For the new Richard Gere movie “Oh, Canada,” it is never a good sign when you are: 1. Hoping that you will doze off; 2. Wondering how a screenplay this bad could ever be greenlighted; 3. Thinking that a movie this bad would find better use as a night light in a nursing home; and 4. Saying to yourself many times during these nightmare two hours, “Please God, make it stop!”
This movie is about a man, Leo Fife, played by Richard Gere, dying of Cancer and decides to record a series of interviews about different events of his life. Unfortunately, all of these different events are extremely boring, disconnected, and at times hard to follow (especially considering the onset of a coma while watching his disaster of two wasted hours). Uma Thurman plays Emma, Leo Fife’s wife with a role that was hard to believe any well-known actress would take.
This entire film is nothing more than a series of scenes, then more scenes that do not make sense, and a final merciful conclusion after wasting 1 hour and 31 minutes that seemed like a 3-hours. I for one am very sick of sitting through bad movies like this, blog movie review author or not.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this horrific mess is a way too high 66% with an IMDB score of a very low 5.6. My rating is 6%, recommending this movie for only people who have trouble sleeping.
For those on the fence about whether to give up their careers to stay home and raise a child, this is not the movie for you.
The new movie “Nightbitch” stars Amy Adams in her first role in about 2 years. It is a mystery when a respected actor who has received six Oscar nominations and has been a major player in Hollywood for over 25 years, would choose this screenplay to return to acting. Adams wears no makeup in this film, has gained about 30 pounds, and plays an extremely depressed, exhausted, and suicidal married woman during the entire time she is living in this small house with her son, and has a husband who is rarely home. Adams’s character name in this movie is of all things, “Mother”, with her husband, played by actor Scoot McNairy, “Husband” – one of those “trying to be different, never seen this before” ideas that are seen far too often in movies in the last few years.
Nightbitch is based on the book written by Rachel Yoder, and being true to the book while creating another off-the-wall movie idea, Mother slowly starts to transition into a dog. She notices hair on her body that was not there before, her teeth become more pointed and sharper, and while in the shower, we see that she has developed 6 dog nipples – now that is something we have never seen before on screen – and never wanted to see on screen. Mother starts to walk on all fours like a dog and hangs out with other dogs in the neighborhood. Mother also has several incidents where she is eating food like a dog with her head in a bowl or a plate, even in front of several people at a local food store cafeteria, where she gets face to face with a plate of meat. For long-time fans of Amy Adams, “What the hell is she thinking, taking this role?”
This movie has too many fake scenes, where the actor fantasizes about something they would like to say or do, followed by what they say in real time. Too much of this can be distracting and somewhat annoying, with this practice getting old very quickly in any film. In one scene Mother is asked how she felt giving birth and goes into an insane tirade about her life being ruined, her dreams destroyed, her fears and desperation. Then says, “My brain just doesn’t operate the way it did before I had the baby,” she says. “I’m dumb, now.” In the real-time scene, Mother says, “I love being a mom”. Enough of this already.
The idea behind the Mother to dog transition has to do with the book stating that while giving birth and raising a child, a woman can become more like an animal than a human being, which is the entire reason for the dog transitioning throughout this mostly ridiculous and depressing film.
The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Nightbitch are a correct and understandably low 60%, with my rating at 50% only because of some of the good acting in this hard-to-believe was ever produced insane movie.
While watching the new movie “Wicked”, which has been adapted from the long-running Broadway musical I realized that given the years of hard work, the sets, the costumes, the music, and the enormous amount of money spent on 2 Wicked movies (Wicked 2 will be released in November 2025), is that out of respect for this much effort, no critic could ever give a bad review to a movie like this one. I have no doubt that Wicked will be one of the ten movies nominated for Best Picture this year, making it one of the few musicals ever nominated for Best Picture in Oscar history.
The story of Wicked is about the good witch Galinda played by Ariana Grande and the wicked witch of the West Elphaba played by Cynthia Erivo and how they met and became friends at a college called Shiz University. There are frequent musical numbers in this film, and the singing of all the cast members, especially Erivo and Grande is always outstanding. The overall story is slow at times and one flaw I thought was the transition from the friendship of Elphaba and Galinda into an ending when Elphaba and Galinda meet the Wizard, played by Jeff Goldblum, that seemed contrived and too out of nowhere. The ending, in my opinion, broke up the flow of the story too abruptly and seemed designed to create a dramatic ending out of nowhere.
At the end of the movie, there was a “To be Continued” message for the next film, Wicked 2, which will be released in late November 2025 and show Elphaba’s transition into an evil witch.
The real strengths of this film are more the musical numbers, amazing sets, and costumes, and less the overall story, which I thought was sometimes weak with an overly complex and contrived ending.
I mostly agree with the high 90% ratings on Rotten Tomatoes and I recommend this movie.
A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies. 