Its an unsettling real-life story about a small man taking on a huge corporation. And while not as knock-down, drag-out sexy as a different big-screen contest,"Godzilla vs. Kong," the straight-forward courtroom drama, "Percy vs. Goliath" still packs a punch.
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"Revenge is a dish best served cold," Khan tells Captain Kirk, in "Star Trek II: The Wrath of Khan." That film also featured Spock, an alien being who otherwise, was not capable of human emotion. Spock would have had what it takes to star in "Tom Clancy's Without Remorse," since showing emotion is not a prerequisite. Its subject, played by Michael B. Jordan, is a ruthless, cold and unfeeling individual who kills, kills, kills as he tries to hunt down his wife's murderer.
"Without Remorse" is a revenge tale not just served cold, but without any spice or flavor. It's a bland genre entry that renders its star useless. And come to think of it, Spock would have never touched this film, seeing how monumentally illogical the whole thing is. Review: 'Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street,' it's not easy being green, or brilliant4/29/2021 The only negative thing I could say about the new documentary, "Street Gang: How We Got to Sesame Street," is that i didn't like the end...in that I wish it could have gone on forever.
That's how I felt watching it. This incredibly insightful, hilarious and heart-warming documentary is one part origin story, describing how a group of tremendously talented and motivated people all got together at just the right time and place in history to create something timeless. It's also a celebration of what was created, and what was achieved, in a television landscape that was like the Wild West, unexplored and primed for pioneering. Then it's an inspirational trip down memory lane...nostalgia served up in delicious spoonfuls...that made me long for simpler times. Watching "Street Gang," I was a kid again, and was made to feel thankful that I - like millions of other children - grew up on "Sesame Street." But as an adult looking back, the love and appreciation is deeper by a hundredfold, especially when you realize just how daring, bold and innovative "Sesame Street" really was. "Sesame Street," as one person puts it in the film, "is Television if Television loved the audience, instead of just trying to sell to it." This love permeates through "Street Gang" and makes it one of the most effective, insightful and yes even important documentaries of our time. Although this new HBO Max Documentary (coming Thursday, April 29th to the platform) is called "Lucy the Human Chimp," a more appropriate title might have been "Janis the Chimp Human." That's because its story really isn't about Lucy, a chimpanzee that was raised as a human for the first years of her life as part of a scientific study in mid 60s. It's more about Janis Carter, a caretaker who became so attached to Lucy, that she dedicated the rest of her life to helping Lucy and chimps like her acclimate themselves back into their natural habitats.
It's a truly fascinating story, but relying heavily on dramatizations and the same few photos, it doesn't lend itself well as a full-length documentary film. Watching several hundred movies a year, you come across many that are clearly awful, and a handful that are really great. For the vast majority of them, you might not feel strongly either way but you definitely feel generally positive or generally negative about the whole of a movie. There are then the rarest of them all...ones that seem to land at the absolute direct middle point on the scale. To give a film like this a "positive" review would be to forgive the many grievances or missed opportunities you feel the film possesses. But to give it a "negative" review, you dismiss the several really good things that the movie had going for it.
"Four Good Days" is such a film...the sort of film in which I hope you just read the review and see it just to determine for yourself in which direction you lean...a film that a letter grade or a RottenTomatoes score doesn't bring full justice to. Ultimately though, "Four Good Days" should have been better given what was working for it, leaving the unsatisfactory taste in my mouth to linger longer than my memories of what worked. You're alone. You turn on the TV as not to alarm anyone in the house. You survey the room. You see your wife gracefully picking up a toy, clearly she must have a child. Probably toddler age. You see a toddler run naked into the room. Suspicions confirmed. You begin to focus. You settle in to watch a movie. That movie is called "The Virtuoso." You think the movie should be good. You notice the credits say that it stars Anthony Hopkins. You note that he is now a two-time Oscar winner, having won previously for his role in "The Silence of the Lambs." You remember you also liked him in that show "Westworld." You are inspired by your own knowledge of Oscar history and HBO. You turn up the volume. You crack open a beer. You wait.
Beautifully animated, hilarious and inventive, "The Mitchells vs. The Machines" is exactly what you'd expect from "The LEGO Movie" directing duo, Phil Lord and Christopher Miller...however this time they only produced. The new filmmaking pair of Michael Rianda and Jeff Rowe ("Rianda & Rowe") have a catchier name and they make the most of their inaugural directing effort.
"The Mitchells vs. The Machines" is an absolute blast, and you're sure to love it whether you're a kid, an adult or even a robot. Nominated for two BAFTA Awards, including Best Picture, "Limbo" arrives state-side this weekend. And like it's subject, it is a film that feels delightfully stuck in the middle.
"Sesame Street" has been chasing the clouds away for over 50 years, and tonight, ABC plans to celebrate with a two-hour documentary, aptly named "Sesame Street: 50 Years of Sunny Days." (airing on ABC at 8pm ET).
Perhaps until the past few years, there was nothing that would divide people more than their opinions of the annual Academy Awards telecast.
The "hate-watchers" as I call them are in one corner, tuning in every year just to complain about the length of the program, the stuffiness of it all or to call for the hypocritical Hollywood elites handing each other golden statues to just be quiet. On the other side, you have "Awards aficionados," the ones that eat this stuff up, that block their calendars off months in advance when they announce when the Oscars are happening, who secretly love when the Oscars go long, who tear up during the In Memoriam segment each year and who would do all of the above annually without question because it validates and confirms their "love of the movies." The first group LOVES trolling the latter, and the latter love to defend the Oscars at all costs...they are and have always been a sacred celebration of all things movies, and an attack on the Academy Awards is, in fact, an attack on us. I say "us" because I proudly identify as being in the second group, an awards show junkie who credits his love of movies to watching early 80s Oscar telecasts as a kid, who learned about movie-making from the technical awards categories that would be presented to the "nobodies" on stage (I desperately wanted to one day be one of those nobodies), who thought that his grandma had been invited to the gala (it was, in fact, not my grandma but Jessica Tandy), and who fights off naysayers each year when they inevitably attack the integrity of the biggest awards show of all, by suggesting that it - gasp! - shorten, or otherwise change. So let me say this as Oscars biggest fanboy: Last nights show was indefensible. There was a lot of good, some bad, and then a final 20 minutes or so that absolutely sucked the wind out of me, and made me disgusted. The Steven Soderberg-produced show crashed and burned after a promising start...and if I ended up feeling devastated about it, I can only imagine what the "haters" thought. I'm not here to defend the 2021 Oscars...but let's take a look at what worked, what didn't and everything in-between. |
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