The movie Disclosure was released in 1994 and was based on a book written by the late Michael Crichton and personally one of my favorite movies made from one of his novels.

It would have been something had this movie been released today, given the recent rash of sexual harassment stories coming out of Fox News the last few months. This movie is about sexual harassment in the workplace, but in this case, it is an evil woman played by Demi Moore who is the harasser. I thought the story and the acting were great in this film and I consider the portrayal of the lead character, Tom Sanders as one of Michael Douglas, best performances. I remember thinking when I saw this movie for the first time that there should be many more movies made about being an employee of a company to show the inevitable backstabbing and bad people that so many of us have to deal with to make a living.

What made this movie so good was how believable the complex political situations were and the injustice of what an innocent man had to endure once he is falsely accused of sexual harassment. It was amazing to see the attitudes of just about every one of Tom Sander’s co-workers who could just not believe that he was the victim of sexual harassment because he was a man. Tom was considered completely guilty before even getting his day in court. The rest of this movie was also very well done, including the courtroom scenes and the final the comeuppance of Meredith Johnson, played by Demi Moore that we all would love to see in real life but almost never do. The comedian Dennis Miller also makes a very convincing appearance in this movie as one of Tom’s co-workers.

This very good movie also stars Donald Sutherland who is the owner of the high-tech company who does a very believable job portraying the back-stabbing politics of the real working world. I highly recommend Disclosure as one of the few films I can remember about working in the real world.

from Dictionary.com:

A framework containing the basic assumptions, ways of thinking, and methodology that are commonly accepted by members of a scientific community.

It should be obvious now to anyone who goes to movies with any regularity that the very specific paradigm of some crazy woman who wants some other woman’s husband or boyfriend and then goes through an insane series of events to get him back, is something that producers in Hollywood believe will ultimately make money.

There have been so many movies like the movie “Unforgettable”, and it all started with the first film, which was the only good one of this type that was released 30 years ago, Fatal Attraction. Probably the main reason why Fatal Attraction was the only good movie is that it was the original and all the clones that follow are just pale imitations. I am more amazed that this exact story has been made so many times, with a storyline and action scenes that are so similar to the other movies. There is always a crazy unstable woman, this time played by Katherine Heigl and always a nice woman who is the victim, played by Rosario Dawson. There is always a scene where the two women fight, sometimes to the death. There are always several scenes where the insane woman plots to discredit or ruin the relationship of the other woman. There always seems to be some young child involved who can possibly be harmed during this insane conflict. There is nothing new in this entire story, other than to try and explain why Heigl’s character is so crazy because of her overbearing mother who is played by Cheryl Ladd, who looks extremely good for her age, 65. The comedian Whitney Cummings also has a small part in this movie as the advisor and friend to Rosario Dawson and she seems completely out of place in this story.

This film could be considered some kind of a comeback attempt for Katherine Heigl and it’s a shame she chose this bad movie to make but perhaps due to her problems in the past this was her only option. I have not seen Rosario Dawson in a movie for a while and perhaps she was in the same boat as Heigl and had no other options. The title for this bad film “Unforgettable” is unfortunate because not only will everyone forget this movie very quickly, you actually want to forget you made the decision to see this film while you are watching it. A better title for this bad film would be “Missable”.

I thought this movie is not the worst of all of the many clones that have been made in the 30 years since Fatal Attraction was released, but it’s definitely a film that should have gone straight to DVD.

One can only imagine the challenge the 2 screenwriters faced 2 years ago after the success of the last Fast and Furious movie. All of the actors in the last movie were signed to multiple film deals in this franchise and despite the fact that one of them, Jason Statham is in a maximum security level prison and one of the main stars, Paul Walker was very tragically killed in an auto accident. Now they had to come up a new story that would explain all of this for the new movie but for some reason, it seems that they completely forgot to explain why Paul Walker’s character Brian was not in this story. The new actor who will probably be his replacement, Scott Eastwood, has been added to the cast as the new Mr. Nobody who works with the old Mr. Nobody played by Kurt Russell. On top of this, the murdering criminal enemy in the last film, played by Jason Statham, now has to somehow, miraculously become the “good guy” and friends to the entire Fast and Furious family at the end of this film. Didn’t Statham’s character try to blow up Vin Diesel, Paul Walker, his baby and his wife in the last film? Are we suppose to forget about the murders he committed and now consider him part of the family? Of course, all of this is just too stupid, but somehow we are expected to accept this as part of the story.

I thought that the last movie had a very good story and very good action and a great tribute to Paul Walker at the end of the film. This new one had a very stupid and convoluted story that made no sense and the action scenes were not nearly as good as the last film. You cannot blame the 2 screenwriters, Chris Morgan and Gary Scott Thompson who were actually given the impossible task of writing a script that literally had to be “reverse engineered” into a story that had to satisfy the contracts of the actors and preserve the continuation of a franchise that has always been based on a stupid concept. Essentially, the idea of fighting terrorism and master criminals by driving cars fast is completely absurd from the start. We overlook stupidity like this for this movie franchise because the special effects and the stunts involved are so amazing to watch. However, at some point, the upside of seeing stunts and special effects are not enough to cover up a bad story, stupid plot, corny lines that are repeated too often and a series of events with the characters themselves that have now become ridiculously over the top and absurd. How many times can a character die in a movie series and not really be dead? What is the count of non-dead people in these movies so far? I lost count of this a long time ago.

Two new actors have joined the continuing cast of the Fast and Furious franchise, Charlize Theron and Scott Eastwood. It seems the producers are grooming Eastwood to take over for Kurt Russel or eventually take over for Paul Walker because he looks a little like him. As far as Theron, I thought she was miscast for this part as the evil mastermind criminal who obtains leverage over Vin Diesel’s character so he turns rogue.  You had to figure that the producers thought they needed this new idea or twist with this movie to hopefully prevent it from becoming stale, but what they overlook is that the more convoluted and ridiculous the story the larger the threat to this franchise continuing. In my opinion, if in another 2 years they come up a story or illogical events for Fast and Furious #9 as bad as with this movie, then this entire franchise might just have reached its limit too soon.

For me, the best part of this movie is the violent banter between The Rock, Dwayne Johnson and Jason Statham, when they first meet up in prison and later in the movie when they somehow, despite what happened in the last movie, slowly start to like each other? The Rock is becoming famous for several of his over the top lines in these movies and this one was no exception. The one time when the Rock tells Statham what he would do to him in a fight, that involved brushing his teeth, the audience I was in as well as the two actors just had to laugh out loud. It was by far the best line in this movie.

The ending of this movie that involved driving cars on a glacier in Russia seemed to be just an excuse to drive cars on ice and blow them up and like the rest of this movie made no sense. This final scene also involved the use of the submarine and an ending car jumping scene with Diesel that was far too similar to the ending of the last film. At this point in the movie, I was overwhelmed and very annoyed at the ridiculous plot that made no sense and action scenes entirely for the excuse to have special effects or stunts, rather than a story had some logic to it. This movie pushes the envelope of absurdity and over the top dialogue more than any of the other previous 7 films and because of that reason, ruined the film. At some point there just has to be a plot that makes some sense and not a storyline that was created just so all of the actors involved can have their contracts honored for future movies. Another flaw I saw in this story was the computer expert, played by Nathalie Emmanuel, who in this movie is a passenger in cars during the action scenes and in harm’s way, even though she is the computer person who should be working on computer issues remotely. Why is she involved with these action scenes and almost getting killed when she never even drives a car? This just another example of stupid decisions for this movie that made no sense.

Normally I would say to see this movie just for the special effects, but the insane story and just above average special effects are not enough for me to recommend this latest installment in the Fast and Furious franchise.