Getting a zero on Rotten Tomatoes is a rare occurrence and the new movie “Gotti” starring John Travolta and his wife Kelly Preston, currently has a zero rating. I do not agree with this film getting a zero – something 25% would be more appropriate with less cruel reviews. When you consider the amount of time and years of planning it must have taken to make this movie, there is no way anyone can say that it is a zero. Making movies and writing a great screenplay are both extremely difficult things to do, and in the case of Gotti, the problem is simple; horrible screenwriting and film editing. As far as the disconnected scenes in this movie, its almost as if they decided to film all the scenes in any order and then when it was time to combine all the finished scenes, they threw them into the air like sticks and then just pasted it all together wherever they landed. There are few things about a movie that are more annoying than a story that is badly told and does not make any sense. For Gotti, the story lines are not explained, what is going on is not explained in many cases, characters come and go without any idea of who they are and how they are connected. However, in the end I thought the acting of John Travolta was good. Good enough to guarantee that the movie did not get a zero rating.

When I found out that Gotti received a zero rating, I immediately thought of the fact that this movie was in the planning stage for several years and then the weeks and months that went into making it and how cruel the critics can be. Just for the effort and acting this movie is a 30% – well below average but not a zero. But why make a movie about a murderer and a gangster like Gotti? Why show so many actual films from the 80’s and 90’s of people in the streets of New York City and Brooklyn defending a person like this?

This movie could have been substantially improved by just showing the scenes in sequence and adding some obvious additions to the story so you at least know what is going on. A director like Martin Scorsese could have turned this movie into something very good or great, but unfortunately when the wrong people are in charge, the end result is a movie like this.

This movie should be missed but could have been good. Unfortunately too many obvious mistakes were made.

This is a documentary about the late Fred Rogers, arguably the most likable person who has ever been on TV. Fred Rogers was in real life exactly as he appeared on his PBS show, where all he cared about was helping children. Very few have ever had the talents to make people feel better about their life, maybe less unhappy, less nervous, but Fred Rogers had the innate ability to make everybody who saw his show feel just a little bit better. In the audience I was in, some people were weeping because they were so moved by the niceness and human decency in Fred Rogers just watching the tapes of some of the many shows he did on PBS. At one point, Rogers decided to take a break from his show, hoping he could reinvent himself trying to help adults, some of whom were in prison – but he was not as adept at that aspect of relating to people. Rogers even tried to help children get through death, divorce, bullying and even the 911 tragedy with his show.

What amazed me the most about this very good documentary that has a 99% positive rating on Rotten Tomatoes is that even a guy as nice as Fred Rogers did not escape the stupid criticism of some critics – who accused him of being responsible all the ills of the current generation of children because he told them that they were all special. Rogers believed that we are all special in the eyes of God, but the cruel and stupid critics thought that this gave too many children an excuse not to work hard. Obviously, this criticism is even more cruel than it is completely idiotic but its also part of being in the public eye. This shows that in this world, no matter what you do, there is always someone close by just waiting his or her turn to knock you down and make you feel bad about yourself. As Rogers himself said in this documentary – “people who go out of their way to knock other people down are the very essence of evil”. All of us have met people like this in our life and careers – including me. Its part of life, an unfortunate reality.

“Won’t you be my Neighbor” gets my highest recommendation.

The good news about the latest in the Jurassic Park series of movies that started in 1993, 25 years ago – is that this one is bad enough that maybe they will stop making these movies. The Rotten Tomatoes rating is only 50% and I would have given this movie a 20% rating.

The logline for this entire franchise is – there are dinosaurs somewhere, people are around the dinosaurs and then something goes wrong and people run for their lives and some die. Considering a logline like this its no wonder that all of this can get old pretty quickly. The first Jurassic Park was released in 1993, the second in 1997 and the third in 2001. Then it was 14 long years before the new one was released in 2015. I thought the 2015 version was a good film, but this followup is a bad movie that could wreck the franchise for good. The story was convoluted and not believable, many of the things that the main characters, played by Chris Pratt and Bryce Dallas Howard, are not things that anyone with any level of intelligence would do. Somewhere along the line, the producers of these movies have to realize that special effects cannot rescue a bad idea, or worse a bad script.

This movie is only for kids who love any kind of dinosaur movie or for the most die-hard Jurassic Park fan’s. For everybody else, this one should be skipped.