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Movie Review: Smile 2

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Someone who is a fan of horror movies and wrote the screenplays for “Smile” and the sequel “Smile 2” decided that a person who just stares at you with an evil grin is horrifying. The problem is that a person standing with a strange wide grin gets old after a certain number of similar scenes. Smile 2 is the sequel to the movie Smile, released in 2022 about an evil spirit floating around the world who invects a victim, over time forcing them to kill themselves in front of a witness. Then once the person is dead, the spirit infects the witness creating a chain of people who are killed.

This time around the main character is a Taylor Swift-like famous singer who is the newest part of the chain of victims of the evil spirit who infects a person’s body. Naomi Scott plays a famous singer Skye Riley with the most memorable part of her performance – her constant high-pitched screaming throughout these 2 hours. This is another part of this sequel that gets old after the third or fourth loud scream.

There are several disturbing scenes of smile victims killing themselves, by either trying to cut off their face or in one instance, a man taking a large weight plate and repeatedly smashing it into his own face. At times it is hard to believe that movies like this are considered horror entertainment because this level of over-the-top gore is never necessary to scare any audience.

The ending, which comes out of nowhere is another insane bloody ending that even includes a giant bloody alien that comes out of the body of Skye Riley. At this point. I had more than enough already and could not wait for this film to come to an end.

The film critic Sean Collier summarizes the problems with this film the best: “Our movie would lose all of its terror by turning the lights on and avoiding staccato bursts of unmotivated sound design, it’s not scary — it’s just irritating“.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Smile 2 are way too high 83% with my rating at 50% and a big thumbs down. Lets all hope that this is the last Smile movie – but there will probably be a Smile 3 in another 2 years, unfortunately.

Movie Review: Goodrich

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There is a well-known screenwriting paradigm known as the Three-Act Structure, which states that a screenplay has three acts. The first act sets up the characters and the main part of the story. The second act creates a major conflict peak, which is resolved in the third and final act.

The new movie “Goodrich” starring Michael Keaton is one of the few films I have seen that violates this well-known screenwriting paradigm. The main character Andy Goodrich, played by Keaton, who owns an art gallery, wakes up to find out that his wife is in rehab and wants a divorce. The remainder of this story is about a long series of bad luck events, and problems with Andy’s 2 children including his daughter Grace with his previous wife, played by Mila Kunis. Then the Goodrich art gallery is failing and about to go bankrupt.

This major departure from what most would expect from a story like this is ultimately what is best about this movie. This story is about real life, not a movie where there might be a happy ending. This is not about the nice person who has been getting the worst of things and who finally triumphs over major obstacles. We want movies to work the happy way because the conflict resolution and the nice guy winning in the end is why so many millions of people go to the movies in the first place. All of us also know that this is not how real life works. Just because someone is nice and deserving does not mean things will ultimately work out for them. Life is a long series of conflicts and attempted resolutions with no guarantees of success. This one unique drama/comedy movie does a great job of showing a real-life story, not a generic Hollywood happy ending. This one fact and the excellent acting and story make this film a standout.

Other actors in this film are all very good in their roles, including Kevin Pollak who works in the art gallery, Andie MacDowell as Goodrich’s x-wife and Carmen Ejogo who plays the daughter of a famous late artist who betrays Andy. Hallie Meyers-Shyer, wrote and directed this film and produced a real-life, believable story.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for Goodrich are way too low 68% with my rating a 85% rating and a solid recommendation.

Movie Review: Saturday Night

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The premier night for the NBC Show “Saturday Night Live” was October 11, 1975 – forty-nine years ago. The new movie “Saturday Night” is about 90 minutes from 10 PM to 11:30 on the unlikely opening night of the show. The way this screenplay tries to describe what Saturday Night Live is a unique and mostly effective idea because it showed a frantic Lorne Michaels played by Gabriel LaBelle, putting out constant fires and fixing arguments, breaking up fights, people leaving the show, equipment almost falling on the cast when they rehearsed, and finally trying to get John Belushi played by Matt Wood to sign his contract.

This movie almost exclusively follows Lorne Michaels around the studios of 30 Rockefeller Center for 90 minutes as he tries to fix one problem after another. In fact, this first show was almost not aired because too many things were going wrong. The plan was to air a repeat of the Johnny Carson show and NBC Executive Dave Tebet played by Willem Dafoe gave the go-ahead to allow the show to go live in the last seconds before 11:30 PM.

Saturday Night Live has always been a last-minute frantic, changing of scripts, and sets and deciding which skits get on the air on the fly. If I wrote this screenplay I would have shown how the show is produced during a typical week that includes the late-night writing sessions as the writers and cast try and get their comedy skit to appear on the show. A high percentage of these skits are rejected and over the years only a small percentage of the skits that get on the show have been funny. This intense level of writing and creative stress late into the night has been an ongoing tradition for Saturday Night for almost 50 years. This is the comedy movie or documentary that I would be most interested in seeing – demonstrating all that goes wrong and right during a typical week of the show.

For the last 50 years, the original cast of Saturday Night Live, including Chevy Chase, Dan Aykroyd, Gilda Radner, Lorraine Newman, Jane Curtin, and Garret Morris has always been considered the most talented cast. Once the original SNL cast left the show in 1980, the following seasons with the new cast were considered weak except for Eddie Murphy, whose comedic talent saved the show. The year 1985 once the second cast and Murphy left SNL, had a strong cast with Billy Crystal and Martin Short.

SNL is still an ongoing American institution mainly because of the few skits that do work, and the arrival of some outstanding performers over the years, including Kristen Wiig, Will Ferrell, Tina Fey, Kenan Thompson, Kate McKinnon, Amy Poehler, Mike Myers, Dana Carvey, and the late Chris Farley and Phil Hartman. For many years the best way to watch Saturday Night Live is to fast forward through the bad skits when necessary, trying to find that one miracle skit that is comedy perfection. One example of comedy perfection is the first alien abduction sketch starring the extremely talented Kate McKinnon and host Ryan Gossling (see video below).

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this movie are a solid 80% and I agree with this rating and do recommend Saturday Night.