“Once Upon a Time”: The Complete Fourth Season is another successful year for the residents of Storybrooke. The plotlines are interesting and the introductions to new characters, and return of others, make it feel fresh. Even as someone who doesn’t follow Disney very much and haven’t kept up with the series, I enjoyed this season.
I know plenty have hated the Divergent Series thus far and although hardly great, I found portions at least semi-entertaining but that’s about it. Unlike Hunger Games: Catching Fire and to a lesser extent Mockingjay Part 1, Insurgent just kind of “is”. There’s nothing really memorable and the performances are limited thanks to a screenplay that could’ve been better.
“Orphan Black”: Season Three might not be as strong as its first two seasons (which I would give an “A” grade) yet there’s still some good storylines and once again Tatiana Manslany gives several great performances with the different clone personas.
LEGO Super Heroes: Justice League: Attack of the Legion of Doom is another fun entry into the LEGO animated line with nice animation and good voice casting making for an all around entertaining flick serving as a good placeholder while we wait for LEGO Batman. The Blu-ray released by Warner Home Video offers solid video/audio transfers while the singular featurette is actually interesting.
Citizenfour reveals and covers a subject Americans should and need to know about but I suspect many, a fair number in the millennial generation, might not take too seriously and maybe even assumes or accepts the government is spying on them. In any case, the subject matter is one thing, this documentary is another.
The Singing Detective is a bit jarring in its presentation yet there’s some fine moments especially with the performance from Robert Downey Jr. and to some extent Mel Gibson if only for the weird hairpiece and make-up which was more distracting than anything. The Blu-ray release by Olive is decent enough I guess but there were some minor issues with the video while the audio is better than expected. That said, for the money it’s a bit much.
Hackers isn’t exactly a good movie but still entertaining and of the movies from the ‘90s dealing with technology, like The Net, Johnny Mnemonic, Virtuosity, it certainly holds up better (by comparison), in fact pair it up with one of those to make for a fun double feature.
The fourth season “Person of Interest” is another solid year for the series expanding the world and adding the new element in another machine, an adversary that makes the gang’s lives far more difficult and harder to help those in need. The performances all around are quite good and I only wonder where they go from here going into a 13-episode fifth season which, unless ratings improve, might be the series’ last.
I last saw The Babysitter a few years ago probably on one of the pay channels and seeing it again on Blu-ray only reminded me it was crap then and it’s crap now. The performances from a normally respectable cast was bad, the writing is awful and the movie all around just is a mess and frankly on the dull side rather than anything titillating or thrilling.
A Midsummer Night’s Sex Comedy isn’t a very well known Woody Allen film and although it pales in comparison with Manhattan and Annie Hall, lacking the same charm, even quirky by comparison, I wasn’t quite enamored with this movie as some though the performances by the supporting cast were quite good to go along with Allen’s typically eccentric nature.
Summer Lovers excels thanks to its exotic Greek locations and scenery more so than the story or characters. That said, Peter Gallagher and Daryl Hannah both turn in good performances and all in all it’s at least a semi-entertaining flick though not sure how much of I’ll remember about it down the line.
Big Game is by no means a good movie but as a lower budget version of Air Force One or any number of action-adventure flicks from the early 90s, it’s semi-entertaining and a film that’s probably more geared towards teenagers. But the cast is impressive enough and although Samuel L. Jackson isn’t his over-the-top self, he does have a couple amusing scenes.
Although I enjoyed J.K. Rowling’s Harry Potter novels and movie adaptations, for whatever reason The Casual Vacancy failed to strike a chord with me. I don’t know if it the adaptation work was lousy or what but outside of the likes of Michael Gambon, Rory Kinnear and Julia McKenzie there wasn’t very much that grabbed my attention.
Vendetta is the McDonald’s double cheeseburger of the film world. It’s merely famishing while watching but utterly forgettable by the time it’s over and completely forgotten within hours. It’s actually not terrible and Dean Cain isn’t too bad in the lead and Michael Eklund serves as a delightfully squirmy villain but outside of that it’s not worthy of a rental and with some edits is destined to air on Spike.
True Story isn’t terrible but at its core, there wasn’t enough ‘there’ to make for a very interesting feature film. The performances I suppose weren’t terrible yet by the same token the odd relationship between Finkel and Longo never really did much or make any sort of emotional connection.