Category Archives: Drama

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.

Movie Review: Caught Stealing

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In terms of horrible New York City apartments, squalor, and barely surviving, set in a gritty, dark, and depressing story, the new movie “Caught Stealing” is one of the all-time standards.

Caught Stealing stars Austin Butler as Hank Thompson and Zoë Kravitz as his girlfriend, Yvonne, who are constantly in trouble, running for their lives, and getting beaten up. One of the early beatings of Hank involves a long period of kicking his midsection while he is lying on the ground. This causes Hank to lose one of his kidneys. At some point during a scene like this, you would think that director Darren Aronofsky would have yelled ‘cut’ long before this scene became obvious overkill.

Unfortunately, this movie is mostly about scenes like this, with one of the few good aspects, the appearance of an extremely attractive house cat, who is present for almost the entire movie, despite the constant gunfire and violence. My guess is the director thought of having this cat appear in this movie to diffuse the over-the-top action scenes.

The story is about a large sum of money that two groups of criminals are trying to find at all costs. Hank has a friend who is leaving for England, and the criminals think that Hank knows where the money is. What follows are chase scenes and non-stop gunfire.

One group of criminals is a Russian gang, the other group of two Hasidic Jewish men, played by two well-known actors, Liev Schreiber and Vincent D’Onofrio, are the most violent, at one point blowing up a nightclub with many people still inside. Regina King plays a police detective in a role and a story twist that we have all seen too many times before.

While the acting is good in this film, the story, over top violence and several parts of the conclusion that do not hold water, I do not recommend this movie, despite the too high 84% rating on Rotten Tomatoes.

Movie Review: Honey Don’t

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It is not often that a bad movie is released that is directed or written by either Joel or Ethan Coen. Unfortunately, this is the case with the new and very strange film “Honey Don’t”. This movie has three major stars, Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans, who probably all took their roles only for the opportunity to work with the Coen brothers, regardless of the quality of the story or screenplay.

The erratic, haphazard story of the strangely titled Honey Don’t is about a private investigator Honey O’Donahue, played by Qualley, who investigates a series of murders in the depressing town of Bakersfield, California ( this movie was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico). As she investigates the different murders, while visiting a series of broken-down locations and homes, even more killings occur, some of them extremely violent, where most of the killings seem to be excuses to keep the audience from dozing off, as most of this movie is very boring.

I was surprised someone as talented and funny as Aubrey Plaza took this role as a police officer, as there are several shockingly raunchy scenes with Margaret Qualley and an extremely violent scene with Qualley later in the movie. What were these two up-and-coming actors thinking, taking bad roles in a bad movie with horrific scenes like these?

Chris Evans plays a local, perverted evangelist, Reverend Drew Devlin, in a role he will likely regret later in his career. The problem with clout in Hollywood is that a famous and respected director or writer can create a bad project and still attract named actors. The worst example of this is last year’s disaster, “Megalopolis”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who spent 124 million dollars of his own money to make one of the worst movies ever produced.

This movie is categorized as a dark comedy, which is used as an excuse for some of the insane and disturbing scenes. There is nothing funny here, within a film that really has no plot and no reason for existing. I agree with the very low ratings of 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie.