ddelamaide

Watched this again last night for the umpteenth time. A real adrenalin rush--the concept, the music, the actors (Jeff Daniels almost steals the show). Jan De Bont even makes the bus flying over the "gap" believable (I once read a blow by blow account of how they pulled that one off). It is above all the chemistry between Keanu Reeves and Sandra Bullock in what may be her best role. You expect Dennis Hopper to be good and he is. The supporting cast, especially the passengers on the bus are all good. The scene where Keanu and Sandra finally leave the bus, fortunately or unfortunately, will gives me a thrill.

This is a pretty bad movie and I'm not surprised at its low rating. Script, direction, cinematography are all mediocre to bad. The only saving grace are the performances by Liam Neeson and Aidan Quinn, but they can only do so much to redeem a script that is so flawed. While the script is uniformly bad, the ending seems rushed, like the producers ran out of money. The whole plot borders on incoherence and stretches disbelief beyond the breaking point. Supporting actors are not great and it makes you wonder whether streaming is such a good idea. It's too bad that actors of the quality and achievement of Neeson and Quinn have to make their living this way.

This series is a stinker, a satire that's not the least bit funny. Blame the script and the direction. It's not really the time for a series about a crazy central European leader and her "unraveling" is simply not funny. Who thought this was a good idea? It goes a long way to confirming my opinion that the Wall Street Journal's television critic, John Anderson, is not reliable. He gave The Regime a favorable review and it looks like he is wrong, again. There is a lot of good shows on TV (not as many as there used to be), but this sadly is not one of them. HBO/Max itself is a pale shadow of itself nowadays.