The new movie “The Fall Guy” is another one of those bad films where the more interesting story is how so many people, for so many months and years, can collaborate and then create something this bad. Considering how much money and time is involved with creating a big budget movie like this one, its almost impossible to believe that this movie exists.
The screenplay for this movie is so bad, it is almost as if there was no screenplay, where disjointed and idiotic scenes are slapped together thinking that because of two well-known stars, Ryan Gossling, and Emily Blunt, there is no need to spend money and time to write and then re-write a coherent script. “All we need are some special effects and two well-known actors, who cares about the screenplay or anything else”. This seems to be the mantra of too many movies in recent years, and over time the movie going public is going to get sick of of this and demand quality over numerous explosions.
There is no recognizable plot here, other than the main character, a movie stunt man Colt Seavers, played by Ryan Gosling and a stunt coordinator Jody Moreno, played by Emily Blunt are making an action movie and slowly become more than friends. Within 30 minutes of this, most of the audience will go into “what is going on black-out mode” hoping that the whole nightmare will be over soon. Then realizing that with a too-long running time of two hours and six minutes, that a decision (which I almost made about 10 times) to leave early is the number one thought on your mind – no longer the bad movie.
This film could also be another example of a production studio manipulating the critics ratings on Rotten Tomatoes to a ridiculously high 83% for a movie that should get only 50% for the stunts and special effects. My rating is 40% mainly due to the two well known actors, rating this a huge miss at the very start of the blockbuster movie season.
The new movie “Challengers” is a movie about 3 tennis players, Tashi Donaldson, a top woman tennis player played by Zendaya, Patrick Zweig played by Josh O’Connor and Art Donaldson played by Mike Faist, who are up and coming and in the case of Zweig a struggling-living-in-his car tennis pro.
The story is about a bi-sexual love triangle about the 3 tennis players, with Tashi, after a major leg injury helping to train at different times, both Donaldson and Zweig. The most obvious big problem with this film is the constant and insane flashbacks. From 9 months earlier to 13 years earlier, to the present day, to ahead 3 months, way too many times There was never a thought just to tell this story sequentially. This many flashbacks are just annoying and frustrating to watch.
There is also no measurable and contiguous story, just a series of disconnected scenes that lead to one of the worst endings I have ever seen. For this movie, the relatively high ratings make no sense, but we have all seen that before, “Poor Things”, and the horrendous, “Everything Everywhere All At Once” are just two insane examples of horrible movies that the critics graded highly. Within the first hour, I was already into “watch-looking” mode, waiting for this all to be over. There is some good acting, mostly wasted by a very bad screenplay.
The Rotten Tomatoes 88% rating is way too high, with the audience rating a more understandable 75% and my rating only 60% only for some of the acting, with this one a major miss.
The outstanding TV series “The Resident” ran on Fox from 2018-2023 with 107 episodes and six seasons. In terms of an hour long drama/medical series it is by far the best I have ever seen.
For everybody in the world, the profession that creates the highest level of respect is the medical profession. It takes many years of hard work and dedication to even begin, at around age 38-40, to start to make real money where any doctor can start to pay down their enormous student loan debt. This debt includes years of college and then medical school followed by years of internship within a hospital where the salaries are always very low.
What is so great about The Resident is that in every episode it reminds all of us just how difficult it is to be a diagnostician, surgeon, emergency room doctor or a nurse.
The main character and lead dignostician Conrad Hawkins, impressively played by Matt Czuchry with his expertise at figuring out what is really wrong with patient after patient. Conrad’s amazing diagnostic skill is by far the best part of this series. Even more impressive is the extensive medical research required for technically accurate scripts within all 107 episodes. For this entire series, where there were no weak episodes, I was continuously amazed about how much there is to know about the human body, the supporting medical machines and the thousands of drugs that have been created to keep people alive for decades.
The main relationship in this series is between Conrad Hawkins and Devon Pravesh that starts from the pilot show where Conrad is both cruel and harsh with the Devon, in order to get him ready for the hard work and stress that was ahead of him. Their working relationship over time became a powerful friendship that was based on mutual professional respect.
For fans of The Cosby Show, which premiered on NBC in 1984, who wondered what ever became of the character Theo, played by Malcolm-Jamal Warner – he is a central character and extremely impressive surgeon in this series. Warner’s acting is outstanding throughout all of the episodes he appears in and his character proves, that the only profession that has room for people with huge egos is the medical profession, where true genius and skill actually save lives.
This series shows in extreme detail what it is like to look inside the human body and repair organs, stop bleeding, and make us all wonder how any human being can do work like this as their profession. It all looks completely impossible for those on the outside looking in.
Other characters include Randolph Bell, played by Bruce Greenwood, Nicolette Nevin played by Emily VanCamp and Kit Voss played by Jane Leeves. Considering the high quality of this great show that ran for six years, including both great acting and writing, I was surprised that I never heard about this series when it was on Fox. Even more impossible to understand, is that this great TV series never won or was even nominated for a major award.
This series also had several episodes that dealt with the horrific months and years of the Pandemic the stress this disaster placed on Hospitals around this country and the toll it took on so many medical hero workers during that time. There are also more than a few medical supply companies and criminals where the bottom line and profits take precidence over the lives of too many patients.
An ongoing problem throughout this entire series is the nonstop money issues and the exorbitant costs within any Hospital like the fictional one in this series called “Chastain”. There is one standout episode that followed the path of one patient who was shot and did not have insurance, treated by over 100 different hospital workers at a total cost of over 430,000 dollars in one day.
There are high stress professions, professions that require extreme knowledge and expertise, but the medical profession is the only one where there is no room for error, no matter how long the hours, or how difficult the medical emergency is. When mistakes are made, people die and then doctors and Hospitals are sued. Job burnout, heart attacks and strokes from the extreme stress are common within the medical profession, never worse than during the Pandemic that started in late February 2020.
The IMDB rating for this series is a solid 7.8 out of 10, with my rating a 9.5 and a very strong recommendation. This one cannot be missed.
A Screenwriters Perspective: Current and Past Movies. 