Category Archives: Drama

Movie Review: The Friend

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The new movie “The Friend” has a very simple logline. An older man, Walter, played by Bill Murray, decides to commit suicide and leave his Great Dane, named Apollo, with a friend Iris, played by Naomi Watts. What follows in this story is the grief that Iris experiences after losing a close friend, the many difficulties in trying to take care of a giant dog, and her landlord’s constant reminders that dogs are not allowed in her rent-controlled apartment.

This movie is filmed entirely in New York City, following Iris continuing with her professional and personal life despite the many challenges she suddenly faces after her friend dies, coping with both grief and anger. There are more flashback scenes with Bill Murray towards the end of this film, that show the depth fo this friendship between Ira and Walter.

Most of the good moments of this story are about the personality and likability of the dog when he demonstrates a high level of intelligence including several moments of sadness in his eyes, after Watler dies early in the film. From ChatGPT: “Great Danes are considered a giant breed, and unfortunately, larger dogs tend to have shorter lifespans compared to smaller breeds. Some of the most common health issues that can affect their longevity include: Bone Cancer, Heart Disease, Hip Dysplasia and Gastric Torsion.“

I thought the ending was well done, with Iris struggling to find a solution to the landlord forcing her to get rid of the dog that she has grown to love.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for The Friend is a very high 86% with my rating around 80% with an overall running time that could have been shorter, due to the very simple story.

Movie Review: A Working Man

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The new movie “A Working Man” has many similarities to the great Liam Neeson movie “Taken” from 2008. The entire screenplay plays like Taken with one man taking on significant gangs of criminals, in this case, three different gangs, corrupt police, a young woman kidnapped into a human trafficking ring, and a dramatic ending with Levon Cade, played by Jason Statham finding the young woman named Carla, played by Noemi Gonzalez also very similar to the ending of Taken.

The attempts to make this movie different than Taken, with Levon Cade an employee of a family of a construction company to find their kidnapped daughter are not enough to erase constant reminders of Taken throughout this two-hour movie. A Working Man was written by Sylvester Stallone, David Ayer, and Chuck Dixon making it more unusual that with three writers nobody could think of enough new ideas to turn what could have been a much better new story idea, into an obvious clone of Taken.

The acting in this film is good, with David Harbour and Michael Peña and the action scenes are what anyone would expect with a Jason Statham movie. The ending has a major flaw with about 20 bikers running into a bar trying to kill Cade, and later they are nowhere to be found, with Cade fighting the lead biker at the end. As with all movies like this one, when there are multiple people shooting guns and machine guns against one other person, there is no way one person would survive with that many bullets. But this is a movie, not real life.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings of 53% are accurate and I do not recommend this movie, that did not try to be more original.


Amazon Prime Movie Review: Tyler Perry’s Duplicity

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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.