Lack of clarity and character purpose slows a movie about a female child molester. The boy was thirteen, she got caught, went to jail, became pregnant and married the victim. Natalie Portman is the actress that arrives 20 years later to witness the aftermath and understand the feelings involved in a messy woman's choices so she can better portray her in an upcoming film. The couple believes it might bring redemption but it's not clear what Portman's true intentions are. Julianne Moore settles on a safe space where the husband, children and neighborhood are trapped within the woman's bubble of fantasy and control. She never thought she did anything wrong except cheat on her husband. Boy grows up and remembers feelings that were not kosher, his dependence on his wife gives him no place to run to and he needs to blast it to any one that can help him understand. Charles Melton's abused boy is a frozen fuckboy in a bubble of his own that conveyed not much more than the script. The beautiful score is unsettling and builds to nothing. A Lifetime movie wish they had that kind of music and would probably put it to better use. Melton pauses and clamps trying to act through something that's keeping him away. Moore has a few moments, Portman gave us brilliant seconds but the styles never coalesced. The script mumbles and only hints at evoking feeling. When a woman is a victim of abuse, her story is always front and center. If the man is the abuser he has to register as a sex offender, not live by schools or children, be destroyed for life and never be the lead in his own story. Why didn't this victim get the same respect? 03-Dec-2023

"I would have made Prince Eric an enslaved black royal in a slave boat that crashed in the sea. Black Ariel saves him but must fight a racist society to get him back to his tribe. If you're going to invest in a culture, invest. 06-Sep-2023

Cuteness and self congratulations does not befit these superpowered saviors. It rehashes helicopter dad and rebellious vigilante super daughter, predictably and unattached. Paul Rudd looked confused. The daughter misses being a good thing because she is stereotyped. MODOK looked like a badly stretched photo. The Quantum Realm was a mishmash of background paintings with no movement or the dulcet tones of Bob Ross. The inhabitants are the rejected drawings of cantina ideas for all the Star Wars films. The director applied the cutesies to an alien slime that cutely spoke. Good job actor, but there is nothing cute about talking jello. Pfeiffer tackled her heroism with gusto even though the words sounded exhausted. Chemistry was beginning to form between her and Kang. They should have played that out as a Part 1. The support was alert but there was too much realm and rah rah rah. The purpose of this pilot movie was to introduce Kang so it can comfortably occupy more room in the tie-ins. Majors hits all the right notes but Kang is underwritten and easily beaten. 18-May-2023

Invitation to a world we know little about, so they can explain themselves in high educated detail. Before an understanding of what the music fuck they are talking about, the film shuts us out. Tar created a family, success, working friends, an orchestra and a roomful of prizes and adoration. The director spent more time educating us about the mad professional rather than explain why her private life was so robotic. Mapping a character's career to establish how their mind works keeps audience attention until the snooze button pops up. An orgasmic technical achievement to its creator but it was bupkis to the people they were trying to reach. There was a lascivious side to Tar that was lightly explored. Lady Blanchett was the interest, the talent and the launch. I would have quit earlier had she not convinced me that I would witness art. She is art. Most of her gestures were off base. Her conducting shocked me. Are we supposed to cut in before the next instrument? Tar gets accused of misconduct, her sexual proclivities locked in a bottle unlike her rage. Cate was privy to a character's truth and conveyed it to the camera. Brava! 13-May-2023

An abortion would have served it right. Black men are not fanatical about visiting voodoo stores and doing horror cosplay. It brings bad mojo. He would have shat his pants. Is anyone aware that the Creeper is a sexual deviant that kills teenage girls and devours soft boys? He wouldn't give two shits about a girl, especially an old one. A pervert with a penchant for boys made him, the Creeper should be treated as such. 03-Feb-2023

I hope so. Besides the original two, no one has added anything fresh, stimulating or artistic. Michael is psychic now. He can tell when someone's been bad to children, like Santa Claus. They gave Laurie white guilt because she is responsible for unleashing all the serial killers in our community. It felt equivalent to hanging Carroll O'Connor for his amazing portrayal of a bigot. Laurie's feminism got softened. She sets up her granddaughter, that almost got killed by the most famous serial killer ever, with a date that served time for maybe killing a child. Yeah, the kid died. Worst parent ever. Why couldn't they meet on their own without Laurie's instincts being seniled? Absolutely not, you are never leaving this house until that psycho is off the streets! That would have been enough fury to unleash a psycho. Corey's idea of a possible serial killer is smiling like he's auditioning for The Dark Knight: The Joker Reborn. An animated feature. I wished the psychos in my life were that funny. Giving Corey a storyline was a stall tactic because they didn't know how to end it. It's been so long that they forgot the purpose. It mistook the original as schlock entertainment and served it as such. What stood out in the original was the images, hand magic, ideas and symbolism. Awesome music is ingrained, a mask and a scream queen born of Janet Leigh never hurt. Everyone deserved better. 02-Feb-2023

Christian Bale plays his detective with self-control and whispers. The man is unnervingly entertaining. The film takes you to a place you don't want to be but since you're there, why not try it? It hooks its audience immediately. Edgar Allan Poe becoming his deputy, figuring clues and outsmarting the other, was fun. I almost expected young Sherlock to show up with his dancing pastries. I thought Lady Gillian was one of those pastries. You couldn't get enough of her. The investigation is the whole of the film and the soul is its end. 12-Jan-2023

Spending all your time fearing death is not living. Independent housewives who feel apathy in their routine will take an ick to numb it. Of course, the daughter blames the ick for making mama forgetful. Maybe forgetting is the key. Dumb teenager believing everything they read on the internet and sending pregnant daddy on a mental loop cycle because she lost all common sense. He spends all his time annoying with german babbling, recounting tidbits of Hitler's art and bragging how it was the foundation for his career. It's time he paid more attention to his wife. Were the people the toxic cloud? It's irrelevant. It doesn't land and when it wants to, it spirals and crashes. The weight is on Driver but his character is unsympathetic. That's what happens when you try to cash in on someone else's legend. Gerwig lends nothing to a nothing woman that needed lots of pap smears and mental hospitalization. Except for the ick nagging daughter, all the kids were cutouts. Every time Cheadle approached to philosophize nonentities I wished Thanos would make him disappear. It yada yadas to death and says nothing. 02-Jan-2023

Entertainment has wrung art dry. The artists are burdened with inciting memories of great historical art and erasing them, lest the audience think they pilfered them to bring a manipulative story to the screen. You can tell the director was probably very cool headed because a household with that much violent disarray would include more horrific things. Marsh girl would have turned out a creature less human instead of a starving foreign exchange student. Daisy Edgar Jones flattens the character by not bringing star charm to a mimicking portrayal. See Sandra Dee and Troy Donahue. Even when they couldn't act, they glowed with excitement and saved a crappy movie. Her ascension to sophistication is questionable. Either her mother had a great wardrobe or girl was doing something besides chucking clams. Also, why didn't she just eat the clams? The owners of the grocery store were inspired by a very special episode of "Little House On The Prairie" featuring the blacks. A little wild girl living all alone in the swamp would attract a lot of perversion. She couldn't read but she picked up on romance real quick. She flew into her "first" kiss. How did she know? What kind of nice daddy was hers before he booked? Why was she surprised to experience Tate Walker's natural findings in the swamp? Wouldn't she have discovered it whilst being the swamp? The crime and the courtroom boredom that follows had me eye rolling. The film is a cheer for womanhood but not art. It's a facsimile. I wanted to feel something. I am a man, after all. The ending knocked it out of the park but so did Harris Dickinson, to no avail. 16-Nov-2022

The dinos are stunning and grandiose, the familiar faces are warm, whatever stole Chris Pratt's mojo ain't giving it back and Bryce Dallas Howard would have stolen the whole shebang had someone written in a Tammy Faye Bakker impression. The movie confirms that in order to save the planet, we must die. (You didn't think we were sacrificing for us or our children, did you?) 11-Oct-2022

By eliminating all references to sex, the film loses its soul and inspiration. Sex is a fact and a trigger. If the creative team can't comply with artistically and forcefully presenting it, it isn't a cautionary tale. We need to talk about the burden god leant us. Over and over. Ben Savage is in kiddie acting mode and gives the monster, no quirks, edges or history. What made this idiot? Abby was an athlete and in top shape. Why didn't she fight more? Why was his violence directed at things he built and not Abby? Masters don't change beating styles. If they hit you on the first date, they will hit you every time esp. if no one can hear you. Erica Durance beautifully played a withering mother and deserves to be in courageous art. According to this film, teen gets kidnapped by craziness because he is lonely, likes her hair, kissed her once over tape and she's weak. They spent the rest of the time bonding. Lots of reading, cooking, getting spoiled, playing board games, sleepovers, hugging but no sex. It sounds like summer camp if you're ugly. There is not much here to make a teen tremble and aware esp. when the imagination can create worst things by hearing the facts on the news. 09-Oct-2022

Making the audience cum doesn't make it good. As soon as the last drip is swallowed, it's forgotten. "I fucked whom?" 23-Jul-2022

There are beautiful patches stitched to murder, carnivals and mentalists. AHS killed carnivals and mentalists are bullshit. The film squirts beauty of everything that's interestingly slight. Bradley Cooper's Stanton starts as an Eastwood Quiet Man and evolves into a charming egotistical salesman, like a virus. Don't sleazy salesman jabber all the time? When did he acquire it? He's so damn quiet. There are no spins to copied thoughts. It was a reenactment without approach. Toni Collette was gearing up for more. She gave daddy squish Bradley a deserved bath and finished him off like a gay would. I rewound 5 times then fell asleep. Toni deserved reciprocation. Cate Blanchett is an Eternal unharmed by copper platters. She is gold lame shimmering in every era with Lucille Ball regrets and Faye Dunaway determination. It needed to either move faster or interject some cool things in between. I expected more. 05-Feb-2022

Zhao contributes "beauty of art" and serenity to the MCU. The actors are sound comic book cutouts defying gravity with little purpose. A Galactus of significance would have created the conflict that Gods favor and audiences delight in. There was a sameness to the threat, a sadness to the truth and no color for the future. 13-Jan-2022

Disturbing friend passing as white revives a childhood friendship with a black woman who lives like a white person. It is filmed in black and white so we don't notice how silly it would have appeared in color with lots of white powder on pale brown faces. In this case, the story needs to be brighter than grey. Why is Clare invading a stranger's home? People don't do that unless they're desperate. She was just bored. She stole attention from the children and her friends. She fucked her husband and talked shit about her behind her back. Nothing was executed. Everything was a hint. The stalker is married to a most ignorant white man. She's getting darker because she's tanning more. Hahaha. How did she handle pubic hairs? Unless bikini waxes were all the rage, women kept it bushed in the 20's. The white stupid husband didn't get to tell his story. Thompson and Negga gave it what it required but the director did not excite us with a Bette Davis and Joan Crawford type showdown. I wanted Thompson to rage at Negga for interrupting her housewife bliss. I wanted Negga to explain herself whilst she tore her hair out. What a waste! 05-Jan-2022