like a Mexican bandito! Or having to hear about rotten cantaloupes 99,000 times.
Aberrance (2022)
Interesting Camera Work and...
... That's about it. Could have been so much better with a better script.
Maybe you have to be Mongolian to understand? Nah you just have to know how to write a script intended to mislead you into thinking one thing, while something else is happening.
This was hamfisted at Best and just plain dumb at worst.
Because of the husband oives his crazy pregnant wife, why have him abusing her physically?
A better story would have made it seem like he was when in reality it was the wife doing the abusing put she was imagining it. I actually thought it was going in that direction when she elbowed him in the face and got excited for the twist.
So many dumb decisions from the filmmakers. Yeah, you're trying to make us believe that neighbor is a good guy, but would a bad guy really call the cops and alert them that the couple your planning to kill were there or so clever more they won't suspect you in the disappearance?
Camerawork was good, decent cinematography, even not a bad score. But a really bad script with zero subtly. Watch some classics and try again.
I'm going to give it 5 for effort, because I hate badmouthing a film from Mongolia. Keep up the camerawork. I was impressed. The killings were very realistic and while the acting want really good the actors really know how to die on camera!
The Harder They Fall (2021)
The Anachronisms Weren't A Problem
... For me. At first I was half watching because I just had no idea what was going on.
About midway, it started to make sense not not, because why? Wish was the end game?
The beginning leads to the ending. Many of the beginning scenes were to introduce the characters and their individual character.
Yes, the introduction to the characters was very muddled. But if you pay close attention you see what the movie was trying to do - up to a point.
Could it have done without so much violence? Yep, because there was actually a story in there, involving the two main characters that was actually, in the end, poignant and would have made a much better story if they had stuck to it or at the very least created a moral to the story. Because there actually was a moral to the story. However, everything between the beginning and the end ruined any message that could have been conveyed.
Held our attention (husband really liked it). The 10 minutes before the end really surprised me - never saw it coming - so I'm giving this a 7.
Sebastian Fitzeks Der Heimweg (2024)
Wow!
The last 10 minutes changed my reading from 4 to an 8.
Spoilers below!
Totally unexpected and came of nowhere. Stick with this. This is a German made film. I switched the audio over to German because I really just don't like dubbing even though it was pretty good with the character of Jules but it was off when other characters came into the movie.
You really have no idea what this movie's about because of the way it unfolds.
Obstensibly, it's about a serial killer called the Calendar Killer and you're just wondering where the heck it's going. But eventually it starts to coalesce into (maybe) about domestic violence(?) Or suicide? Depression? Dangers in society?
Okay, but what does that have to do with a serial killer you may ask. And who's who and who's doing what? And why is the story being told the way it's being told? I cautioned my husband, who was watching with me, to be cognizant of the fact that sometimes foreign films can seem "odd" to American sensibility as to how American film story turned to be related differently.
I even asked at one point if he wanted me to switch and he said, no, he was interested in the movie, so we watched a movie; but literally, up until the last 10 minutes, I was kept wondering where this movie was going and what was its point! I was getting annoyed!
Anyhow, I won't spoil the movie for you and will just tell you it has a very satisfying ending. Stick it out and you'll see what I mean.
Companion (2025)
For once a preview did not ruin a movie for me!
Maybe there were additional previews out there, but what I saw never ever hinted at what this was going to be. I hate when previews as it gets closer to the movies start revealing more and more of the movie and totally ruining it.
Spoilers below~
I thought this was just going to be some crazy girlfriend going off the deep end kind of a thing.
Going back to the beginning, there were a few things that were little bit off that hinted that this might be somewhat futuristic.
For example, when they were in the car and going to the destination ,I thought gee both look really relaxed like neither are even driving the car and then the GPS looks so futuristic.
And the other woman not particularly liking her and the sex was, pardon my expression, a little robotic. Also the focus on the contents of the suitcase still didn't hint enough for me at what this was going to be; but, I thought, again, that this was going to be a crazy girlfriend or crazy boyfriend pic, because either he or her were going to find something on the thumb drive that would set it off.
Clever and welldone take on modern human relationships - control, the manipulation, the gas lighting, it's not me it's you it's not you it's me all of that.
A fun and sometimes violent ride!
Arcadian (2024)
I Love Dystonian/End of the World...
.. Movies and will watch just about any one of them that comes along. I thought this was 6/7, but gave it a 7 to boost the 5.5 rating, because it deserves more.
Mostly I liked them because I would fantasize about how I wouldn't have to pay my mortgage to go to work anymore. Lol! Now I think of us as a species that sucks, has run it's destructive course, and it's time we relinquish the Earth.
It drags a little at the beginning and it explains nothing that's happening, but so what?
I read a ton of reviews here from people complaining about movies that explain everything and then whining when people have to guess or surmise or think or infer.
Like make up your minds! Or just watch Michael Bay movies.
For once Nick Cage is calm and thoughtful, playing a loving and caring dad, who'll do anything to protect and teach and prepare his kids for a dangerous world.
Sometimes when I see his name I have to decide if it's going to be a fun or crazy or too bizarre or just plain cheesy ride I'm in for.
The monsters were definitely something new. They weren't that hard to kill, but fighting in groups they were dangerous, but seemingly pretty fragile overall. I think that's why no one seemed to be in constant fear and panic.
The origins of the end of the world are never explained and the kids didn't seem to know and just speculate how it came about. How long has it been if adults didn't explain?
I gather that there was apandemic/virus that infected bugs, which bit people (fun fact mosquitoes kill more people than any other animal), which turned them into critters that looked like part wolf, part spider, part monkey... Or something....
Camerawork was used to instill fear. Despite the fact that I actually suffer with chronic vertigo, the camerawork didn't bother me and I thought lent another layer.
I think I'm going to watch this at least once more to glean a little more nuance and hints.
Worth at least one watch.
The Toolbox Killer (2021)
What a Creep - I mean the Student Profiler!
This was really hard to get through as much as because of the crimes that were committed by Bittaker and Norris, but also because we had to listen to the naivete of the FBI investigator or whatever she was.
If it wasn't for the no nonsense retired FBI agent who worked in the behavioral unit, I don't think I could have stomached her.
She really believes that this POS ended up feeling feelings and she wasn't being manipulated - of course he manipulated her!
She actually looks very much like the victims that he preferred. If you look into his sick mind and read between the lines, in which, admittedly, one of the truest things he said - if he had, had better parents, he might have been a better person and that he wanted pictures, so it would look like the girls actually wanted to be with him.
One of the reasons for recording these girls, besides for his sadistic urges, was to pretend that he actually had a girlfriend - but he's such a sick f*, I genuinely believe that he believed taking pictures of girls being tortured would somehow translate into them being interested in and wanting him.
I tried to look past that FBI person, but when she sent a picture of her innocent son to Batteker in prison, I was done with her. And her trying to justify her friendship with him at the end. Disgusting.
I would have been able to handle the "relationship" she claimed to have had, which I would have never used that word in relation to him and myself, if she said she was detached from all of this and was focused on her mission.
I actually have a cousin who had gone to jail several times mostly for drug-related abuses. He told me one time that if we knew what those creeps say when a kid comes across the screen in a tv room - it would make a goat vomit. I didn't ask him for a specifics because I really don't need to know. And she sent that email things a picture of her little boy.
And boy oh boy what were her psychological issues what was she doing pregnant and homeless - does she identify with the victims in that way?
Frankly, I would have loved to have heard from the retired profiler to give us a profile on that chick.
I'm so glad that they had the contrast of the retired FBI agent on there to cut through the BS because there might have been a few people who would have actually believed that somehow he had become a different person.
As a lot of sadistic creeps like himself, the only empathy he ever had was for himself; and just like he demanded a fake relationship from those poor girls, he was manipulating her into a fake "relationship" with him and she stupidly fell for it. You could be an empathetic person, but don't let your brains fall out of your head.
Lastly, I'm glad that the doc had the decency to not put the tape of those girls' dying out on the air.
None of us have a right to know.
A Kiss Before Dying (1956)
Really Stiff Acting
I thought Robert Wagner was good playing a sociopath and Joanne Woodward played a really good part of a '50s girl who just wants to get married and have kids and believes everything that her psycho boyfriend tells her. Pretty annoying and even I wanted to knock some common sense into her - well, at least she the not to take those pills.
I actually read the book years ago and it wasn't until nearly 1/3 into the book where you realize you have no idea who the killer is. That's how clever the book was.
However, in a visual medium I guess it is a little difficult to hide the identity of the protagonist. Although, I can actually think of at least one way to do it.
They changed several things around that were in the book. For example there were three sisters not two. An old Bud Corloss bit the dust in a much different way and at the hands of someone else.
Still, the movie was good for its time. It held our attention and the cinematography was gorgeous.
Oh yeah the stiff acting - yeah the tutor/cop with the still props - the never lit pipe and the glasses he kept removing and the dad. OMG! His acting was so weird it was distracting. He was awful.
Profile (2018)
Now Well Written!
I gave this a seven because it held my attention and I didn't have a problem with the way that the movie was shot.
Okay, first of all, unless you're looking at it on a huge screen, you're not going to be able to read everything that's going on. So my suggestion is to watch it on your phone or on the tablet so you can actually read what's happening.
Now here's my problem despite the fact that I gave it a seven:
If this was going to be made as realistic as possible, they should have gotten an actress that actually looks like she's 20.
Next of all, write the story as though she were a real journalist. Not like you pulled someone off the street and told them, I'll pay you if you get some information on Isis.
A real journalist in my opinion would not be telling her friend what she's doing and showing her clips of her screen.
A real journalist would have done a much better job of looking and acting like a 20 year old.
A real journalist would have done a better job of being prepared. They would have known who their contact person was. They would have done all of their research beforehand. They would know technology really well. And they would have been prepared to show their screen if necessary and for just about every contingency. Research would have let her know that she probably needed to have someone take care of her dog and not have it barking in the background.
The newspaper would have prepared their undercover journalist and debrief them and trained them for months and months and months.
A real journalist would not have gone to the sweetshop. And then have an hysterical conversation right in front of the Muslim who owns the store. And their journalist boss would not have continued the conversation, but it would have shut it down immediately.
So many, many flaws in showing this as a real journalistic piece that it's based on.
For those people who didn't get why she would turn the way she hadm there were clues along the way on the screen. She needed money, her rent was pretty expensive and past due. She was broke. She wasn't that enthralled with her boyfriend. There were some issues with the death of her mom by suicide and the death of her dad. She wasn't living in the greatest part of London based on what appeared outside of her window. She seemed very unhappy to begin with. Granted the length of the movie and the writing and acting didn't really allow sufficient time for her transition. And so it didn't pull it off really well.
The actress didn't sell her part but the male actor definitely sold his.
Qll the things that I pointed out show this really wasn't a very well written movie. But the format they choose was fine with me.
If this was supposed to be a novice journalist who was just thrown in over her head then they pulled that off really well. Lol!
Stopmotion (2023)
Bleech...A Lot of Work into this...
... And all I have is bleech...
Zero likable characters. The main character was especially unlikable. I didn't care about her and you have to care about a character to get into a movie. I hate how sometimes moviemakers forget this essential part.
Make at least one character likeable, so we're invested. When you're just wishing she'll just do away with herself or the friend/boyfriend, whatever the heck he was, would just drag her by her ratty, greasy hair to the nearest lockdown institution.
I mean when you're rooting for her to strangle the kid, you know the moviemakers missed the boat on the essential part of moviemaking -
Make your audience care about the character or if they are the bad guys, make your audience hate them!
The little dolls were creepy and, frankly, there story was way more interesting than watching two obnoxious characters (obviously the little girl was her even creepier and deranged inner self).
Like bathe, kiss your abusive mother goodbye, move out of your dark, dank apartments, touch grass and turn your face to the sun for goshsakes. Seek help!
I love off the wall slightly skewered movies, but movies that are creepy just for the sake of bloody creepiness actually just annoy me
I finished this schlockfest (sorry guys! I know you worked really hard!), but just hate watched it to the end.
4 Stars for the poppets. 1 star for finally ending the movie. So glad I didn't pay to see it. I think my husband would have divorced me!
I Feel Pretty (2018)
Good Premise... Execution Awful
I wanted to like this. I really did. As a woman who was considered pretty, I still understand the doubts when you're not actually a knockout or everyone's cup tea.
Never had low self esteem but as a womanm I still get it. The scenes, every single one of them fell flat. Not one laugh, not even a smile.
One after another dull scenes that should have been funny. I couldn't take the agony any longer and finally gave up.
This was like sitting in an audience frozen in time and space without a laugh to be has anywhere.
Should have been really, really funny and wasn't. I can't even explain why. Even the actress that I know are funny were flat. Too bad. I needed a laugh.
The King Tide (2023)
The Women Were Complicit...
I've said time and time again on social media that if a kid is being abused in some way, there's a woman somewhere in the background (or foreground) who's complicit.
Enter this movie, which really triggered that sentiment!
Once again people show their human nature - pure selfishness,
A lot of things aren't explained and that's okay, although, many would wish for a little more info.
A small island is self-sustaining. How, we don't know because I never saw a garden or crops in it's rocky soil. Some things can be made by hand people have some or for centuries. Maybe they rockpiled lumber and tools. I saw no animals for wool or meat. Who knows?
Anyway, Isla, who washed up as an infant, we learn very quickly (if you're paying attention - the adoptive father and Mayor, Bobby, has blood on his shirt from a cut when he drives back from saving her as an infant, but shows no injury under the cut, he's been immediately healed just be touching her.)
Anyway, apparently day after day, grown adults come to this child to be read children's stories and be healed of cuts, bruises, and hangovers.
They grown complacent and when her powers stop after a traffic incident, they become selfish and angry and want access to her. The father and town drunk/medical person are the only two trying to protect her.
The foster grandmother, Faye, couldn't care less. Neither the supposed mother (see above). Faye's dementia was cured and her personal needs are paramount, so she manipulates the town and even murders to maintain access to the child.
The parents of a dead boy (the triggering even that shit off her powers), who was never taught by any of the adults to not play Russian roulette with death ends up dying from poison when Isla is busy being made bait for fish to feed and sustain the island, decide to leave the island and report child endangerment. No longer being used as fish bait, the town will starve come winter.
A socialworker shows up with a cop in tow and things come to an intense and somewhat surprising (but not really if you've been paying attention all along) conclusion.
I found the ending entirely satisfying and much deserved, with only a few innocents suffering the same fate....
Curb Your Enthusiasm: The Bat Mitzvah (2007)
That Ending!
Here I am 20 years plus later bingewatching Curb via dvd's from the local library.
I love this show and it's my 3rd bingewatch through the years, but it's never been laugh out loud funny to me. Just in anm Oh, Larry! He's at it again! Shaking your head kind of way. Clearly an a* hole, but an often right a* hole.
This season he brings in a black family with the last name of Black and actually incorporates the familyb dynamic and characters well into the season.
The last part of the last episode did got me laughing out loud. It was great!
Took me my surprise because I had no recollection of our! The show ended the season with a bang! I'm going to watch it again to see Larry finally loose and happy and being defended by his woman for her man and the look on Larry's face at the vindication. It plays on some stereotypes, but did it in a funny and inoffensive way. I'm black myself and really enjoyed it!
Alice, Darling (2022)
If you've ever been emotionally and/or psychologically abused...
... Then this movie will resonate with you.
Unlike actual physical violence, emotional/psychological abuse is done differently. It's constant control, jealousy, and manipulation of your feelings and reality to the point you begin to question your own perceptions.
The clues were sprinkled throughout this movie. I guess the low ratings are from those who expect abuse to be physical in form, but that's not always so, although it can escalate into violence.
As a matter of fact, most physical violence starts off as emotional and psychological abuse, after the initial love bombing to trap you.
One of the manifestations of abuse is the constant request for sex. It's usually very demanding and pushy. They won't take no for an answer. They pick very inconvenient times. And you're held on to very tightly to the point that you feel like you're suffocating and trapped. For me, those scenes were the most triggering.
I can't say that I enjoy this movie in that sense. It was very well done and be subtle... Perhaps too subtle for those people who are always looking for action or for those who have never been in an abusive relationship.
For the rest of us, all the signs were there. A must see movie for viewing and discussing, especially for the outsiders who failed to recognize abuse when it's right in front of them and end up blaming the victim and wondering why they're complaining about this lovely person who "loves" and "cares" so much for them, thereby furthering the gaslighting and the abuse of the victim.
Agnes of God (1985)
Annoying
This movie has always annoyed me, specifically for the way that Agnes is written and the acting by Meg Tilly.
I've always wanted to just shake her and slap her and tell her to spit it out already.
There's no mystery here. There was no God here. There was no miracle either.
The mystery was solved in the end, except we don't know who the father was and I'm not quite sure that DNA analysis which even of it was as prevalent as it is now, would have solved the case as to who's the daddy, which in the end was literally the only mystery.
Agnes who is mentally ill as a result of her mother's mental and physical and sexual abuse of her wants very badly to be innocent and a virgin and perfect in the eyes of God, which is pretty much what happens to kids when they've been brainwashed into religion.
In the deathbed scene when the nun mouthed to Agnes, who probably misread her, I did try to read the nun's lips but to no avail as her mouth was oddly shaped.
Whatever it was the nun may or may not have said, it appears that the elderly nun who died was just as delusional as Agnes was, if she had told her to go to the "angel", or the nun was just plain evil....
At any rate, either she did or Agnes wanted to believe that there was someone outside who was an angel waiting for her.
As the psychiatrist said she either was raped, seduced, or did the seducing. But there was no divine pregnancy or birth - as a matter of fact there was only a poor baby who was murdered and if it had lived would have just been dumped at the hospital.
So much for religion....
I guess if you're religious you can get away with murder.
I didn't find any of the acting all that great although Anne Bancroft is always good. Jane Fonda, never a great actress, wasn't that great here either and as I said before, Tilly's acting just annoyed me.
Als, James Fonda, supposedly a former smoker, didn't really give a very good realistic performance of a smoker. Those herbal fake cigarettes must have been awful because she never inhaled - by the way we were supposed to notice that once she became obsessed with the case, she stopped smoking. This didn't really do much for the movie, since her smoking was never convincing to me, an ex smoker. Although, I only smoked one cigarette a day.
The movie just never really had any meat to it; it never really conveyed how Jane Fonda's background really affected her. Ee were just told in a couple of conversations that somehow she was affected and it was affecting her analysis.
As a layperson I really didn't see a problem with her approach. A baby was dead and she wanted to stick to facts, not faith - which is literally deciding to believe in something for which you have no evidence... She was simply looking for facts.
Oh and the hypnosis scene was totally ridiculous. Still it had held my attention even though I was annoyed the entire time and the cinematography was good, so I'm going to give it a six.
Before and After (1996)
Awful... And the Acting OMG!
First, I'm going to start with the musical score - the overwhelming loud fullstring orchestra score that played constantly in the background and then stops midway through. I guess the director thought that the audience needed all those strings to set the idyllic stage because we didn't have eyes and ears and we're stupid and have never seen movies like this ever before.
Next, the godawful dialog that all of the actors delivered as wooden as the lines were written. Meryl Streep struggling to act like a naive housewife (I know she's a doctor in the movie but still...) was painful to watch. I've never been a fan of her acting because you can see her acting and see her thinking how great she is. I've never gotten the hype. She's the same in every single movie and at one point and I'm not kidding, she slips into an Irish accent upon listening to Liam Neese's barely hidden Irish accent - I kid you not. Lol! It's during a scene at the midway part, I think right after the son has told his side of the story and they're having a cup of coffee together. Listen for it!
This movie came across as though it had been a stage play and they were still staging that play.
Basically, I ended up hate-watching it. All of these actors have been in much better things and have been much better actors with better scripts and better direction, but even they could not rise above the mediocre script, the mediocre direction, and that god-awful music that permeated the movie.
I'm giving it five stars for achieving such a poor level that I hate-watched it to the end!
This Is the Zodiac Speaking (2024)
Frustrating
Like someone else said he may have been the Zodiac killer or he may have been just a pathetic child molester who wanted to appear to be the Zodiac killer. He was a very strange man indeed
But even stranger was a mother who would allow a man to be around her children to the degree he was, especially after he was incarcerated at Atascadero, a prison she was quite familiar with as her husband was incarcerated there for molesting his own daughter.
Like what the heck was wrong with the mother??? She maintains close contact with this man over the years, including apparently sleeping with him and even after her adult son says he confessed to him for drugging these children and molesting the sister and she rather deny it and laughs about it.
But this just goes to my contention -bnot always well received - that women are complicit in child molestation cases as much as men are, women more so, not necessarily through direct molestation, but through providing, procuring, making available, ignoring, denying molestation of their own or other children and doing absolutely nothing about it.
Makes me sick.
She basically entwined this man in her children's lives, making them think he was a okay and this feeling from them towards him lasted well into their adulthood to the point that the sister who was molested and the brother who may or may also have been molested, because he also molested boys as his criminal indictment indicated, to the point of estrangement from the sibling he confessed to because they needed to be in denial.
I think this bothered me more in the documentary than the fact of the Zodiac killer being a murderous person.
I would like to hear what the FBI profile was, because to me this was obviously a man who hated young women and I would posit that that hatred had a lot to do with his childhood and teenagehood of being rejected by girls. He was a big hulking guy and perhaps not particularly attractive to young girls of the same age.
Anyway, overall, I thought this was well done - not too far stretched out as some documentaries are, a little frustrating because of the mother as well, whom I came to dislike even more than the Zodiac killer if that's possible, as well as the naivete of these adults recounting their childhood.
I'm from San Francisco, but by the time these murders started in 1963 I was probably living on the East Coast and of course I would have been too young to even realize what was going on back then. Interesting enough I'm familiar with Clear Lake, as my dad owned property up there and used to take us out on this boat on the lake. If it's the same Clear Lake that I'm familiar with it's up past Napa Valley and it's literally at the top of a mountain in a crater from an old volcano.
This is pretty well done. The episodes are only 53 or so minutes long and pretty easy to binge watch - you do want to be looking at your television set and not playing on your phone as a lot of images are played out, so it's not all talking heads.
Personally I think that Mr Allen as the children, now adults call him, was the Zodiac killer and if he wasn't he was still a sick f* for toying with the idea and for molesting children, because of course he did... Can't get that Mom out of my head! Those children deserved so much better... How the sister could deny it when she herself says he had his hand down her pedalpushers when they were on that trip in which they were very drowsy and the brother couldn't wake up. How could you stay in denial as an adult with children of your own and now knowing that a man with his hand down your pants even though it didn't bother you as a child.... I don't know...why...?