Author Archives: jjcwn

Movie Review: The Alto Knights

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

The new movie “The Alto Knights”, directed by Barry Levinson, with Robert Robert De Niro, playing two roles as mob bosses Frank Costello, and Vito Genovese – plays more like a documentary not told sequentially with no noticeable story.

This low-rated film reminds me of last year’s “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” (it now looks like Chapter 2 will never be released), written and directed by Kevin Costner which had some of the same major flaws. Scenes, storylines, and characters are injected without regard to the previous scene, providing no measurable level of continuity, fundamental to the understanding and enjoyment of the audience. Instead, De Niro, as Frank Costello, talks to the audience at different parts of the story, trying to educate a confused audience about some event in the past. After about 5 scenes like this, this movie starts to fail with everyone watching hoping the two hours will be over soon.

Considering a great accomplished director like Barry Levinson and arguably one of the greatest actors of all time, it is surprising that a movie this bad could have been written, directed, produced and released.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for this movie are a correctly low 38% and I agree with this low number and do not recommend this film.


Amazon Prime Movie Review: Tyler Perry’s Duplicity

Posted on by • Posted in Drama • Tagged , • Leave a comment

The main problem with Tyler Perry’s new Amazon Prime Video is similar to some of his other movies. Trying to be different and trying too hard to fool his audience with some off-the-wall crazy ending. The other unique issue about Tyler Perry’s movies is the extreme hostility of many of the critics who hate just about all of his films. Perhaps one of the reasons for this is Perry’s insistence about adding his name to the front of the movie title as with the new movie “Duplicity”. One bad sign of a newly released movie is that the final Rotten Tomatoes ratings are delayed, to prevent some people from rejecting this film because of the bad critical grades. Here are some of the reviews so far on Rotten Tomatoes:

Joseph Robinson: Tyler Perry bolsters his filmography with yet another barrage of dumb characters doing nonsensical things while drowning in an inane narrative that takes entirely too long to arrive at its ridiculous conclusion.

Brian Orndorf: Perry gets close to ickiness by trivializing police shootings to fuel a moronic thriller, messing with real world agony to generate another forgettable stinker.

Unfortunately for Perry, these reviews are typical of many of his productions, going on for many years. The reason why screenwriting is so difficult is that creating a dramatic conclusion that fools the audience, must also include plausibility and believability. One scene at the end of Duplicity is where a small unathletic woman frees herself from chain shackles at the bottom of the lake setting the stage for one of the surprise scenes at the end. There is no way this scene could happen in real life and should have not been included in this film.

Duplicity stars several mostly unknown actors Kat Graham as Marley, Meagan Tandy as Fela, Tyler Lepley as Tyler Lepley as Tony, and RonReaco Lee as Kevin – in a story that involves corrupt police officers a prosecutor and a shooting of a black man by a white police officer. Some of the twists and turns in this story, work, but most do not. However, the acting overall is good, which is why it is a shame that the story and especially the ending does not work.

The ratings on Rotten Tomatoes for this film will be extremely low, around the 10% level, with the IMDB rating a very low 4.5%. My rating is only 25% for some of the acting.

Due to the large number of panned Tyler Perry movies, perhaps its time to leave the screenwriting of these movies to someone else, leaving him more time to concentrate on all the other aspects of the films he produces.

Movie Review: Magazine Dreams

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

Actor Jonathan Majors is a respected actor in Hollywood who in recent years has had problems with a domestic violence charge involving actor Grace Jabbari – the main reason why the new movie “Magazine Dreams”, produced in 2023 is releasing now, after most of Major’s legal issues have gone away and he is now married his long time girlfriend Meagan Good.

Major’s performance in this movie about a young man living on the edge of suicide or going postal is good and convincing enough for an Academy Award nomination. Unfortunately, films released this early in the year are rarely considered for any major movie awards.

Killian Maddox, played by Majors is a man in his mid-30s who works at a low-paying menial job at a local food store and lives with his ailing grandfather. Killian tries to distract himself from his memories of his father murdering his mother and then himself when Killian was 11 years old, by devoting all his free time to trying to be the world’s greatest bodybuilder. The bodybuilding aspect of this story is the most impressive thing about Major’s acting performance – due to the months of massive calorie intake and intense bodybuilding workouts to become believable in this extremely physical role. As is too often the case with competitive bodybuilders, Killian injects himself with steroids and after visiting a doctor, does not even care about the noncancerous tumors on his liver and the high probability of dying from steroid abuse.

Midway through this story, Killian becomes dangerously angry due to the steroids and destroys a hardware store after they refuse to complete a job of painting his grandfather’s house. This later leads to a violent confrontation with three men and metal pipes that almost kills Killian. A downward spiral follows with Killian losing his job with the food store and being humiliated when he is on a date and she sneaks out of the restaurant. This movie is very good at showing just how bad the life of a human being can get – very quickly.

The ending uses some seen-before movie trickery involving Killian meeting his long-time bodybuilding idol and fantasies of going postal by shooting a large number of people with a rifle he buys from the internet.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics are correct this time around with a high 82% rating and I agree with this opinion and recommend this film despite its dark and depressing story.