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Reviews
Gypsy (1962)
Really disturbing
I could not stop thinking about Jonbennet Ramsey throughout this. Both daughters were who'd out by their failed star mother and this was supposed to be love. I expect both of them would have ended up on heroin before 30.
If Mama could have found Harvey Weinstein's address she would have beaten down his door introduced him to her daughters.
Was stripping considered a legitimate art form in 1962? I know slavery was once considered acceptable as well as segregation but I had not heard that stripping, even if just teasing, was acceptable.
Furthermore, you've got to keep giving more or they won't come back.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Vertical Drop, Horizontal Tug (2024)
In what world is anyone trying to get pregnant by Leon?
In what world is anyone trying to get pregnant by Leon? Especially a young attractive couple who are apparently also wealthy if they are living next door to Freddy Funkhauser (Vince Vaughn). It's a bit of a stretch for them to opt for Freddy but at 53 he's the young pretty boy of the cast. It was unbelievable that he could could send photos of Larry, Jeff, Richard, and Leon and the young pretty couple would be interested in any of these old, out of shape, decrepit geezers. Who would want a child sired by any of these crusty, gray, old men?
The only way this makes sense is if the wife is trying to cheat with her husband's permission but again she could have found someone better like a guy in his 20s with healthy gametes.
Aside from this implausible story, it's not likely that Larry would care whether his girlfriend, whom he hates, fell of the wagon or not. He doesn't need her anymore so he'd just dump her and let her drink.
Nor would Larry even hesitate to tell his neighbor to pound sand when asked to pay for the neighbors tree removal. Even the most passive person would reject this and Larry is not passive.
Curb Your Enthusiasm: Atlanta (2024)
It looks like this season is going to be even more political
Based on the first two episodes, it looks like this season is going to be even more political which explains why, except for the magazine covers with Maria Sofia, that they are laughless.
Larry does not seem to be making any effort in these episodes. He seems to just be talking without purposes in a 'funny' voice until they cut the scene which is usually too long for the premise. The show has often been lazy but they aren't even getting out of bed with these episodes. We can tell what the joke is going to be from a mile away.
We learn early in the episode that Auntie Rae is voting, in Georgia? We now know how the last 5 minutes of the episode will go. The soup is so thin that it is spread into the second episode and it may last the entire season.
The TDS episode even features the cast of actors of from MSNBC to complain to lie about the Georgia voting law that forbids POLITICAL CANDIDATES from giving water or food to people within 150 feet of a polling place. There is no law against friends of people on line, or poll volunteers, from giving water but don't expect truth from David and MSNBC. This might be forgivable if the gag ended with the episode but they seemed to have based at least the first few episodes of the season on this premise.
Oz the Great and Powerful (2013)
Problems: casting and 3D fad
This movie was released during yet another 3D fad and the beginning of the film was littered with proof of this. Watching on DVD ten years later, this serves no purpose and just drags the film down. This is the time to scan forward.
I thought Franco was good in other things but he is awful in this film. He never stops looking like James Franco. That wispy facial hair was not done in 1905. He looked like a 1990s slacker went back in time. The worst part about Franco was his voice. He slurs his lines and at times talks like some 2010 hipster. His accent was all over the place. It's as if he got the job and immediately started filming and never understood that this took place a century before in Kansas rather than 2013 LA.
Perhaps worse was Mila Kunis who channeled Glenn Close from Fatal Attraction to play Theodora. She was bearable until she realized that she only imagined Oz was in love with her and then she became her character Jackie from "That 70s Show" angry at her boyfriend. When she was not angry she delivered her lines exactly like Meg from "Family Guy". Kunis shows herself to be an untalented actor.
If this was a TV movie with other mediocre actors this might have been bearable but Franco and Kunis had to share the screen with Rachel Weiss, Michelle Williams, and Zach Braff who are all superior actors. Even without them though, Franco and Kunis are frequently outshone by even the minor character actors.
And Just Like That...: The Last Supper Part Two: Entree (2023)
Good riddance
So, let me guess, this BBC producer is now going to be Miranda's new love interest? If so, Miranda certainly seems to be attracted to unattractive women. However, between the voice and the posture, I am not sure if this woman was born that way.
If nothing else, Miranda seems to have no money problems for someone who hasn't had a paying job in two years and was paying Columbia tuition for one of them at $75k per year.
Carrie should have dumped Aidan a couple of episodes ago. Aside from him being a bad boyfriend (and parent), it was also unbelievable that he would be comfortable with Carrie's newfound wealth. Aiden always had more money than Carrie and more than once used it to punish her. When Carrie broke up with him, sweet Aiden sued her to force her to leave her apartment that she lived in for years or buy the apartment from him when he knew she had no money. This was previously a dirt-cheap rent stabilized apartment but Aiden ended that by buying it out from under Carrie. Now she had to buy it for probably half a million dollars. Nice guy.
Aiden previously was constantly punishing Carrie for her relationship with Big and yet was suddenly okay with Carrie using Big's millions to buy him a two floor love-nest in Grammercy Park with a private, locked park for him and his kids.
I must be the only one who didn't like Samantha's cameo knowing how Katrall badmouthed the show and her co-stars and how difficult she made the cameo for the producers. The show made a has been actress famous at an advanced age. That's pretty rare for aging actresses. Even Joan Collins had a significant early career before being rediscovered in her 40s.
Despite all the 'girl-power' pretense, one thing about SATC is that while I could see Carrie being friends of varying degrees with Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha, there was no way that Miranda, Charlotte, and Samantha would have been friends with each other.
And Just Like That...: There Goes the Neighborhood (2023)
Terribly unfunny comedian
Che continues to be the least funny comedian in the world. She plays to sold-out rooms of 12 people for 3 minute sets and yet someone tried to give her a TV show. The audience never laughs but smiles at all her jokes that center around her being non-binary. Who says women aren't as good at stand-up comedy as men? Well, anyone who's had to sit through Che's insufferable routine.
At least she makes enough money as a receptionist at a Veterinarian's office to cover the rent on her (at least) $5,000 a month apartment. I didn't know unskilled receptionists in New York made that much. I wasted my money on my law degree.
And Just Like That...: The Last Supper Part One: Appetizer (2023)
Run from Aidan. He's bad news.
While Carrie treated Aidan very badly in SATC when they first dated, he also treated her badly when they reunited and tried to control her (demanding she marry him, buying her rent-stabilized apartment and forcing her to buy him out when he knew she was broke).
Aidan (like all parents in the series) is a door mat for their kids. No one seems to do any child-rearing but the kids all turn out to be great students but insufferable, rude, entitled, brats. Rock was the first worst example with her dictating her image to her parents and school but Brady was close behind with the parents listening to their 17-year old and his live-in girlfriend have sex while smoking pot. Somehow the formerly tough as nails Miranda was picking up her son's used rubbers, too afraid to act like a parent to a child. Her parenting involves moving to LA and leaving her son in NYC except to plead with him to go to college.
Now Aidan's son is the child terrorist. If your partner allows the type of rudeness that Aidan allowed his son to show to Carrie, you at least put the brakes on the relationship if not end it. At the same time, Aidan should not be turning his phone around to show Carrie on a bed in a see-through dress but the son should not be rude to her. Take the phone call into the kitchen and tell your son he was being rude. Don't "aw, c'mon, buddy. Okay, Wyatt, I'll talk to you later."
He demonstrated to his son that his temper tantrum didn't get his attention so Wyatt will just have to do something more extreme to get his attention.
I'll say this for AJLT writers, based on this one scene, Aidan dumping Carrie was completely believable. Aidan's son was a terrorist so would have acted out to break them up. Aidan being a terrible parent (like all those in AJLT) gave in to the terrorist. He even said he has to be there in Virginia continuously, not even allowed to take weekends off, for his sons until they are 20 year old. That's a control issue to think you can't leave your kids alone for a weekend, twice a month when they have their mother right there. If that is his situation, then the kids need to go to a group home staffed by trained professionals because these parents failed.
And Just Like That...: Trick or Treat (2023)
Can we get rid of the Wexleys now?
They are awful characters. Watching them is like watching the worst Cosby show characters. The perfect parents with unlimited wealth who know and discuss every black historical character in history and whose parents were, of course, at Selma. They spend no time with their kids but their kids are all super-intelligent, high achievers at the best private school in New York. The wife dresses like Cruella DeVille in what could best be called, "clown costumes". Not just in the Halloween episode but all episodes. For the Met "ball" episode, Lisa walks ten blocks dressed like she has a globe on her head, with hands outstretched like she's walking the runway, and her dutiful husband carries her train like a dutiful son. I can see how that would appeal to the single mothers watching but married, black men wouldn't comply with the diva routine.
I can see why Charlotte might be friends with her since, as she complained, she doesn't have any black friends but no one else would be friends with this couple.
The 2:02 episode in which the Wexley husband could not hail a cab outside his $10 million dollar apartment required the producers to travel to Eastern Europe to find a white cab driver in New York City. Most cab drivers are black and they won't pick up most black men on the street however they'd probably pick up the obvious millionaire with his two daughters.
And Just Like That...: When in Rome (2021)
Clapter
There are many things being shoved down our throats during this series that interrupt the already strained comedy. Che is a low point for this season. Whenever she (no, I don't care) speaks, the camera pans to the other people in the room and their fake laughter. When she does standup comedy as on her Netflix special it is as funny as open heart surgery. She just tells the usual anecdotes that aren't jokes and aren't funny and the camera has to pan to the "clapter" of the audience.
Miranda suddenly becoming gay at 55 doesn't make sense since one of her best friends went gay for a while (Samantha). Spending most of SATC being angry at all men gave her plenty of opportunity to consider that option 20 years ago. With a start like this we can figure out that a large part of the cast is going Lgtxyz.
The Peanut Butter Falcon (2019)
Series of vignettes
This movie was a series of partially connected vignettes with some of the vignettes missing. I don't blame the actors I thought they did a great job with what they were given.
The script and editing was a mess. There are so many holes in the plot that I can't remember all of them: she drives a bus to find Zack and then abandons the bus, I guess? They get a car at the end from who?
What happened to the guys stalking Tyler. It was unlikely two skinny guys walked into someone's backyard filled with wrestlers and sucker punch the friend of the crowd favorite with a tire iron and walk out of there without getting beaten themselves.
Tyler didn't bathe the entire movie and looked filthy yet the college educated prissy girl is falling in love with him?
Why was Tyler stealing the other business's products and then committing arson when they complained. He definitely was not the hero of this story.
The Woman in Red (1984)
A mean spirited comedy
I decided to watch because I was too poor when this came out to see it in the movie house.
The script and plot were terrible. Wilder sees a ridiculously attractive woman, who would plausibly have rejected a 1980s Tom Selleck, but for some reason falls for a middle-aged Gene Wilder?????
Not only does Wilder look like Wilder but he reveals himself to LeBrock to be amoral by trying with all his might to cheat on his wife and kids. The woman in red discovers that he's lying to her too when Wilder brings her to his grandmother's house and finds his wife and children there. For no reason at all, this makes him MORE attractive to LeBrock.
This movie was only a dream for Wilder's character and he should have been woken up at some point and that would have been a bit more believable.
It was mean spirited to make a comedy about three guys engaging in affairs and feeling no remorse over their behavior.
Soap: Episode #4.12 (1981)
Connecticut has two governors
My pet peeve is that Burt meets the governor of Connecticut. The problem is that this isn't the governor of Connecticut we've been introduced in this universe before. In fact, the governor of Connecticut is Burt's cousin (by marriage) and this fact doesn't get mentioned. The fact that the governor is Mary & Jessica's cousin Gene Gatling wasn't just revealed in a casual comment that we could ignore. There was a whole t.v.show about it called Benson starring the family butler which was running concurrently.
They could have easily used the mayor or a senator but instead chose the governor.
This part of series was getting repetitive with Danny's third love in two years. Jessica's tenth lover in two years.
The best thing about this part of series is that we learn that the Tate family wealth actually comes from Mary & Jessica's family, the Gatlings when it was suggested that it came from Chester's family. Mary & Jessica's mother (the majors wife) disinherited Mary and gave the family fortune to Jessica to bribe Chester to marry her since she was not very bright. Chester was blackmailed into the marriage even though he liked Mary.
We learned in first season that Mother Gatling took the baby Corinne from Mary & Jessica's brother Randolph & Ingrid and gave it to the Tate's to raise leading to Ingrid's vendetta against the family (justified, in retrospect).
Mother Gatling was the most interesting character never shown on the show.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Magnificent Ferengi (1998)
Quark is one of the best characters on the show
From a cast of mediocre and cliched characters, Quark has always stood out.
When the Ferengi were introduced on TNG in the first season, they were described as being as powerful as the Federation with starships as powerful as the Enterprise. This would further suggest that they were as powerful as the Romulans or the Klingons or the Cardassians.
Since that introduction however they are now portrayed as a bunch of incompetent misers working as waiters in a Federation space station.
How did these nincompoops manage to create a galactic empire alongside the Romulans, Federation, Klingons, or Cardaddians?
Belfast (2021)
It's usually a bad idea for an artist to write, direct, and produce a film especially when it's autobiographical
Another Irish movie in which it never rains except for two brief scenes at the end. I find it hard to believe that Brannagh grew up in Ireland. The actors were excellent but they could only do so much with the material.
Van Morrison was overused. I don't remember the Bollywood style ending at the Irish funerals I've attended.
The cinematography was awful. Were they unable to get good film stock? It had the look of a homemade movie. The shift early in the film from brilliant color to B/W made the B/W look shoddier than it would have if B/W was used throughout. The color used during trips to the cinema also made the look cheaper.
It's usually a bad idea for an artist to write, direct, and produce a film especially when it's autobiographical. The material is too close for objectivity.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Doctor Bashir, I Presume (1997)
Federation Slaves
I found it odd that Bashir never seems to have been given a choice of whether he wanted to be copied as a computer program to be used and manipulated far longer than decades.
Zimmerman arrives and tells him and the captain what is going to happen and that seems to be the end of it. (Odd the captain is first learning of this when Zimmerman waltzes in). It's not like Zimmerman was a charming salesman. He was off-putting from the first and became worse as the episode progressed.
Are Federation personnel obligated to forever give their skills, personality, and likeness to the Federation? It started with TNG and became clearer in DS9 that the Federation is not a benevolent organization. As was said by the guy who defected to the Maquis, the Federation can be as bad as the Borg.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: For the Uniform (1997)
Sisko chews, gnashes, and digests the scenery
Avery Brooks delivers the most bizarre line-readings in Star Trek history in this episode. His pitch and volume go up and down with no relation to his words.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Ascent (1996)
Get a room!!!!
There were some interesting comments suggesting how they could have suggested better.
Odo made himself out to be a big N*z* in the beginning. Odo can be a dirty cop sometimes. Sentencing someone to jail for life seems extreme for a simple smuggling operation ESPECIALLY when you have no proof of the smuggling operation.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Things Past (1996)
Not what it seems at first
After the Tribble episode I was shocked to see another time travel episode but I was wrong. I also noted that key cast members like O'Brien and Major Kira were missing.
It wasn't time travel it was just mental projections. Kira wasn't missing, she was being held in reserve for a very dramatic ending.
This is a bit more reality than most can stand. Odo could never have appeased both sides AND stayed alive without some innocent blood being shed. Didn't Kai Wenn (sp?) sacrifice her own son to help the Bajoran resistance? Didn't the UK sacrifice their own ships to prevent the Germans from knowing they had broken the code?
It's messy.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: For the Cause (1996)
Sisko is not believable as a...
Any romantic relationship between Sisko and...anyone...is not believable.
Honestly, there was more chemistry between him and his son than between him and Kasidy Yates.
I did enjoy the tension between the Captain and Eddington especially since it has been established that the Captain has expressed previously that there are issues with the Federation. Call it "big government". They think they know what is best for everyone and Eddington interestingly called it when he said it was as bad as the Borg.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Homefront (1996)
Reminds me of Covid
The links to Covid hysteria are obvious as well as to post-9/11 hysteria as well as the Russian 2016 election hysteria. Make people hysterical and you can more easily control them.
Sisko's dad in this episode was such a tired cliched character he made even Sisko look good. Where did these people learn to speak in such stilted fashion? Maybe the actor felt he had to speak in an unnatural manner to make his being Sisko's dad plausible. If that's the reason then good for him for immersing himself in the pomposity.
What restaurateur walks around his restaurant lecturing to his customers and ever has repeat business? Yeah, we get it, Cajun food is the best. Gumbo, yeah. Virtue signal sure.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Indiscretion (1995)
Reminds me of Abraham and his son
So Gal Dukat holds a gun on his daughter, announcing he is going to kill her to hide her illegitimacy and race-mixing, she prays to her god waiting to die, but then changes his mind and ALL IS FORGIVEN????
The daughter hugs him and Kira smiles that he changed his mind (about killing his daughter).
One might think that the daughter and Kira would be a little hesitant to think well of Gal Dukat at the end of this episode.
WTH?
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Die Is Cast (1995)
The heroes are villains
I agree that the crew are presented as good for violating the law and Garak is nonredeemable.
Once again, the Fed's most inept captain, Sisko, takes the senior command on a mission in violation of orders thus risking those on the Defiant. This also risks Sisko's command, DS9, since all the most experienced station commanders are gone thus leaving the station vulnerable to attack.
Who knew that Starfleet dispensed starships to inexperienced commanders of space stations? I guess operating a space station is the same thing as operating a starship, right?
It's like having Air Traffic Controllers take a battleship on a military mission. It's an almost identical skill set.
Garak tortures Odo with Nazi like precision and in the process SOMEHOW endears himself to Odo and they become friends.
WTH?
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: The Jem'Hadar (1994)
Mixed bag
Once again, Sisko shows himself to be incompetent as a commander - how did he get a promotion after this?
I was actually shocked when an entire starship is destroyed at the end of the episode and he brushes it off as if it was nothing. Perhaps that is the incompetence of the actor but the producers/directors should have directed him to a proper line reading.
At least the rest of the cast gets better after this season. It's still the worst ST series but it does improve. Unfortunately there was no way they could jettison Avery Brooks or they would have gotten cancelled even in the 1990s.
Star Trek: Deep Space Nine: Starship Down (1995)
Sisko/Avery Brooks is terrible
Yeah, I said it. The character and the actor who portrays him are not good.
Sisko as a captain should be removed from his command after his idea to go against the advice of his experts and protocol to take a ship into an atmosphere that he admits is not designed to go into an atmosphere let alone a hostile gas giant. Within seconds the ship is critically damaged, several people are killed, and they spend the rest of the episode just trying to undo the damage this idiotic decision caused.
The other half of the equation, Avery Brooks, is just a bad actor in this role. His line readings rarely reflect the content of this lines. The captain should not be the weak link in the cast.
Shameless: Father Frank, Full of Grace (2021)
This is the kind of finale that makes you really glad it's over.
First, the good: Frank remembering the kids and Monica from the first season was sweet although it didn't mesh well with his suicide note in which he attacked them.
The rest was an interwoven mess that seemed to be setting up for spin-offs rather than ending the series. I may have injured myself with the number of times I rolled my eyes.
Two choices that series finales have are to tie up all the loose ends and show the characters are moving on (Frasier, Buffy, Voyager, Friends, Good Times) OR to arbitrarily end the show with the idea that the characters are going to continue as is (Cheers).
Lip has gotten more self-destructive. He could get a job in many high paying fields but he forgets he's a genius who was teaching classes for his professors at U of Chicago. I hoped his interaction with the day trader would remind him but instead it makes him sink lower and lower.
He tries to sell the most valuable items he has by NOT advertizing them and literally waiting for people to walk up to him with a low ball offer (the bike buyer had to see the bike hidden in the garage and paid only half it's value-try ebay Lip; the house buyer is paying less than Carl paid for the house 6 years ago while clearly telling Lip that the value will skyrocket-take the hint Lip). Was there a brain injury he suffered that I missed?
Debbie has taken Frank and Monica's crown as worst parent in the world by constantly abandoning her daughter in favor of booze, drugs, or whoever she picked up at the underpass last night (great line). Why add new criminal character in penultimate ep when Sandy was available? Deb looks down on Sandy because she abandoned kid at 15 after getting statutory raped but the new woman who threatened to shoot Frannie in the head is "hot"????
Liam wants a kid and he and Mickey forget that Mickey is already a father. Had there been competent writers the baby story line could have started in first episode of season and brought Mickey's son back for him and Liam to raise but nah, wait until 13 minutes are left in series to start this drastic new idea.
Frank's mother buried $100k in the bathroom wall in an early season. Is the new buyer going to find it?
The writers had all season to wrap all these threads together and could have taken their time by starting in the first episode of the season and resolved them over 12 episodes. Instead they waited until the day before it was due, pulled an all-nighter, and delivered it full of typos.
To continue the analogy, the way the writers wrote this last season indicates that they haven't read the book (or watched the first ten seasons) before writing this season.