Movie Review: Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft – The Tour Live in 3D

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For a human being, only 24 years old to have already achieved huge success in music at the level of Billie Eilish is most likely unprecedented. Eilish has already won ten Grammys and two Academy Awards for Best Original Song, the youngest person to ever win this award. She has performed in huge concerts around the world, where her fans are as devoted and rabid as Taylor Swift’s.

During Eilish’s performances for the concert movie “Billie Eilish: Hit Me Hard and Soft”, her fans know every lyric to all of her songs and sing along with her for every performance, many of them crying. After the concert was over, almost all of her fans, most of them young women, were still crying profusely, as if they had just seen the greatest performance in their lives. Many of Eilish’s songs are somewhat slow and sad, making the emotional impact on her audience greater than most other performers, with the possible exception of Taylor Swift.

Eilish’s achievements at such a young age, even caught the eye of the great director James Cameron, who directed this impressive concert movie, which shows from the beginning the huge logistical effort it takes to assemble the scaffolding, lights, sound, and software within a huge concert venue. Then all of these man-hours of construction and testing have to be taken down, then driven by trucks to be reassembled in another huge stadium. For this tour, this happened an incredible 106 times with 1.5 million attendees grossing 225 million dollars worldwide.

Everything about Elish’s performances is highly unusual, including lying down on stage while singing and looking up at the sky. She wears loose-fitting athletic shirts and pants, a baseball cap, and continuously walks around the huge stage. At times, Eilish takes the risk of stepping into the audience to shake many hands. Eilish, along with her brother Finneas, writes all of her own music, another thing she has in common with Taylor Swift. It is hard to imagine a life like this to be so rich and world famous at such a young age, with so many millions of fans so devoted. Then to have the amazing ability to stand in front of so many thousands of people and remember all of the lyrics to so many songs. Also, like Taylor Swift, Billie Eilish has not let her huge success go to her head, and she also seems like a well-adjusted, normal person.

There are several scenes of Cameron and Eilish directing this concert movie, which also include several interviews in which Eilish is asked by Cameron to give her own perspective on her incredibly blessed life.

I put this concert movie on a par with “Taylor Swift: The Eras Tour” concert film, released in 2023. I agree with the 90% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and give a high recommendation to this movie.

Movie Review: The Devil Wears Prada 2

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The last time there was a major social media interest fervor for creating a sequel to a production that had been off the air for years is the outstanding TV series “Suits,” which ran for nine years from 2011 to 2019. This resulted in a TV sequel on NBC, “LA Suits,” which was a disaster of 13 episodes that ran for one season in 2025 and was immediately cancelled for low ratings and bad episodes. The problem with racing into a new production based on buzz on social media are that very often the new show is rushed, to take advantage of what could be a temporary anomaly of enthusiasm, mostly to cash in on ratings and box office. Unfortunately, when a new production is rushed because of social media buzz and is based on a previous show that was outstanding, what results is a bad TV show or movie. The bottom line is that you cannot rush quality. Creating a new great idea or writing a great screenplay can take years.

“The Devil Wears Prada”, released in 2006, has maintained its popularity on Cable TV for twenty years. This is one of those movies that, even though you have seen it many times, you still want to watch it again. The quality and great moments in this original film are relatable to everybody who has ever worked for a company and/or with very difficult people. This includes the incredible rudeness of CEO of the magazine “Runway”, Miranda Priestly, (Meryl Streep), and the ongoing nastiness of Andy’s coworker Emily (Emily Blunt).

Miranda’s inconsiderate behavior towards Andy (Anne Hathaway) included not even remembering her name, throwing her coat on Andy’s desk, mean, condescending comments, ignoring, and dismissing at a level at times that are so extreme they are funny. Far too many of us have been subjected to this kind of employment garbage daily, only because someone else has us under their financial thumb. This harsh reality of making a living is one of the most unfortunate parts about being alive and needing money to buy food and shelter.

The sequel, “The Devil Wears Prada 2” is a far better effort than Suits LA. The screenplay was written by Aline Brosh McKenna and Lauren Weisberger, walked the line of giving the audience reminders of some of the best moments of the original, with enough new ideas that make this movie experience not seem exploitive. The bottom line in any new movie production like this, is to make money first. Taking huge risks is far too often not an option because the producers do not want to alienate the fans of the original movie. Therefore, frequent reminders of the original are to be expected.

The other main character returning for this sequel is Stanley Tucci, who is outstanding as Nigel, with Lucy Liu as a famous fashion mogul whom Miranda wants to interview to save Runway because the magazine is going through hard times due to the greatly reduced interest in print media, due to publishing on the internet. I also thought that the twist at the end of this story, about wealthy businessmen screwing over other wealthy people, was too similar to the ending of the original film. Lady Gaga also has a cameo towards the end of this movie along with Donatella Versace, Naomi Campbell and Heidi Klum.

Overall, I thought this sequel was good, but nearly as great as the original, with the acting good throughout. I agree with the 79% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and give this movie a moderate recommendation.

Movie Review: Michael

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There is a chance that during the 152-venue Taylor Swift tour, which ran from March 2023 to December 2024 in 51 cities and grossed over 2 billion dollars, that Swift might have surpassed the fame Michael Jackson had at his peak in 1984, but this is impossible to know for sure.

The difference between Taylor and Michael is that she was not burdened with an abusive father, and Swift was not ten years old, the lead singer of a huge music act, and the sole financial support of his whole family. There is no way that someone like Michael Jackson could have lived such an extremely unusual life, with so much red-hot worldwide fame, and still turned out to be a normal, well-adjusted person. Jackson’s huge talent was both a great blessing and a curse. The good news is that Taylor Swift is a normal, well-adjusted person and will not be following the path of Whitney Houston, Elvis, and Michael Jackson and so many others who could not adjust to the negative aspects of being so famous.

The new biopic “Michael” is about Michael Jackson’s career, which started with the Jackson Five, and the start of his solo career in 1978 with the album “Off the Wall,” and eventually led to “Thriller” in November 1982, the most popular album of all time, and unprecedented superstar fame. In January 1984, Jackson was filming a Pepsi commercial and promo for the Jackson family Victory tour, and he suffered a massive burn injury to the top of his head, which burned his scalp so severely he became addicted to painkillers for the rest of his life. Of all the bad breaks Jackson endured in his career, this one injury ranks as the worst because of the doctors who prescribed many years of opioids to help him with his burn injury and made him a drug addict.

Michael is directed by Antoine Fuqua and stars Jaafar Jackson as Michael, Colman Domingo as Joseph Jackson, Nia Long as Katherine Jackson, Juliano Valdi as young Michael Jackson, Larenz Tate as Berry Gordy, and Miles Teller as Jackson’s manager after he became a solo artist. The acting is very good throughout, with too many scenes of a belt and child abuse with Joseph Jackson and his ten-year-old son Michael, which were extremely difficult to see and hear.

Joseph’s lifelong attempt to dominate Michael’s entire career is a central part of this story, which, in the end, with the Jackson family Victory tour in mid-1984, Michael was finally able to escape. This movie abruptly ends in 1984, twenty-five years before Michael Jackson’s death in June 2009, almost as if the producers and screenwriters were afraid to go further into Jackson’s many allegations of child molestation, which were never addressed in this film. The best parts of the movie are the singing and dancing of Jaafar Jackson, who does an outstanding job with all of the most famous performances of Jackson’s career, and the movie ends with about 15 minutes of Jackson performing in the Victory tour.

This movie does a good job as a biography of one of the most well-known music careers of all time, but with no new revelations or addressing the many controversies that Jackson lived through. This is one of the main reasons for the surprisingly low critical Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 38%, with an almost perfect 97% audience rating. My rating is 85%, and a strong recommendation to see this movie for the great musical performances and acting.