Movie Review: Roofman

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The new movie “Roofman” is one of those ideas that, if it weren’t based on a true story, nobody would have greenlit the screenplay because the facts are too unbelievable.

Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum) is a soldier who, after returning from Afghanistan, has a life that is a disaster. Like so many people who return from war in this country, Jeffrey has no marketable skills and is unable to get any decent-paying job. He has no money and is married with three children, and his marriage is falling apart. Desperate to support his family, Jeffrey does something stupid and robs a local McDonald’s. Even more unfortunately for Jeffrey, he locks the employees in a freezer, and the judge threw the book at him, adding kidnapping to his charges, sentencing him to a horrendous 45 years in prison.

It turns out that Manchester is super intelligent with high-level observational skills, making his life after the war even more unfortunate because nobody in the Veterans Administration took the time to recognize his high IQ and train him for a high-paying job that takes advantage of his high-functioning brain. How many thousands of veterans experience homelessness, depression, and suicide after returning from war, because nobody in the Veterans Administration takes the time to help them?

All of this sets the stage for Manchester to use his high IQ and observational skills to not only break out of prison but to evade the police for an amazing six months. Jeffrey stayed in the immediate area after escaping from prison and hid inside a Toys R US, by using a large unused storage area to live and sleep and stay hidden from everybody in the store.

This story is even more insane because after the many television broadcasts showing Manchester’s face, after only a few months, Manchester became a known member of the town he was living in, and even fell in love with a divorced woman with two children Leigh Wainscott (Kirsten Dunst). Manchester frequently attended Church with Wainscott, who was a member of the Church choir. This part of the story is the most unbelievable because after the prison escape, Jeffrey Manchester’s face was all over television, and after only a few months, out of all the hundreds of people he knew in the town, nobody remembered his face from the prison break?

The end of this story had to do with Manchester trying to use a friend he knew from the war to help him escape to a different country, and it was easy to guess the conclusion, which did not diminish the high quality of this movie

The Rotten Tomatoes is a high, well-earned 84% and I agree with this rating and give a strong recommendation to this film.

Movie Review: Tron Ares

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“Tron” is a science fiction movie franchise that started in 1982, starring Jeff Bridges and Bruce Boxleitner. The last Tron movie was released in 2010 “Tron Legacy”, starring Garrett Hedlund and Olivia Wilde, with below average IMDB ratings on a par with the first movie, 6.8 out of 10.

The new movie “Tron Ares” is yet another example of name recognition, fans of the old movies and TV series, where the producers in charge think that throwing special effects at an audience is more than enough to get people to see any science fiction movie. Forego the screenplay, which takes too long; just pay a special effects company, and all we need is some dialogue. This summarizes this movie perfectly, because there is no story, no continuity, and no understandable screenplay anywhere in this disaster of two hours.

This movie stars Jared Leto as Ares, who is a robot, Jodie Turner-Smith who is another Tron robot with an appearance late in the movie of Jeff Bridges who once again plays Kevin Flynn and Gillian Anderson, who plays an executive, Elisabeth Dillinger. For all who see this very bad movie I suggest getting on your cell phones before the film starts and ask ChatGPT what this movie is about, otherwise nobody will have any clue with what is going on in one scene, after another scene, with no connection or logic, anywhere. The synopsis from rom ChatGPT, says it all:

  • After the events of Tron: Legacy, companies ENCOM (run by Eve Kim) and Dillinger Systems (run by Julian Dillinger) are competing to integrate digital programs from the Grid into the real world.
  • They’re limited by a problem: the materialized “digital constructs” only last ~29 minutes in the real world before “deresolving” (they degrade and disappear).

Discovery of Flynn’s Permanence Code

  • ENCOM and Eve Kim believe Kevin Flynn left behind a hidden piece of code (the “Permanence Code”) in an old remote Arctic research station which might allow constructs to stay permanently in the real world.
  • Eve successfully uses the code to bring a digital orange tree into the real world — it lasts much longer, proving the code works.

Introduction of Ares

  • Julian Dillinger creates Ares, a super-intelligent digital Program, intended as an expendable weapon, to deal with ENCOM’s threat and exploit the real-world materialization tech.
  • Ares is sent into the real world, and once there he begins to observe, question, and — to some degree — develop a sense of self, especially when confronted with nature, suffering, and real human consequences.

Conflict and Betrayal

  • Eve and Ares eventually align, as Ares starts diverging from Dillinger’s control. This sets up conflict between creator (Julian Dillinger) and creation (Ares + Eve).
  • Eve becomes a target because she has knowledge of the Permanence Code and maybe because Dillinger wants control of it. The stakes include asking who has the right to “create life” or let digital beings live permanently in our reality.

As far as Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews, which are a very low 53%, one critic Kyle Logan from Chicago Reader wrote: “Ares is also saddled with a truly atrocious script. Awkward attempts at emotional and thematic heft are laughable”. My rating for this very bad movie is around 15% only for some special effects. Hopefully this is the last we ever see the word Tron, anywhere, ever again. Run from this special effects mess.

HBO Series Review: The Pitt

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When a movie or a TV series reaches of the highest levels of quality and perfection that the HBO Series “The Pitt” does, it should be celebrated with Awards, in this case, 4 wins out of 13 Emmy nominations, including best drama series and best lead actor in a drama series, Noah Wiley. From what I have seen, this series should have won all 13 Emmy nominations.

More importantly, this HBO Series of 15 episodes, demonstrates better than any medical show I have ever seen the lives of the heroes who work in the emergency rooms of hospitals. The Hospital for this series is the fictional Pittsburgh Trauma Medical Center, inspired by Allegheny General Hospital (AGH), Pittsburgh Pennsylvania.

Throughout these great 15 episodes there are flashbacks from the years during the COVID pandemic and the realization of so many deaths and the suicides of doctors and nurses during the years 2020-2022 where 1,091,715 people lost their lives. Working in an intense, high population area emergency room requires the highest level of medical expertise and stamina. The ability to make accurate life and death decisions for shifts that can last from 12-15 hours, one after another, is an ability beyond impressive. The knowledge and experience that is required that includes the many medical machines that are involved, on the fly surgical skill, the numerous medical tests, the hundreds of different drugs that for any given patient may or may not save a life, is of the most impressive parts of the depiction of impossible people who have impossible jobs.

For the actors, it must have been so difficult to remember all of the medical terms that are written down in a script, but for the real life doctors they are portraying, committing this much medical information to memory seems at times an ability almost impossible to attain. All of the people in this emergency room are extremely intelligent and high achievers, but the human aspect of dealing with so many patients, non stop medical emergencies and ultimately death, would take a toll on anyone, even after one bad day.

One of the best moments in this series was when Dr. Michael Robinavitch(Noah Wiley) collapses in an empty room after trying and failing to save a young woman who was shot. Another standout episodes includes a young girl who drowned and her young sister to reveals that her sister was trying to save her from a pool, and she has not been told her sister died.

The other standout in this series is Dana Evans (Katherine LaNasa), who plays the charge nurse of the emergency room, her personality and work ethic keep the entire department from falling part – the acting of LaNasa in this series won her the best supporting actress Emmy. We learn that an organizer in the center of such intense chaos is mandatory for an emergency room, especially with one later episodes when they are overrun with 120 shooting victims from a nearby mass shooting.

The other standouts are all the young beginning doctors who are getting their first experiences of working in an emergency room, including Dr. Melissa King (Taylor Dearden), Dr. Dennis Whitaker (Gerran Howell), Dr. Cassie McKay (Fiona Dourif) who are all outstanding in their roles. There are the typical fights and arguments that are expected within an environment this intense and medical egos this large, and the expected abuse the doctors with less experience have to endure from other doctors, mostly
Dr. Frank Langdon (Patrick Ball), who has an ongoing series of conflicts with Dr. McKay.

The longer you watch this great first season of 15 episodes, the more you realize that a life like this is not a job, where you receive a paycheck, this is something far more important. This is about courage, education, skill and the innate ability to deal with 12 hours of stress every day and then wake up the next day and do this all over again. This is a life career where if you make a single mistake someone may die. This is a level of superhero ability that very few people could pull off on a daily basis or ever consider making this a career.

For the many huge fans of this great medical drama, season two will be released in January 2026 – way too long to wait to see what will happen next.

The Pitt gets my highest recommendation of 100%. This is by far, one of the productions including movies and television I have ever seen.