Monthly Archives: May 2024

Netflix Movie Review: Atlas

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When does the desire to remain relevant in Hollywood start to be a bad idea after a defined number of bad movies made – mostly on Netflix over x number of years? It seems that Jennifer Lopez’s career is more about volume and less about quality and over time, this will eventually ruin anyone’s potential to make any new movie.

The latest Netflix release, “Atlas” is a robot-AI movie that is mostly about the main character named Atlas, played by Lopez, sitting in a robot transport similar to the ones used for the movie “Avatar”. Her character has conversations with the robot computer voice named Smith and fights other robots, for reasons that are not defined well enough.

The critics are in agreement about how bad this film is, giving it a Rotten Tomatoes rating of 17%, with one of the better reviews from Susan Granger of the SSG Syndicate: “What was Jennifer Lopez thinking when she agreed to star in this absurdly formulaic sci-fi action adventure? Did she even bother to read the cliched, derivative script?” Not bothering to read the script seems to be a new trend in Hollywood, with the other trend being, “better to make something bad, rather than nothing at all”. If you’re as wealthy as Lopez, then why make all of these bad streaming movies? Why not wait for something great or hire a great screenwriter to write something specifically for you, and then make a good movie instead?

Volume should never be respected more than quality, in any profession. The well-known phrase, “overstaying your welcome” has a great deal of meaning in this situation. A good example of an actress who never makes a bad movie, and waits for a quality production is actress Michelle Williams, who has been nominated for 5 Oscars, all of them for outstanding movies.

I was also surprised to see the great actor Sterling K. Brown in this bad movie, once again going for the money and not waiting for quality. Simu Liu is also in this film, playing an android robot.

I agree with the very low Rotten Tomatoes ratings of only 17% and rate this movie a big pass.

Movie Review: Babes

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The new movie “Babes” is another one of those films that walks a fine line between what is funny, and what might be funny because it is raunchy. Some comedy movies go the raunchy route, believing that if it is disgusting, then enough people will laugh and word of mouth will carry the movie in the box office. This movie is at times raunchy and then dials back for a while, and then is raunchy again – sometimes too much and other times, just enough.

The story is about two close friends Michelle Buteau who plays Dawn and Ilana Glazer who plays Eden. Dawn is married and at the start of this movie is about to give birth along the way to the hospital, which creates some opportunities for some raunchy scenes that involve water breaking and the pain of childbirth. At one point Dawn even crawls into an elevator, while in labor and on the way to the hospital. The scenes of Dawn giving birth provide a second barrage of raunchy dialogue and scenes, that many would consider both unnecessary and more importantly – not funny. Later in the story, after a fling with someone she met on a subway, Eden also gets pregnant and for the rest of the movie – the medical issues involving her pregnancy follow – with once again, several over the top raunchy scenes.

Overall, the story of these two close friends and their ups and downs included good dialogue for the most part and solid acting. This is not a high-quality comedy movie like “When Harry Met Sally” or “My Cousin Vinnie”, it’s overall just OK, but not good enough to be long term memorable.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie is way too high 92%, with my rating 75%, mainly for some of the acting and a moderate recommendation.

Movie Review: Furiosa A Mad Max Saga

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For the latest Mad Max movie “Furiosa A Mad Max Saga” the most impressive parts of this film have nothing to do with the screenplay or the acting. This movie is all about sand dunes, old beat-up cars, dune buggies, tractor trailers, and insane special effects. This movie was shot in the deserts and barren locations of Austrailia in the hot sun, where filming had to be a day by day nightmare, of cars breaking down and sand getting into the engines and transmissions of all the vehicles that were driven hard and destroyed within this story. The heat for the actors during so many hours of filming had to be extremely difficult to work in, reminding all of us who are movie fans that movie making is very often not the easy road many think it is most of the time.

This movie stars Anya Taylor-Joy as the lead character Furiosa, who starts as a young girl who loses her mother to a group of criminals and animals. She then grows up to be a great fighter who battles insane gangs in a world that is rapidly coming to an end. Her nemesis is an insane evil character Dr. Dementus, played by Chris Hemsworth. Unfortunately, the story is boring in too many areas and once again, this movie is way too long at 2 hours and 28 minutes.

This is yet another example of special effects and action scenes over a great screenplay – which is always the hardest thing to accomplish within any effort to produce and direct a new movie. The “Mad Max” name recognition is the reason why the producers think “who cares about the story, lets create explosions and car crashes in a huge desert, nobody cares about the story”.

I have never been fan of any of the Mad Max movies, often wondering why anyone likes a movie like this, with characters who are dirty and disgusting and barely alive in a world that is barely worth living in.

The Rotten Tomatoes high ratings of 89% – once again – make no sense, with my rating of 60% and a big pass for this film.