pridgeondesigngroup Reviews

Atlas (2024)

An interesting story ruined by horrible acting.

[1/10 · 25 May 2024]

This film is almost like a one man play so it requires an actor with great skill to keep it engaging. I've never thought much about J Lo's acting, but her bad performance in this film really stands out. Not in a good way. I don't recall ever seeing an actor playing a soldier whose character needed so much makeup and hair maintenance. I've got to save the Earth from destruction, but let me first spend an hour doing my makeup and hair. The real issue is that she just doesn't find the character. There are scenes where she is cracking jokes and trying to be funny, and then other scenes where she is supposed to be in tremendous pain and experiencing intense fear and sorrow, but she plays it all the same. She has the same expression on her face, and she always looks more like an aging model than a soldier saving the world. A role like this would have been great for Aubrey Plaza, or anyone else that tried a little harder to create a believable character and was less concerned about how they look in the mirror.

Scavengers Reign (2023)

A Masterpiece of Animation and Storytelling.

[10/10 · 19 May 2024]

I just heard that Max cancelled this series. It's at such a high level of filmmaking. The story itself, and the way it unravels is sublime. The animation is astoundingly beautiful. The musical score is perfect. Everything about this film, and I say film because it is not really a series but a long animated film, is crafted so wonderfully. These people are masters at what they do. As an art, Director, myself, I could go on for pages about the color palette alone. The world that's created in this film unfolds in such a mesmerizing way. What seems cute and harmless just may be that, but it could also be a trap, something sinister. I have not see animation so spectacular in a long time.

Madame Web (2024)

Very little effort went into making this film.

[1/10 · 15 May 2024]

There are three writers credited on this film. Two of them wrote Möbius. The third, is a woman who literally has never written a thing in her life. Then they hired a woman to direct who has only worked in TV. This is her first big film directing. Then they decide to make Dakota Jonson the lead. Why? She has very limited range as an actress, and she is certainly not an action star. Her character has the ability to see the future and change it. Remember that great scene in Minority Report where Samantha Morton, being able to see into the future helps Tom Cruise escape pursuit? I expected this film to have similar moments. It has none. You can barely tell, amongst all the fireworks, when she has a vision of the future. The overall sense I got watching this was that I was watching a low budget television show. If you know all this going in maybe you wouldn't be so disappointed as I was.

The Coffee Table (2022)

Great opening 40 minutes. Then boring and dull.

[4/10 · 14 May 2024]

I am going to take the opportunity to discuss Steven King's movie or series recommendations. His first recommendation that I listened to was the series, bad sisters, which I hated. Then he recommended baby reindeer, which I thought was disgusting and degrading. His latest recommendation was the film coffee table which I admit was fantastic for the first 30 to 40 minutes but then it was just a snooze fast, boring, dull and it certainly wasn't a dark horror film as he described it. So I guess I've learned my lesson that I should ignore everything that Steven King says. I believe that he smokes too much pot and he watches too much television.

Bodkin (2024– )

A failed attempt at merging a goofy Irish comedy with a murder mystery

[1/10 · 10 May 2024]

This series has an identity crisis - It wants to be a charming Irish comedy, which honestly has been done to death and has become a cliche, and it wants to be a murder mystery. I find the murder mystery to be far more interesting, mostly because of a great performance by the Irish actress that plays the cop. She has enough comedic chops of her own, that we don't need the distraction of the goofy, bumbling performances of the podcasters. It is distracting and not in the least bit funny. What we are left with is just a lot of boring scenes that seem pointless, when the engaging part of the story is almost ignored. I know some the comments will say that it starts off slow but gets better in later episodes, but I'm way too busy to sit through 3 boring episodes. Boredom is not entertainment.

Boiling Point (I) (2021)

Boring and stupid series about chefs in a tiny, claustrophobic, kitchen with inadequate lighting. It feels a kitchen in a prison.

[1/10 · 6 May 2024]

There is not a single character in this series that I cared about, and if you have zero empathy about a character, you don't care what happens to them. One thing this series is not about is food. No character in the kitchen seems to have any interest in food. It's like watching a show about chefs working in a prison. A prison kitchen is a good metaphor, because many of the characters in this show seem as if they just got out of prison or will soon be going there. Having worked in a kitchen before, I can tell you that this kitchen is so small that they would be having 10 collisions a night, plates would be broken, and meals would end up on the floor. So, I guess my main point is that this is not a realistic portrayal of a restaurant kitchen. The health department would shut this place down in a second. Especially when the pastry chef is a " cutter" with open wounds. Even if it was a realistic portrayal of a restaurant, the workers would not have time to take endless phone calls and have endless discussions about their personal lives in the middle of a dinner shift. Being a chef is a serious business, and it takes serious people to make a kitchen run. It feels like there were no requirements to get a job at this restaurant.

Overall, I just think the writing is horrible. There are a few good actors in here, but the writers and directors did them no favors.

The Idea of You (2024)

A stale concept that is poorly executed.

[1/10 · 5 May 2024]

I had just watched Miller's Girl last week. Similar concept, but an older professor romantically involved with a young student. I didn't care for that one either. I think the problem is that our current culture is void of romance, so when writers are giving the task of writing a romantic comedy, they don't really know how to do it. There was a book and a movie called How Stella Got her Grove Back, 25 years ago that was about a 40 something black writer who falls in love with a Jamaican boy 25 years younger. The book was praised as an empowering story of how love healed this writer who was struggling with middle age. Then it was a hit movie. Black girl power was all the rage. Except that it was all a fantasy. Stella goes to Jamaica and falls in love with a muncher younger boy, but it turns out that the boy was gay and only used her to get a green card. She divorces him and spends years complaint that she was conned.

This movie feels like a con too. Anne Hathaway is 42. Her character somehow wins the heart of a 20 something pop star. Even the scene in the trailer when the pop star looks out at a sea of gorgeous young girls, but is smitten by a 42-year-old mid, seems preposterous, which is why this film went straight to video. It's a tired boring story. There is zero chemistry between the two actors. A love story works because you pull for the characters to get together and stay together. This just feels like watching two empty people passing the time because they are as bored with their lives as we are.

A Man in Full (2024)

I can't get over how awful Jeff Daniels is.

[2/10 · 2 May 2024]

I have never submitted a review so early for a series, but I don't intend to watch any further. Let's begin with Jeff Daniels' "accent." It's such a cartoonish southern accent, that I was immediately reminded of that cartoon series from the 60's, Foghorn Leghorn. I was not able to really take his character seriously, and like a lot of actors that have horrible accents, he seemed to think that going over the top would somehow help. It didn't. Daniels' portrayal of his character is so buffoonish and moronic, that he made the worst possible mistake an actor can make. He made the character so hatable and unredeemable, that I just lost any interest I had in watching him. If you look at all the great villains in film history, the actor usually finds something sympathetic about him, something relatable. He also sort of slurs when he speaks, like he is about spit up. His whole performance is a joke, but this is not a comedy.

Spaceman (I) (2024)

Prepare to fast forward a lot.

[2/10 · 3 March 2024]

Was it fun to watch Sandler floating around in space? You bet. A giant talking spider in space? I guess. However, this really has nothing to do with space. Sandler character could have as easily been working on an oil tanker at sea for a year. His wife, played by Mulligan, seems to want a divorce while carrying his child, or after losing a child, during the worst possible time for an astronaut. She is selfish and cruel, and while Sandler is losing his mind in space, his wife ghosts him. This is essentially the plot. Do you want them to repair their marriage and get back together. ? Not really. This is the problem with the film. It is a film about a marriage falling apart with space as a backdrop, and it is very boring and uninteresting. I had to fast forward through a lot of bad dialog, so I probably missed a lot of plot stuff, but in my defense, there isn't a plot.

A far better space film is Constellation (series on Apple) about a woman in a bad marriage who returns from space but she is not the same woman that left. The mystery is what happened to her up there, and what does all of it have to do with quantum physics?

Big Sky (2020–2023)

Everything woke turns to...

[3/10 · 25 December 2021]

I gave up up on season one after 4 episodes. I gave season 2 a chance because of Kathryn Winnick who I have loved since Vikings. Plot issues and bad writing aside, I think what bothers me the most is watching 14 year old girls exploring a homosexual relationship while their lives are in danger from drug dealers. It isn't credible and it feels so forced like the writers were compelled to insert an LGBT agenda where it clearly didn't belong. I want to be entertained not preached to. I wish Hollywood gets back to entertaining an audience at some point.

Don't Look Up (2021)

Wokeness over laughs

[3/10 · 25 December 2021]

I'm pretty sure astrophysicists have computer algorithms that track the paths of comets. So the opening scene makes no sense, and the tone from the start is odd. It doesn't play as a drama or a comedy. I had the same issues with Vice and that cop movie. Step Brothers is a fantastic comedy because it set a perfect tone from the start. If a movie can't with me over in the first 20 minutes it just becomes a chore. I didn't laugh once at this and I fast forwarded through most of it.

The Matrix Resurrections (I) (2021)

I quit after 40 minutes.

[3/10 · 22 December 2021]

This is so sad. The first Matrix is a masterpiece and groundbreaking. The next two were disappointing but watchable. This is nothing short of a disaster.

Midnight Mass (2021)

An abomination of bad writing, bad acting, and bad makeup

[1/10 · 25 September 2021]

Right from the start you see these characters with really awful makeup trying to make them look old. You take a guess that perhaps these young actors trying to pass for old, with painted gray in their hair and painted liver spots on their faces might be being growing younger at some point in the story . I mean why else would you have all these actors in cheap, awful makeup. The dialog is atrocious, but you think I want to find out why the fake old people will get young? Maybe a fountain of youth? That would be cool. But no, it is another stupid vampire series. The twist on this one is that vampires are all Christians. Now intelligent writers could make something of that, but the writers of this trash seemed to have googled "Christianity" and " vampires " and written a story that a teenage boy might have written. The fact that the lead vampire is the village priest had potential but the writers do nothing with it. Instead they just think that if vampires quote from the Bible that it would be wicked awesome and send thrills up the legs of the anti-Christian left.

This series is insulting to intelligent viewers, and offensive to Christians. Fair enough, but the real problem is that the series is dreadfully BORING and VAPID. In short, more Netflix garbage.

The Pursuit of Love (2021)

Promising start but falls apart just like the main character

[4/10 · 1 August 2021]

I love Lilly James. She is terrific in everything she does. At first her character is charming and full of life, feeling trapped by her families wealth and privilege as she dreams of true love and an thrilling life. The director, Emily Mortimer, like Sophia Coppola before her, decides to mix a period piece with contemporary music. It was great to hear Marianne Faithful I admit, and in the first episode I found the series promising.

However, the character, Linda evolves. She becomes a horrible person who hates her own children and eventually abandons them. She also uses men to escape her boredom. She leaves a trail of human despair in her wake. Her cousin and best friend, Fanny is the narrator of the book and film. Soon you begin to wonder why they are friends at all. Linda seems incapable of being a friend to anyone. She is self-absorbed, aimless, and incapable of being happy and content. This is OK, of course. She is not the first anti-hero in literature and film, but this series tries to portray her as some sort of feminist hero like being a wife and loving mother is a betrayal to her own independence and Bohemian soul.

This is tragic story. Her downfall is very sad, but it's played out like a comedy that is not remotely funny. The characters are paper-thin cliches, void of humanity. I am reminded of today's youth who seem to think that a life on social media is the same as real life. It's a life of veneer. People pretending to be something they are not because it's more thrilling than facing how ordinary we all are.

Linda goes to great lengths to find happiness, ultimately by escaping any chance of it.

And in the end listening to people complain about there boredom is well, BORING.

Fear of Rain (2021)

It's hard to get past the first 20 minutes.

[2/10 · 25 July 2021]

First of all, Harry Connick Jr. Can't act. So every scene he is in is a real struggle. He in his mid fifties but is trying to pull off a haircut he had when he was twenty. A 55 year old father could not realistically wear that stupid hairstyle without being laughed at by his neighbors and peers. So the fact the procurers couldn't find a real actor to play the father is a bad sign.

Then there is this scene where a girl suffering from schizophrenia ends her stay in a hospital to return to public school. While fumbling through her locker a bottle of medication falls out of her locker and on to the hallway floor and she is mortified and embarrassed as all her classmates stare on with disdain and judgement. 1) every high schooler is on medication these days so it should not be an issue at all. 2) if she so ashamed of being spotted taking medication why not key it in her purse and take them in the bathroom. 3) medications have childproof caps which means it's nearly impossible to drop a medication bottle and have the pills spill out on the floor. So the fact that the writers and producers kept this stupid scene in the film is a very bad sign. It is lazy filmmaking.

... and this is far as I got.

Big Shot (2021–2022)

Less wokeness and more basketball please

[2/10 · 25 July 2021]

I love basketball and I follow women's NCAA. Therefore, I'll always give a show like this a shot. The problem is that this is not a series about basketball. It's a series about turning a high functioning alpha male into a woke beta because the woke agenda promotes homosexuality and denigrates the traditional male. The won't decision made by the producers though is to cast for diversity instead of basketball skill. Not a single actor can even dribble let alone shoot properly. So what we are left with is not a show about athletic skill, passion for the game, developing teamwork, or basketball strategy. I follow UCONN's basketball team. One of the reasons I love their team is that they have as much talent and desire to win as and men's team I have ever seen play. Women do not have the same skill set as men so the basketball is purer. There are not as many fast break dunks or schoolyard flashy play, but what you have is teamwork, diversified scoring, and a lot more passing and strategy. Basketball at its purest.

The coach in this series wants more than anything to teach the fundamentals and even more to teach his girls to love the game. In today's culture though that isn't woke enough. So all the women in the show, and the token homosexual teacher, must band together to retrain a successful NCAA coach what it means to be woke.

Do you know how many lesbians are the the Connecticut Women's basketball team?

I don't either because nobody cares.

Would not a better example and a better basketball show be about how the game brings people together regardless of race or sexual preference? Wouldn't a better message to young girls be that is if you are talented and have heart that no one will give a rats ass about your sexuality? However in the rules of wokeness it's not enough to not be racist you have to be ant-racist. It's not enough to be gay, you have to be pro-gay and a gay activist. To me that seems like a lot a pressure to put on a kid.

What if a girl just loves basketball and wants to win? What if she wants to be a better player?

Well that's not a show. That's not woke enough.

Lisey's Story (2021)

SK has never been boring until now.

[2/10 · 17 July 2021]

It's always a joy to stumble upon a SK story turned into a film or series. When I first signed up for Hulu and found Castle Rock I did not have high hopes because I had not heard anything about it, but it ended up being one of my favorite series and it's a crime it only lasted 2 seasons. I read his books as a kid and I loved the way he wrote.

In these entertainment barren times post pandemic, the news that Apple was doing a new SK series starring Clive Owen playing a writer was truly great news... However, this series was so boring, so unfulfilling, so void of any entertainment value, that it's a miracle I lasted to the end. Of course even this isn't true because I fast-forwarded through the last few episodes because I was so tortured by this tedious drivel that I couldn't watch it in real time.

A quick note to some commenters who try to defend this disaster by calling it a "slow burn" implying that we are just not sophisticated enough to appreciate a slowly paced story. That is a rubbish. The problem is not pacing. It's a boring story with boring characters that do absolutely nothing. I cared so little for the characters that I was pulling for that Bool monster thing to kill them all off.

If you have not seen Castle Rock, get Hulu. You can watch two seasons in a month and it will only cost you $6.

Synchronic (2019)

This is sort of two movies in one and they both suck

[4/10 · 17 May 2021]

What starts out as a movie about the dangers of designer drugs ends up being a low budget time travel movie that is the most boring time travel movie in history.

The Woman in the Window (2021)

I like Joe Wright but he's no Brian De Palma

[5/10 · 16 May 2021]

There is no one like Hitchcock and everyone who has tried to imitate him has failed except Brian DePalma. However, De Palma did not imitate him he learned from him and used his techniques. He was inspired by Hitch and developed his own style. Watching this film I kept thinking it was missing the mark and I wondered what DePalma would have done with this script. It's a shame because I think he would have made a much better film.

StartUp (2016–2018)

My finger is sore from pressing the fast forward button

[4/10 · 14 May 2021]

The first half of season one is pretty good. It's far fetched but at least there is a plot and some character development. Then begins the slow decent into absurdity, pointless sex scenes, meaningless dialog, and excruciating scenes where main character's relationship put into completely nonsensical situations. Season two is so stupid I found myself fast-forwarding through 50% of each episode. Season 1 at least has an interesting premise: is crypto currency the money of the future or just a way for criminals to operate under the radar of law enforcement? By the middle of season two you realize the show is just a bad soap opera, and the characters seem to forget that they are millions of dollars in debt, some have murdered people, and all of there lives are in danger from the Russian Mob. How the Russians entered the storyline is a complete mystery.

Another issue is that it totally misrepresents the complexity of crypto currency and how it works. It really doesn't matter because all of these plot points are just frivolous devices for meaningless sex, murder, and cheap dramatic tension.

Alien Trespass (2009)

Funny, thrilling, romantic, and charming.

[9/10 · 8 May 2021]

Don't get the bad reviews for this. This is directed by an X-Files alumn and it has that same vibe of humor and drama. Do people not get that the special effects are purposely bad? Why? Because this is a film about an alien invasion in the the 1950's and the premise is " what if those cheesy sci-fi movies with the cheap effects were accurate? It's a clever idea executed to perfection. The thing that strikes me is how romantic and charming it is. In today's bitter world it made me wonder if with all are technological advancements in the last 70 years if we are any better off. I loved this film. I highly recommend it for anyone that wants to feel good and uplifted.

Jexi (2019)

So painful to watch that I gave up and fast-forwarded through most of it.

[1/10 · 3 May 2021]

Horrible writing and horrible acting by the lead. SF looked nice but even that is a lie because if you have ever been there you know that you only see the bridge from a few places and mostly you just see endless apartments in every direction. I could see where it was supposed to be funny but instead of laughing I just cringed and felt embarrassed for watching this garbage.

Without Remorse (II) (2021)

Why is the film so dark and flat?

[1/10 · 1 May 2021]

Did they run out of money before hiring a lighting director?

Frank of Ireland (2021)

Funniest series I have seen in many years

[10/10 · 24 April 2021]

This is so funny I had to watch it twice because the jokes and laughs are so rapid fire it's easy to miss some. This is the perfect show for our times. It's so ridiculous and absurd, but it has real charm too. I could go on about my favorite scenes, but I don't want to spoil it for others.

My only complaint is that there are only 6 episodes and I wish there were 20 more.

Condor (2018–2020)

Great cast except for the lead

[4/10 · 12 April 2021]

What made 3 Days of the Condor such a great film was Robert Redford's performance as a naive book worm who suddenly is thrust into the role of a hero-spy instead of just reading about spies.

There are some very good actors in this series. It's impressive. What is not impressive is the lead actor in this series. He has no charisma. He can't act. He seems to be cast because of his physique which is odd because his character is supposed to be an analyst not a stud field agent.

It's a horrible miscalculation.