Change Your Image
chrystinekanderson
Reviews
Why Women Kill (2019)
Lucy Liu is as fabulous as her character...
.....if not more so. This isn't the show I expected - it was much, much better. Each leading woman takes us on a ride but Lucy Liu takes us on the most exciting roller coaster ever built. The one-dimensional character at the beginning of the series is slowly revealed throughout the season to be a multi-faceted, emotionally relatable woman, and those reveals never feel forced. Her over the top glamour and social machinations are exquisitely anchored by a nuanced portrayal of a woman deeply in love and deeply in pain. I'll watch this season again (and most likely again, again & again) just to witness the character and character arc brought alive by Lucy Liu.
Sometimes When We Touch (2023)
Would be a 10 if...
As a child of the 70's, this is my jam. Learning about Captain and Tennille was such bittersweet nostalgia - my very first memory is of "Love Will Keep Us Together." I was 2 years old and I remember my parents dancing to it in our basement "rumpus room" where just a few years later they'd roll the rug back so my brother and I could roller skate to the "Xanadu" soundtrack. These days I blast these hits and others while wheel around on a stool in my research lab working on drug safety testing. Same roller disco vibe, just as a way cooler adult.
It would be a 9+ if the sound worked consistently. There are long periods of silence that I think are supposed to be filled with narration or something informative?
Old (2021)
Sciency Spoilers Ahead...
This is one of the rare movies that I feel that I can speak to with experience and authority. Not because I enjoy an island vacation - I don't because I'm allergic to sunscreen. I can speak on this with authority because 1) I'm a scientist specializing in cell culture (I grow cells in a lab for research and safety testing) and 2) I have epilepsy. All I have to say is this movie was fun and that's what we need from movies today. A little bit of fun and maybe some eye candy (looking at you, Aaron. I see you too, Rufus ;)
Just take a break from the current intensity of every moment (which this movie will remind you of) and have fun. You can stress out over the fact that life rarely gives us time to breathe after the movie.....
After Darkness (2014)
Tries to be Melancholia.....
I watched this movie try so hard - and I wanted it to succeed - but it didn't. It felt like a Lifetime Movie version of Melancholia, down to the perceived weakest family member being, in fact, the strongest one. Lars Von Trier's meditative pacing in Melancholia was very effective, however the pacing here is all over the place. Characters are undeveloped, events that would have explained motives and actions are unexplained, and character arcs are more like pinball trajectories. A barely watchable tangled mess.