Tag Archives: Chris Evans

Movie Review: Honey Don’t

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It is not often that a bad movie is released that is directed or written by either Joel or Ethan Coen. Unfortunately, this is the case with the new and very strange film “Honey Don’t”. This movie has three major stars, Margaret Qualley, Aubrey Plaza, and Chris Evans, who probably all took their roles only for the opportunity to work with the Coen brothers, regardless of the quality of the story or screenplay.

The erratic, haphazard story of the strangely titled Honey Don’t is about a private investigator Honey O’Donahue, played by Qualley, who investigates a series of murders in the depressing town of Bakersfield, California ( this movie was shot in Albuquerque, New Mexico). As she investigates the different murders, while visiting a series of broken-down locations and homes, even more killings occur, some of them extremely violent, where most of the killings seem to be excuses to keep the audience from dozing off, as most of this movie is very boring.

I was surprised someone as talented and funny as Aubrey Plaza took this role as a police officer, as there are several shockingly raunchy scenes with Margaret Qualley and an extremely violent scene with Qualley later in the movie. What were these two up-and-coming actors thinking, taking bad roles in a bad movie with horrific scenes like these?

Chris Evans plays a local, perverted evangelist, Reverend Drew Devlin, in a role he will likely regret later in his career. The problem with clout in Hollywood is that a famous and respected director or writer can create a bad project and still attract named actors. The worst example of this is last year’s disaster, “Megalopolis”, directed by Francis Ford Coppola, who spent 124 million dollars of his own money to make one of the worst movies ever produced.

This movie is categorized as a dark comedy, which is used as an excuse for some of the insane and disturbing scenes. There is nothing funny here, within a film that really has no plot and no reason for existing. I agree with the very low ratings of 47% on Rotten Tomatoes and do not recommend this movie.

Netflix Movie Review: Pain Hustlers

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With outstanding series like Dopesick (Hulu) and Painkiller(Netflix) currently streaming, it is no surprise that the new movie “Pain Hustlers” the true story about the salespeople of Insys Pharmaceutical who lied, bribed doctors, and sold dangerous pain-killing drugs that killed so many people has been released on Netflix.

Pain Hustlers stars Emily Blunt as Liza Drake a down-and-out single mother with a daughter, living in the garage of her sister with her mother. Liza seems to have no chance to lift her life out of the hole it’s in until she interviews with a failing Pharmaceutical company named InSys. Even though Liza is completely unqualified and has no college degree, she is hired by her interviewer Pete Brenner, played by Chris Evans himself, adding made-up qualifications to Liza’s resume. At the beginning of this true story, nobody can blame Liza from trying to escape from her poor squalor nowhere life into trying to sell doctors a highly effective pain killing cancer drug and making commissions that eventually became 600 thousand for one year.

The problem with situations like this is greed. Within this true story, it was also the insanity and greed of the CEO of the company Dr. Neel, played by Andy Garcia. As soon as sales flattened for the pain-killing drug that was only created for cancer patients, Neel demanded that they “go off the label” and bribe doctors to prescribe the drug for all pain. Soon after this, some people started to die of overdoses. What is most amazing about this true story is the blatant disregard to the rules set by the FDA, with the desire for so much money that all involved ignored the possibility of going to jail for many years because what they were doing for so long was against the law.

The other player in this opioid pain killing disaster is the company Purdue Pharmaceutical, the subject of the great Hulu series Dopesick (reviewed in this blog). Due to the greed of this now-bankrupt company, tens of thousands of Americans died from drug overdoses caused by Purdue’s main painkilling drug OxyContin. Purdue is now bankrupt as of 2022 as is Insys in 2019 and this also included jail time for the CEO and all the executives of this company.

For reasons unknown, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are rating this very good Netflix movie only 22%. This is dead wrong, with my rating of 80% for a solid look at the reality of what people will do for money.

Movie Review: The Gray Man

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In the history of Netflix – which has been having its share of problems with its stock this year, no movie has ever cost more to produce than “The Gray Man” – 200 million dollars. There is nothing small about this film, or nothing that seems like it is not a top mainstream movie production. The special effects are spectacular to the point of wondering how they were able to pull off such dangerous stunts. The fight scenes are as impressive and dangerous as I have ever seen.

The acting from the 3 main stars Ryan Gosling, Chris Evans, Ana de Armas and Billy Bob Thornton is outstanding throughout this 2+ hours. However despite all of this positive news about this very good action movie and the fact that it cost 200 million dollars to produce, the critics on Rotten Tomatoes are only giving this a 50% rating. Once again, the critics are dead wrong, because this movie deserves a 75% rating just for the hard work that went into some of the most amazing action scenes ever filmed. There is one scene where it seems like large part of a European city is destroyed by car crashes, buildings exploding, mixed with non stop gunfire.

It is true that we have seen most or all of this kind of film before, but adding up all the positive points, this movie is a must see, with at least an 85% rating. The concept of taking someone from prison or about to go to prison and training them for the most dangerous work within the CIA is a concept that has been done in the past – most notably with Bridget Fonda in “Point of No Return”, released in 1993. Sometimes just being different can be a bad idea, IF being different results in a ridiculous story, like too many movies have been doing lately. The upside of this film is that everything was very well done and believable.

I was most impressed with the highly intricate and choreographed fight scenes with the 3 main stars, de Armas, Evans and Gosling. It looked to me that there was a high probability of a major injury for all 3 of them, because no matter how hard you practice and prepare, there is always something that could go wrong. Considering the money, fame and incredible jobs these A list actors have, they also have to take the risk of possible major injury or death, just to make a movie.

In terms of a great action movie this one ranks very near the top and I give it a strong recommendation.