Jade Delphi

About as exciting as watching molasses flow in winter. A lot of long drawn out unnecessary scenes that felt like padding, such as about a 10 minute long scene of the protagonist eating. Who writes these scripts anyway, children? And then the ghost wandering around with the sheet with holes cut out for his eyes is more humorous than spooky. I prefer a movie that has a plot, not just some vague artistic statement.

I thought this movie was boring and way too long. Bruce Wayne seemed whiny and had no energy, Batman seemed inept. The Batmobile sucked. I found myself struggling to keep watching this movie because I wanted to turn it off after half way through. I still think the best Batman movie was Tim Burton's 1989 version.

This movie is dumb and predictable. Some parts were so cheesy I couldn't help but laugh. And the wolves look like escapees from the set of "Cats."

Very slow movie that gets bogged down by too much new-age psychobabble. Excessive dream sequences and flashbacks disrupt the plot, and there are a lot of long drawn-out scenes that should have been left on the editing floor. This movie wasn't scary as much as irritatingly boring.

Way too long with really bad CGI effects. Even stellan Skarsgard couldn't pull this dog up out of the desert ground. So boring I thought it would never end.

A very interesting and entertaining take on police life in the Los Angeles area. Although the shaky-cam "found footage" approach is a little played, once you get past that this is an fascinating movie with a lot of tension and drama. The interplay between the partners is both humorous and sweet as they back each other up through all manner of intense crime-fighting sagas. This would make a wonderful series, if the same writers were kept as the dialogue is always fun to watch. Very entertaining film. The shaky cam doesn't really help the narrative though.

The movie was disjointed and fails to explain many of the characters' relationships or motivations. The plot veers from being a story about an aging rocker (think Robert Smith's and Andy Warhol's love child) and his quirky life with his friends and wife in Ireland, then suddenly turns into a strained hunt for a Nazi war criminal. The underpinning of the film is about the journey of self discovery for the protagonist Cheyenne (Penn), who is constantly carting "baggage," literally, in tow until the end where he apparently is supposed to now be free of his demons. (I guess the filmmaker equates self actualization with losing one's individuality, as Cheyenne has dropped the baggage and now dresses like a normal bloke, hoorah.) The movie has Sean Penn's acting going for it, and some nice cinematography as the character travels across America, as well as a few interesting nuggets of wisdom that pop unexpectedly from the protagonist's mouth, but so many scenes dragged and felt self-consciously "artsy" that I was bored, and the ending was predictable and flat. I was disappointed with this film -- it could have been much better. And the David Byrne music was over played. I did get to learn who invented wheels for suit cases -- goddess knows that shining bit of minutia couldn't have been left on the cutting-room floor. I was not entertained.

Story of this robo-action thriller is a muddled morality tale of AI life that asks, "If I think, aren't I alive?" Poor acting with a predictable plot, but interesting special effects of the realistic CGI killer robots keeps the film watchable, barely. The human characters are boring, two-dimensional and the 'bots definitely have more personality, which isn't saying a lot. The villains are cartoonishly aggressive and like to say the "F" word a lot so we know they're tough guys, or something. I had to fast forward through a lot of the slow parts and parts with too much crying scenes -- I cheered when the whiniest doctor guy finally got blown up so we didn't have to hear him screaming like a punk anymore. Of course, the black girl gets killed first, because systemic racism exists even in Hollywood. Pretty much a suck fest unless one is inebriated and/or stoned.

Somewhat entertaining for this type of film, but if I never have to see Jessica Chastain in a movie again it will be too soon. Badly miscast and sporting a tragic Liza-Minelli-style wig, her brittle screen presence nearly sinks the movie. The basic story is of her character's arc from skanky unemployed garage-band bassist to "loving mother" of the two abandoned girls is not believable. Also, the special effects of the wraith-like ghost, "Mama," are amateurish and not scary at all. The film bounces from plot holes to unbelievable actions by the characters until the melodramatic ending which fails utterly to suspend disbelief. Also, way too much blue filters to make day shooting look like night. The movie's only bright points are the two actors who play the girls, who manage to portray traumatized children surprisingly well given their youth. It was watchable (if you fast forward though the scenes with Jessica Chastain) but forgettable schlock.

Let me start by admitting I am not a Tarantino fan -- I find most of his movies overly mannerist and unnecessarily gory, especially Sin City and Django. I first attempted to watch Once Upon a Time In Hollywood when I was day drinking and after an hour was bored (I'm somewhat impatient when impaired) and stopped watching, writing it off as just another schlock QT movie. Fast forward a year and having watched nearly every other movie available on my streaming service during the COVID lockdown, I watched this flick again sober, and with a clear head I appreciated the nuance that I missed when I was three sheets to the wind. It was vastly entertaining. First, I liked how it built the sense of the magical in a place -- Hollywood is itself a character in this glittering fairy tale of LA (of all places). Anyone who is familiar with the Manson killings and the time period should sense the building tension as we see the "hippy" women flitting around Hollywood like hungry ravens after the close up shot of the infamous Cielo Drive. As a former resident of the LA area I appreciated the way the city is depicted both in its dusty architectural dreariness and yet the shiny veneer of tinsel town that sums up so much of the Hollywood experience. Showing the beating pulse of a town isn't easy, but Tarantino does a masterful job here. Second, I enjoyed the small details which ordinarily would have been boring segues into other more substantive scenes but with expert pacing and ironic humor QT makes them interesting, especially the early scene early on where Brad Pitt's character is feeding his dog in his ramshackle trailer. Nothing was wasted and the series of fast clips make the scene both amusing and relatable (especially if one has ever fed canned food to their dogs). I loved the way the menace of the Manson clan was wonderfully highlighted in the scene where Brad Pitt's character was at the ranch, from the creepy rat in the house, the grime on the walls, and the way the zombie-like "sisters" appeared seemingly out of nowhere as Pitt refused to take no for an answer. There was a real sense of the sinister behind their hypocritical "flower-power" rhetoric that felt cult like and genuinely creepy. I was left with a sense of real danger from these characters and it wasn't hard to imagine this may have not been far from the truth. (Although for some reason the racist underpinnings of Manson's motivations was skipped and I'm not sure why, instead the film seems to bash "hippies" in general which to me felt somewhat political, as did the odd scene with a fictional Bruce Lee.) To me the scene that didn't work was the overall ending -- QT seems to like to fictionalize history in a way that may please a certain element of the audience, but to me felt like lazy scriptwriting. It reminded me of the end of Inglorious Basterds (a disaster in my opinion), where the horror of actual history is glossed over with an adolescent fever dream of "wouldn't-it-be-nice-if-THIS-happened-instead" ending. Although the action may be fun, its disrespectful to the people who actually lost their lives. I think there could have been betters ways to depict a more realistic ending rather than departing entirely from reality. And he just happens to have a flamethrower. Really? Generally, though, I found this flick to be entertaining and much more engrossing than most QT movies, I hope he continues to mature as a film maker.