Change Your Image
chasdemont
Reviews
Mr. Harrigan's Phone (2022)
Writer or director, who is to blame?
Twenty minutes into this I was happy, thought I'd chosen a decent movie to watch. Hancock's direction is polished, focusing on character development and attractive, well photographed sets. The cast all make worthy efforts. The story is promising, with an interesting relationship between a youngster who reads literary classics to an aged, mysterious business tycoon, Donald Sutherland.
Fascinating, where will this curious tale lead? Nowhere. Half way, the entire story derails and becomes a tedious, vapid, supernatural pile of twaddle. Stephen King wrote it and is exec producer, he must shoulder much of the blame for this waste of time. John Lee Hancock chose to make it and eventually to steer it into the ground - he's guilty too.
This is the second John Lee Hancock movie I've watched recently. The other is The Little Things, which suffers from the same directorial problems. A promising story with good character development, ending in a disappointing, unsatisfactory conclusion.
The Gray Man (2022)
Utterly idiotic yet entertaining
The Gray Man should be viewed as a slapstick comedy. It is fundamentally a very stupid film. The premise for the story is absurd, the story as a whole is absurd. It is highly predictable. The characters are ridiculous. There is no logic or intelligence applied in any given situation. It is fast and furious, quite exciting action throughout. I laughed quite a lot. I speculated about the extent to which the producers think their audience are idiots. Sadly movies like this, and there are an abundance of them, are forgettable pap. It was quite pleasing to see Ryan Gosling once again paired with Ana de Armas, after Blade Runner 2049.
Columbo: It's All in the Game (1993)
Not as great as it's cracked up to be
I struggled with this episode because I couldn't accept the out of character romantic relationship Columbo strikes up with Faye Dunaway, his prime suspect. Regular viewers know how Columbo frequently references his never seen wife and we're all kind of sure that his marriage is a pretty solid one. But to see him so easily slip into the situation where he allows her to shower him with kisses, personal presents and going on dinner dates suggests a bit of a philanderer.
This left me doubting that Columbo was really going to take his wife bowling on Friday evening.