Sandoz Reviews

Thirst (I) (2023)

The Wah-wah is All Methed-up

[3/10 · 14 January 2024]

A married couple and some friends with the usual interpersonal dramas must contend with a hazardous contamination (some kind of concentrated methadrine) of their local area's water supply. Tensions already festering are made worse as their situation becomes more desperate as they begin to dehydrate.

I generally root for ultra low-budget films to surprise me and make up for their scarcity of budget with a cleverness of plot and a display of filmmaking talent. Thirst is undeniably well-made even though it appears to have been produced for mere pennies compared to big studio productions. Unfortunately, however, the scenario sinks into silliness as the story drips along... Spoilers below as to what annoyed me about the film and warranted my three star rating:

A local water shortage, especially one lasting beyond a couple of days (apparently in this case it seems to be about two weeks) would not be ignored by local or national aid groups; there would be assistance arriving at some point with bottled water or water buffalo trucks providing help.

Not once, but twice, the home of the sheltering group is invaded by intruders who walk in through unlocked doors. C'mon, it's not the 19th century--who doesn't lock their doors anymore whether at home or not? The house is not out in the country, it's in the friggin' suburbs. I lose sympathy for characters when they're written as this stupid.

In the final act, the husband finds a freshwater pond via an internet search and the group depart to camp and partake of the clean water there. However, the next day they awaken to find about twenty other cars nearby with other people who had the same idea. And then soon again, two tough guys with one shotgun commandeer the pond and demand payment for anyone who wants to fill up water. C'mon, all those people and NO-ONE else brought firearms along, also? This story is taking place in America...the tough guys wouldn't be the only ones who brought firearms with them. And the cherry on this inane plot twist is that one of thugs just happens to be the abusive boyfriend that the husband cold-cocked with a 2 by 4 earlier after he beat-up his girlfrind who, distraught, committed suicide at the couple's house (who must have been buried in the couple's backyard because we never see any Coroner arrive to remove her body).

The Renata Road (2022)

Interminable Slog through a Lynchian Purgatory

[4/10 · 25 May 2023]

A man checks into a weird hotel, meets a lot of weird people, and experiences some weird occurrences. For two hours. Then after a brief attempt at escape (check-out?), he finds himself again sitting in the same chair waiting to check-in.

This is a threadbare scenario from which to build a feature story around; it could have been better served as a short film instead. It isn't hard to achieve a feeling of tension and uneasiness in a film, but it IS hard to sustain those feelings continually for two hours. And it's even harder when all the characters seem to be some kind of archetypic figures rather than actual humans; it makes them all one-dimensional.

Technically, the film is commendable. The bright cinematography goes against what might be the typical choice of dark shadowy lighting for a tale like this and actually assists in establishing the eerie-ness of the location as though the rooms are all under the bright lights of some laboratory. And, thank god, at least the film avoids the trap of using any shaky-cam to establish anxiety (allow me to digress here and interject a personal opinion: Death To Shaky-Cam!).

I'm going to give this film 4 stars because it at least showed some ambition and an attempt to issue something off-beat and not just a run-of-the-mill thriller or pedestrian drama...it didn't succeed in its ambition, but trying is worth some recognition. Although the fact that I checked this film out from my local library and there was no cost on my part to watch it no doubt helped my rating...if I had actually had to pay for a rental of this I likely would have rated it lower.

The Last of Us: Left Behind (2023) Season 1, Episode 7

how to fill wallets...

[1/10 · 1 April 2023]

< Notes from Production Meeting Discussion for show "The Last Of Us" >

Producer 1: Well, regarding HBO's commission to a full season of our show...I have some good news--

Assembled Producers: Yeah! Hooray! Woohoo!

Producer 1: --and some bad news.

Assembled Producers: Aaarrgghhh!!

Producer 1: Now wait a moment, let me explain, it's not all that bad... HBO very much liked our pitch for the show, but the only point they raised was they thought only eight episodes would not be enough...they felt more like ten would be appropriate--

Assembled Producers: Aaarrgghhh!!

Producer 1: Yes, that's how I felt, too. I tried to explain to them we had painstakingly planned the first season to cover all that needs to be said for this season, but they BEGGED me to give them more content...so I managed to convince them that we could guarantee just ONE more episode and deliver a nine episode season.

Producer 2: But we've already written a filler to cover the eight episode requirement! We've got the beardy romance story between the Hermitic Gun-Nut and the Epicurean Artiste for a whole episode--

Producer 1: I know, I know, more than one filler episode will stand out like a sore thumb and get us lots of criticism--

Producer 3: WELL-DESERVED criticism, too!

Producer 1: True. But there was no reasoning with the network suit guys...after all, they do sign our paychecks!

Assembled Producers: (grumbling assent)

Producer 1: So I gave it some thought, and what about that small bit out of the game where Ellie thinks about her friend...couldn't we extend that and make a whole episode of the two of them frolicking and doing some sappy teen-bonding at the derelict shopping mall?

Producer 2: Hmm, I suppose we could. We could even shoot most all of it on mostly a single set for once--

Producer 3: And it would hardly need any CGI work at all!

Producer 4: And a really minimal cast list, too!

Producer 5: Just a single Fungie-Zombie!

Producer 2: Yes, it could work!

Producer 1: See? I knew you guys could come up with something! Great idea making it all about, Ellie, too...all the saps who love her character will adore this episode because it will be "Ellie-centric!"

Assembled Producers: (cheering!)

Producer 1: Great, guys! I'll assign the script this later this week. Well, that should do it for this meeting...

(Assembly rises and begins exiting)

Producer 1: Oh, and hey guys, just one more reminder--

(All turn to listen)

Producer 1: An extra episode added to the season means that everyone will get between two to four weeks additional paychecks for the extra work.

Assembled Producers: (enthusiastic cheering!)

How Sex Changed the World (2013– )

wink wink nudge nudge

[3/10 · 22 March 2023]

While flipping around my cable channel guide, I noticed this series airing on a station called, ahem, VICE (I kid you not). Out of salacious curiosity I briefly checked out a couple of episodes. Has a lot of talking head experts (sexperts, I guess) giving cursory historical info about how sex existed during certain historical periods or locales, all the while inter-cutting film clips from old movies (hollywood, foreign, and exploitation), artwork and photographs, and a lot of contemporary photos and film-clips totally anachronistic to the subject.

Like most sex itself, watching an episode of this was interesting for five minutes...Very Interesting for about ten minutes...and then EXTREMELY INTERESTING until about twenty minutes... And then it was just wearisome and blah.

If the film clips utilized had been provided titles instead of remaining anonymous, I might have tuned in for more episodes just to note a few that looked like they might have been a hoot to track down and watch, but no such luck.

3/10.

Speak No Evil (2022)

Masterpiece of slowly unnerving terror.....until the ludicrous and infuriating climax

[3/10 · 31 December 2022]

How do you reduce a film like this one to a simple numerical value when every moment of it up until the last fifteen minutes or so was a masterfully paced slow-building stockpile of suspense and terror....only to fall flat on its face in the unsatisfyingly stupid denouement?

I don't want to write a long review of this film-its conclusion made me so furious that the less time I spend on this review the better it will be for my blood pressure... Let me just sum this up by saying that if you're OK with films where the "good" characters prove themselves to be a couple of cowards who won't even put up a fight to protect each other and just accept their fate as victim fodder for the evil characters then you'll no doubt love this movie. After being captured and driven to their forthcoming demise in a car by the killer and his wife, the father and mother make the weakest and most-half-hearted attempt to fight back and just decide to accept their fate. When the odds of survival are just a man against a man and a woman against another woman-both sides equal matched physically and age-wise-that's pretty much a "fair fight", especially if the villain doesn't even possess a weapon, AND the captives aren't even physically restrained at all. If you can't put up a decent struggle in that situation when it literally means "fighting for your life," well then, good riddance. Cowards like that deserve to be victims.

And then there's the ludicrous amount of clues and evidence that are left behind to easily trace the trail of the victims to their doom that only the most mentally-challenged evil villains would leave behind. We're supposed to believe (based on the innumerable photos of the previous families of victims that line the villains' lair) that the killers could commit this number of multiple murders without being discovered? C'mon---DOZENS of victim photos?? Really, a half-dozen or so would have been believable. And why even post them on a wall in plain sight for possible discovery in the first place?? And finally there's the execution scene of the couple that's done by STONING them to death?? If I wasn't so angry at the film suddenly plummeting into stupidity I would have been rolling on the floor laughing.

The makers of this film probably think they produced a masterpiece of nihilistic terror that reached the heights of real horror masterpieces deserving of that accolade like The Vanishing, Funny Games, or Kill List. Sorry guys, but you didn't stick the landing. Great routine but you broke both ankles on the dismount.

Scream (I) (2022)

Do you like scary movies? Well, keep looking...

[1/10 · 19 December 2022]

The first Scream film in 1996 can arguably claim to be the first meta film about Horror films owing to its clever and original premise of having its characters be aware that they are actually experiencing the terrifying situations that occur in fictional Horror films. There is also a valid argument that even the first sequel (Scream 2) is nearly as meta as the first film was since almost all successful horror films eventually get a sequel.

But when an attempt is made to meta-size (or meta-morph maybe?) a new reboot of the original film, that doesn't make the new film twice as meta...it just makes it repetitive, lazy, and dumb, especially when nothing really clever or original is added to the new remake. Really, was ANYONE surprised when there turned out to be two killers just like in the first film? Or when the supposedly dead killer really wasn't dead but sprang back to life for a cheap shock scare only to be blasted by the heroine...which was followed, of course, by a pithy quip just like in the original?

What is really tragic and most disturbing, however, about this cruddy waste-of-time remake is not so much that it was actually made...it's that it appears some newer viewers seem to have been entertained by this pabulum. One of my favorite aphorisms has always been that "some people are starved for entertainment," even if said entertainment is just a shameless ploy to turn a quick buck by tracing over the template of an earlier success. The 2022 Scream proves this theory.

Don't Let Her In (I) (2021)

"Don't" is right...

[3/10 · 22 August 2022]

...as in don't waste your time on this. Mercifully, this film is only 61 minutes long, so at least if you do happen to watch it, at least you won't be squandering too much of your life on it. The bad news is this story is so been-there-done-that it could have been told in a half-hour format. In fact, this story of a succubus-type demon has been told already in countless feature films before, and in quite a few horror anthology shows, also.

I'm giving it 3 stars instead of 1 for not wasting too much time telling its hackneyed story, and for having a bit of female nudity, too (I consider gratuitous female nudity to be a plus for any low-budget horror film).

The Boys: Herogasm (2022) Season 3, Episode 6

Disappointingasm

[4/10 · 3 July 2022]

There was a lot of pre-release hype for this episode about how outrageous and shocking it was going to be...

I really, REALLY have to remember to tell myself to NEVER believe hype.

Anyone who has read the comic knows that authentic outrageousness and shock value is how Herogasm was portrayed in the comics. What we got in the TV episode was basically a supe version of the orgy scene in Eyes Wide Shut with just a bit more nudity. I'm aware that subscription-cable shows still cannot go full-on porno and need to rein things in somewhat...but if anyone actually feels this scene was pushing any boundaries in terms of debauchery and decadance, all I can say is get the comic issue of this and check it out: your mind--and maybe some other things, too--will definitely be blown.

Still love the show, but this episode was a let-down.

Festival Express (2003)

ho-hum

[5/10 · 19 June 2022]

I agree with the reviewer who deemed this a "Bargain-Bin Woodstock." It really is. The only performers I had any interest in seeing were The Band and Janis. That is, they are the only performers INCLUDED on the disc that I had any interest in seeing; according to a note in the trivia Ten Years After and Traffic were also on this tour but the rights to their performances cost too much to include. Pity, they would have enlivened this set enormously. The Grateful Dead puts me to sleep.

Quarantined (1970 TV Movie)

White Hat Heroes in white lab coats.

[4/10 · 2 June 2022]

Undoubtably a pilot movie for a potential series as the main credits for the first five actors list both their real names and the character name whom they are portraying. The remaining featured players are introduced as "guest starring."

Competently made, but nothing about it stands out, either. Most likely greenlit by ABC to jump on the hospital bandwagon as CBS struck gold the previous year as their series Medical Center proved to be a huge success. Personally, I'm not much of a fan of television medical dramas as they really all seem indistinguishable to me. The only one I liked enough to watch 3 or 4 seasons of was "ER" and even that got tiresome eventually. Once you discard the new diseases or injuries that must be treated each week, what's left are interpersonal dramas and lovey-dovey affairs in the hospital which bore me to death (is there a pill to treat that, Doc?). Basically they're all soap operas with stethoscopes.

The Handmaid's Tale (2017–2025)

Another show that doesn't know when to end

[5/10 · 16 April 2022]

Season 1 was great; really ran with the concept and made the dystopian world of the book believable with much better detail than the 80s film did.

Season 2 was almost as good, necessary backstories shown and resistance began to foment.

Season 3 the show started going off the rails. Instead of having the tone of a show for pay-cable it started resembling the type of dumb sci-fi action shows on the SyFy channel.

I really hoped Season 4 would get back on track of the quality of the earlier seasons, but no, it's even dumber than S3. I'm done. And--good lord--it appears this has been renewed for a 5th season, too! Man, some people are starved for entertainment it seems.

I'm giving it a 5 overall rating just because of the quality of the earlier seasons.

Munich: The Edge of War (2021)

Munich: The Edge Of Annoyance

[2/10 · 6 March 2022]

This movie was an endurance test to watch. Between the CONSTANT wavering shaky cam that NEVER quit jerking and swaying and panning, and the rapid-fire editing that in most scenes couldn't HOLD a shot for more than a second or two, this was quite possibly the most inept and unprofessionally made film I've seen in quite a while. This is a DRAMATIC Thriller--emphasis on DRAMA. The majority of the scenes involve a pair or small group of people in a room TALKING to each other. There is no sane reason to not have the camera fixed on a stationary mount to make it easier for the audience to absorb the dialogue of the scene and the performances of the actors! And, there is no sane reason for these types of scenes to need to cut every couple of seconds to reverse shots or close-ups BEFORE an actor even finishes a line of dialogue! That is filmmaking 101, for god sakes...was this a choice by the Director, or did the DP and Editor talk him into accepting this staccato ADHD style of filmmaking? A quick glance at the credits indicates this was a German production...I'm not familiar with any of the names behind the camera for this, but I am now and will at least know to avoid watching anything they're involved with in the future.

Here is a better detailed example of what I'm railing about. The first dialogue scene after the credits involves the main character meeting his wife for lunch in a posh London restaurant. Two characters, sitting across from each other at a table and talking to each other. The entire scene runs two and a half minutes. During this scene, the camera never stops moving; it's always wavering or swooping around (maybe it's supposed to be the POV of a fly, who the hell knows). And if this wasn't bad enough, the editor decided that he was going to try and include a shot from every.single.setup that was filmed during the scene. There are cutaways in the middle of lines to the listening actor and then back to the speaking actor, cutaways from close-ups of the actor speaking to medium shots of the same actor speaking--during the same line! I actually re-watched the scene and counted the number of cuts within it...remember, it's a 2 1/2 min scene, which is 150 seconds. So, take a quick guess how many individual cuts are within this "simple" scene? Try 73 SHOTS! That works out to almost a shot every 2 seconds...for a friggin' DIALOGUE scene with 2 actors???

This frenetic craziness continues onward for the entire rest of the film without respite, and considering this a 130 minute film (Why? It's not that intricate of a plot that it needs that running time), if you are at all susceptible to motion-sickness I would strongly suggest ingesting a pill or two of Dramamine before attempting to watch it in one sitting.

Zone 414 (2021)

Plenty Of Style....Paltry Substance

[4/10 · 18 February 2022]

This film starts out promisingly... The visuals set the mood for a dark, dystopian, cyber-neo-noir clearly patterned after Blade Runner (then again, what cyber-neo-noir of the last forty years isn't?). We are introduced to our main character (Guy Pearce), a former cop now working as a private detective (*cough* Rick Deckard), who is contracted by a creepy oligarch known as the creator of almost-human androids (*cough* Eldon Tyrell) to find his missing daughter who's disappeared into Robot Town, er, "Zone 414." To assist him once he's there, he's told to contact the high-class escort, Jane (*cough* Rachel) who, we find out, is a special model and unique (*cough* more human than human).

Based on the above, the line between being "inspired by" and actually "ripping off" Blade Runner is getting pretty close to having been crossed. But I decided to keep watching and hoping those initial similarities were just a foundation and that the rest of the story would stake out its own turf.

Unfortunately, it does not. As the detective conducts his search with leads provided by the beautiful replicant, er robot, Jane, he talks to a lot of weird characters and eventually finds the missing daughter. And of course, during the course of his investigation falls in love with the beautiful replicant, er robot. If you've seen Blade Runner before, you'll pretty much foresee what to expect in every upcoming scene of this film. There's a small twist for the climax, but really not all that twisty because you can see it coming, too, since hardly any other characters are relevantly developed as likely suspects. In fact, even if you're not overly familiar with Blade Runner, if you've seen any private eye detective stories before you'll be two steps ahead of this mystery.

It's a shame more work wasn't put into the script because all the cast sell their parts convincingly (although the actress playing Jane shows her inexperience whenever her character has to express any profound emotions in lengthy dialog scenes). And the overall visual design of the film, especially the sets and the editing, enhance the de rigeur neo-noirishness... Those contributions, at least, keep Zone 414 from being a total waste of time, but the predictability of the plot fails to garner enough interest to elevate this film to re-watch status. There's a line in the film that Jane's pimp says to her about one of her recent clients..."he enjoyed his visit, but he got all he needed from you and won't be visiting you again." I feel the same way about Zone 414.

Station Eleven (2021–2022)

Loved the novel. This...not so much.

[3/10 · 25 January 2022]

I am perfectly aware that whenever a literary work is adapted either theatrically or for television that it likely becomes necessary to omit or augment parts of the story for the new medium. I have no objections to that, just as long as the new entity created manages to retain the overall plot, themes, and (most especially) the MOOD created for the reader of the original novel. Station Eleven the mini-series only partially succeeds regarding the plot, but fails regarding the other two elements.

Both the SE the novel and SE the mini-series begin at the same point: the opening night at a Toronto theater of the play King Lear starring the famous movie-star Arthur Leander. A young girl named Kirsten with a small part in the play whom Arthur has sort of taken under his wing is also introduced, along with an Indian-Canadian paramedic watching in the audience, Jeevan. During a scene in the play, Jeevan rushes to help Arthur when he collapses onstage and dies from a sudden heart attack, witnessed from the wings by Kristin.

That's really about as totally faithful as SE the mini-series gets to following the novel. From this point on, things diverge significantly. For instance, after Arthur is pronounced dead, Jeevan briefly converses with Kirsten, but he doesn't become her de-facto guardian; after Arthur's death they never see each other again until twenty years later. Arthur Leander's story leading up to his death is of major importance in the novel; in the mini-series it gets meager attention, so much so that Gabriel Garcia Bernal isn't even credited as part of the main cast, but instead gets a "guest starring" credit. Arthur's story is important because he represents the past, and this evolution of what it means to be an actor--one who is true to that craft-- is only recognized by him at the very end of his life. The past choices he's made in life and regrets for all the false or ignorant ones he's made reflect on the future quest of the travelling symphony who are attempting to preserve the art of drama for a new post-apocalyptic world.

The novel is a great tale of how people we know and events we experience during our past and present lives can affect and influence our future. Both big, life-changing events and even the most miniscule of seemingly random actions or casually offhand remarks can reverberate and influence who we become and what we do a lifetime later. Yes, a deadly flu pandemic would be the most consequential of these life-changing events, but it is not any more significant in memory than some other small conversation we may have had or a brief occurrence that seemed insignificant at the time but turns out to have huge reverberations much later in our lives. It is primarily a story about CHANGE, which is really what life is all about. And to bolster this theme, the novel uses the three characters we meet in the first chapter (Arthur, Jeevan, and Kirsten) as individual symbols of humans for the past, present, and future. After Arthur's death in the theater, from that point the structure of the novel fragments into segments of: The Present, with the outbreak of the flu (Jeevan sequestering with his brother in his high-rise apartment until nearly everyone else has died, including his brother, and leaving the city); The Past (Arthur and his acting career, meeting Miranda who becomes his wife and creates the graphic novel Station Eleven, and the failure of his marriage); and The Future (Kirsten twenty years later, a member of the travelling symphony that perform music and Shakespeare for small communities bordering Lake Michigan).

It's an elaborate structure, like a tapestry or a mosaic of interlocking destinies that are interweaved with causes and effects that all need to be included or else the thematic structure won't stand. Instead of this, what we got in the ten hour mini-series was a standard survival tale during an apocalypse with a meager portion of the novel's subtle intricate threads brushed on like a marinade rather than being the meat of the work. Instead of giving Arthur's character the importance it deserves, the mini-series decided to focus the majority of the scenes primarily on Kirsten, and in doing so most of the interlocking occurrences in the past were abandoned.

Finally, here are some of the changes from the novel made for the mini-series that I found particularly aggravating:

>The novel does not pander to cheap and easy TV sentimentality like the mini-series does, such as the interminable goodbye/farewell scenes in the last episode, or having Kirsten (who shouldn't even be present in the scene) sing Noel in Frank's apartment so everyone can get all teary-eyed.

>The Prophet in the novel is also Arthur's son Tyler, but he's a religious zealot with a cult group of followers who kidnap girls to become the "wives" of the Prophet and eventually wives for other male members of the cult. There is no ridiculous horde of bomb-carrying suicide kids.

>The characters of Arthur and Miranda are both Canadians from the same small town on an island in British Columbia who meet again later in life in Toronto; they are not a Mexican actor and a Black girl from the Caribbean. I supposed this change was needed in order to secure funding from HBO to be "inclusive." I am not opposed to stories with multi-ethnic or multi-cultural casts. I do object, however, when these changes are imposed in the adaptation of existing stories where those characters were not created that way and there is really no reason to change them. It's only done to "check a box" because the producers don't want to deal with any backlash that they're too pussified to handle.

>The dinner scene where Miranda realizes Arthur is having an affair with Elizabeth (who will become his second wife and mother to Tyler) is skimped over in the mini-series and has much more incisive and revealing detail in the novel. It's actually the one scene I most looked forward to seeing dramatized in the mini-series because there is a such a slow-burn through the characters dialogue leading up to the moment when Miranda realizes her marriage to Arthur is finished. But instead what we get is the cliff notes/soap-opera version with Miranda being dramatic and pouring out her glass of wine onto the table. Also, in the novel Miranda walks to the street outside Arthur's mansion to have a smoke and meets Jeevan who is staking out the place as a papparazzo. It seems the importance of this chance encounter was lost on the mini-series adapters of this story. Only a talented playwright could have properly scripted this scene, and probably the whole series too, and not the cable-TV hacks who churned out this bloated ten hour TV version.

The Nevers (2021–2023)

"Nevers" is right...as in Never continue to watch it.

[2/10 · 22 January 2022]

Oh brother--or perhaps it would be more appropriate to say--Oh sister... What a been-there-done-that concept this show is. It's like someone cherry-picked a bunch of story tropes that are currently in vogue and/or were successful in the near past and tossed bits of them into a big plot cauldron and stirred them up to make a messy mix... There's some X-Men (mutant super-heroes), some Charlie's Angels (asskicking femme power team), a bit of Victorian London (the Ritchie action-hero Holmes)...what a recipe for derivative success!

Josh Whedon is the guiding hand behind this series, and like most of the crap he's churned out since Buffy TVS ended, he's been repeating himself ever since. Don't get me wrong--I liked Buffy, I even liked Angel, too...but that's as far as it goes with Joshie. Starting with Firefly (the most over-rated nonsense show of the last two decades) and then Dollhouse (sci-fi secret agent fluff), the snark factor would never fail to reach the point in JW projects where I found myself wanting to slap the shinola out of just about every character who always had to issue some snide smart-ass comment. And when nearly every character who did so was one of the "good" guys, that's not a recipe for success when it makes you start rooting for the villains to kill all of them just to shut them up.

If you're easily distracted and entertained by shows with a few fast-paced action set-pieces here and there, then I suppose you'll be satisfied with this. But if otherwise don't waste your time here and instead watch a truly great series like The Boys, Black Summer, or Midnight Mass (examples of recent superlative TV mini-series) that actually deserve attention for being original.

Katla (2021)

Don't like it? Fine, but don't for this reason....

[5/10 · 12 December 2021]

Reading through quite a few other reviews posted here about this show, I'm really a bit dismayed how many people are so dense about the final manifestation of another person "resurrected" by the volcano...that is, the main character's Grima's double from an earlier, happier time in her life.

Jeez, were you people paying attention?? Did you not notice that during the russian-roulette sequence the colors of the tops the two Grima's were wearing switched back and forth between them...as though the two of them were interchangeable? Or how about when the two Grima's are talking at the kitchen table and her husband enters and says "Talking to yourself?" and she replies "Something like that."

There is a reason her husband doesn't seem to notice that there are "two" of his wife in the house....and that's because THERE ISN"T TWO OF THEM! The second Grima is not a physical entity but someone the real Grima has conjured in her own mind, a manifestation of herself when she wasn't troubled and guilt-ridden about her mother's suicide and her sister's disappearance. The show established in the very first episode and throughout that Grima was suffering from severe depression and taking medication for it. Cracks were apparent in her marriage as her husband strained to co-exist with his ailing wife who had changed into an angry and sullen person haunted by grief and regret. I know it can be easy to jump to the conclusion that the second Grima is an actual creation by the volcano, but if anyone bothered to look a little closer and are willing to go a bit deeper, it's obvious she is not.

Evil (2019–2024)

1 star rating is a big FU to CBS

[1/10 · 29 June 2021]

CBS is a garbage network, with insipid and moronic shows that either pander to the lowest of the lowbrow who are entertained by reality puke shows like Big Brother or Love Island, or those who have a hard-on for military or cop shows that run endlessly like a never-ending parade of psuedo-entertainment situational recruiting commercials for the military-judicial-industrial complex...

So finally after a constant parade of disposable twaddle CBS manages to surprise everyone and actually land a one hour drama like Evil that contains some meager originality and amazingly breaks from their usual pattern of formulaic dreck...what happens? After a surprising first season success, the head doofuses at CBS decide this is just the kind of show they need to move the second season of to their brand new money-suck venture, Paramount Plus, because, hey if like Marx said about religion that it's the opiate of the masses, well television is at least the oxycontin for those same masses and they'll all surely be "hooked" enough from watching season 1 that they'll gladly pay to get their fix on the brand new subscription streaming service, right?

Wrong. There are "other" ways of seeing this show that don't involve paying up like a sheep just to be able to watch them. And besides, what sort of sucker would even subscribe to a service that only releases episodes once-a-week instead of all at once so we can watch them on OUR time, and not theirs? It may take a little more effort for me to get new episodes of this show for view, but I won't be paying a dime to the wallet-sucking scum at CBS for them. Streaming services for entertainment may be the "future" but you know what was the future before this new future appeared on the scene? The Internet. Amazing what you can find if you look around on there enough... I suppose just call me "Evil".... Hahahaha.

Alyce Kills (2011)

Alyce Pukes

[1/10 · 16 May 2021]

Two airhead bimbo girlfriends (Alyce and Carroll) wander around downtown L. A. looking for parties and drugs and blather incessantly about who in their circle of friends they hate while making juvenile jokes like inserting the word "vagina" into the titles of famous movies... That's the first third of the film.

Then while totally zonked out on whatever the last drug it was that they scored, while jumping, dancing, and frolicing around on the roof of Alyce's apartment building (and also, of course, spouting more insipid dialogue), Alyce "accidentally" knocks Carroll over the edge. Cue the begin of Alyce's slide into homicidal psychosis as first she smothers the hospitalized Carroll with a pillow, then starts knocking off the annoying hipsters and other low-lifes previously encountered. And just to make sure the film can reel in the Horror film suckers who salivate when they hear the word "gore," Alyce's kills during the last portion of the film are made particularly visceral and eviscerating...

If films that the descriptive terms of empty-headed, vile, squalid, and repellent are what you're hoping to find in your movie-watching experience...well then this is the film for you!

From the Dark (I) (2020)

You can't get much more post-modern than this...

[2/10 · 8 May 2021]

A movie about a murderer...starring a murderer. Well, at least the backers who put up the bucks to produce this turkey will probably get a return on their investments now. Funny how a little notoriety is always good for the box-office. Cool location though, that's way I gave it an extra star.

Chronicle of a Serial Killer (2020)

Better than "Citizen Kane!!!"

[1/10 · 7 March 2021]

...at least according to ratings here on IMDumBee. Ol' Kane only gets an 8.3 rating, whereas this cinematic masterpiece merits an 8.8...and that's from over a thousand ratings, too. And skimming through the reviews, about 75% of them are 2 or 3 line reviews (about the minimum number of words required here in order to post a review) that blather how this film is "So Good!" or "Loved it!!!"

I don't know how much of the budget of this grade Z product was set aside for the promotional campaign, but this production is sure getting its money worth...and I'm sure it paid off, too, by suckering in a few suckers to check it out and part with a measly two or three bucks to rent it.

Washington (2020)

History Channel once again proves they are all about Entertainment, not History

[1/10 · 2 January 2021]

Really, will someone SLAP already whomever it is that greenlights these shows about historical figures that insist on hiring actors and re-staging events? Either make a true documentary without the Hollywood embellishment, or go all-in and make a dramatic biography with actors and a story...but PLEASE stop trying to play on both sides of the fence. And this one in particular was 6 HOURS of annoyance! But I guess it's not surprising considering that the History Channel nowadays panders to the simpletons who boost the ratings tuning in for Pawn Jerks and the Trash Pickers and all the other low-brow dreck HC produces now.

Out of Blue (2018)

Kind of Blew

[2/10 · 6 December 2020]

After having recently finished Martin Amis' source novel NIGHT TRAIN, I discovered it had been adapted as this motion-picture. But perhaps the word "adapted" is being too kind, because aside from the names of a few characters being the same and the initial death that begins the police investigation, this film bares practically no relation to the story presented in the book at all.

The novel is not a pleasant read. In fact, I'd consider putting it on a list for the most bleakest and depressing stories I've ever read...especially within the Crime genre of fiction. One reviewer on Amazon summed up the novel perfectly as basically "...a 176 page suicide note," and that nails it in a nutshell. The novel may be referenced as a Police Detective story, but it's actually an examination of how a seemingly incomprehensible event (in this case, the suicide of a young woman who seems to "have it all"...physical beauty, high intelligence, financial independence) can ultimately lead to a realization that in the end, there are no explanations and searching for meanings (or solving a crime) are pointless. It's a descent into inevitable despair.

It would take balls for any filmmaker, even ones with real artistic talent, to tackle this theme and do it justice, which is probably why the result is the muddled mess that is OUT OF BLUE. Obviously the task at hand of faithfully bringing the novel as (mostly) written was too arduous for the writer/director of this film, and she decided to reimagine the tale as primarily a murder mystery, with a main character as a "flawed" protaganist. The female police detective of the book is not merely flawed: she's hanging onto responsibility, duty, and sanity by a very slender thread. In fairness, it should be mentioned that main character of the novel relates the story in first person narration, so that would strengthen the task for filmMatic adaption; yes, a harder job, but not insurmountable, either.

There's stuff in this movie that just made my jaw drop from having a WTF moment when they occurred, such as: what was this crap about a .38 Killer from the past? That's totally contrived and not in the book at all, and it's obviously just included to land this film squarely within the Mystery genre; taking that ridiculousness even further, there's a big revelation at the conclusion that one of the primary character is, in fact, actually the .38 Killer! This is amateur stuff that even e a novice Crime/Mystery writer would avoid because it's so lame-brained.

I could go on...but I won't because Imdb lets you write as much as you want to for a review, but if you go over the limit you don't get a warning that you need to cut words until you try to submit it. So my last word is if you've read the book and are reading this because you're curious if the movie is worth seeing, I can steadfastly state the only thing you'll get out of a viewing of it is a lesson in how NOT to adapt a literary work to the screen.

Rise of the Nazis (2019–2023)

Re-enactments suck, but still a fascinating subject

[4/10 · 28 November 2020]

I'm being very generous to rate this "documentary" a 4 as my usual position is to rate any and all documentaries a 1 whenever they include innumerable recreations of historical events. It's my opinion that if you're going to employ actors, the use of costumes, and dressed sets that probably aren't the real locations for the events being portrayed anyway...then just make a goddamned fictional film already! Don't influence how the audience remembers history by having look-alikes stumble and bumble around whilst talking about them. And with regards to the re-enactments as portrayed in this particular series, they are trivial anyway: all we really get are shots of people sitting at desks, talking and walking around outside, answering telephones. If this crap had been omitted, this series could have said what it needed to say in 2 episodes instead of 3. But, if the point was to fill time and satisfy the contract for a 3 episode series, I suppose that explains their inclusion.

But, the history this series covers is too timely and important to totally dismiss, especially at this time in history as in many countries around the world (and yes, particularly the United States) the same ominous signs seem to be present so a reminder of the significance studying how the Nazi Party came to engulf and control the government of Germany and managed to subvert and fester within the democratic process in order to achieve total power is an invaluable lesson worth examing. There are, in fact, various quotes and observations stated about events eighty-odd years ago that could be applied verbatim to what's been occurring during the second decade of the 21st century.

Flesh and Fury (1952)

Not Film Noir

[6/10 · 14 October 2020]

Yes, there is a "bad" blonde babe in this film who exploits the innocent pugilist main character, but otherwise this story falls more squarely in the realm of melodrama than film noir. Still worth a look, especially for the mid-50s milieu of the grimy boxing palaces that would be apotheosized thirty years later in Martin Scorsese's Raging Bull.

(EDIT, Feb '22): When I wrote the above the film still had "Film Noir" included on the main page as a genre' tag for the film. It has since been removed. And no, I didn't request the change...evidently somebody else agreed with me.

The Alienist (2018–2020)

Lady Boss Cop

[2/10 · 29 July 2020]

Oh, look what's happened between seasons one and two... The female police secretary character played by Dakota Fanning has opened her own Detective Agency! How ahead of its time! And totally anachronistic, too! Such spunk...

Well, like Lou Grant once said to a "spunky" Mary Tyler Moore: I hate spunk. This plot device for season two is a ridiculous fabrication and has destroyed any semblance of authenticity this show mananged to obtain (which, based on season 1, wasn't all that much anyway).

So guess what else has happened between seasons one and two of The Alienist..? That's right--Sandoz is no longer a viewer.