Movie Review: Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1

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In one of the most risky and ambitious movie productions of all time, the first of four movies about the American West during the time of the Civil War, “Horizon: An American Saga – Chapter 1” has been released and unfortunately, the critical reviews of only 40% are correct.

This film reminded me of the game Whac-A-Mole, with new characters, storylines, and scenes out of nowhere popping in and out of this 3-hour movie, with no setup, explanation, and total disregard for the art of storytelling. What is going on now? Who is this person? Does anybody have a name? Is this new scene related to other parts of this story?

The weekend box office for the first installment of this Horizon series was a low 11 million dollars. One of the reasons for this low turnout is the poor critical reviews. The other reason is, that fewer people are willing to sit for 3 hours to see any kind of movie, much less one that is getting bad reviews. Regardless, there is no necessity for this first Horizon movie to be 3 hours and 1 minute long. With so many disconnected stories, one-third of them could have been cut. With the second installment coming out in August, the excess could have been moved to the next film.

The odds are extremely high that the second movie will probably have more or less the same reviews, although hopefully, the next film is not another 3 hours. Considering the huge investment involved with producing four films over two years, you have to wonder if they even bothered to have test audiences for the first movie, to get their opinions before taking such a huge risk and making more movies. I also wondered what the people in the audience of the Cannes Film Festival some weeks ago were thinking when they gave Costner an 11-minute standing ovation. This movie is nowhere near worthy of a standing ovation, much less one that is 11 minutes long.

Kevin Costner wrote the screenplay with 2 other screenwriters, which might partially explain the way too many disconnected stories and scenes. It’s almost as if none of the screenwriters bothered to collaborate with the other writers. There are about 10 different standalone sub-stories in this screenplay.

The good points about this film are the solid acting, and the well-shot vistas of the American West, with the underlying story about how extremely difficult it was to be alive in the United States during this period in history. Sienna Miller and Jena Malone are very good in their roles as long-suffering women living during this time. Kevin Costner plays the lead role of Hayes Ellison in this story, however, he does not make his first appearance until 1 hour into this movie – another decision that made no sense.

In my opinion, there have been 3 great Westerns in the last 30+ years. The best is Clint Eastwood’s “The Unforgiven”, released in 1992. Second is Costner’s “Dances with Wolves”, released in 1990, and “Open Range”, released in 2003. It is a shame, despite Costner’s extreme enthusiasm for this Horizon idea, which has been ongoing for over 30 years, that this first film of four was not written as well as his last two Westerns.

I agree with the low ratings of 40% for this film and cannot recommend it.

Movie Review: Daddio

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The first rule of screenwriting has always been, “show, do not tell”. Less dialogue is always better in a screenplay. Subtext and visual descriptions are better. A screenplay is not a novel, it is mostly a series of visual directions that depict a story. There are exceptions to rule, including the 3 Ethan Hawk movies, “Before Sunrise”, “Before Midnight” and “Before Sunset” that were released from 1995 – 2013, and consisted of almost 100% dialogue. Making a movie like this is risky, because the conversation has to be compelling enough to hold an audience attention for 2 hours, this can be very hard or at times impossible to accomplish.

For the new movie “Daddio”, starring Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson is a 1 hour 41 minute conversation between a cab driver Clark, played by Penn and a passenger named Girlie, played by Johnson from JFK airport to her home in Brooklyn. There were moments of interesting conversation, and other moments where it was hard to stay engaged with what was being said. Some of the language was too much on the disgusting side, mostly unnecessary considing the majority of the conversations. Too much usage of the F word, is once again still something to always expect in too many movies.

Overall, I thought the acting was good, and perhaps a solid comeback for Johnson after her horendous recent Madame Web movie some months ago. It took courage for both Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson to agree to act in this movie.

The Rotten Tomatoes critics reviews are 79% with the audience rating a very low 50%. There is not much to recommend here, other than for the most loyal Sean Penn and Dakota Johnson fans.

Hulu Series Review: The Bear: Season 3

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It is very hard to understand that with a television series this well received in its first 2 seasons, considering the money involved, the many Emmy Awards, and an ongoing need to protect a great franchise, that season 3 of “The Bear” could have missed the mark in so many areas.

What was so great about the first two seasons of “The Bear” is that it showed for the first time, how hard it is to work in a restaurant and maintain it as a profitable business. The constant arguments, the pressure of getting an impossible amount of work done, night after night, the heat, people crashing into each other, the mess and the extreme financial problems that plague all restaurants was fascinating to watch.

Unfortunately, this highly anticipated third season forgot just about everything that made this series so great. There are some intense arguments in the 2nd episode that are almost as good as some of the episodes of the first two seasons – but that is all there were remaining episodes of season 3. The use of the F word is also way overdone in this 3rd season in too many scenes. There is one episode that consists of a long talk between Natalie, played by Abby Elliott and her mother Donna played by Jamie Lee Curtis, while she is lying in a hospital bed in labor. It’s almost as if they either ran out of good ideas or thought they could skate by with below-average scripts because of the built-in audience and name recognition.

The other problem is that the most compelling character in this series Sydney Adamu, played by Ayo Edebiri does not have nearly enough screen time in these 10 episodes. This is a huge mistake because her character is just about the most interesting in the entire series. Several of the unresolved storylines from the second season are not resolved or even addressed in this 3rd season. Once again, what are they thinking here? Sometimes extreme success breeds overconfidence, and in this case, it appears that the producers believed that they could throw something against a wall, and it would still work because of the great first two seasons. Unfortunately, this just might have killed any possibility of the 4th season.

The entire cast is back for season 3, including Jeremy Allen White, Abby Elliott, Oliver Platt,
Liza Colón-Zayas, Ayo Edebiri, and Ebon Moss-Bachrach, who is still the angriest character I have ever seen in a television series.

The Rotten Tomatoes ratings are a ridiculously high 94%, with an audience rating of a correct 66%. Why the paid critics are rating this 3rd season-high makes very little sense. I agree with the audience rating of 66%.

My recommendation is to watch the first 2 great seasons of this series and skip this last one.