Movie Review: Black Bag


For the new movie “Black Bag”, what is most significant is the extensive list of named actors in this production: Michael Fassbender, Cate Blanchett, Naomie Harris, Regé-Jean Page, Pierce Brosnan, and Gustaf Skarsgård.

This film violates the #1 rule of screenwriting – “Show Don’t Tell”, as this screenplay is almost 100% dialogue. This is a movie about a complex series of events involving a group of spies that requires the complete attention of the audience, due to the many twists and turns, the number of characters, and the complex dialogue. The main spy, Kathryn St. Jean, played by Blanchett, might be a mole in the agency, and her husband George Woodhouse, played by Fassbender spends the majority of this movie trying to find out if his wife is a counter-spy. Unfortunately, a spy movie with limited action scenes can become boring after about an hour – with the good news being that this film is only 93 minutes long, with a very unusual and abrupt ending that I did not like.

I cannot understand the extremely high ratings for this movie, directed by Steven Soderbergh of 97% on Rotten Tomatoes, with my rating only 75% and a passable review, only because of the acting and the number of relevant actors.

Movie Review: Mickey 17


The Oscar winner for Best Picture 2019 was “Parasite”, a win that had more to do with something new, in this case having a movie made in South Korea and a South Korean director, Bong Joon Ho win two major awards. In 2019, two better films were passed over for best picture, “A Marriage Story”, and “The Irishman”.

Once a famous director wins an Oscar for Best Picture and Best Director, they have the power to write their own ticket to receive funding to produce any movie they want for years into the future. Too often, having the clout to fund and produce a new movie results in a horrible film. A great recent example of this is Francis Ford Coppola’s movie from last year “Megalopolis”, when Coppola spent 124 million dollars of his own money to produce one of the worst movies ever made.

While the new movie “Mikey 17” is not as bad as Megalopolis, it is bad enough to make any top ten list for one of the worst movies ever released. Starting with the insane logline: “In a futuristic world on another planet, an expendable worker on a colonization mission, dies many times and then is recreated using a 3D printing machine that can create clones of any human being”. What is the point of the main character Mickey Barnes, played by Robert Pattinson, dying 17 times in a row, and then being recreated is never really explained in this story. There is another character in this film who appears several times dressed as a giant rooster – also never explained, even for those in the audience who have not fallen into a coma.

The entire film is about following Mickey Barnes as he falls victim and dies in one accident after another, and then winds up back again in the human cloning machine. The screenplay is nonsensical, disjoined, and largely makes no sense. Inside of 30 minutes, anyone watching this mess is looking at their watch, hoping for a quick end to this torture, which unfortunately is way too long at 2 hours and 17 minutes.

Other actors in this bad movie include Steven Yeun, Mark Ruffalo, and Toni Collette and I can only conclude that these well-known actors agreed to act in this movie for an opportunity to work with an Academy Award-winning director – Bong Joon Ho – and then forgot to read the screenplay he wrote.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film are an insanely high 79%, that is all about the new trend in Hollywood where something never seen before, is more important than quality. My rating, only for some of the special effects is 20%, and a recommendation to run from this disaster of 2 hours.

Movie Review: I’m Still Here


On March 2, 2025 a 60 Minutes broadcast a segment called, “Death Flight” – a story about Argentina in the 1970s where political prisoners were murdered by flying over the Atlantic Ocean and dropping them 10 thousand feet from a plane – to make sure that they were never found. The movie “I’m Still Here”, one of this year’s 10 Academy Award-nominated films, is about a similar dictatorship in Brazil in the 1970s where the government arrested people for no reason, held them prisoner for years, or murdered them, including the method of dropping them into the Atlantic Ocean.

I’m Still Here is about a family living in Argentina in the 1970s when one day, the Argentina goverment walked into their house and arrested the father, Rubens Paiva, played by Selton Mello, for no reason, lying to the family telling them they were just going to question him and Rubens would be back soon. The family never saw Rubens again. A few days later the Argentinan government arrested Rubens wife Eunice Paiva, played by Fernanda Torres, and questioned her in prison for weeks, they were eventually returned. The rest of this story is about the family trying to find out, for many years, what happened to Rubens Paiva, that at times can seem rather boring. The acting is outstanding with Fernanda Torres receiving a best actress Oscar nomination and the film receiving the Best International Film Oscar.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 97% is too high, with my rating at 85% and a solid recommendation.