Category Archives: Uncategorized

Movie Review: Lee

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The new movie “Lee” is about World War II correspondent and photographer Lee Miller, and stars Kate Winslet. My first impression about this above-average movie about World War II and the dangers of covering a war by a civilian is that the chain-smoking throughout this film, by Lee Miller was way overdone. The world knows that smoking was constant and most common during all the years until the time when the Surgeon General declared that cigarettes cause different kinds of Cancer in 1964. However, this level of constant smoking was not necessary just to show that this bad habit was prevalent during World War II. Lee Miller did in fact die at age 70 of lung Cancer in 1977 at the age of 70. If she smoked as much as she did in this movie, it’s amazing she lived as long as she did.

As far as this film, it is well done and well acted by Winslet who has several scenes that could be considered worthy of Academy Award recognition. However, with ratings as low as 63%, on Rotten Tomatoes it is unlikely either the film or Winslet will receive any nominations. This film did a good but not great job of showing the insanity of a civilian with no training or a weapon who runs around taking pictures during a battle. In World War II, no less than 127 war correspondents were killed. Why this practice of putting civilians in harm’s way during a war for a story, picture, or video, is baffling, considering the safe workarounds of putting cameras on war equipment or even on the helmet of a trained soldier. We do not need a civilian standing in front of a tank while a bomb goes off, to know that there is a war going on.

One big surprise in this serious drama is the appearance of comedic actor Andy Samberg, who has a serious role as Lee Miller’s friend during the war. His acting was very well done, and believable despite his many years of doing nothing but comedy.

I thought the Rotten Tomatoes ratings for this film were too low 63%, with my rating about 75% and a mild recommendation.

Apple TV Movie Review: Wolfs

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , , • Leave a comment

The most interesting thing about the new Apple TV movie “Wolfs” starring George Clooney and Brad Pitt is how two of the top actors in the movie industry chose a screenplay this run-of-the-mill, mundane, and boring to collaborate and star in. Are there so few great screenplays in Hollywood to choose from or was this production part of a favor bank that both Cooney and Pitt were obligated to join?

The story is extremely simple. Two “cleaners” Brad Pitt, known as Margaret’s Man in the credits, and George Clooney, known as Pam’s Man are called by a frantic woman who thinks that a young man in her apartment may have killed himself by accidentally jumping off her bed and crashing into a table.

This young man played by Austin Abrams appears in this movie almost the entire time, wearing nothing but socks and underpants. He runs from Pitt and Clooney, several criminals throughout a city, many times in the rain, wearing only socks and underpants. I cannot remember ever seeing something this strange and unusual in a comedy/action movie before. Why not have this poor actor wear some jeans – or shoes? Running through a city in socks had to be a major challenge, to say the least. What was the idea here? Just to do something different? This time to show an “underpants running man”?

Was all of this supposed to be funny? Unfortunately, most of the attempted “underpants running” humor in this movie did not work as well as the competitive banter between Clooney and Pitt that for the most part was boring at best.

What follows is the discovery of drugs and a scheduled drop-off that leads to some gunplay and an ending that seems to just degrade into a very run of the mill, seen this many times before ending.

The Rotten Tomatoes rating for Wolfs is an equally anemic 68% – a number I agree with, and I do not recommend this movie.

Movie Review: Megalopolis

Posted on by • Posted in Uncategorized • Tagged , • Leave a comment

In this history of movies, a phenomenon like “Megalopolis” will never happen again, because it represents a point in time when the director, Francis Ford Coppola, of arguably the best film of all time “The Godfather”, released in 1971, has now written and directed arguably the worst movie of all time.

Megalopolis rivals last year’s “Babylon”, 2022, “Everything Everywhere All at Once”, 2022, and last year’s, “Poor Things”, 2023 as three of the worst movies I have ever seen. There is no screenplay, no connection between scenes, no plot to follow, just a series of scenes, that make no sense that are thrown at the audience as they desperately hope for these two hours of garbage to end. Coppola also funded this horrendous film with his own money – a total of 125 million dollars, representing a colossal waste of money. Understandably no production company considered making a movie this bad for a story idea that has been around for over 40 years.

One of the obvious best signs that a bad movie has been released is the comments from critics, This time around they are about the worst ever published:

Jack Martin: There is but one hope that can finally bring us together as a species: the fact that absolutely nobody in their right, sane mind can make heads or tails as to whatever in the hell Megalopolis is trying to do.

Adam Olinger: Megalopolis is the sci-fi movie equivalent of CATS.

Chad Byrnes: It’s painful on a truly impressive level.

A.A. Doyd: Dramatically and philosophically speaking, Megalopolis barely coheres. It seems unrealized even in its unlikely realization, still more of a glowing idea of a movie than the movie itself.

It is hard to believe that a film this bad even exists. What were so many successful people thinking for all of the months and years this movie was being produced, written, and directed? How could anyone believe this movie idea and screenplay could ever be successful? Why would Francis Ford Coppola pay 125 million of his own money to produce a film that is obviously terrible?

Megalopolis stars Adam Driver as Ceasar, the star of this story about the fall of the Roman Empire and how it relates to current-day New York City? Nathalie Emmanuel is on screen probably the most during this mess and plays Julia Cicero the wife of Ceasar. Other unfortunate actors in this terrible movie include Laurence Fishburne, Shia LaBeouf, Jon Voight, Jason Schwartzman, Talia Shire, Giancarlo Esposito and Aubrey Plaza. They all probably thought that if someone like Francis Ford Coppola contacted them to act in his movie, they take the role before reading the script. It’s a huge opportunity to enhance your career because a great director is behind the movie. They never could have believed that the film could be considered one of the worst of-all time once released.

Unfortunately, there are too many drug-using critics on Rotten Tomatoes that add up to an overall rating of 49%, changing an average that should be zero. Megalopolis is a run-for-your-life total rating of zero and should never have been released. One of the worst movies I will ever see.