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Reviews
Flowers in the Attic: The Origin (2022)
Melodramatic crap
Just barely better than the Lifetime Dollanganger movies, which are some of the worst things ever committed to film.
The plot and thinly written characters are exactly what you would expect for this series - essentially identical to every VC Andrews adaptation, so that can hardly be blamed on this production, but several factors indicate just how little they could be bothered to care about it. Here are a few of them:
They couldn't be bothered to do anything to age up the characters over several decades other than sprinkle a little talc in their hair. No make up, no acting choices, nothing.
English actor Max Irons has little to do other than shout, since the character of Malcolm is devoid of any nuance at all, which seems like it would have given him time to work on his 'southern' accent. He clearly didn't.
The music. Oh my god the music. I don't believe the composer ever got anywhere near the film. They just asked for some random tracks that made it seem like the world was ending and then applied them randomly to the film with no regard to what was actually happening in the story.
Olivia gets rid of the saw she uses to sabotage the staircase and try to kill Malcolm by putting it in a fire. The metal saw.
Spenser Confidential (2020)
For those who can't understand the negative reviews
This is not a terrible movie. But it's an unforgivably terrible Spenser movie.
If you want to make a generic 90s buddy action movie, go ahead. I'll watch and enjoy along with the rest of them. But don't call it a Spenser movie unless you plan to make a Spenser movie.
These aren't some shoddily drawn characters from an 80s TV show that you can recycle like the big screen versions of popcorn fare like The A Team, Dukes of Hazzard, CHiPs or Baywatch. These are characters with distinct lives, back stories, and ways of talking and acting that millions of readers are intimately familiar with through 45 years worth of novels.
Wahlberg and Duke are fine, but they bear no relation to Spenser and Hawk. The end credits claim this was based on the novel "Wonderland", but the fact that it has an old dog track called Wonderland in it is not enough to make that claim. This plot has no connection to the novel at all.
The fact that Spenser starts out as a felon means, as one character helpfully points out, he can't get a P.I. license in Boston. That's literally the entire character - that's who he is! Spenser gives his reason for taking on this case as something do with the widow reminding him of his mother. But Spenser never even knew his mother!
One of the writers on this is Brian Helgeland, who is a perfectly good screenwriter - he wrote LA Confidential (is that the reason for the title of this one? What the hell does Spenser Confidential even mean? I'm none the wiser after seeing it). However, Helgeland clearly isn't a Spenser fan. I would question whether he's even read one of the novels.
And THAT is why, for the people who don't get it, this perfectly fine, run of the mill generic action comedy is getting some low ratings. It's not because people are expecting an Oscar worthy film. It's because people expect an incredibly popular and well loved franchise might be treated with the tiniest bit of respect.