Planar_Being's reviews

Right away, it's nothin' but shaky cam. This is immediately followed my violent shaky cam. Then there is a lot more shaky cam. In every scene, it's wall-to-wall shaky cam. It's not even cleverly done shaky cam. It's just shaky cam.

So I checked episodes of season 2. I figured, "they'll probably tone down the shaky cam." Uh-uh. It was all shaky cam. Just shaky cam. I checked out season 3. That's shaky cam too, all over the place, from start to finish, shaky cam. I then looked at season 4. That was full of shaky cam too. When I looked at season 5, I was pretty sure I'd see lots of shaky cam and, indeed, there was shaky cam and lots of it.

I have no idea what this all about, because it's just shaky cam.

Allowing these killers the opportunity to dress up and be filmed from flattering angles is an appalling travesty. Molls never looks in the camera. Pops is a cypher.

I do not recommend this product. It is one-sided, weak and exploitative. This is typical of most crime documentaries, but here the American bias is intolerable.

I'd been looking forward to viewing an honest account of this appalling crime but this is a great disappointment.

Not once is Moll's history of mental problems mentioned and her lies to her friends are glossed over in seconds.

These killers are now back home again, safe and sound. Shame.

Because this stuff is so stupid and dull. But the laughing noises keep on coming. His pauses either demand or expect the laughs, while allowing for easy insertion of the same batch of laughs over and over. I've seen the inside of TV production, so I know how skillful these post-production people are, with their vast libraries of laughter sounds in all shapes, sizes and intensities. I also noted, in a Dave Chapelle video, that the guy has a number of stooges (called "sakura" in Japan) who are positioned at the side of the front row. These people laugh at everything, with huge hand-claps and body language designed to cue the audience and ensure that the noise never abates. Chapelle ridiculed handicapped people in one video and the stooges were beside themselves at how "funny" it was.

I couldn't get past the masturbation "jokes" in this Rogan vehicle. Truly pathetic stuff that only school kids would find weirdly amusing. Yeah, Rogan is just weird.

A clever piece of entertainment, with a secret message: as soon as a character feels stressed? Smoking a cigarette is the sure-fire solution. Note how many scenes have gratuitous cigarette smoking. Why?

"When people see product placement for a particular brand like Marlboro, retail sales of Marlboro products go up. However, what's more surprising is that sales of other competitor cigarette brands (Camel, Parliament, Newport, etc.) also go up," says Pradeep Chintagunta of the University of Chicago. "This indicates that product placement isn't just about getting people to shift the brands of cigarettes they use - but to get people to smoke more overall."

This interview broke my heart. I'm having a hard time coming to terms with the sad denouement, to tell you the truth. Donald was so much in love with Stormy, clean head over heels, one might opine. Stormy assumed the opposite posture, but their love was bound to fail, in any case. Such star-crossed lovers are sure to reunite in paradise, if not in Florida.

Especially thoughtful and kind of the great man was his choice of attire. What could be better suited to the evening than boxer shorts and silk pajamas? I have no doubt that Donald's heart will never be repaired, though he prays upon his bible nightly, and took his punishment spanking in advance, like a true leader.

Tora should have taken this vacation a long time ago. Let's hope it's permanent this time. Let's hope he took the lighting crew along with him. As well as the director, the writer and the rest of the cast. Anything to give our brains a rest from this series, which is so fantastic, exciting and erotic that my brain can't stand it for very long. My heart was beating so fast that I could see my ribs oscillating through much of the series. I bought a blood pressure meter just to be sure I didn't conk out during the high-pressure chase scene in episode 22, the sex scenes in all episodes and, of course, the music was to die for.

Obviously this is propaganda, but it would have been somewhat bearable (with much assistance from my capuchin monkey on the FFWD wheel) at about 125% playback speed, if not for the obnoxious voice-over which is used for all the German-spoken dialog.

Stalin is portrayed as the coolest customer you ever encountered -- understandable, as to portray the fellow otherwise would have earned a ticket to the coldest and remotest gulag. So that aspect does offer some laughs and light entertainment, especially if in good company over some beers and other novelties.

Oh, and Stalin loved that old pipe of his, a nasty habit... there, minimum character limit met.

Karen smokes so much in this movie that I felt I was getting lung cancer. In the car, at the plant, even blowing smoke over her kids as she hugs them. Will cigarette promotion in movies ever stop?

Cher must have had a major overhaul after this movie. I could hardly recognize her. All characters are depicted as having so many bad habits that there's not much to be charmed or attracted by. The acting is about average, with nobody having to do too much, apart from smoking and drinking beer. Streep's flash of her left breast felt unnecessary. A real loose cannon. Was Karen really so off the wall?

Phony big-them-up stuff, the typical nowadays. Each persona inflating the ego and image of the other until it gets unbearable. Use any fast-forward, capuchin-monkey-helper to get you through this very inferior content as fast as possible. That way, you don't waste too much time on insipid melodies, a near-old man prancing about, and all that. Most disappointing is the way Fintan O'Toole degrades himself to appear in this, to big-up these mediocrities. It's a sad reflection on the state of popular music today that these guys are still selling their wares to a beaten-down, bored and uninspired audience. All the phony bigging-up stuff pulls the wool over everybody's eyes and, while there's money to be made, it will go on forever. Be your own hero.

Cobb must have know it was a crap venture, resorting to his frog's-croak roaring and raving, non-stop. "Ah, Link," (slaps thigh), "it's gonna be just like the old days." No, it's not, Lee J. The old days are gone for good and you forget that Gary Cooper is the good guy, belying his black hat that's in pristine condition through the entire movie. As soon as his fancy six-shooter was stolen, I knew this was gonna be a real turkey.

Consolation: Poor ol' 3-pack-a-day Julie London will make an excellent schoolmarm-bride, able to carry her make-up kit through even the harshest terrain. Nobody's ever figured out where she hides it and she's not telling.

Jack Lord and the sidekicks weren't bad, though it must have been tough for ol' Jack to play such a wimp.

I've always loved Groucho and his brothers. These were some of the first movies I watched with my kids and it was interesting to see how their zany antics still seemed fresh and appealing to children. I also liked Cavett, as he featured the more interesting kinds of people for his interviews and was less of a vacuous establishment figure than other late-night hosts.

However, Groucho's appearances on the show were, for the most part, not that interesting and were mostly a novelty act. Dick had to allow Groucho to ramble on about fairly mundane topics (like the cap he wore), and that deference to his hero detracted from the experience. Groucho was beyond challenge, beyond interruption, but his sense of humor and choice of topics was a little old-hat at this stage and there was no way for Dick to direct him.

A film about one of those nonentities who were chosen for their nonentity. This guy Cave, along with a bunch of other singers whose names I can't remember but who pop up ubiquitously... oh, yeah, Elvis Costello, guys like that, not to mention the female nonentities, is remarkable only for the fact that he is a nonentity whose schtick is to look and sound ugly, be irritating, parade his nonentity aggressively. Oh yeah, Madonna, Gaga, the names come flooding back to me now, the crotch-waggers and assorted twerker types: all the idols of people who know nothing of music. I watched an Elvis documentary last night: now there's a guy whom I never particularly liked, yet, wonder of wonders, I do see that the guy was not a nonentity! But these people, the Caves of the world, are nothing but snake-oil salesmen, with nothing to offer.

Without a doubt, the most boring and artless movie I've ever watched. Flat camerawork, dull acting, idiotic plot.

To add insult to injury, some jokers voted this top movie of all time!

This director was one giant blind spot, without a creative idea in her head, replaying some memories of her mother in the kitchen, apparently. Simply remembering my mother in the kitchen was far more interesting.

Admittedly, the 4x playback speed gave the debacle a comedic touch, but the FFWD button is still your best friend if you are so ill-advised as to take the glowing reviews to heart. It'll take some time for me to recover from encountering this appalling waste of time.

Time for this man to hang up his shipbuilding tools. Skipped through this on the BBC website and could but shake my head at the dullness of the music, the dragging pace of the vocals, the lack of interesting melodic content and the general lack of charisma in the singers. "The biggest ships in the world were built at the end of my street... immensely proud..." Blah-blah. But where's the music?

Worst of all was the alt-singer who savaged every attempt at singing with a form of dissonant shouting and general roaring. Son, this is not a shipyard and those are not hammers but musical instruments. Dreadful stuff.

I had no idea that NASA astronauts were so alcohol-dependent, or that cigarettes were a constant, even in the control room at NASA. Every time they want to chill out, it's out with the smokes and off to the bar, men and women alike. Message: booze and tobacco will soothe your pain. I don't buy it. Nicotine and alcohol are just drugs that happen to be legal and this cheap trick by industry must be called out. Ruined the series for me.

Couldn't understand a word the guy said. Mumble, mumble... Even at double the usual volume, incomprehensible. At least, he could make a bit of an effort! But, no. Mumble, mumble, mumble.

If this is stream of consciousness, working in real time, this mind/brain must have an awesome editor because, no matter how drunk the guy gets, he's remarkably clear in his production of words. To call it poetry is a misnomer. It's heavily worked over, dull prose, superficial and predictable. It looks like they knocked this thing out in a few hours, not much effort involved.

Lifetime achievement award for the worst performance of all time by an actress in a leading role. Another for the worst portrayal of a drunk in a million years. Another award for the "fancy man" "from Ireland" for playing the perfect twit.

What a waste of 6 precious minutes of their lives! I struggle to fill my 150-character quota here by scanning my memory for even one entertaining second from this $35-million movie. Nothing. And I watched it all the way, just so I would clarify, without a shadow of a doubt, how stupidly people squander time and treasure on exploitation and on being exploited.

Never thought I'd write this sentence, but Kenneth Williams was the only bright spot in this stinking pile of ordure. Found the reference to this in the documentary "All You Ever Wanted to Know About Composers." The fast-forward key on my keyboard is almost worn out by now.

The Memoirs, for the most part, are bizarre and even tedious, compared with the earlier series. The worst aspect is the direction. Bad sound on locations, silly camera placements, artsy compositing of images that detracts from the narrative, weak and convoluted stories that feature far too little screen time for Holmes and Watson. Along with more frequent calls for Watson's trusty service revolver and some fisticuffs this time 'round, Mrs. Hudson tries to pick up the slack, and I suspect that she was probably the brains behind the operation all along! Jeremy Brett, always in my heart.

Most of these "great Italian movies" seem to have been made for middle-class folks who had missed out on the social changes of the 60s. The younger generation at the time it was made had already availed of the new freedoms, if they so wished. But for the "standard society" types, this kind of material must have seemed quite risqué and innovative. For them, this confusing wish-mash, conjured up by this director and others, must have served as a kind of one-upmanship and a reaction to the feeling of having missed out.