kmayes-80640 Reviews

Alias (2001–2006)

Flawed, but Still My Favorite

[7/10 · 13 August 2016]

I love this show. That being said, it has some flaws. You can tell when it went downhill is when J.J. Abrams stopped working on it regularly. Season 1 is great, Season 2 is great, Season 3 was OK, Season 4 not so great, and I'm going to pretend Season 5 didn't happen. I'd have to agree with some of other reviewers on here, it seems like they ended up with a bunch of different writers that lost direction or understanding of what the show was about and where it was supposed to be going. It started out as a spy show with a hint of sci-fi, and ended up the other way around which was just weird. It seems like the only person who really understood the whole Rambaldi thing was JJ. I think that the actors did a good job with what they were given. Watch Season 1-3 if you want to check it out. Its on Netflix as of 8/16.

John Carter (2012)

Worth Watching

[8/10 · 10 July 2016]

I actually really liked this movie. I don't know a great deal about the pulp novels that it was based on to know if its radically different, but I thought that for what it was was something entertaining. I have watched it several times since it was released and would gladly watch it again. I think there was a lot of bad marketing for this film. I could see where it may have gotten some eyebrows because it appears to copy the Star Wars prequels and Avatar plots. The John Carter stories were written in the early 20th century and a great deal of the content that we see in Star Wars and Avatar are shamelessly stolen from John Carter (here looking at you George Lucas for Episode II). It should have been marketed as something as the foundation of science fiction, before star wars, before avatar there was John Carter. Take it for what it is, a popcorn, exciting family movie. Don't expect it to be deep or thought-provoking, that's a different genre.

One for the Money (2012)

Disrespectful to Book Lovers and All Around Crappy Job

[1/10 · 18 June 2016]

I will preface this by saying I am an avid reader of these books, but I also recognize that production companies have liberties to change some of the content when they buy the film rights for any type of book series. HOWEVER, we all know that there are production companies and writing teams out there that have done a much better, much more respectful job at translating a story from book to screen. One that comes to mind is Outlander. This movie was a mess. I didn't mind Heigl as Stephanie, I didn't mind that they clearly used Pittsburgh instead of Jersey, what I did mind was the major deviations they took with the script and with character casting. Some of the casting they got spot on, some it was so bad it makes me shake my head and wonder if the casting agents ever spoke with Evanovich (the author) or read any of the books, all of which gave very, very descriptive pictures of the characters. Heigl, eh, she was OK, her accent sucked, but I can handle it. One thing that irked me was the clothes they put her in in several scenes. Those who have read the books know they were out of character for Stephanie and distract from what was going on in the scene. Vinnie, Connie, and Lula? Spot on, great job. Grandma Mazur? As much as I love Debbie Reynolds, she is not at all Grandma Mazur, she is regular described in the book as not aging well with a body like a soup chicken. She's feisty, over the top, and really old. Now, in spite of all of those not so flattering characteristics, I think Cloris Leachman would have been much better. Another not so great casting choice was Daniel Sunjata. He wasn't the worst guy who could have been picked for Ranger, but there were much better choices. Ranger is a former Army Special Forces Cuban American in his early to mid thirties. He's shorter than Morrelli and some times has long hair pulled back in a pony tail. He barely says anything except Babe, exudes sexiness, he's mysterious and dangerous, and is the best bond enforcement agent. Stephanie secretly thinks he's Batman. Where was ANY of that in the movie? He talked away too much and Sunjata didn't use an accent. The Jersey/Cuban accent was part of the sexiness about him. Adam Rodriguez would have been better. The casting choice that partly ruined the movie was the guy they cast for Morrelli. They chose Jason O'Mara a born and raised Irishman to play the Italian of all Italian Stallions (book reference) Joseph Morrelli. Morrelli is a Trenton cop, mostly reformed bad boy/womanizer. He's not allowed to wear a uniform on the job because he would look like a casino pit boss. He's over 6 feet tall, has dark eyes, classic Italian good looks, and dark wavy hair. Nothing about O'Mara remotely resembled or was able to translate to be Morrelli. Although they did remember a slightly obscure detail: Morrelli's tattoo from his Navy days. A much better choice, Joe Manganiello. He actually is Italian American. We all know he's drop dead sexy and can act as seen in multiple films/TV shows. The other part that made it so terrible is that they took out a lot of the more violent parts of the plot and added in other elements that were supposed to be funny and weren't. I watched an interview with Janet Evanovich and she said they did this to appeal to a greater audience. That was a bad decision. The dialogue sucked. Many of the lines sounded like they were wrote by middle school students. The movie plot focused a lot on one aspect of the relationships that is not so heavily used in the book. I realize that with films there is a great deal that has to be compacted to fit in about 90 minutes, but these changes were again disrespectful to the source material and the characters. Outlander is another adapted book to screen series that has has a huge following for the books and now the show. It has deviations from the books, but they do not stray so far from the source material that you are left scratching your heads. It all works beautifully. It is VERY popular. However, it's on Starz which gives it the space and the rating room that it needs to be properly adapted from the books. Furthermore, one of the key scenes was severely watered down to where the impact of the violence is not as devastating as it needed to be. I assume this was watered down to get the PG-13 rating and again appeal to a wider audience under the umbrella of light, popcorn romantic comedies. Evanovich's books are funny, they don't go too deep, but they were raunchier, more violent, and smarter than what this disaster of a film was. I gladly have paid money to watch a rated r Stephanie Plum movie and I'm sure that a lot of other Plum fans would too. The movie bombed and no surprise. Hopefully, Netflix or HBO/Starz/Showtime kind of channels will pick it up and give it the room and the time that it needs to be as awesome as the books are.