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kvmarcin
Reviews
I Care a Lot (2020)
Very funny
One of the funniest movies I've seen in a very long time. I'm surprised that only a few reviewers managed to pick up all the comedic and satirical aspects of this film. Dianne Wiest's gloating, when she discovers that the Rosamund Pike character is defying her son, is priceless. But the comedy of the supporting characters, such as Alexi, her son's henchman, and Steve the lawyer, is also done well. Rosamund Pike seems to be having the time of her life with her character, Marla Grayson, who is as ruthless as they come. Yes, it's implausible, but so what? It's a movie, not the Encyclopedia Britannica.
Murder Among the Mormons (2021)
Story is poorly told
Let me say, first of all, that I didn't watch the entire documentary - I watched only the first episode. But the problem with the storyline was big enough that I had no interest in watching any further.
The documentary is about the existence of a Salamander Letter, a document thought to be in the archives of the Mormon Church. The problem is that the documentary provided no context whatsoever on its subject. It doesn't tell us, for instance, why the letter would have been important to the Mormons. I'm a history buff, but I have little knowledge of Mormonism aside from the early days when Joseph Smith traveled to Utah in the early 19th century, and then later in the 20th century, when the fundamentalist aspect of the Church of Latter-Day Saints was ruptured by the crimes of polygamist Warren Jeffs.
Perhaps the importance of the letter is covered in the latter two episodes, but I sat through 45 minutes of the first episode without knowing why I was watching the documentary at all. This, I felt, was a grave misstep on the part of the filmmaker, who should have assumed that not everyone would be already familiar with the story he was telling.
The Undoing (2020)
Wildly uneven
This miniseries has both strengths and weaknesses. Hugh Grant's acting is brilliant, and he's grown into a very fine dramatic actor as he's aged. Nichole Kidman, on the other hand, should be nominated for a Razzie Award -- it's by far the worst performance I've ever seen her give. It appears she's been Botoxed within an inch of her life, and her facial expressions range from solemn and earnest to solemn and earnest.
The first three episodes are very well-written, but the writing gets worse and worse in the final three episodes. Part of the problem, I think, is that David E. Kelley is unsure of his genre -- it veers back and forth between drama and mystery, and the mystery element is sadly deficient. I won't give too much away, but it was a painful experience watching the last episode, and the ending is so completely predictable that I was stupefied in my frustration.
This six-episode miniseries is at least one episode -- and maybe 2 episodes -- too long.Watch the first three episodes and the last one. Skip episodes 4 and 5, and you'll miss very little.
Manchester by the Sea (2016)
Affleck's acting is excellent but screenplay is half-baked
I've very much enjoyed other Kenneth Lonergan films, and I've admired Casey Affleck's acting gifts for a long time. Because of the rave reviews, I was looking forward to seeing this. Unfortunately, the film went into production with a half-baked script. It probably needed another 5-6 rewrites to make the characterization more layered, develop the subplots more, and get to the pith of the central conflict, which was extremely weak.
The story didn't really get off the ground until the last third of the film. It's a testament to Affleck's acting, not the story, that the film managed to sustain my interest. The only thing I'll say about the music is that the classical music was used in a very ham-handed fashion to manipulate the audience's emotion.
Affleck plays a character named Lee, who has suffered a tragedy from which he can't recover. He does his best with an taciturn, undeveloped character whose aims are vague and is so caught in depression and grief that he displays little outward emotional expression. The other major character is Patrick, a teenage boy whose father, Affleck's brother, has died suddenly.
One of the big wrongs in the screenplay is that we don't get any sense that Patrick is grieving or even in shock about his father's death until a contrived scene later in the movie about a refrigerator that is a weak, unconvincing attempt to show Patrick has feelings about his father.
The relationship between Lee and Patrick is meandering and with mild conflict here and there. It's supposed to be the spine of the movie, but it's so flaccid that the film often lacks focus.
I think this movie has something to say, but it's not fully articulated, because the film was shot before the script was fully ready for production.
Ghostbusters (2016)
Give It a Break - It's Fun!
Hey, all of you misogynistic, nerdy fanboys who have been viciously attacking this film for a year before it was released because of the female casting, too bad that the antagonist in this movie is you. Boo-hoo. Women have been suppressed for thousands of years, and here's a movie with girl power. So suck it up. It was also produced by Ivan Reitman and executive produced by Dan Ackroyd, so it has the imprimatur from the original GHOSTBUSTERS, which I adored, too. Yes, there are a few plot holes. The script's not perfect. But it is about 500 miles above that bloated corpse BATMAN V. SUPERMAN. And yes, we girls do happen to like cute guys, and I had no problem with Chris Hemsworth, who seemed to be thoroughly enjoying himself.
Paul Feig is extremely capable at writing chick flicks, such as BRIDESMAIDS and SPY. He knows what women are like when guys aren't around. Sorry that your minuscule sensibilities were offended. This movie is actually a bit tamer than Feig's other films in presenting the feminine viewpoint. It's not high art. The pacing is efficient, the plot development sufficient, the women actors have good chemistry with each other, and the CGI ghosts were lively (the evil balloons were my favorite). Leslie Jones is my favorite new action hero.