David Macarelli

It felt as if they were trying to imitate the original Dexter, with the same characters, and the same mannerisms, however not a single one of the characters had the level of depth of the original. Perhaps Christian Slater in the place of James Remar, but really nothing else. Patrick Dempsey was okay, the guy who played Dexter was truly a pale shadow of Michael C. Hall, maybe he had 1/10th the acting ability, screen presence, charisma and gravitas, and that just wasn't enough. Debbie's character felt completely wooden and didn't have any of the darkness that the original character had. I don't get the high ratings, perhaps people are just becoming much easier to please, perhaps Dexter fans are willing to sacrifice their standards? I just don't understand why the show is getting the kind of rave reviews it's getting. By the end of the 2nd episode I pretty much bought out of the whole thing.

I watched this movie twice now, the first time I really liked it, I thought there was something kind of poetic and almost magical about it, it felt lyrical and free-flowing, and I wasn't at all put off by the rambling nature of the movie. I just watched it again and I found a lot of it to be very self indulgent on the part of the director, and it felt a little bit too dream like, it wasn't really a film that felt like it had an anchor of any sort and the rambling became fairly obnoxious after while, as did the constantly changing camera angles and attempt to be endlessly creative. Sometimes a story is good enough that you just don't have to push the edge, but I believe that the edge was being pushed here because there just wasn't much of a story, and the writing was nothing special. In the end it just became quite boring. Also one of the things that struck me about the film is that it is a film about the music industry and it is a film about musicians and yet we never really get to hear even one song that's halfway decent. That is just weird.

Jack Huston is only the latest in a series of descendants to show that this legacy seems a blessing rather than a curse, at least in terms of creativity. The grandchild of John Huston, son of Tony, and nephew of Danny and Anjelica, Jack already has a solid career as an actor, which in no way guarantees his abilities as a director. But “Day of the Fight,” his debut feature shows that this guy may be a powerhouse of a director. This was a very nuanced film a relatively small production done in black and white the direction felt Pitch Perfect a cinematography was excellent the soundtrack was gorgeous and Michael Pitts performance is one for the books it was an astonishing tour de force that deserves many more Kudos than it seems to have gotten. I've seen Oscar nominated performances that weren't nearly this good. What initially appears to be any other day in 1980s New York City is progressively revealed to be nothing but: Mikey, our anchor throughout the film, goes door to door visiting the essential people in his life in preparation for his first boxing match in many years. It is a neat storytelling trick: Huston, who also wrote the film’s screenplay, focuses on a brooding character only to show, through the conversations he has with those people on his pilgrimage, the torrent of emotions bubbling underneath the surface. It isn’t a secret that Mikey has been to prison or that he has blood on his hands — he just usually prefers not to talk about it. The people he interacts with the most during the course of the story are people he’s known for several years or decades. Mikey’s confidants include his no-nonsense trainer Stevie (played by Ron Perlman), who has known Mikey for 25 years and who owns Stevie’s Gym, the name of the place where Mikey trains; Mikey’s friendly uncle Colm (played by Steve Buscemi), who is a manager at Stevie’s Gym; and Father Patrick Donnelly (played by John Magaro), a Catholic priest who has known Mikey since they were childhood students together. All of them know about Mikey’s troubles and have forgiven him for his mistakes and misconduct. At this stage of his life, Mikey seems to be a man of dignity, grace, and kindness. He seeks redemption. The scene with his ex-wife was touching and felt real. This was a film with so much heart that it leaves you wanting more, the film literally flew by though it was slow paced, the engagement factor was so high and the depth was very satisfying to one's soul.

I just don't get the hype. I liked the first two or three episodes, and then it just felt like it fell off a cliff. I sort of felt like the writers didn't know where they were going, and it kind of descended into madness and nonsense, and kind of a lack of purpose. When you take protagonists that are basically unlikable people, and you try to make them sympathetic, and try to impose noble qualities upon them that don't really exist, the writing just becomes very garbled, and I found it very hard to get past episode 4. I'm a really good guy because I really like my mom, and I'm very loyal to her, and I'm kind to the dog. That's just not much to go on.

Every once in a while a film comes along that's so pitch perfect, and so elegant in its presentation that it kind of slaps you up the side of the head, and wakes you up from your slumber. This film was so delightful, it was also so profound and so unexpected. A movie like The Life of Chuck doesn’t come along very often. Films can do all sorts of things, but it’s the rare work that can be a balm for your soul. Mike Flanagan, working off of the Stephen King source material, has achieved this feat. In the tradition of Frank Darabont, Flanagan has taken King’s non-horror output and made an instant classic.  Flanagan is a miraculous filmmaker and he creates magic more frequently than most everyone else out there. He engages just about every emotion one can have while engaging with cinema. It’s not an exaggeration to say that this is one of the most fulfilling films to come along in a great long while.  Playing Chuck, the trio of Tom Hiddleston, Benjamin Pajak and Jacob Tremblay share similar amounts of screen time, yet make each stage of his life incredibly distinctive. Pajak and Tremblay are asked to do a lot, while Hiddleston has to make his mark with less opportunities than you’d expect. At the same time, he nails it. Chiwetel Ejiofor and Karen Gillan have a very difficult task in hooking you during the most mysterious element of the story, yet they’re more than up to the challenge. This wouldn’t be a Stephen King/Mike Flanagan film if something weird wasn’t going on, though, so we find out that Chuck’s childhood home is haunted. Sort of. His grandfather claims there are ghosts in the attic, and Chuck is forbidden from entering the room at the top of the stairs. Chuck’s childhood home is the embodiment of the film itself, a warm family home with that one spooky corner that keeps it from being too cozy. For the horror cautious, The Life of Chuck is not spooky/scary Stephen King, it’s more weird/what’s going on King. There is a mystery about the locked room, and Flanagan presses his horror-inspired thumbprint on the whole thing, but the prevailing tone of Chuck is hopeful and earnest.  They say dance like no one is looking. The Life of Chuck says dance no matter who is looking.

Truly dreadful. The opening sequence kind of gave away that fact that it was going to be a crummy film, a bad comedy, one where you can sit there for 30 minutes, 45 minutes at a time and never chuckle once. The casting was absolutely atrocious, every single actor in this film was poorly cast, and even if they had been well cast the writing was so terrible that it was like a bad comic book. I should have known when I saw the Josh Hartnett was the lead, that it was I going to be lousy, it was very hard to watch, it would have been much easier to to listen to someone scraping their nails on a chalkboard then sitting through 10 minutes of this turkey. It was so formulaic, it was so Hollywood and not in a good way. They used a director who has no experience except for visual effects, and I'm not sure why studios make these kind of choices. I guess they save a bundle of cash but they end up with a piece of garbage. Hartnett plays Lucas Reyes, a mercenary who is hiding out in Bangkok after a job gone wrong. He is awoken from a liquor-induced slumber one morning by his ex, who operates some sort of shady organisation dedicated to world peace or something. Lucas is instructed to hightail it to the airport and board a flight bound for San Francisco. Aboard the flight is a mysterious, high-value target known only as ‘The Ghost’.  The problem is regardless of what kind of organization it was it was totally unconvincing all the characters behind it seemed like rank amateurs and in addition to that they were very obnoxious characters. The writers forgot to give the story some redemption, they forgot to give a few characters qualities that a decent human being possesses. Yikes.

Help yourself to a hand grenade. That line had a tiny bit of amusement the first time around, by the fourth time it was dead weight. I've liked some of Wes Anderson's film in the past, but I feel like some of his films in the last 5 or 10 years have veered pretty sharply off course. This film was a joy to look at, it was a pretty film, the sets were great, the costumes were cool and there was a modest degree of entertainment value, however I did not consider it to be a comedy because I never laughed once in the entire film. I smiled a couple times but that does not make comedy. It just felt like the writing was weak and it didn't feel like there was much of a point to the story. As great an actor as Benicio del Toro is, it didn't feel like they gave him enough material to work with. The supporting actors were sort of fun, but overall the movie ended up feeling quite dull and very unsatisfying.

Though this is admittedly a very bleak film, it possesses tremendous power, the story is very well told, and the cast is truly outstanding. The direction feels pitch perfect and the flashback scenes are very effective and poetic. This is a very heartfelt story told in a very realistic manner, well written and beautifully paced. Truly a film for adults. Director Nora Fingscheldt and screenwriters Peter Craig and Hillary Seitz and Courtenay Miles don’t go for the melodrama here but instead, with Bullock fully invested, present a gritty portrait of a woman struggling to find whatever remnant of humanity she once had in what is pretty evident to be a town without much pity. Bullock never misses a beat here and gives the character a lot of breathing room to let us slowly find the human being inside. A virtually lost soul, so much of Ruth is told in the sunken eyes of Bullock, who strips away whatever movie star persona we may associate with her. A bravura turn. It also exciting to see her go toe to toe with Davis, who is taking on a supporting turn but adds fire to every scene she’s in. Likewise Jon Bernthal is excellent as are the other supporting characters. This is a must watch film and I must admit it really got under my skin in a wonderful manner. Very moving.

This was a film of great power and strength, one that was told with a sense of conviction and a very believable manner. The direction was outstanding, Johnny Depp played the character masterfully, and most of the performances were excellent, a real tribute to the director and the crew. There are few more appropriate directors than Levitas. Being a photographer, sculptor and painter, he brings a medley of art forms to the film and storytelling process. His ability to bring Smith’s images to life and put us behind the camera in order to capture the photographer’s process, is both elegant and effective. Playing with light in the whether the blood reds and ink blacks of Smith’s photo labs, brings us closer to the horror and humanity of the tragedy.  Johnny Depp is suitably cast as the cantankerous, alcoholic photographer, playing the character with a degree of charm and wit that will remind you how effective an actor Depp can be. When we meet Smith, he’s washed-up, suffering from PTSD self-medicated with whiskey and barbiturates. Then he encounters Aileen (Minami) who reminds him that he still has a responsibility to speak truth to power, telling him he has to tell the world about the atrocities happening in Minamata.  Inevitably, a story such runs the risk of being a "white saviour" narrative, but Levitas is clearly keenly aware of such issues, and provides space to allow the Japanese cast to shine, including an impassioned performance from Hiroyuki Sanada. Levitas is as interested in the people Smith captured in his photos as he is with the legendary photographer himself. The black and white tableaux of Smith’s iconic images, including the moving "Tomoko Uemura in Her Bath", are exquisite experiments in the interplay of the moving and static image, where the focus is on the kindness of a mother amidst the horrors inflicted on her child. This is a film that makes an indelible impression on one's psyche, and at the same time makes a powerful, poignant and important statement about corporate greed and indifference to the plight of humanity, and the horrific carnage that it often leaves in its wake.

I really enjoyed the first 45 minutes of this film, it was a good premise, Kate was doing a reasonably good job, the cast was great, and it was a pretty slick production. But the incessant humor started wearing on me after while, and the comic book quality of the movie started really coming into play, and the last half of the movie was fairly difficult to sit through. If you like Marvel films, if you like Transformers, if you like Fast and the Furious, Avengers, Black Widow, and those Hollywood drivel films, you'll be fine with this movie, but if you're even slightly intellectual, and you want your films to be even slightly believable, you might find this film as tiresome as I did. I would give it a pass. As utterly derivative action films go, Jolt has definite energy, and it’s not pretending to be original. As a time-killer, that may be enough for some. It wasn't for me. I think part of the problem with this movie is very poor direction, I think the director Tanya Wexler was completely out of her element and it felt as if the studio preferred to save some money rather than hire somebody serious for the job. Kate Beckinsale was good in the part, though the writing was pretty thin and the comedic elements fell fairly flat, but as usual Bobby Cannavale was great, he's always great. The inclusion of Laverne Cox as the other cop was quite unnecessary. I felt like it was a politically inclusive statement, and being quite an obvious ladyboy it very much distracted from the story. Overall this is the kind of light weight watch if you have 90 minutes to kill, and you have absolutely nothing else to do with that time in your life. The movie is fun at times but it leaves you feeling kind of empty. I would call it dietetic cinema. It was just more low quality action junk from spectacularly uncreative underbelly of Hollywood.