Category Archives: Drama

Hulu Movie Review: Swiped

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The new Hulu movie “Swiped” is about the career of Whitney Wolfe, who was mostly responsible for the dating apps Tinder and Bumble.

The best part of this story is the real-life battleground of betrayal, bad people, credit stealers, and backstabbers that all of us face in this world, working for companies and trying to make a living. None of this is ever easy for anyone, least of all Whitney Wolfe who, despite her genius, had to live through huge injustice and hardship before hitting it big.

Lily James stars in the lead role as Whitney Wolfe Heard, who, at only age 22, had ambitions to be a very wealthy entrepreneur in charge of her own financial destiny – the perfect workaround from working for other people. Whitney runs into several other entrepreneurs and lands a job at a new startup, attempting to create a dating app for a smartphone. Mainly through Whitney’s great and innovative ideas, the new dating app “Tinder” was created.

Whitney mistakenly has an affair with a new hire who is her boss, and when she breaks up with him, an avalanche of injustice follows. Despite Whitney’s proof of non-stop texting abuse on her phone, she is the one who has to leave the company, even though she is the one who created all of the best ideas for Tinder, including the name of the app. What follows seems like it was the fictional ideas of a screenwriter even though this is a true life story. After a long struggle and legal battles, Whitney started her own company with the help of a wealthy investor and was a self made billionaire in February 2021, when the company went public. Real life stories like this one can inspire anyone who has been through a bad job, or a massive injustice at work.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics giving this good movie a 37% rating are way off, with my rating a solid 85% and a recommendation for a great true-life story about struggle and triumph.

Movie Review: Highest 2 Lowest

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The new movie “Highest 2 Lowest” is the latest Spike Lee-directed movie. His last film was five years ago, “Da 5 Bloods”, released in 2020 on Netflix. This is the 5th collaboration between Spike Lee and Denzel Washington who stars in this film as a music mogul in New York City named David King, who is a major risk taker and has built a music empire that is either doing well or about to collapse from bankruptcy.

There are several speeches in this film about risk, success, and failure that are very well written, all ultimately about what is most important in life: how hard it is to succeed, and how easy it can be to lose everything are some of the best parts of this story.

There is a huge deal that David King is trying to make with this company that surprisingly turns into a kidnapping of David’s son, Trey, played by Aubrey Joseph, and a mistake by the kidnappers that adds many story twists and impossible decisions, making this movie a standout kidnapping story.

The acting is outstanding, including David King’s best friend, Paul Christopher, played by Jeffrey Wright, and his wife, Pam King, played by Ilfenesh Hadera. Former NBA player Rick Fox plays himself as a high school basketball coach, and there are several references to his time in the NBA and especially the great playoff matchups with the Boston Celtics.

The twists towards the end of this story and the ending are very well done and never predictable, with my only negative comment involving the too-long music montage fillers at certain parts of this film.

The rap star A$AP Rocky is great in his role as Yung Felon, with some of his arguments and speeches with Denzel Washington at the end of this movie performed very impressively. The singer Sunni Valentine plays an aspiring singer Julie Tucker, with her only appearance at the end of this film, with a great performance of her song “Highest to Lowest”, trying to convince David King to sign her to a music contract.

The Rotten Tomatoes consensus of 90% is correct this time. I agree with this rating and highly recommend this film.

Movie Review: The Long Walk

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The description for the new movie “The Long Walk” is one of the strangest in the history of movies.

After a worldwide financial disaster where everybody lives in extreme poverty, a group of about 50 young men agree to compete in a contest where they have to walk nonstop until there is only one person standing. The winner of this contest will be given a substantial amount of money, although the exact dollar amount is never specified in this story. The rules are that if anyone walks at a pace slower than three miles per hour, they are given three warnings and then they are shot in the head. So in this contest, there is a 98% chance of death and only a 2% chance of winning. Right from the beginning, this story makes no sense because nobody would enter a contest that has a 98% chance of death, regardless of how extreme the global poverty is.

The main character, Raymond Garrity (Cooper Hoffman) enters this contest to both help his mother out of extreme poverty and to avenge his father, as we find out much later in this story. The best part of this film is the developing friendship between Garrity and Peter McVries (David Johnson), which grows during this entire story.

Mark Hamill plays The Major, a cruel military leader of this walking contest. There are many scenes of extreme violent death as we repeatedly see young men shot in the head or body, which I thought was over the top, unnecessary at this level of extreme gore. Worse was a scene of a man defecating while trying to maintain the three-mile-per-hour walking pace. Why the director and producers decided to show something this grotesque is anyone’s guess. What is the future of the actor who decided to take a part like this in this movie?

The acting is good overall, despite the insane story, with a way too high 91% Rotten Tomatoes rating. My rating is a 70% pass, due to the extremely unnecessary scenes of death, people being shot in the head, and disgusting scenes. It is hard to understand the point of a film like this, other than making a movie that has never been done before. Considering the over 350 miles of walking in 5 days, there is no way any human could walk this far, nonstop for that many days at a three mile and hour pace.