timmyhollywood

I think the reviews got this one right. Allow me to synthesize: Aside from certain impressive cinematic images, Horizon is mostly shot like an old TV show. Standard medium close-ups, often overly lit. Reviewers say it felt disjointed, and that stories seemed to kind of start in the middle of the action, but I actually didn't mind. I liked that Jena Malone's character was introduced aiming a shotgun at her rapist and pulling the trigger.

I've read elsewhere that, despite Mr. Costner's expressed commitment to tell the story on the American Indian side as well, they're given short shrift. There's not much fleshing out of the Apache tribes, or any distinction between them. They're all just kind of "natives," with the stereotypical hothead young one and the wise, cautionary elder.

I will say this: the huge raid on the village near the start of the film was completely intense, and well done. I was literally on the edge of my seat for that one.

But after we start to get a sense of who's who and what's what, the story begins to fall apart. More characters are introduced (hey there Jeff Fahey!) with muddled purpose. Things that were developing change abruptly. And then it's just sort of over, with a long preview for the next installments that reminded me of the Back to the Future III preview at the end of Back to the Future II.

But what else should we expect? Costner admits he was beholden to his Yellowstone contract while making this and produced it by "filling in the holes" of his free time. He shot the entire three-hour episode in 52 days. Compare that to over 100 day shoot for the classic Dances with Wolves.

Me thinks Mr. Costner's ambitions may have exceeded his capacity.

6.5/10.

The same day I clicked over to IMDb to write this review, the website showed me a list of titles "Coming Soon." Every single one of them was a sequel, a rehash, a reboot, a cash grab. We are drowning in a commercial sea of unimaginative tripe. Hollow spectacle movies without characterization, stakes, or real conflict. The Watchers draws from both a fantasy subgenre and horror trope, sure, but the pairing makes for an interesting mix. Having not read the book, I had no idea where any of it was going for the first half. The pacing, suspense and atmosphere drew me in. The second half, yeah... well, like Hitchcock said, the anticipation of the monster is scarier than the monster itself. But it isn't that the second half had nothing to like. Director Shamalyan follows through and sticks the landing. It's not a groundbreaking or earth shattering film, but at least it wasn't the eightieth Marvel movie.

6.5/10 rounded up.

Somewhere in Fede Alvarez's "Alien: Romulus" is a good movie. But it's bogged down by cheesy fan service and too many repeat beats from the previous films.

I get it. There are only so many stories to tell under the sun. At the end of the day, the best we can do is one-up our predecessors while paying them homage. Right?

Balderdash.

We can do better than this. And it seems like Fede, demonstrating such command of visuals, music, and atmosphere, has the skills. But the characters feel generic and unimportant, the stakes are low, and all the winks and nods to previous films ruin an immersive experience. Like so many other films of late, the viewer is too aware that this is a movie, this is IP, instead of being romanced and immersed by true drama, tension, and suspense. Romulus unfortunately falls into the bin of "decent facsimile" while offering nothing truly great or memorable. I'll watch Alien and Aliens another half dozen times in my life; this one probably never.

Like a lot of movies, perhaps, Reality Bites is a perfect storm. One element: an insightful, personal screenplay from Helen Childress, who never really wanted to be a screenwriter in the first place, but a poet, and so shares an authentic take on commercialism and "selling out" in the 90s. Another element: that post-Regan-era, Gen Xer existentialism (embodied wholly in Troy Dyer (Ethan Hawke)). And it's got Ben Stiller at the helm, in his directorial debut. The thing about Stiller: he was ahead of his time as a satirist of media culture -- tabloid journalism, reality TV, advertising.

Reality Bites is an effective and affecting time capsule. I was 18 in February of 1994 when the film released, so I'm biased toward the nostalgia, but the music, the clothing, the lifestyle are all on point. This is pre-internet, pre-social media, pre-cell phone times, when people played board games and guitar and talked to each other in person. There's something that feels innocent about the era, as if we were all just children then, but I suppose this is how nostalgia always works.

Reality Bites is a love story, and at that it succeeds beautifully. Lelaina (Winona Ryder) is completely adorable. She's the product of a broken home, having tried to hold her family together while they were falling apart. She brings that dynamic to the group of friends, a sort of caregiver to others while she struggles to keep her own head above water. Troy (Hawke) is dreamy while imperfect, a wise-cracking high-intellect slacker with his own family baggage, including a neglectful and possibly abusive father. The arc of their story is believable and romantic. They're friends who've always had a spark for more, but fear that change and what it might bring. Their friends Sammy (Steve Zahn) and Vickie (Janeane Garofalo) bring the laughs, and Ben Stiller is perfect as the other man in Lelaina's life, the pivotal character who Stiller creates using what will eventually become his patented neurotic everyman, a stammering, well-meaning corporate widget-maker who falls for the delightful and beautiful Lelaina.

In a year of Schindler's List, Forrest Gump, The Lion King and Jurrasic Park, a little film about four friends beginning adult life after college could easily get lost in the culture, and it probably did. But over the years, Reality Bites has proven both prescient and well-grounded in its moment, a snapshot of an American corner of the world, while an intimate story about four friends facing the issues of the day -- AIDS, homosexuality, bills, boomer parents, an increasingly material consumer-centric world. It is all this plus a well-defined love story with two characters I wanted to see succeed in matters of the heart.

I love this movie.

10/10.

Overall this show has been a slow burn gaining momentum in the middle to end episodes. Like another review notes, the "quantum mechanics" -already applied fast and loose to begin with-get even shakier here. Why all the Jasons? The script runs roughshod over an answer: they were simply created by the box... because infinite worlds, I guess.

But why didn't they stay contained in their own parallel universes?

It's a question perhaps too big and daunting to be dealt with in a TV thriller / drama. But the lack of a satisfying explanation aside, we're left with an odd, sad, ethical dilemma about all these Jasons here in this world wanting the same thing.

Effort is made to resolve the unresolvable - because Daniela "chooses" this Jason, the other Jasons (mostly) act nobly and step aside.

But perhaps the bigger oddity- why did everything devolve into violence so quickly to begin with? All the other Jasons start to behave almost like a hive mind, many willing to kill and maim to meet their goal. Do none of them try just talking? What if the box could be used to create multiple Danielas and Charlies?

I don't know. Just spitballin here.

These are massive concepts to deal with and for the most part, the show pulls it off. A little weird here at the end, but hey. Good for you Blake Crouch. Amazing project to tackle with super heady concepts and not a huge budget. Bravo.

Dark Matter starts well. As these mini-series tend to go, the first episode is like a pilot. Often the show creator -- in this case Blake Crouch, adapting from his own novel -- writes and directs, as Crouch does here. After this great opening, though, the pace slows way down. To the point of agonizing boredom.

The book, which I read years ago, is a stripped-down edgy sci-fi thriller. The sentences are punchy, the paragraphs and chapters short. The sci-fi is given just enough mumbo jumbo to make it intriguing and credible in the book; here it's dumbed down quite a bit.

Crouch seems to be expanding things to make more of a drama. Near the end, this is done to great effect. But in episodes 2, 3, 4, the set-up is just too slow, and it's still confusing. I had to explain to my wife what was going on. Crouch is withholding the purpose of the box, but this only befuddles the story. Better to explain what it is from the outset, then let the drama of Jason's attempt to return home unfold, and Jason 2's run of the perfect life coming apart.

But things start clicking again around episode 5, then 6, and halfway through episode 8 -- Jupiter -- you know the show is at its best.

And Joel Edgerton is always good in everything he does.

7.5/10.

Lots of good reviews on here already, with folks rightly noting that Longlegs is no Se7en or Silence of the Lambs, films it was putatively compared to in the run-up to its release (by whom, I wonder?)

But let's get into why Longlegs, while not without merit, falls so woefully short.

For one reason, those films had stakes. Once it's determined in Se7en (by Morgan Freeman; you remember the scene) that the killer is acting out ritual killings in the manner of the "seven deadly sins," there will be five more until he's finished. That's huge. By the end of the first act, we know we're in for some grisly murders, each likely worse than the last.

In Lambs, the stakes are even clearer. A young woman his been kidnapped, and unless serial killer Buffalo Bill is captured, she will die. It's a race against time.

In Longlegs, it seems men are killing their wives and kids in gruesome murder-suicides. Someone called "Longlegs" sends notes to the FBI taking credit. Now it's about finding him. Yes, more families might die, but we're not embedded with any of them, like we are embedded with Katherine in Silence of the Lambs. And unlike Se7en, there's no sense of a murderer making a grand point, and that if he's not caught by the last murder, he may never be.

Longlegs has no stakes. It has the young FBI agent Lee Harker (Maika Monroe) but unlike Starling projecting poise and newbie confidence, Harker is a wreck. She's nervous and twitchy through the whole movie. She lives alone in a cabin in the woods where she conducts forensic field tests on her own. She has a mother she barely speaks to. No father, boyfriend, love interest. Just Carter, her supervisor, played unremarkably by Blair Underwood.

And then, it gets worse. The brilliance of Lambs is that it's *about* Starling, but only psychologically. And to the extent Se7en is about Detective Mills, it's done in a way so unique and clever, thrillers have been trying to repeat it for decades.

Longlegs falls into the trope of directly implicating the investigator into not just the resolution of the mystery, but the whole damn story. It's all about her. She knew everything all along. Perhaps she was repressing it, but she knew.

Untangling the plot of Longlegs and laying it out end to end looks like this: Longlegs came to Harker as a child. But Harker's mother interrupted what would have been (I guess) an abduction. Now, Harker's mother has to bring a homemade doll into the homes of nice families. Inside the doll's head is a hollow steel bearing that somehow emits the thoughts of the devil. The father then kills everyone and himself. Harker's mother does this again and again so Longlegs, or perhaps the devil he serves, won't kill Harker. Longlegs lives in the Harker's basement. (Yet, oddly, he refers to satan as "the man downstairs.") And all of this is told to Harker by her mother when she's a girl.

If there is a pattern to the killings, we're to believe that the young girls in each family are selected for their birthday, and how that birthday will look with all others when graphed out -- it forms an inverted triangle, the sign of the devil!

Look, I laughed out loud during this movie. I don't mind a convoluted story, as long as it holds. This one just fell apart. The first five minutes are arguably the best part, with the 4:3 grainy film showing Longlegs approach young Harker.

Incidentally, aside from that first scene in which he says "I don't have my longlegs on" we have no idea what "Longlegs" really means or its relevance. Characters, such as Agent Browning, are added in out of nowhere to be killed in the next scene. Longlegs has a facial prosthetic for no reason cited. The whole evil-doll thing feels like a plot from another movie. Like one reviewer said, this story can't seem to decide if it's demonic horror or serial killer thriller. There's also some odd moments its suggested Harker might be psychic. In the end, it also seems to wobble a bit towards comedy.

If you're looking for something bonkers and creepy that relies on loud booms and screeches to deliver its shocks, enjoy Longlegs. At least it's not two hours.

Well, I suppose it had to happen. This pitch-perfect show with suspense masterfully drawn out like taffy had to finally end. And what an ending. The courtroom showdown between Rusty and Tommy was absolutely riveting. But there was 20 minutes left on the show clock... what else might happen? At first it seemed like it might be about seeing how the relationships resolved. Will Rusty's wife finally leave him? Seeing her packed suitcase in the bedroom, it seems like she might - and so he confronts her in the garage. From there, everything goes haywire. In the span of about five minutes, we go from thinking the wife did it, to maybe it was Rusty after all, but then the daughter, Jay, brings home the win. The daughter!

Look, I get it. *She* was the one "presumed innocent" - maybe the only character in the whole show that we didn't suspect! But still, after eight episodes of such incredible drama, such tension, such gritty verisimilitude, this last minute one-two punch in the garage...

I dunno. I guess I'm still reeling from it. It works, I suppose, yet it also seems absurd. They just bury it and move on? God, they're all going to need therapy the rest of their lives.

What a show. Overall a 9/10, but this episode just felt out of step with the rest. Like suddenly it was a different series, some horror story about murderous families.

Anyway, see you on down the road.

7/10.

For me this show rivals HBO's miniseries The Night Of for its impeccable direction, its acting, its authenticity and gravitas. It's riveting to watch, intelligent, and even offers some good surprises, like the one at the end of this episode.

The only thing that's a little tough to swallow -at times- is the relationship between Barbara and Rusty. I buy that they both want family stability and do love each other in some way, but his reaction to her disclosure about her own affair was odd. I mean, all she did was talk to and kiss a guy. Meanwhile, Rusty sustained a monthslong affair he lied about repeatedly, obsessing over the woman right up until the moment of her murder. Who is he to get haughty??

I understand his life is on trial and he's under a lot of stress; the scene just didn't quite click for me.

Otherwise, this show is head and shoulders above the rest - kudos to all involved. So far it's a near-masterpiece.

I thought this movie was superb. Good script, direction, and great acting. To summarize the plot, though, I'm going to quote from Yuval Noah Hararri's book "Sapiens."

"The alpha male usually wins his position not because he is physically stronger, but because he leads a large and stable coalition. The coalitions play a central part not only during overt struggles for the alpha position, but in almost all day-to-day activities. Members of a coalition spend more time together, share food, and help one another in times of trouble.

"There are clear limits to the size of the groups that can be formed and maintained in such a way. In order to function, all members of a group must know each other intimately. Two chimpanzees who have never met, never fought, and never engaged in mutual grooming will not know whether it will be worthwhile to help one another, and which of them ranks higher. Under natural conditions, a typical chimpanzee troop consists of about twenty to fifty individuals. As the number of chimpanzees in a troop increases, the social order destabilizes, eventually leading to a rupture and the formation of a new troop by some of the animals."

Also, Benny is a sigma. ;)

P.s.

Things I learned from this movie:

1. To get a girl, you can stalk her, provided you are very good looking. Use the power of brooding / smoldering eyes to gradually win her over and wear down her current boyfriend, who will simply flee 2. Tom Hardy gets very very close to you when he likes you. Even if you are a dude. When he asks you to take over as boss of the motorcycle club, it looks like he's about to kiss you deeply. Remain calm.

3. If you have to choose between the love of a good woman and your love of the open road / freedom / ultimate manly autonomy, don't. Someone will die and you will just come back, decision made.

I could say all the things. George Miller has run out of ideas. Nothing fresh or new here. Chris Hemsworth kind of ruins it by being Chris Hemsworth. The CGI is off in places (and *really* off in other places). It's just not Fury Road.

And it isn't.

But we wanted more Mad Max, and this is it. Well, so to speak. Aside from maybe the most teasing of cameos, Max is nowhere in this story.

But we wanted more Furiosa, and this is it. What did we expect? Furiosa's fate is set. And so this film moves like a conveyor belt towards an end we know is coming, stopping at all the places we've already been. Gastown, the Bullet Farm, the Citadel. Just about every Fury Road character is back, too. Immortan Joe, of course, and his weird sons. The guy with the big fat foot and the guy with the snarling snaggletooth... you get the idea.

All but Max. Instead of Max, we get Dementus (Hemsworth), and, for a little while, a Pretorian (sp?) called Jack (Tom Burke). But it doesn't quite add up to Max. And a film that's part origin story, part love story, part tale of vengeance, doesn't quite add up to Fury Road, either. With it's furious tempo. And it's jaw-dropping scale. And its Charlize Theron and its Tom Hardy. And it's NOVELTY. By God, we hadn't seen a Mad Max film in THIRTY YEARS when Fury Road came out. Now it's barely been ten, and honestly it feels like just yesterday that Tom Hardy was chewing through his iron mask and Charlize Theron was deftly shifting gears on her war rig, looking like a total bad a$$.

When Fury came out, it felt rich with backstory. We didn't know anything about Furiosa - we gleaned it. We didn't know about the concubines she was rescuing; it was slowly revealed to us. Fury didn't explain itself. The Warboys had their own culture, their own words for things -- we just accepted it as we barreled along. Everything was new and shiny.

I said I wasn't going to say all of this. But I am. Because we wanted this, yes, we wanted more Max, erm, Furiosa, but we wanted something new, too. Not just a retread of all the places we'd been. Not just a spelling out of all the things we'd gleaned through the subtleties of the first film. Oh, she lost her arm THAT way?

You know what? I DIDN'T WANT TO KNOW.

The not knowing is better. The mystery is better. This felt like Miller didn't really have a story to tell. He told us all the things he hashed out in the writer's room prior to Fury road and left out of the script as backstory to inform performances and make things feel three-dimensional.

Origin stories are for superheroes, maybe. Could you imagine a film that explained how Bruce Willis's John McClane was in the military, and then became a New York cop, and some of the stuff he went through with Holly, all leading up to their separation and him getting on a plane out to LA to see her? Die Hard works because we don't really know any of that. We accept his skills and fearlessness. It's hinted at he's no ordinary cop. We don't need it spelled out.

Furiosa was good. There were some fun moments. But it didn't feel necessary the way Fury Road did. That vital film, one I can't imagine not existing. I can imagine this one not existing.

7/10.

I have no doubts about the veracity of these ten men sharing what they experienced with actor Kevin Spacey in terms of sexual harassment and/or misconduct. My disappointment comes from the craftsmanship of this "series." It's two episodes, about 50 minutes each. The first touches a little on Spacey's childhood - which is critical - and the second deals with his later work at London's "The Old Vic." The first group of accusers are American men, the latter are British. The second episode repeats some of the same moments from the first. A reporter by the window checking his phone, another reporter pacing in a conference room... Some of the lines from Spacey's accusers are repeated, too.

Perhaps most bewildering is the huge bombshell dropped by his brother in the middle of the second episode, there one minute and gone the next, never to be revisited.

This could have been an excellent feature documentary, with more insight into Spacey's childhood trauma. It could have avoided the repetition that cheapened the stories shared by his accusers. And it just sort of ends, having really arrived nowhere, revealing nothing more than these ten sad stories of sexual impropriety.

6/10.

"Sugar" is one of those rare shows that, despite a bland story, remains watchable. That's probably because of Colin Farrell, and the fact that the eponymous John Sugar private eye he plays is a nice guy who helps homeless people and doesn't take advantage of intoxicated women.

It's not the quirky direction, which relies on constant time jumps and juxtaposed scenes to cover over the slowness of the story. It's not the spliced-in scenes from old black and white movies either. (See! It's an homage!) And it's not really the cast. Colin Farrell is good because Colin Farrell is always good. But Amy Ryan feels a little miscast, honestly, and the rest of the ensemble is just okay.

And it's not the "mysterious past" Sugar has (is he a Jason Bourne super soldier? Is he here from another planet? What's with the typewriter and the note-taking?) or the hint that he lost someone -- a daughter, maybe. A cloudy past and a core wound / great loss are all standard tropes for the genre.

No, it's none of these things that make Sugar watchable despite its bland story (a rich white girl is missing, possibly the victim of domestic abuse, yadda yadda).

It's just that it's kind of fun. Farrell wears cool clothes and drives a fancy car and fights like a bad ass. He acquires a rescue dog that he takes good care of. You believe in him -- whatever he is -- he makes it seem like a guy like this could really exist.

That's it. Four episodes in, that's all that's really going on. If there's nothing else to stream that night, the wife and I will watch Sugar, and be generally satisfied.

See you on down the road.

You don't make a movie called "Civil War" that ostensibly envisions what an American civil war in modern times would look like, then switch to a film about the challenges of combat photojournalism. Or simply a film about how such a civil war would be violent and terrible. We know.

What are the particulars of such a war? How and when did it kick off? How long has it been going on? What are the sides exactly hoping to get out of it? Writer-director Garland doesn't answer these questions. Or, if he does, it's so offhanded and quick you might miss it. More so, it's purposefully obfuscated. Texas and California are the "secessionists"? The two US states with the least in common? Why are the "western forces" western? Who's calling the shots?

Nick Offerman's president is confusing, too. This is no parody of Donald Trump, yet it's casually referenced at one point he's in his third term. But doesn't he control the US military? And aren't they the western forces? If so, then the ending makes little sense.

Regardless, the film just feels like a bait and switch. Jesse Plemons is billed in the trailer and has five minutes of screen time. Characters are introduced so they can be killed in the very next scene. No one's motivations are very clear, even the journalists, who are just "doing their job," and want to interview the president before the war is over, they say. None of it makes for very compelling viewing.

I wanted to like this more; I wanted to be an important film from a talented writer-director, but he punted.

6/10.

Good movies make you want to live in them. It's sad when they end. The characters feel like close friends. And nowhere is this truer than "Running on Empty," a tightly-woven drama directed by veteran director Sidney Lumet from a heart-wrenching script by Naomi Foner.

Sure, the "Manfield" family (an alias; their real surname is Pope) are on the run all the time, living out of suitcases, can't even remember their latest assumed name. Seventeen year-old Danny / Michael has attended more schools than he can count. They're constantly leaving behind friends, community, a life. Who would want that?

But their warmth and their conviction, their care for each other makes them likable. You want to be there with them, singing along in their kitchen to James Taylor's "Fire and Rain." You share in Danny's joys and feel his pain as he begins to break away from the family.

The story by Naomi Foner does what all good dramas do -- at its heart is a turning point, a moment a character makes a choice that changes everything. Danny decides to tell his girlfriend (a somehow feisty-yet-insouciant Martha Plimpton) what he's never told anyone -- that his family are fugitives on the run.

The story really is Danny's, but it's Annie's too, played by a perfectly cast Christine Lahti, who gets top billing. Lahti's combination of sweetness and toughness, her smarts and her good looks, imbue Annie Pope with all the right characteristics she'd need to handle this life. She loves her family and she loves her son, a talented piano player coming of age.

We realize the extent to which this is Annie's story during a scene towards the end when she meets with her father for the first time in 14 years, asking him to take care of Danny. It's an absolutely heart-rending scene, written and acted to perfection.

Running on Empty is a gem. Everything about it works. The love story between the teenaged Danny and Lorna (Plimpton) is convincing and touching. Danny's piano playing, his talent, is perhaps augmented by the tragedy of real-life Phoenix being such an immensely gifted performer himself, taken too soon.

Phoenix's tragedy makes the ending, too, perhaps even more lovely and poignant than it already is. "You're on your own kid," says his father, Artie. And everyone, tears in their eyes, says goodbye as the James Taylor song comes fading back in. Phoenix's Danny smiles -- his life can begin now. His own story. And he knows he will see his loved ones again.

That final shot though, seems almost clairvoyant in its rendition. There's the expected mixture of relief, sadness, and exhilaration, but something darker, too. A fear, perhaps, of the wider world and what's to come.

Or maybe that's just hindsight talking.

9.5/10.

This started out strong. The opening scene at the college is quickly engrossing and hilarious. Monk (Jeffrey Wright) then has to leave and we meet his sister, who is charming and funny. Meanwhile, encountering the writer of an extremely popular (but in Monk's mind, dumb and stereotypical) book sets us up for what's to come. Family tragedy and financial need then push Monk to do something crazy.

And that's where it goes off the rails. Somewhere between meeting a pretty neighbor and having a second date with her, Monk writes a novel. Not a treatment for a novel, not an outline - an entire novel. Sure, one that's supposed to be dumb and stereotypical like the super popular book he resents, but no one writes an entire novel in a couple of days. Not one they then send to their agent who also, in a day or two, manages to sell.

It was hard to accept anything that came after this, which only got sillier and less plausible anyway. Even in a comedy, there has to be some verisimilitude. "American Fiction" may have something important to say, it may have funny moments, but it becomes farce starting with such an utterly unrealistic premise and getting further absurd from there.

Why not have him start the book when he first encounters the popular writer? Why not have him send his agent the first few chapters of a work in progress? The double message here about stupid stuff being the most popular and white people using black stereotypes to assuage their guilt could have really meant something with just a little more of a credible premise.

Great scene between Wright and Issa Rae though.

6/10.

This show has received so much backlash for being "fake," that the producers decided to make an episode (S1E5) addressing the accusations.

The thing is, most viewers have no idea what goes into making a television show. You can't just follow people around with cameras. You need permits in many cases and appearance release forms from anyone you film. You might miss a critical moment - like two brothers shooting a caribou at dusk - so you reenact it, cut a scene together with what footage you have, etc. It happened, it just didn't unfold directly in front of the cameras in real time.

If the family goes into a bar to attempt to barter with the owner, you think the cameras were already in there all set up? Or if they go into a store and flirt (poorly) with the female cashier? Of course not. Those people are asked in advance, sign waivers, and maybe are even coached a little how to behave. It's been done this way since 1992's The Real World.

Where Alaskan Bush People succeeds is in its characters. I find these people fascinating. And whether or not there are sides to them we don't see (of course there are), what we do see is endearing.

The problem is all the repetition. At least for the first two seasons, the writers have introduced us to the family about a dozen times. "Bear runs through the woods, Matt is the oldest," etc. I realize the show aired on Discovery before I got to it here on HBO Max, and it's cut for commercials, but my God, how many times are we going to get the recap of their first cabin, then being run off their land, then their boat sinking, etc. The Christmas in the Bush episode (S2E1) was particularly excruciating and I fast forwarded through most of it. An hour of them cutting a tree down and decorating.

But it goes on for 12 more seasons! I'll skim along and find out what happens to this interesting family.

UPDATE: Having watched (or skimmed, really, due to the insane amounts of repetition) to halfway through season 8, my tune has changed a bit. The show *is* fake. But, a few caveats: Of course I don't think the family are actors (I even follow some on instagram). And I believe the basic story of a family of libertarian parents and their seven kids who, for a time, truly did seem to live off grid. Once the show started, though, their lives understandably changed. "Browntown" wasn't as remote as it was depicted on the island of Chichagof, and there's no way they're feeding those strapping kids with a couple of deer and that tiny, sad garden. Or even the chickens they had one year, or the cow. No, the show never comes right out and directly claims they are 100% self-sufficient, but its implied. And it's just not true.

When the family must move to California for Ami's treatments, okay -- no problem. It's a "reality" show, after all. And in real life, stuff happens. But after a season (7) almost entirely of repetition and flashbacks, the family then ostensibly heads to Colorado. Only, at the start of season, they're not in Colorado, but Washington State. Wait--what?? Unless I missed something, this was NEVER EVEN MENTIONED. Season 7 just ends with them in Colorado to start a new life, and somewhere into season 8, Bill Brown says "Washington," and then Birdie says "Washington." I looked it up. They're in Washington.

But -- and here's the more important thing -- they're not really living atop a mountain in Washington. They're not living in those four teepees, or even the mobile home. No way. They're in city clothes, well-fed, sitting around a fire while the cameras roll. A crew goes off with Matt and he makes some fireside coffee, or purifies water, and the producers spread this across a couple of episodes. That way it looks like daily life for the Browns. It's not. They arrive for a time, get wired up with the microphones, and the cameras roll while they cut down a couple of trees or build a small deck off the RV. Bam is dating a producer. Bear wears Michael Jackson leather jackets and pants. Rain is a California kid if I ever saw one.

But hey, I like them. I think they are genuinely good people. I think this show happened to them, and it's obviously changed their lives irrevocably. But they're no more "Alaskan Bush People" than I am. They're a reality TV family, a sort of anti-Kardashian family the cameras follow through changes and misadventures. Try as the producers might to bend the show towards some kind of survivalist family story, toward bushcraft or outdoorsmanship, it's really not. But that's okay.

I'm a bit late to the party here (1500 reviews, wow!) so I'm not expecting this review to go very far. But, man, what an amazingly creative film. And hilarious. I haven't laughed this much at a movie in a long time. Not necessarily one I was running out to see in the theater, but as soon as it was on Max I queued it up. My daughters and wife have seen it, and I loved it. I mean maybe a couple of moments were the tiniest bit uncomfortable? But for any of the hate about this movie being preachy, etc, I can only say I applaud its subversiveness in its women-versus-men central conflict.

Great performances, amazing talent on display from set design to costuming and props. Music was great, Gosling's abs were on point, and Margot Robbie - what a perfect role for her. Do yourself a favor and see it, enjoy the ride, laugh at yourself a little, laugh at this wonderful world - laugh at Kate McKinnon. Omg, her and Allan - best characters in the movie.

8/10.

What makes a movie great? There's a simple answer and a not-so simple answer.

The simple answer: there is at least one character to root for and the story is clear and easy to follow.

Of course there are all sorts of exceptions to this, which is why it's the easy answer. The more complicated answer is that sometimes the story isn't so easy to follow - movies like "The Departed," "2001: A Space Odyssey," or even "Donnie Darko" are just a few examples of films with complex plots that are still great.

"Godzilla Minus One" is straightforward. A kamikaze pilot in 1945 fakes a malfunction to save his own life. He lands on Odo Island, and within minutes, he and the fighter pilot mechanics that occupy the island with him are confronted by Godzilla. It's a gruesome and terrifying opening. Terrifying because it's not gratuitous; there are no "hero" shots of the monster; it's usually filmed looking up, the way a person would see the beast as it stomps through the base, picking up men in its jaws and flinging them.

I won't spoil what happens there with Koichi, the kamikaze pilot, or where the story takes him from that point. The story is half the fun. The story is half of what makes this movie great.

I can talk about the other half, though, without spoilers, I think, and that's the monster. I can say what it isn't, and that is treated like some kind of good or bad character. Many modern renditions of Godzilla have taken to humanizing it by giving it an agenda, making it the boss of the mythological titans, etcetera. This monster is stripped down, back to basics. This is the embodiment of nuclear war; it is mindless, capricious, massively destructive. Of course, that's for us to interpret; there's no explanation of what Godzilla is in the movie. The monster is just a fact; like war, like nuclear holocaust, the Japanese people must learn how to deal with it.

There are two distinct ways the monster is shown. One is naturalistic: the camera tilts up from a boat careening through the water to reveal the jagged fins of the creature pursuing it. The fins are almost not in the shot. This almost candid, heat-of-the-moment depiction of the monster is contrasted by the much more elaborate presentation: Godzilla smashing through Tokyo. Here, the monster is focused up in the lens, full-body, stomping through the Ginza district as the classic Godzilla score booms and crashes along with the beast.

"Godzilla Minus One" goes back to basics in more than one way. It takes us back to a simple, driving story with characters we come to care about. It gives us a monster that it just that: pure monster. This is cinema at its best: a moving story entwined with jaw-dropping spectacle. Nothing feels forced or contrived, but organic, natural - which is quite amazing, given its as fantastical as it is.

Then again, the nuclear devastation that brought the story to life is nearly as fantastical, if only it hadn't happened.

9/10.

The pros: tip top cinematography, incredible music, gifted actors. Even the cgi was damn good.

The cons: a script that tries to make a movie out of a NYC hipster author's (I'm guessing) upmarket suspense novel. That means running a bit roughshod over character development and including at least two commenting-on-the-state-of-the-world monologues.

I won't spoil the ending, but suffice it to say the point of the book probably wasn't the big reveal about why all of this bonkers stuff is happening. The movie doesn't seem sure whether to make it about that either. What we get is a really fun ride at the start, a mystery buoyed by a riveting score, lots of juxtaposing scenes, clever camera angles - suspense! What T F is happening?!? It's enjoyable, and it builds, and then it plateaus, tries to recover, doesn't really, and then it ends.

Sylvester Stallone executive produces -- meaning approves or disapproves -- the documentary examining his own life and work.

That's red flag number one. Even in an age of ubiquitous "documentaries" (they used to barely exist in the margins of filmmaking), such a project should aspire to illuminate its subject, warts and all.

Here, Sly makes an attempt at a mea culpa, lamenting how he should have spent more time with his family, yet inclusion of that family's story scarcely exists. I had no idea his son, Sage Stallone, had died in 2012 at age 36. And the only reference to that here are life dates shown on screen after the brief segment about Sage appearing in the ill-received Rocky V.

And what about Stallone's other son, Seargeoh? Yes, that's right, Stallone had two sons, and Seargeoh apparently was diagnosed with autism at the age of three. Not that the documentary reveals that -- Seargeoh is never even mentioned; I found out only by searching online, and only after an image of the actor Milo Ventimiglia (who plays Rocky's grown-up son in 2006's "Rocky Balboa") inexplicably appeared beside the name "Seargeoh Stallone" when I Googled it. Try it. You'll see.

The real Seargeoh, apparently, has lived most of his life with his mother, Sasha Czack, now Stallone's ex.

Okay, maybe it's to protect the privacy of his children, and that's fine. But it's a conspicuous absence in a documentary ostensibly about a man's life. Which it is, to a large extent, especially about his childhood, and how his physically abusive (Sly implies this, though never directly says it) and "brow-beating" father may have pushed him to seek external validation from an audience, or crowd.

But the picture really focuses on the work, the ups and downs of Stallone's career, his regrets and his massive successes, and the way his two big franchises, especially the Rocky narrative, are really mirrors for his own life and career. Where this gets the most interesting, at least for this viewer, was when Stallone described these two world-famous characters as ends of a spectrum. Rambo is the broken hero with no home who dies alone. Rocky embraces humanity, and family, and is in turn embraced. Stallone admits he's both characters.

In "Sly," I appreciated this emphasis on the work. I make my own living as a suspense writer, have worked in film, and in my own much smaller and less famous way, have experienced a lot of the frustrations and joys. Every artist does, really. This telling of Sly's life seems like a letter to all artists, that they may aspire to such greatness at their own peril. That even with great success they may, like Sly, be left searching for inspiration, hoping to slow life down, hoping for another good fight.

Over 30 years ago, Ron Howard and Brian Grazer made "Backdraft," a serial killer story wrapped in an estranged brothers tale wrapped in a paean to Chicago firefighting. And it's a beautiful thing.

While only 1991, Backdraft is quintessential 90s. Sweeping shots of Chicago, Bruce Hornsby music blaring over masculine montages, shotgun-blast punch sounds, even a couple of brief -and meaningful - love scenes.

Even with what's now obvious 90s over-the-top schmaltz, Backdraft is a solid film, handily directed, well-acted, with a story that never slows or lags, but let's you in, makes you want to be there for every moment. When the big set pieces come with all the dazzling pyrotechnics, they're more a bonus than something you've just been waiting for, because you're invested in the characters and the story.

All the characters are three dimensional, even the minor ones. And while the plot mechanics are largely procedural - it's an investigation at the heart of this story, after all - the pieces come together in an almost Shakespearean way. Stephen (Kurt Russell) and Brian (William Baldwin) are brothers who lost their firefighting father at a young age. (They must've lost their mother, too, because Stephen ends up raising Brian.) It's twenty years later and the man their father saved before dying is (spoiler alert) serial killing men connected to a money-making scheme that was killing firemen. As the Lieutenant, Stephen has to deal with what Axe (Scott Glenn) has done -so in a perverse way, the sins of the father are visited upon the sons.

Sure, the arson investigator (Robert De Niro) is involved with the case way past his purview, and without a doubt Stephen's brazen choices in a fire would be condemned by any real fire safety expert, but it's a drama. A solid 90s flick from an original screenplay by Gregory Widen and directed by one of our most reliable, Ron Howard.

They don't make 'em like this anymore.

Here's the idea: what if "encounters" with aliens really wasn't about creatures with fantastic technology flying thousands of light years to earth to visit some school children in Africa?

What if, instead, aliens were more abstract than that? Or if the explanation for their presence was a bit kookier, a bit more muddled: they're beings from another dimension. They're sort of like angels. They're from a parallel universe. They're just something that exists we can't really fathom so we call them "aliens" and tell ourselves a story that they're from other planets.

I'm being a little cheeky, but it's actually kind of interesting. And this brief docuseries tugs that thread, and does so mainly by putting the late Harvard psychologist John Mack front and center.

Mack was almost rebuked from Harvard for his work with so-called abductees. He was sued for malpractice since he didn't treat abductees like mental patients in need of medicine. Instead, Mack takes their stories at face value. He even wrote a book about it, called Abductions. I have it.

The problem is the glaring oversight that people, while not necessarily suffering psychiatric problems, do experience occasional sleep paralysis, in which they can't move and might feel presences. Mack conspicuously never addresses this. Nor does he seem to understand how coincidental it seems when someone experiencing abuse simultaneously has an "encounter" where they're whisked away to a better place.

As far as any tech goes, any UAPs, it's probably our stuff, or it's from another country. But probably ours. We spend hundreds of billions every year.

Still, I keep an open mind. So many people have had experiences. They can't all be trauma induced, or sleep paralysis, right? 60 kids seeing something? Whole towns experiencing strange events? I do think there are "more things in heaven and earth," as the Bard tells us. And, as I said, this docuseries pulls at the thread. But that's about it.

I watched this when it came out and remember liking it, particularly Frank Darabont's crisp dialog. On a second viewing, 13 years later, woah. There are some problems.

So, Rick Grimes gets shot in the side. It's bad, but not crazy bad. He's in the hospital and he passes out, apparently, because when he wakes up the world has been entirely transformed. And not just in the span of a few hours. The changes had to take days, maybe weeks.

At least a week.

The world is wrecked. Rick slept through tanks and helicopters and absolute mayhem. The slaughter of hundreds of zombies. Bedlam in the hospital. Rick was unconscious so long that people gave names to the zombies - "walkers" - and know how they operate, how to deal with them.

A week. Easily. Yet all that time in a hospital bed and Rick didn't poop himself or pee himself or wake up FOR ANYTHING. He's got a full beard though.

While Rick slept, a man and his son lost the wife / mother. She turned to a zombie while they were in someone else's house squatting. They had left their home, gone to another home, the wife died, turned into a zombie and they turned her loose outside. While Rick was cutting Zs in the hospital.

Rick was out of it for so long, apparently, his wife assumed he was dead and slept with another guy. Hooked to an IV, just snoring away while the military bombed buildings and people screamed and zombies died en masse, Ricks wife was like okay, it's time to move on, how about I let Ricks best friend have a poke.

Other than that, well, it wasn't so bad, just not as exciting I'd remembered. I've seen the opening of The Last of Us now, so I'm spoiled.

This episode honestly felt slow, with Rick making some really dumb moves, like turning his back on a car full of murderous criminals, or shooting a guy in the head in close quarters, blowing his ear drum. Certain scenes were even laugh out loud funny - Rick running around in his hospital gown with that fake beard on, trying to react appropriately to hell on earth.

Granted, it all must've worked on me the first time, because I watched for several seasons.

I won't be doing that again.

Benicio Del Toro co-writes this gritty, granular police procedural about a murdered real estate agent. Who killed her? Her fiancé, Justin Timberlake, her soon-to-be ex-husband, or a sketchy weirdo played convincingly by Michael Pitt?

But then, heavy spoiler alert, the final act: when Del Toro comes home one night from the job, he finds signs of a break in. The pool is leaking. You think, Oh no, the killer got to his wife!

But she's not dead - she's shot at Pitt and put a hole in the pool. Pitt is there, it turns out, to give Del Toro a clue. One of those handy thumb drives with all sorts of damning digital evidence.

The real estate thing involves the cops, and drugs, and something about money laundering. Del Toro confronts the cops, at one of their homes, at nine in the morning, and a shootout ensues. End of story.

He doesn't even go after Timberlake, who instead we see golfing in a penultimate scene, then the FBI ride up in a golf cart and nab him.

Roll credits.

I mean, Jesus.

What started out as a creepy, interesting story with lots of tension devolved into a by-the-numbers "corrupt cops" trope. Granted, a lot of this was done well. The pacing feels brisk, the editing crisp. Del Toro is great, his wife played by Alicia Silverstone is great, and it was refreshing to have their marriage be healthy and functional.

The music is on point, too. The direction and camera work consists of the usual intensive continuity with way too many close ups, but that's nearly every film today.

Se7en this is not. This is Netflix doing a pretty good job of creating a serviceable cop drama with some flashes of originality that ultimately isn't brave or bold enough to not fall victim to the most pat formula resolution.

I mean, who or what was "reptile" anyway? Who even actually killed the woman at the beginning? What was the significance of her wounds - being stabbed so hard the knife penetrated bone?? What were the potential bite marks on her hand all about?? It's like the writers thought to present a great mystery but only figured out how to solve some of it.

Close, Del Toro, but no cigar.