mommyplum Reviews

Burden of Proof (2023)

Moving and powerful

[9/10 · 17 January 2024]

In 1987, 15-year-old Jennifer Pandos disappeared from her locked first floor bedroom in a gated community of Williamsburg. No one has seen her since. Did she leave on her own? If so, why leave behind all her possessions except clothes on her back, even her contact lenses? If she was taken out by force, why did nothing seem disturbed and her mother even called her room "pristine" the morning it was discovered she was gone. And what to make of the note her parents said they found in her room, written in a sloppy hand and stating that Jennifer was leaving to be with an unnamed older man for a few days...seemingly written by the unknown older man himself. This incredibly moving, haunting and intriguing documentary focuses on the work and heartache of Stephen Pandos, Jennifer's older brother. Away at college at the time she disappeared, Stephen has had the unsolved mystery of his sister looming large his whole adult life. For the last decade, give or take, he's come to believe his parents, Ron (described as a troubled Vietnam vet with ptsd) and Margie (coming off as quiet and passive), were responsible. Now on his absolute mission to prove this at any cost is where the documentary begins. I have to say, I, like Stephen, completely believed his parents the most likely suspects for the first half or more of the docuseries. Stephen described his father as physically abusive, and the mom doesn't deny it, which leaves open whether he was capable of a supreme violence against his own child. Also, for parents who discovered their minor child missing, they seemed hardly alarmed, claiming they believed the letter left in Jennifer's room was genuine and they decided to let her have a few days. I'm a parent, and if one of my kids was gone in the night leaving behind a note saying they were off with an unnamed adult and would return, I'd call every law agency in the book, including the coast guard, within about 2.5 seconds. Yet, Ron and Margie did not, they waited 3 days, even giving phony excuses about Jennifer being ill and unable to come to school to her friends. And what to make of them not contacting family far and wide to see if they'd seen or heard from Jennifer...a few of these people who lived in another state say they weren't even told Jennifer was missing for years, always being given excuses of why she wasn't around. Baffling, inexplicable behavior. And who could this older man be, none of her friends interviewed have a single clue. In fact, by all accounts, Jennifer was still madly in love with her ex-boyfriend, a fellow student at her high school. Stephen Pandos is such a strong person, visibly containing his sorrow, anger and frustration so he can work for an answer. When the evidence starts to definitively point away from a conspiracy by his parents as the series progresses, his transforming pain is palpable. He's been so sure it had to be them for so long that justice for Jennifer seemed only 2 steps away, and now he finds his crusade against them might have been meaningless, his refusal to continue a relationship with his mom all these years while she "lied" a cruel miscalculation. I feel terrible for him. He couldn't even take relief in knowing his parents probably didn't kill their child, because it means everyone is just as far from a solution as ever. No closer to knowing Jennifer's fate than that cold morning in 1987 when she was gone. Could her ex-boyfriend, who may have still been seeing her in secret despite having a new girlfriend, hold the key? Could another teen have really so expertly crafted a fake runaway scenario in the middle of the night, leaving behind no evidence whatsoever...ever? Is Jennifer still alive, a runaway after all, too moved on from her old life to come forward? Stephen and his mother are left almost where they started by the end, with no Jennifer and no closure. At least it was good to see them at the beginning of rebuilding their relationship. My heart goes out to the family and Jennifer's friends, I hope one day they really do get an answer and can find a better peace. Definitely worth a viewing, the cinematography is also excellent and the editing is perfect.

Before We Die (2021– )

Not my cup of tea

[3/10 · 8 January 2024]

My husband and I had high hopes for this series, we've loved Lesley Sharp in other roles and the premise sounded promising. Sharp plays Hannah, a high ranking police detective now involved in a romantic relationship with her longtime friend, fellow cop, Sean. Problem is, Sean is married and they must hide the affair. On the morning he tells her he wants to leave his wife, he disappears. Seems like an intense whodunit and why is ahead...but it isn't. In the first episode we learn Sean's fate, he's been kidnapped and tortured by a crime family he's been secretly investigating unofficially. He later briefly escapes and contacts Hannah, but is ultimately killed before he can tell her anything. In short order we also learn Hannah's estranged son, Christian, who is newly out of prison on drug charges, was helping Sean by feeding him info on the Mimicas family, who Christian became entangled with after he served time with one of the younger family members, before he realized how dangerous they were. From here on out, the plot mainly becomes Christian and Hannah doing really dumb things and almost getting themselves and others killed. Really, it's as if no character in this show has an ounce of sense or feeling of self preservation. Are the criminals suspicious of me? Then why don't I whip out my burner phone every 2 min while I'm around them to text info to my cop mom? Am I in the most dangerous position of my life and one wrong move will end in my gruesome, painful death? Hmm, then it would be a great idea to start making cow eyes at one of the mobster's fiancee and almost kiss her every time we're alone for 30 seconds. Also, how dumb are the mob members here? They're practically frisking pigeons outside their restaurant headquarters to make sure they're not wearing wires, and casting hard stares at Christian's often flustered behavior, but they've never checked Christian's background to see he's the son of a police officer, and thereby highly suspicious? It's this weird way of writing the situation where we're supposed to get the sense the crime syndicate trusts no one, is swift to violence, paranoid and also not 100 percent believing Christian's earnest seeming loyalty, yet they keep giving him info on secret dealings and taking him along on business meetings...then almost catching him in the act of spying, but not quite. It makes no sense, and it becomes tedious. Also, there's no real mystery here. We know what the mobsters are up to at every turn and it's just a constant slow moving cat and mouse game of the same situations over and over. We quit watching the series halfway through. I can't recommend it.

The Head (2020–2024)

Loved first series and binged it, kind of reluctant to watch series 2 because everyone says it's so bad

[8/10 · 4 January 2024]

My husband and I are huge mystery fans and we loved the set up of this one from the start. Antarctic research station Polaris VI is clearing out for the brutal 6 month winter ahead where they become unreachable with only 10 crew slated to stay and work through the relentless dark and cold to come. Among those leaving is Johan, the no nonsense Summer Crew Station Commander. Among the 10 staying behind is his researcher wife, Annicka. The two hate to part, but her work requires her to stay with head scientist and egomaniac Arthur, as he is allegedly on the last leg of a breakthrough that could reverse global warming. 3 weeks shy of the winter season being over and the station being reachable again, it goes dark - there's no Wi-Fi, satellite, radio or mobile service there, no one can communicate in or out . Johan is desperate to get back to find out what's wrong, practically leaping from the return helicopter before it even lands. What awaits him and the dozen or so return team he's brought with him is a busted up station with broken glass, a burned out snowcat, blood smears on the walls and a bunch of dead over-winter crew members, with 3 unaccounted for. His wife is among the missing. A storm has followed Johan and his ground team there, so not even authorities can get to them right away, and he and the others are left to make some desperate investigations to find out what has gone on and where his wife could be. Frankly, we loved it. The 6 episodes feel like a taut mini series thriller. Admittedly, we guessed a lot of the solution around Episode 5, but there were still some twists.

I have to add, I was excited to see there was a Season 2, but after seeing all the negative comments about it, we're reluctant to watch. I'd hate to lose my enjoyment of the first series by having to slog through a bad sophomore effort. If I do, I might come back and do a review of my thoughts on it.

Update: My husband and I decided to go ahead and watch season 2. Honestly, we regret it deeply, but we watched to the bitter end. I'm going to try to avoid too many spoilers, but some will follow for season 2. Season 1 was a tense mystery thriller centered around a small group of researchers and crew members who stay behind at an Antarctic research center for the brutal winter season, isolated from the world, and grappling with a killer in their midst (see my review above). Season 2 is a meandering plot mess about a handful of scientists and crew on a container ship turned into a floating lab facility in international waters who also meet with escalating violence from within. Honestly, a lot of it is silly and nonsensical. The scientists are hired by some shadow dark money group to work on secret research away from prying eyes at sea...but with one exception, no one really explains why up and coming scientists would even agree to such creepy offers, where they're not told ahead of time where they're going or what they'll be doing. I get that researchers can be work hungry and swayed by cash, but I would doubt they'd be able to find such qualified, brilliant people willing to walk into what could be a kidnapping ring, for all they know. Also, there's no way a ship this size could operate with so few boat crew members. The dark money people behind this send literally one mercenary go-to guy to oversee the entire operation on the ship, which seems insane because they keep harping about how millions, if not billions are at stake. What if the guy became ill or fell overboard? Wouldn't they want a few others there who could fill in? They keep saying how they can't contact the outside world because of the need for secrecy, but wouldn't the shadow people behind this want constant updates? And why doesn't the go-to guy immediately contact them the first moment there's a murder? Isn't it his job to protect this enterprise? If people are dying, that's an enormous risk to the investors. And why not contact the people behind making this happen asap, because the first murder happens after they complete the research, so that should mean the money behind this has what they were after and can shut everything down anyway. Not to mention, the mercenary has only brought two weapons with him, a completely preposterous plot point. This ex special forces guy isn't armed to the teeth in such a high risk endeavor? What if pirates had targeted the ship (they do still exist all over the world)? And that begs another question, why are there no security people brought along? This research is worth loads of money and is being done off the grid, so what if anyone suspects and hijacks the ship for it specifically? They thought one guy with 2 handguns would protect it? Then there's the fact the shadow faction behind this is never explained, just implied to be shady and far-reaching, going so far as to kidnap someone off a street in broad daylight and forcing them to make a video for them, which they later say they don't even need...so why is this plot point even here? Then, half the murders are committed by someone we fully see doing them, so there's zero suspense or anything to figure out. And, half the characters do the dumbest, dumbest things that lead to their own peril - like searching someone's cabin alone, finding obviously incriminating evidence and just sitting down and start reading it right there, long enough to get discovered. Or, deciding to go below decks unarmed to look for someone they know is down there and violent, and then just standing there and letting themsleves get killed when they spot them. Or working alone in the lab literally right after the first murder. Its ridiculous. This attempts to be another, "And Then There Were None," type mystery like season1, but a lot of it fails miserably. By the end we were forcing ourselves to watch because we'd slogged through the rest.

Chances Are (1989)

The ick factor is real...

[2/10 · 29 December 2023]

So, this is supposed to be a rather lighthearted romcom, but the premise is so curdling I don't know how it every got made. Robert Downey Jr plays a young law student who is actually the reincarnation of a lawyer who is killed in the 1960s by a corrupt judge, much to the horror and grief of his young pregnant wife. The law student can't remember any of his past life, until he meets and crushes on a fellow student, who takes him to meet her mom - the other student turns out to be his own daughter from the previous life and her mom was his wife. Meeting the mom jogs his past life memory and he suddenly realizes he's been having a romantic relationship with the daughter born after he died in his past life. I mean, yuck, yuck, yuck. He then pursues the mom (who was his past life wife) who comes to realize he really is the reincarnation of her dead husband, but she looks to her daughter (who she doesmt tell about this revelation) like she's just stolen her boyfriend, 20+ years her junior. Lots of hijinks ensue, but the upshot at the end is the mom ends up marrying her friend that's been pining for her ever since she became a widow and an angel wipes the reincarnated man's past life memory, so he can go ahead with his romantic relationship with his own daughter because now he won't know who she is. Yes, you read that right. It also means the girl's mom knows she's dating her own reincarnated father, but chooses not to tell her. I can't even with all this and am astonished at the people who overlook all this and find the movie endearing.

Whiteout (2009)

Has potholes big enough to fly several cargo planes through, but I can't deny I like the film

[6/10 · 22 December 2023]

I am an absolute fan of mystery/thrillers set in remote places. An isolated mansion, a campground deep in a forest, an oil rig in the middle of the ocean - I love a setting like that because it ramps up the stakes in any story and feels oh so exotic somehow, everytime. So, I was naturally drawn to this mystery/thriller set mostly on the Amundsen-Scott Base in Antarctica a few days before the entire place is set to leave in advance of the 6 month brutal, no-sun winter ahead. U. S. Marshall Carrie Stetko (Kate Beckinsale) is the only law enforcement on the large base (and, yes, that stretches credulity - we're seriously meant to believe there's only a single marshall there, but ok). She has the burden of ptsd after a past that includes her partner betraying her for a bribe and her having to shoot him in self defense. Her best friend on base is the lone doctor there (another plothole, the whole base has one doctor and not a single nurse or medic) played by Tom Skerrit and nicknamed, Doc. An avuncular no nonsense type of guy, he seems to view Carrie almost like a daughter. With departure plans for the season in full swing, the base gets a call that a possible body has been sighted in a remote part of a flight path. Doc, Carrie and newbie pilot Delphy are dispatched to check out the claim. They discover a body all right, dressed in only lightweight gear (so he didn't walk to his location) and showing signs of injury, some that look to have been treated shortly before death. Carrie discovers the body still has an id and keycard on a lanyard around its neck and the cadaver is none other than a geologist who was on their base at one time (first pothole, the culprits involved in this crime scheme threw this man out a plane still with full traceable id on him even though they could have easily removed it first and had a better chance of getting away with it?) Back at the base, Doc tells her they should pack up the body and send it to the first base more north out of Antarctica because there's no time for them to investigate, but Carrie presses on. She finds the dead man was one of three geologists doing research on an even more remote sub base and she gets a sudden call from there, so she gets pilot Delphy to take her to the location. Once there she discovers a second scientist dead and a masked killer who almost suceeds in killing her, as well. Another plot hole - this sub base is supposed to be so remote they took a plane, but somehow the killer gets there before them and they don't see his plane when they land...it's a fairly small sub base and any plane would have to be in plain sight. Further, after Carrie manages to evade him, she passes out and wakes up with Delphy tending her. Why didn't the killer just circle around and get them both? When Carrie awakes and wants to go back and examine this second murder, she and Delphy are shocked to find a UN agent in the building already going over the scene. He makes some vague statement about being dropped off, but what does that even mean? Wouldn't Delphy have heard the plane land and take off again? The UN agent, Carrie and Delphy go to look at the geologists' field station and discover, eventually, that the trio had turned from science to treasure hunting when they accidentally unearthed a lost 1950s Russian cargo plane carrying some mysterious valuable shipment, one which was overheard very recently being mentioned by an arms dealer who is under surveillance as being available for sale (hence the UN involvement). In another plot hole, Carrie, Delphy and the UN agent find the plane and all decide to go deep under the ice to see it, which has to be one of the most foolhardy choices ever because no one is left topside to secure the rope and keep watch. There's a cave in and they narrowly escape. The plane no longer had its unnamed valuable cargo. Back at the big base, Carrie is informed the third geologist has been spotted there (another plot hole, how does he even get there from the sub base and no one knew? You have to fly to get between bases and no requests for a plane have come from the completely dark sub base). She chases him, but he's killed by the masked man wearing head to toe gear, just liked the man who attacked her at the sub base. The killer is captured and proves to be another pilot, Haden. A lot more happens, but the upshot is, the three geologists stumbled on the lost plane which held a cache of high quality uncut diamonds. One became seriously injured inside the plane, so they called the big base for medical assistance. None other than Haden and Doc showed up at the sub base to go aid them. The geologists told Haden and Doc what they found. Haden and Doc quickly hatched a plan on leaving with the injured man to steal the diamonds and kill the geologists, and they started by throwing the first one out of the plane, so he's the first body that was found. Plot hole time again, if Doc and Haden quickly decided they'd go in it together to take the valuable find, why not kill all three right then? Why take one to eliminate and run the risk of the other two getting suspicious or confessing to someone at the big base over comms? Also, why wait days in between killing the first and trying to go back and kill the others? And where were the diamonds in between all this? We see later that Haden retrieved them at some point (but when?) and unknowingly was double crossed by Doc, who took them from the original holders and hid them inside the bagged bodies of the victims. Only Doc made sure the bagged bodies didn't get out on the last transport to leave the base while he fully intended to be on that plane, so what exactly was he going to do to get the diamonds? Wait 6 months being locked out of the base, go back, and hope they weren't loaded on the first plane back out at the demand of their families before he could retrieve the stolen loot? When Carrie discovers Doc's involvement, he walks out into the freezing weather with no gear on and perishes. The UN agent, Delphy and Carrie are left behind alone to face the 6 months of winter (which, plot hole, everyone kept saying was impossible during the desperate rush to leave, but now somehow is doable) and they survive. Again, loved the atmosphere and Kate Beckinsale is always fun to watch, but you have to suspend disbelief of rational thought for nearly all of the mystery's twists and turns. Examine it too hard and nothing matches up. I do suggest watching, though, and fully admit I've done so several times now.

Bees Make Honey (2017)

I'm not sure what to make of what I just watched...

[3/10 · 26 November 2023]

So, my husband and I love mysteries set in the past - 20s, 30s, 40s especially. So when we heard about this film, described as a comedy mystery set in 1934 England, we couldn't wait to see it. Twenty min in, we seriously discussed just turning it off, but ultimately stuck it out. I'm not sure we made the right decision. The story set up seems fairly straightforward, a beautiful heiress named Honey enlists the help of a police detective in solving the murder of her beloved husband one year ago at the couple's annual Halloween masquerade. To that end, she throws another party which is the copy of the one her husband died at to every detail, down to the guest list, certain it will result in a solution. The detective is to don her late husband's last costume and ferret out a culprit before the sun comes up. Sounds good, right? But...oh boy, is it not. Stylistically, it's pretty visually stunning and campily noir. That's where the fun ends. Every character delivers their lines like they're in a community play and every bit of dialogue is SO over written it's exhausting. Also, the film suddenly veers into weird surreal moments that come out of nowhere - like where a French chanteuse enters the room where the detective has been taken hostage and blithely tells a story about her first love that has a punchline like a bad vaudeville routine, then departs. No explanation, no point to her having been there, no thought as to why she hasn't noticed the danger of the situation. Nothing. Or the scene where the detective finds out Honey may have lied about what day her birthday is (turns out in the end she had not) and becomes so unglued by the possible untruth he has what looks like a panic attack and passes out. My husband was convinced he must have been drugged, but, no, it's shown to be just a panic attack. Why? Would an an experienced policeman really lose his bearings so severely when told someone may have lied during an investigation? Wouldn't he be used to that? Then there's the sudden, glaringly loud inclusions of punk and rock music in the 1930s setting that serves no purpose whatsoever. Don't even get me started on the scene where 3 of the murderers engage in a madcap montage of snorting coke with the heiress' beautiful and unwitting friend (she doesn't know they're the villains) to more punk music. It's like several people got together with wildly different ideas for a movie - modern camp noir, madcap satire, surreal arthouse and stylish British mystery - then couldn't decide what to choose and just said, let's mash them all in a blender, press frappe and put it on screen. Then there's the fact they all keep saying the heroine's husband was stabbed to death in their mansion kitchen...and when we finally see the kitchen it is an almost empty room with an old fridge, a table and...nothing else. No stove, no range, no equipment. Is this a secondary kitchen? Where are the caterers staging all the food and drink for the massive party that's been raging? By the time the detective and the heiress solve the mystery (hint, it involves a hastily explained plan about pre-World War II nazi sympathizers wanting to buy the mansion for Hitler, which makes zero sense, and wanting to bump off Honey and her husband to get it) and fall for each other to live happily ever after, you'll be glad it's over.

The Monuments Men (2014)

Disappointingly plodding, disjointed and incredibly hard to follow

[4/10 · 30 June 2023]

I wanted to see this movie forever and somehow never had the opportunity until recently, even though it came out in 2014. I've studied the real life subject matter the movie aims to cover - the protection, retrieval and return of art and artefacts stolen by Nazi forces before and during WWII. I only bring this up because my studies should have given me an advanced depth to viewing the movie. It did not, much to my unhappy surprise, because this film plots the events so slapdash and disjointedly, it's hard to even follow scene to scene often. The audience isn't even told where said Monuments Men are most of the time, so we have no sense of what the danger is, why they're wherever they are or what they're trying to protect or find scene to scene, either. One character goes to protect an invaluable statue in a sanctuary in the middle of the night alone because no allied forces will help him, arrives to speak to the clergy there about making it safe and an instant later we have the Nazis in the space removing it at gunpoint and shooting the Monuments Man fatally. My husband and I thought the scene glitched because there's no transition, no explanation of what the Monuments Man's plan was or why he decided to fire on one of the Nazis while he was alone, when the wiser choice would have been to remain undectected and follow/overhear to figure out where it was being taken to report back. However, theres no glitch, the scene is cut that aburptly. It's as if the whole exchange is written just to have one of main characters killed to add weight to the plot. It's manipulative. Also, as another reviewer pointed out, we're given almost no character fleshing out besides those of George Clooney and Matt Damon, so when others in the team die, it feels as meaningless and tacked on. There's a subplot about a french art historian in Paris (loosely based on a real life person) who worked for the Nazis during the occupation only so she could secretly record where every artwork they stole that she saw went. Matt Damon is tasked with gaining her trust that the Monuments Men are sincerely trying to return art, not seize it for the U. S. and get her records. Their exchanges plod along and plod along until suddenly she has a change of heart and turns it over. The moment isn't earned, has no dramatic build up and sort of falls by the wayside as the movie progresses. The last 15 min tries to drum up drama levels that should have been reached 20 min after the beginning, but it doesn't save the movie. It's all a muddled waste of a talented cast and now I'm sorry I watched it at all. Would not recommend.

Welcome to the Dollhouse (1995)

If you step back from the "indie" label which implies artistic value, this film is nothing but horror

[2/10 · 30 March 2023]

I won't even go into many of the particulars, but I watched this film because everyone said what a quirky dark masterpiece it was. I regret watching it. Consider for just a moment this is a story about an 11 year old child who is relentlessly and sadistically abused and bullied by everyone in her life. That's sick. And tragic and horrific and the creator of this film acts like it's a darkly funny take that needs to be told. It's not, and definitely not this way. The main character is in middle school and her life is a misery everywhere she goes, that's the whole plot. She also becomes the victim of an attempted rape and then, in turn, tries to become physically intimate with a high schooler in her older brother's band (ewww....again, remember, this girl is 11) and the storytelling tone of this seems to imply we're supposed to feel sad she's not successful. The movie makers really delight here in sexualizing children and then making them the objects of every kind of abuse and want the audience to have some dark laugh about it. It's horrifying. If you read anything about the filmmaker's other works, you'll see he populates those with more sadists, pedophiles, abusive parents, rapists, animal abusers and victimized kids. I can't imagine what goes on in a mind that creates stuff like this as entertainment. Really, do yourself a favor and avoid this film and any others created by this guy.

Havenhurst (2016)

Just OK and riddled with plot holes and baffling character choices

[5/10 · 23 March 2023]

I'd never heard of this film before when I recently saw it advertised free on my Amazon Prime, and being a fan of mid-budget horror/supernatural/suspense, I thought I'd give it a watch. The story starts with recovering alcoholic Jackie (Julie Benz) graduating from a monitored halfway-house facility to (somewhat) independent living with the help of her social worker. Jackie's history of drinking led to the death of her daughter, and we're given to believe she received mandatory rehab and probation over jail time. She's gutted by the loss and her fresh start is supposed to be a lavish free apartment in a gorgeous historical gothic NYC apartment building that houses reformed excons and recovered alcoholics and drug abusers. It's overseen by the owner, Eleanor Mudgett, who lives in the penthouse. The first day, Eleanor personally greets Jackie and tells her she likes to run the building, called Havenhurst, as an outreach to give a second chance of comfort and stability to those dedicated to changing their destructive ways permanently. Those she accepts to live there can stay in their gifted apartments free indefinitely, as long as they do not return to committing crimes or abusing substances ever again. If they do, it's immediate eviction. Jackie agrees. But there's something more on her mind than keeping sober and starting a new job, she can't seem to locate a friend she made briefly in rehab, Danielle, who she thought also secured a place at Havenhurst. Eleanor tells her Danielle and her boyfriend were evicted and she has no idea where they went. Jackie is stunned to realize she's been given Danielle's vacated Havenhurst unit, and finds some personal items left behind. She also soon discovers one of her neighbors, a former prostitute who has been caught seeing clients once more in the building, is being evicted. Shortly thereafter, she hears a scream coming from that woman's apartment, but can glean no other information besides Eleanor telling her she left. We, the viewers, saw the neighbor attacked by something with superhuman strength before dropping down a hidden trap door in her floor. Jackie also befriends Sarah, a young teen girl who lives in the building with her unpleasant foster parents. Sarah tells her not to do anything to get evicted, and that Eleanor's son gave her a master key that opens every door in the place, which shocks Jackie. The stage is set and the atmosphere is eerie, but here's where it all falls flat. Jackie asks a cop that she met and was befriended by to check into Danielle and the departed callgirl neighbor. When he finds nothing to go on, Jackie suddenly decides she'll break the Havenhurst program rules to see what the eviction process entails hoping it will give her more info on what might have happened to the two women by taking up drinking again. I'm sorry, what?? Her entire life is also contingent on her staying sober...she's done a grueling stint in rehab and a halfway house, lost her child, has to attend mandatory sobriety meetings, but, oh yes, she'll volitonally throw that all away to get more info on two women that, for all she knows at this point, really just moved. We the viewers know that, for some reason, they met with violent ends, but Jackie has nothing concrete at this point but a few uneasy suspicions. Plus, she is as unaware as the other residents that every unit has hidden cameras, so they're under surveillance even behind closed doors, so her downing a whole bottle of whiskey, alone, on her couch, seems a dumb plan flat out - why would she assume anyone there would even know she broke the rules? I really thought when she bought the bottle she was going to splash herself with some and then go see Eleanor, faking a setback to gauge her reaction. Wouldn't that have made more sense? But, really why do it at all? If nothing is going on, her fall from sobriety will cost her a free living space most New Yorkers would die for (No pun intended) and possibly her probation. If something dangerous is going on there to people who fail to uphold the rules, then she'd just put herself in serious peril with little safety net. No avenue has a good result for her. Meanwhile, Sarah's foster parents have disappeared (we viewers know they were abducted out of their own apartment and gruesomely murdered after they were seen breaking Havenhurst rules) and Jackie let's Sarah stay with her. Soon, Jackie and Sarah discover a secret room accessed through the laundyroom that reveals the building's dark secret, Eleanor is a relative of the infamous HH Holmes, who modified a hotel in Chicago with secret passages, containment cells and trapdoors to commit murders. The Havenhurst is similarly outfitted. Only on an even grander scale. Jackie and Sarah get separated and Jackie is confronted by Eleanor. Eleanor admits she and her sons have been committing large scale murders in the building for quite awhile, but tells her they only pick victims who break the rules because society will be better off without them. She tries to claim the moral high ground by saying her family gives them all the same chance and it's their own failings that make them targets. Jackie finds herself quickly entrapped in the building's dungeon after she manages to make a quick call to her cop friend, who tries to mount a rescue. Long story (and a tedious chase that goes on forever) short, Jackie manages to find Sarah and get her out of the building but gets caught and killed herself. The police arrive, say, welp, we can't see anything and leave (wouldn't the call and Jackie's absence have led to an investigation that would uncover hundreds of people going missing and last seen at that building? Nope, guess not). Sarah, in a surprise twist, goes back into the building and straight to the penthouse, avoiding police. She's asked by Eleanor to join the family mission at Havenhurst, and the teen calmly agrees. End of movie. So she fights to protect Jackie, her new buddy, but willingly joins the murder gang when she could have escaped and told the police every detail to end the violence when she knows they mercilessly killed Jackie? Really?

It's a lot of nonsense to wade through, also there's some over the top gore that serves no purpose about midway through. Overall, I don't really recommend it, but it's not the worst I've seen.

The Rig (2023– )

Don't believe negative reviews, it's exciting to watch

[9/10 · 24 January 2023]

Just finished watching all six episodes and I have to say, loved this series. I went into it thinking it was more a closed mini-series, but I think from the cliff-hanger ending, there may be a season 2 expansion. Set on a Scottish oil rig in the far North Atlantic, the crew is looking forward to a rotation in workers, with many imminently waiting for the helicopters to arrive. However, word comes that a problem has occurred elsewhere in the oil field and the helicopters have been diverted, shortly thereafter, all their external comms go down. No radio, cell service, Wi-Fi, tv signal, emergency networks or satellite phones are working and a mysterious impenetrable fog rolls in. It's a scarily claustrophobic set up and mounts with rising dread. I won't say too much specific about the plot, because it's honestly more enjoyable the less you know ahead of time. I will say I can't believe so many on here didn't enjoy it. I hope Amazon greenlights a second installment.

Something About Amelia (1984 TV Movie)

I can't say enough bad about this

[1/10 · 22 November 2022]

I was a child when this debuted on tv to all sorts of critical acclaim, praised for being groundbreaking and brave. Lauded with award nominations. I never saw it then, of course, but I remember hearing people talking of it in hushed tones, but still had no idea what it was about. More than 20 years later I happened to catch it on a rebroadcast and I was astonished how awful it was in every way. I swear, it was as if a pedophile wrote the script in a desperate attempt to get sympathy for other pedophiles. The plot opens with pretty, smart thirteen year old Amelia growing up in upper middle class suburbia with her parents and younger sister. Right out of the gate things seem odd, her father (played by Ted Danson) seems like a jealous boyfriend when he hears she wants to go to a casual dance at school with a boy in her class. He seems to try and strong arm her into spending time alone with him at home and when she refuses, he says he'll get her younger sister to hang out with him, instead. The interchange upsets Amelia to the point she starts spacing out in class and flunking tests. A school counselor asks her what's wrong and Amelia blurts out the truth - her father has been sexually assaulting her by coercion and manipulation for years, and now she's afraid since she actively started trying to avoid being alone with him, he's moved on to start grooming her beloved little sister. The counselor is horrified, and takes her words seriously, calling in her mother (played by Glenn Close). What does her mother do when Amelia and the counselor inform her? She gets enraged at Amelia and calls everyone in the room a liar, storming out with her daughter. The counselor calls the police, who remove Amelia to a foster facility as an emergency measure, yet tell the dad they won't arrest him. Amelia goes into therapy at the facility with the therapist telling her she did nothing wrong. It's the only glimmer in this production of focusing on the victim. The mom rails against her daughter for lying, her father plays dumb and her little sister, who hasn't yet become her father's victim, is baffled. When the mom finally starts to realize her daughter is likely telling the truth, does she kick her husband out and press charges? Nope. She gets them into couples therapy. She talks nauseatingly about how she's so jealous her husband "cheated..." with their underage daughter. Is she for real? She starts yelling at her husband about how he hasn't wanted to sleep with her for years, because of course that's what's important here (eye roll). Her husband finally confesses and counters that when she had a health scare years earlier he was lonely and felt like he got no attention, so he decided why not force his 11 year old into sex acts...and it continued because she (the wife) later got a higher paying job than his and made him feel immasculated. A ludicrous therapist tells the mom she should have sympathy for her husband's motives, which are valid. Again, what?? So glad mom and dad are trying to work on their marriage by outlining reasons to justify the crimes that one of them committed on their daughter and the other one feels resentment for. Plus, why does no one mention that this wasn't some temporary insanity on the dad's part, when Amelia started avoiding him, he began making plans to do the same to his younger daughter. That's a serial pedophile, not some troubled soul. In all this, Amelia is practically forgotten. The mom keeps trying to find ways to stay married and get custody of Amelia back (again, why is she desperate to stay in a marriage with a man who spent years raping their child and planned to do the same with their other one?). Another family therapist tells Amelia she should forgive her father and "move on," so he can heal. Wow, so glad the story calls for telling a victimized child to forgive and forget so her assailant can get back to his old life. Really, if you watch this, you'll be yelling at the tv like I was. It's insulting and gross, almost entirely focused on the "poor" mom and dad who treat it all like an inconvenience that calls for a few couples retreats and the child who has been scarred for life should get over it because they don't want to acknowledge the true horror of what's been done to her. How did this win nominations and awards? It's an insult to child victims of abuse everywhere.

Spirit Halloween (2022)

Good Halloween family fun

[8/10 · 29 October 2022]

Look, this isn't high end movie making, it's a semi-frightening fun little spooky time about adolescent friends who sneak into a Spirit Halloween store to spend a forbidden night laughing it up amidst the aisles of decor and costumes...then get more than they bargained for. Watched it with all my kids and they liked it a lot. There were a few visuals where animatronics came to life and my youngest got a bit nervous, but mostly it was played for fun, so the scare was temporary. I would totally recommend this movie if you're a parent looking for a nice Halloween film with not a lot of serious frights, mostly for 8 and up.

Furry Vengeance (2010)

We don't care what anyone says, our family loves this film and always has

[8/10 · 30 July 2022]

This is a hilarious slapstick movie full of physical comedy and sight gags. My kids and I have loved it for years, bought it on DVD and watch it often. We howl at how funny it is every time. I know this movie gets a lot of hate, but it doesn't deserve it. It's an over the top, wacky tale of real estate exec, Dan (Brendan Frasier) who takes his family out in the wilds to oversee a new development he thinks is eco-friendly, only to find out the company he works for has plans to completely eliminate the woodlands. A plan he reluctantly goes along with at first, and which draws the ire of all the wild creatures for miles around. It's very, very silly and funny. Don't let the negative reviews put you off.

Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Ignore negative reviews, don't miss this

[10/10 · 14 June 2022]

My family and I have been Jurassic fans a long time and have enjoyed each film in the franchise in different ways, just having a good time with the continuing narrative. It's fun, it's thrilling, it's scary as a franchise, sometimes it's even heartbreaking. We saw this today and were thrilled to have one more good, long adventure as the series comes to a close. Sure, people are going to pick apart every little thing or be sour, but it was a truly fun summer movie and great farewell to the world of Jurassic films. It was worth the 2 and a half hours, my kids loved it, and I thought it was a terrific experience. Plus, we get to see all our beloved main characters all together. Definitely go see it.

The Long, Long Trailer (1954)

Our whole family loves this classic.

[10/10 · 7 June 2022]

Absolutely hilarious comedy with Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz in their best days. They play newlyweds Tacy and Nickie who find out their romanticized idea of tooling across country in a trailer they sank all their money (and then some) into isn't the picnic they thought it would be. It's a fun movie to watch and just time well spent.

Doctor Strange in the Multiverse of Madness (2022)

Pointless

[3/10 · 22 May 2022]

I was a huge fan of the original Doctor Strange film and am a Marvel Cinematic Universe megafan, and I'm deeply disappointed in this sequel. It serves no purpose. It's like a rehashing of Wandavision, which was an incredibly interesting look at the excruciating stages of grief in a superhero/magical being combined with a rehashing of "Doctor Strange learns to be a whole human being" that I thought we saw worked out in his first film. So, why does this exist? I had been hoping perhaps this film would dovetail in the Strange we saw in No Way Home, who acted so impulsively and recklessly as to set off events for that amazing story arc. I really did. I thought perhaps we'd discover the two movie timelines overlapped and the Strange we saw in that wasn't "our" Strange the entire time, but...no. Here we get an evil Wanda (really, I'm so mad about her downgrade to villain I could spit nails) and an ego-tripping Strange treading so much non-plot water that seems to only exist to give Sam Raimi a chance to ruin yet another superhero movie with weird horror, campy ham handedness and zero nuance. Hoping for cameos by other new multiverse characters? Oh, they're there...for a moment before most are shredded to death by Wanda. So why bring them in at all? And I couldn't help thinking over and over, if Wanda became so powerful from her ascension to Scarlet Witch, but remained so gut-wrenchingly lonely, why didn't she just make another pocket reality for just her, involving no one else (since we know she can, and she also knows she can now) where Vision and the twins are real to her...instead of trying to rampage at her own peril through multiverses to find another set of her sons? Wouldn't it have been immediately fulfilling and less fraught? And do we get just endless cycles from here on out of Strange becoming cocky yet fragile, suffering, then reaching an epiphany? How much weight does this hold if it just goes around and around endlessly? Just really, really disappointing.

Partners in Crime (2015)

It's practically unwatchable

[1/10 · 22 April 2022]

This adaptation is awful. Truly, awful. I don't say that lightly, I often like reworkings of Agatha Christie source material as much as I liked the originals because it often gives a fun, fresh new spin on things. This show, though, is abysmal. Jessica Raine and David Walliams play Tuppence and Tommy like two cognitively challenged bumblers who have zero sense or reason. Tommy, in particular, comes off as a man child with no coping skills and an inability to understand the simplest of tasks, like he's not even able to post a letter or bring in the paper without a map and detailed instructions. The production values and writing here are insanely bad for something that generally looks as if it was given more than a passing thought for trying to be period accurate to the 1950s. What do I mean by this? Well, for starters, things happen like someone being held hostage in an episode and then 2 scenes later being not held hostage and there's no explanation as to how they were freed or escaped. Or one actor twice calling another actor by their actual real life name, not the character's name, in a single scene and I guess no one noticing while the scene was being shot or in post production? Then there's editing in the final showdown of an episode where the perpetrator has a gun battle and is shot, then the scene that immediately follows is this same person, alive, well and not shot having a verbal spar with other characters in a different location...which I could only surmise was actually supposed to be edited to take place before the shooting? I honestly at first thought it was me and had to go back and rewatch all these scenes several times to verify all the glaring errors were, indeed, real. The mysteries themselves often are either so simplistic you can't believe they even needed solving by anyone and weren't just immediately discovered or so convoluted as to make no sense at all when revealed. I was so disappointed in this, spare yourself the pain and skip it altogether.

The Inheritance (I) (2020)

Great bones of a story that had so much potential, but never got going

[4/10 · 25 January 2022]

Spoilers will follow. I saw this listed in my recommendeds on Amazon Prime video for free and since I tend to often like more indie, lower budget scary movies, I decided to watch. The premise starts off interestingly enough. A married Chicago couple, Peter and Sasha, find out Sasha is the sole heir to her recently deceased grandfather's surprisingly extensive holdings in Ukraine. It's hinted her grandfather wasn't a very demonstrative or effusive man with his family and neither Sasha nor her late mother were particularly close with him. Her grandmother, his wife, passed away more than 12 years prior. Sasha and Peter are off to Ukraine to sort through the legal issues of the estate, with Peter seemingly having an agenda that they should sell everything quick and return to the states. They're staying at an enormous and frankly gorgeous stately old house, still partially furnished, that they're told was once the residence of her grandparents in Kiev and that she has now inherited. Sasha discovers her grandfather was once a high-ranking, powerful and well connected Soviet officer more than 40 years before (Ukraine being under Soviet control then) who seemed to have amassed wealth and property (despite a communist state) due to what we can only surmise were nefarious connections and windfalls. The first night in the house, Sasha hears noises above them, even though there's no one else there. Screams, the sound of an argument, thuds, crying. Her husband hears none of it. In the morning he's brought round a jumpy looking local lawyer who wants her to immediately sign all papers selling every last bit of her inheritance to a buyer she never knew existed. When she balks, the lawyer leaves looking scared and her husband suddenly announces he's going out to "check on their options," or something to that effect. Only he doesn't return for days and keeps phoning her with enigmatic tales of being stranded somewhere and waiting for a taxi or bus. Here's one of my issues with the plot - Sasha is mad he's not back, but never specifically asks where he, in fact, is. Wouldn't that be your first question if you were her? In the meantime, alone, she decides to look into her family history, especially with the house. Everywhere she goes to find info, she gets menacing road blocks. I thought this meant something, but, ultimately it never really does (a bit more on that later). She does manage to find a woman living nearby who once worked at the house for her grandparents and talks to her on the phone. The woman tells her she always liked her grandmother, Olga, who was usually very sweet and quiet, but says her grandfather was a bit of a sadist to his wife. He enjoyed making her cook, clean and sew for him even though they had a house full of servants. He also like to hurt and humiliate her. The woman goes on to tell a shocked Sasha that the only time she heard her grandmother stand up for herself and get angry was when she discovered the new maid that was hired, Irina, was, in reality, her husband's mistress. The woman also tells Sasha that very suddenly the servants were all let go one day by her grandfather with no explanation, but when she went to inquire later after Olga, she was told by some of the grandfather's personal guards/henchman still guarding the house that they'd moved away. That night, with Peter still MIA, Sasha hears more ghostly noises and eventually by morning has found a hidden door that leads to what must have been the rooms for housemaids at one time. Her grandmother's name, Olga, is scratched into the floor of one of them. This leads Sasha to deduce her grandmother must have first locked up Irina in this room and then killed the mistress/maid in a fit of pent up rage and her grandfather covered it up through the help of his connections and left the country with his wife and toddler daughter for the states, maintaining his wealth abroad. No sooner has she leaped to this conclusion than Peter has reappeared and now drunkenly is strong arming her once again into selling up quick. She slaps him and storms out, heading to see the former caretaker in person. Through looking together in a family album, the caretaker shockingly reveals that the woman Sasha knew as her grandmother, was, in fact mistress/maid Irina and produces a photo of the real Olga. Now Sasha knows what must be the awful truth, that her grandfather killed the real Olga after beating her up and imprisoning her in Irina's room for a time, then had Irina assume her identity and beat a hasty exit with her and his child using all his corrupt connections to start over in America. She rushes back to the house only to get ambushed by Peter, who assaults her and reveals prior to all this he borrowed a bunch from people connected to a Ukrainian mobster, and if they don't sell everything to him immediately at a cut rate, with a bit of profit leftover for them, he's as good as dead. They begin to struggle, and then men who have been seeming to watch the house bust in, beat him senseless and basically disappear him, leaving her unscathed. I think we're supposed to deduce these men were not actually connected to her husband's shady dealings, but are, in fact, still the shadowy henchmen/guards (a couple generations later) who have been paid for by her grandfather's holdings all this time. Weirdly, we as viewers can sort of intuit this, but Sasha doesn't seem to, and also doesn't seem to care about her husband likely being hauled to his death, who did it, or what his outstanding debts to underworld characters might mean for her. She just dusts herself off and proceeds to have a brief goodbye encounter with the ghost of her murdered real grandmother. The next day she's packed and headed to the airport. Only 10 seconds later we see her walking back into the house. Why? Is she staying? Did she forget something? Did she actually leave, but is now back again? Are we to think no authorities in the US or Ukraine will ever wonder where her husband went? And why were the people in records and archives so aggressive towards her? They were literally telling her most of what she knew - about her grandfather owning the property, and no current generation more than 40 years removed could have been anyone in these bureaucracies who might have helped him forge documents for Irina by the looks of their ages. Why do the estate agent for the house and her husband hint that everyone in the neighborhood avoids the whole section of the street the house sits on? I mean, it's sat unoccupied but kept up at the grandfather's behest all this while and no one outside of the house knows of his crime. Too many plotholes really sink this and too little is actually spooky to make this really enjoyable, in the end.

The Good Girl (2002)

Dismal and boring

[2/10 · 4 December 2021]

No character in this film is remotely likeable except the older woman who works at the same soul-crushing big box store as Jennifer Aniston's character, and she dies off camera. I thought that part was incredibly sad, she's just a lonely woman trying to stay positive and enjoy the small things in life (like wild blackberries bought at a roadside stand, which turn out to be saturated with a toxic pesticide) and she just winds up dead. Also, later in the movie there's what amounts to a rape by blackmail and it gets glossed over and the perpetrator never has a single consequence. Most of what happens is predictable and the end just gives us a shot of more of a life of quiet desperation. Not a fan of the film at all.

All Too Well: The Short Film (2021)

Beautiful and devastating

[10/10 · 21 November 2021]

I always liked Taylor Swift's music in a rather casual way, like the songs I heard I found really good and liked seeing her acknowledged for her obvious talent. I just never before now made it a specific point to see or hear a particular project of hers. I don't follow thing very consistently in general and watched this because a friend recommended it. I was sobbing halfway through. And I mean, ugly crying. Sadie Sink and Dylan O'Brien are amazing in such a relatively brief finished product. The song, which I'd not heard before (I know this is an expansion of the original, and it doesn't feel like 10 minutes) is so deep and haunting, so raw. Swift can really, really write. My word. Having experienced in my own life a doomed relationship like the one in the film and song at a similarly young adult age, I felt that hurt and longing. That feeling like you had something you found so precious and perfect right before you until the rug was pulled out and the other person walked away with no regard while you suffered. I find it odd that some people are saying things like, "What's wrong with her that she still has pain from this?" Emotional wounds can hurt as bad as physical ones. A person can get an injury they recover from and learn to adjust and move on from, but there can still be a physical pain there for maybe ever. The same thing can happen emotionally, you move on, you grow, there are new experiences and people, but there's still a place where that hurt exists. This song is that. It's natural and human. Anyone who says otherwise has obviously never been emotionally struck to their core. Also, within the context of the film, the "him" character is very dysfunctional and clearly has issues that cause him to love bomb and pursue much younger women to feed his own ego, even while enjoying keeping himself just out of reach till he bolts for the door. And that kind of behavior is abusive. I mean, he invites a young woman he can tell is crazy about him to spend the holidays with his family, which is a very intimate and serious thing, but then refuses to call what they feel love even months later? That's someone who enjoys having his cake and eating it, too, at the cost of other people's feelings. I've been on the receiving end of that in the distant past and it's a bad space to occupy. I've rewatched this several times and cried every time. I would highly recommend it, but be prepared to hurt. And to be singing this extended version in your head on regular rotation.

False Positive (2021)

Disappointed

[1/10 · 10 August 2021]

I was really looking forward to this one after seeing the trailer. I was shocked at how disappointingly bad it is, and also surprised at how closely it resembled the plot of two different late night Lifetime movies I watched in desperation due to insomnia before I saw this film. I mean, the writers of those Lifetime movies should sue for plagiarism, I'm not joking. This watches like a big budget Lifetime movie with a good cast of actors who should have first laughed at this script and then hard passed on it.

Basically, a seemingly average husband and wife have trouble conceiving and eventually seek the help of the husband's creepy mentor, a high priced and highly successful fertility doc who helps them get pregnant almost immediately. The procedure winds up in her carrying 3 fetuses. Now, nonsensically everyone around the pregnant woman advises her to reduce the number of fetuses medically immediately. This is nuts. I've had lots of friends and acquaintances who had fertility treatments and unless the multi-pregnancy goes beyond three or four, or there's some life-threatening issue, they never push reduction. She goes for the reduction and thinks they've left the lone female fetus and removed the two male fetuses, only when she's out, for some reason, her husband and doctor decide to do it the other way round and decide not to tell her. Why??? It's never explained. Also, it's bad writing. How would they keep that news from her? If you carry multiples you get huge, and it would show up on ultrasounds. But they decide to say nothing. Then the wife begins to have nightmares and hallucinate that her husband and the male fertility doc, his mentor, are having an affair. This also goes nowhere - we never discover if it's true or some horrible sign that she's devolving into paranoia and psychosis. She also starts believeing everyone around her is out to get her - we also are never told if any of her beliefs in this are real or imagined. Eventually she gives birth and is stunned to find she's having the male twins. Again, if they literally just decided to have the reduction go this way while she was out, how did either the doc or her husband think it was going to go not telling her? She also has, along the way, made a connection with an independent midwife who appears sympathetic. Then, inexplicably, when she's clearly exhibiting signs of post partum psychosis, the midwife tells her off and leaves. This would be insanely medically unethical for a registered midwife to do, at the very least she should have reported the signs to the patient's main doctors, hospital staff, etc because it's a danger to the patient and the newborns. She doesn't. Then the new mom finally works herself into a rage and storms her fertility doctor's office, killing a nurse and beating the doctor into admitting his only secret is he uses all his own sperm in all his fertility procedures. (By the way, I also saw a different Lifetime movie based on the real crime case of a fertility doc who also did this for decades before he was caught). She kills him, and, in the most unlikely happenstance ever, somehow managed to find her own aborted female fetus still in the offices and takes it with her (this is both completely stupid writing and grotesque beyond measure). When she arrives back home she clutches her female fetus and tells her husband to leave with the male twins, then sits with the dead fetus as if it's alive and that's the end. It's, just bad. No closure, no wrap up, not even a hint if anyone knows she was the perpetrator of the carnage back at the fertility clinic. Are we supposed to assume everything was part of her spiralling breakdown? Clearly the doctor was commiting a heinous crime, or, are we to believe she also hallucinated his confession? What a waste of time to watch.

Space Jam: A New Legacy (2021)

Ugh

[4/10 · 20 July 2021]

Let's face it, for all of us parents now wanting to treat our kids to movies in theaters again after such a long time where it was not possible, we'll basically go to anything family-rated at the bargain matinees. Literally, anything. However, 30 min into this, I couldn't figure out how the agents of Dom Cheadle and LeBron James talked them into this project. I've loved Dom Cheadle in everything I've ever seen him in, he's a wonderful actor, but he has nothing to work with here. His character has no depth - that's how he's written, it's not Cheadle's fault. LeBron playing a fictional version of himself seems natural and engaging in front of the camera, I'd like to see him in other things, because this movie is kind of a mess that didn't need to be made. The set up takes a long, slow time to get through - fictional LeBron has trouble connecting with his son, who would rather expand his talents for coding and creating video games than play basketball and just wants his famous father to accept him as an individual. He and his son butt heads, but later try to mend fences by going together to the Warner Brothers studio to hear a pitch generated by the AI heart of the WB "Serververse" (no, really, a serververse). LeBron passes on the opportunity, but the AI algorithm (played by Dom Cheadle) takes offense and kidnaps the pair in revenge, digitizing them into his cyberspace within all the WB vaults. He then separates them, manipulating the son into thinking the AI is his friend and basically threatening LeBron into assembling a team of Looney Toons characters to face off in a wild, crazy rules basketball game to be held later. Confused? Confounded? Not even sure why all this is our plot exposition? Yeah, me too. We then plod through LeBron recruiting different toons and then the day of the big game - where it's revealed his son is now the star player on the opposing team along with malevolent versions of the OPs he created for his own video game and the WB AI as the Goon Squad coach. Somehow, inexplicably, the AI has also managed to kidnap andndigitize thousands of people across the globe to be spectators, along with LeBron's wife and other children. He tells LeBron right before the game starts that if he loses, all these people will be trapped in the "serververse" forever (eye roll). Don't even get me started on the absolute slog that is the big game. It goes on forever. And ever. Needless to say, LeBron and his son reconcile, join forces and win the game against the AI, who is vaporized, and return to the real world. LeBron accepts and encourages his son's individual pursuits and later they discover the toons can now visit them in the real world. Snore. But, my kids were just happy to be out at the movies again, so I guess it's worthwhile for that.

Nymphomaniac: Vol. I (2013)

A very, very sad tale of compulsion

[3/10 · 23 May 2021]

Up front I have to say this review is going to encompass my feelings about Vol 1 and 2 of this film, since the story has to be seen as a whole narrative and as such, I don't want to write separate reviews under the individual listings. Also, there are a lot of cast members and several parts are played by several different actors at different ages, so I will only speak of characters and you'll have to refer to the cast list for further info. First off, I think people mistake this for being intended as an erotic drama because of the surface subject matter. It's not. It's some of the unsexiest cinema I've ever seen. This is a story of compulsion, of mental health breakdown so bad it ruins lives. The story opens with a middle aged, worn out woman named Joe being found beaten and covered in urine in an alley by a possibly Good Samaritan named Seligman. She doesn't want an ambulance or police. So, Seligman takes her to his nearby apartment to triage as best he can and offers her clean clothes, tea and a listening ear. She begins to recount a terrible tale of her life as a nymphomaniac sex addict (although she, suffering from these diseases, does not realize how truly terrible it's all been) sometimes out of linear order. Yes, the scenes that follow are incredibly explicit, but I can't see how any one found them titillating. Joe has a compulsion for near constant sexual stimulation and encounters and despite almost always reaching, ahem, satisfaction, she's never satisfied. She just as soon ends one as she needs another. There's no pleasure here, not really, she's like a hoarder or a person with crippling OCD or a compulsive gambler, and watching her go on and on is painful. It also leads her to do terrible, hurtful things to herself and others as her compulsion rages - including essentially raping a man on a train who didn't want an encounter with her and ruining other people's committed relationships. She loses friends, jobs, living arrangements. When she finally has a chance at a loving, physically passionate relationship with a man who even wants to remain monogamous to her while giving her the chance to be intimate with others because he says he respects her need for it (he sadly lacks insight into it being a destructive compulsion, not an amorous hobby she has that he wants to be open-minded about) she can't stop going further and further into her compulsive abyss. She seeks out not just supplementary sexual partners to her marriage as her husband encouraged, she seeks hundreds of hurtful connections, even one that leaves her physically permanently scarred. When her actions endanger their child, her husband finally tells her to stop, but she breaks with him violently instead and watches her child carted off to foster care, because so deep is her disease. It's heartbreaking. What follows is her further devolvement and finally, a life of crime because she can't hold any semblance of society and regular life while her compulsion now consumes nearly all aspects of her existence every moment of every day. Someone in another comment said this was a morality tale about a woman being punished for sexual freedom. That's so incorrect. Joe isn't free. She's not fulfilled or in joy over her encounters (which would be liberation), she's compelled and physically and emotionally scarred. She's in thrall to her addiction, and as often happens, doesn't even realize the scope of it. People mistake all the visuals in this as because people are having sex, it's sexy. Again, it's not. It's sad. Tragic. If the movie had been titled, Gambler, and it was a 2 part, four hour story of a person who compulsively gambled until they wound up beaten in a gutter, would you think it was meant as an exciting endorsement for living at the rouelette wheel 24/7 at a Vegas casino while losing all the relationships and opportunities in your life because the scenes were filmed with exciting lighting and a sexy soundtrack? No. However, I will say I think the confusion on what this is meant as might be fueled by the producers' PR campaign to make all the ads and media push look hot. It isn't. Start to finish, it's sad. And, in the end, Joe is tired, strung out, and yet we have no hope she'll stop until she's dead. I frankly cried through 2/3 of all this. That's why I gave it 3 stars - it's 4 hours of such dismal depressing subject matter, I would never recommend it to anyone and I never want to watch it again.

Thirteen (2003)

Just, no.

[1/10 · 16 April 2021]

I'm sorry, I know this is an indie film which received tons of praise and attention when it debuted, but I found it stilted, implausible, often plotted for maximum shock value and just plain sad in every way imaginable. It's like a slightly refined after school special and an absolutely dismal take on young lives in shambles. I know some people just revel in seeing youth in grungy, terrifying emotional and physical distress, but I find it painful and nauseating. My advice is to pass on this one.

Thirteen (2016)

Intriguing premise hurt by bad writing and poor plotting, but still watchable

[7/10 · 15 April 2021]

Some spoilers follow. First off, I'm giving this a 7 out 10 largely due to the remarkable performance of Jodi Comer as Ivy Moxam, an emotionally and physically scarred abduction survivor who has been missing and held captive for 13 years. Comer is outstanding in every other role I've ever seen her in and she's no less than amazing here, too. Seeing her makes this worth watching, along with having a compelling thriller/drama premise that's truly interesting. However, the whole thing overall has a lot of problems due to the writing/plotting/characterizations. Let's dive in. The series starts well, thankfully, with a bang - beginning with a wide opening shot on a sunny, quiet suburban road before zeroing in on a pleasant red front door...moments later the door is opened timidly by a bedraggled looking young woman in a baggy housedress and bare feet. She steps outside, pauses for a moment, and then sprints down the street in terror until she finds a payphone and dials the police. We learn she is Ivy Moxam, a kidnapping victim snatched off the street while she was skipping school at age 13, now 26. DNA tests confirm her identity and her family is contacted. This is where the writing on this miniseries begins to go haywire and never recovers. Enter police detectives Elliot Carne (Richard Rankin) and Lisa Merchant (Valene Kane) who decide based on zero theory to begin grilling new found Ivy like she's a terror suspect while she cowers and shakes in nothing but a paper jumpsuit given to her by the physical evidence team who have stripped, swabbed and internally examined her with not an ounce of sensitivity or even her family liaison officer present. It's unfathomable that Det Merchant immediately then takes the stance that Ivy is guilty of some crime (what would that even be at this moment?) and Det Carne seems creepily attracted to Ivy, even asking her to call him Elliot. It's a bizarre, unsettling characterization. Ivy is then released to her tearful parents, Christina (played by Natasha Little) and Angus (played by Stuart Graham). Her little sister Emma, now all grown up (Catherine Rose Morley) and Emma's fiance, Craig (Joe Layton), are also on hand for the reunion. No one wants to tell Ivy her parents' marriage has been fractured (although not formally divorced) in the 13 years she's been missing, so her dad reluctantly leaves his assistant turned mistress to move back into the family home. Nearly everyone in the house seems resentful Ivy has returned a broken woman full of nervous ticks, stunted emotional development and an aversion to being touched. Her father even whines that his own daughter won't let him near her, like it's all about him. It's annoying to see the characters worry more about what they're getting from Ivy than to be heart broken over what she must have endured to make her this way. Emma starts to rebond with her sister, only to have her fiance, who until now has been shown to be a sensitive, loving and mature man, start whining about how he's gotten less attention in the last week and storm out of the house. Why??? Would a normal man ditch his beloved fiance when she spends a few days focusing solely on the traumatized sister she thought was dead? No. It's ludicrous. Ivy then also makes contact with one of her closest childhood friends, Tim (Anuerin Brand), who turned into her first puppy love mere months before her abduction. He pined for years and years for her, suffering a great deal of emotional distress over her loss, only to get his life together just a few years ago and recently marry. He doesn't want to tell Ivy he's married because he realizes quickly he still harbors feelings for her and that she is so incredibly fragile. Of course, because the writer of this series seems to hate Ivy, she later finds out in the most hurtful and humiliating way possible, because why let this poor suffering woman have anything, right? There's also Ivy's best female friend, Eloise (Eleanor Wyld) who convinced her to ditch school on that fateful day, but never showed for the rendezvous at a local arcade because she got a last minute better offer of a day out with someone else. Strangely, no one seems to harbor any resentment towards Eloise, who has turned into an aging party girl drunk, not even Ivy or Ivy's family, which is baffling. I mean, the fact Eloise wasn't there is the reason Ivy was wandering around alone with her headphones at full volume, which gave the kidnapper his opportunity in the first place. But, nope, no one seems to care. In the midst of all this, the kidnapper, who is still at large, snatches another girl (it's never explained how police know it's Ivy's abductor behind it from the first, they just announce it) and a long dead, decomposed body is found hidden in the basement where Ivy was initially kept exclusively for years. The police jump right to holding Ivy complicit for both these things somehow (again, huh?) and at one point they even drag this heavily traumatized woman off in handcuffs to interrogate her yet again. They have to be shown, once more, that Ivy is a victim in all this incapable of being held responsible for anything over the last 13 years (this has to be proved about 100 times in the 5 episodes like the writer's favorite hobby is victim blaming). Oh, and did I mention Det Carne also breaks into the offices of the psychiatrist treating Ivy to read all her confidential therapy files? Nothing illegal, unethical or immoral about that...And when he reads how Ivy's been feeling so alone, he jumps to another conclusion that she must have formed a genuine relationship with her abductor. A police officer doesn't understand psychological trauma and lack of ability to consent in such a situation? Also, I forgot to mention, in episode 1, Ivy makes a slightly cryptic statement to her family liaison officer which clearly implies she was pregnant at some point by her abductor and the officer neither asks her to elaborate, nor mentions it to the investigative team, which is absurd. Ivy is unclear and it could easily be possible she has a child or children still with her captor and no one follows up, which is really negligent police work, am I wrong? It turns out in the last episode her kidnapper forced her to become pregnant once and she miscarried, but this is something brought to light only after she is re-kidnapped during a botched police operation meant to catch the perpetrator and her abuser is once more holding her hostage and talking to her about it, so I suppose no one in the police ever cared about it. In the conclusion the second kidnapped girl is set free unharmed and Ivy escapes once more with zero help from police. Her kidnapper perishes and she ends looking even more destroyed than ever. My final thought is, it's definitely worth a watch, but you will come away hating more than half the characters for how poorly they are written.