rivergirl301 Reviews

Sinister (I) (2012)

Finally, a truly scary horror movie

[7/10 · 2 April 2014]

I love horror movies. But they have to be good horror movies. I don't like slashfests. I don't like writers who treat the viewer like a moron. I don't like plot holes you can drive a big rig through. I don't like to be left hanging at the end of the movie, wondering what the heck it was that just happened. Probably the last horror movie I liked was "The Others." I liked "The Strangers," but it got too gory. I've been searching for something worthwhile to watch and had a lot of hope for "The Conjuring." (But honestly, as in "The Conjuring," when you're dealing with a family that isn't even smart enough to own a flashlight, it was hard to have any empathy for them.) The night I watched "Sinister," I had just finished watching "The New Daughter" and I can't recommend that, either.

Yes, "Sinister" requires you to have suspension of disbelief. But it does not require you to leave your brain at home. It is truly creepy in horrifically original ways. It doesn't throw out a lot of stupid red herrings that get you worked up over nothing or just leave you confused. I was gasping with shock up until the last frame. Ethan Hawke was awesome as the true crime writer whose subject matter for his current book leaves him coming slowly unglued, and with good reason.

This is a stark, sparse horror movie that doesn't waste your time with a lot of filler. It doesn't need it. This is an excellent horror movie. Take it from someone who loves them and sees far too few of them.

Anger Management (2003)

As bad as it gets

[1/10 · 30 October 2010]

I'm hesitant to add yet one more review to the dozens of reviews of this movie that warns moviegoers (or at this point Netflix subscribers) what a horrible movie this is, as it merely reinforces that Hollywood can put any POS Adam Sandler movie out there and people will flock to it in droves. But I'm a mouthy old broad and want to have my say.

This movie is a POS. It's stupid. It doesn't make sense. I didn't laugh once (I'm all for sophomoric and politically incorrect humor--but this movie didn't even reach the standard for sophomoric and politically incorrect humor). Adam Sandler is improbably forced into anger management on trumped up charges, not knowing he's the victim of a conspiracy theory. His anger management meeting is attended by criminally insane paranoid schizophrenics. Funny, huh? That's the first 20 minutes. It goes downhill from there.

I read the other "I hate it" reviews and didn't see this mentioned once. The actors in this movie look like death warmed over--and I was NOT watching on a high def TV. I couldn't believe how horrible Nicholson, Turrturo and Marisa Tomei looked. Bloodshot, watery eyes, their skin was a color you don't usually see outside of a mortuary and I don't know if the crew was missing a hairdresser or what.

The fact that Adam Sandler is continuously financially rewarded for churning out this sort of crap is proof to me there is no God.

Swing Out, Sweet Land (1970 TV Movie)

I'm not a monster!

[3/10 · 16 October 2010]

Who doesn't love the USA? I do! Who doesn't love John Wayne? I do! Who wouldn't love John Wayne in a show about the USA? Well, me. This show is as bad as you might imagine it to be. Unbelievably awful corn-ball humor. Cringingly sexist punch lines. Cliché writing. Actors sleeping-walking through their lines. I would have given it a 1 but I added a point for the true talent displayed by Roy Clark and Johnny Cash and Leslie Uggams and another point for the attractive sets and props. Otherwise this show isn't even so bad it's good. It's just bad. It seems some of the reviews have a lot of sentimental feelings about this show from having seen it when they were very young and I'll give them that, value as nostalgia. But I think someone watching it for the first time in the year 2010 is in for a bad time.

The Answer Man (2009)

Lovely

[8/10 · 15 October 2010]

Very lovely and sweet movie. I had rented it a while back and caught it on satellite today and glad I did so. Jeff Daniels is uproarious, so afraid he'll be recognized as the author who had "80 percent of the God market" 20 years previously, it never dawns on him there are those who don't have a clue who he is. After agonizing over revealing his phone number to his chiropractor's receptionist for their records out of fear he'll be inundated with phone calls 24/7, he tells her, "I've thought about it and I'm going to give you my number." She thinks he's hitting on her and stops him cold with, "I've got a boyfriend." And don't assume he's a nice guy, either, just because he wrote a book about God. He dumped water on his mailman's family who showed up to serenade him.

Humiliated that his book was based on a fraudulent claim, that he talked with God, he doesn't give himself that enough credit for the quiet wisdom he does possess ("You know what's cool about shaking a little kid's hand? They don't know to squeeze your hand so they just end up holding your hand for a little while.") While coming to his own truths, he helps a reformed alcoholic keep his book store (it's the only place the reformed alcoholic doesn't feel afraid) and a single mother who worries every day that she isn't doing a good enough job.

My only beef with this movie is with Lauren Graham's character. They try to make her kooky but she ends up not kooky enough, so you don't really know what to make of her. And I think she was made to look horrible in this movie with weird dowdy dumpy clothes and matte flat black hair that was too harsh for her. She certainly didn't look her best. Someone dropped the ball on Miss Graham!

Medicine Man (1992)

Just speechless

[1/10 · 6 October 2010]

All I could think about while watching this hot mess was the review I was going to write about it. In no particular order, you've got: Lorraine Bracco running around the Amazon in mom jeans, screaming like a banshee (of course she and Sean Connery scream at each other from the first time they meet; that's how we know they will fall in love and get married at the end of the movie); Sean Connery is is eccentric--how do we know? He's got a ponytail. Cool! Weird lively Caribbean music playing in the background, to illustrate the movie is taking place in the Amazon rain forest, I guess. Well, heck, if there's a story beyond that it was lost on me. For every time a woman in a movie screams, "Whoa. . .whoa! Whoa!!!", I knock a star off. If that's the best dialogue the writers can come up with, I don't hold out a lot of hope that the movie is going to improve along the way.

Away We Go (2009)

So bad I don't know where to begin

[1/10 · 24 June 2010]

I had heard good things about this movie and went into it with high hopes. Those hopes faded quickly. I love The Office. LOVE IT. But John Krasinski cannot act. I found that out when I watched Away We Go. I can only figure that John K. *is* Jim on The Office, IRL, and therefore that character requires no acting ability.

The characters are supposed to be 33 and 34. Maya Rudolph looked 54 and John K. looked 24. It was really distracting. I don't know what the dumb get-up John's character had on--the awful beard, glasses from 1960, wild hair (but he was not a hippie--the movie has fun with making fun of hippies later on)--was about. Worst of all, there is zero chemistry between these two. They were not believable as a couple. They may as well have been in separate rooms reading their lines to a wall as far as their acting abilities and chemistry went.

The couple mentions early in the movie that they realize they are a couple of "f*uck-ups." After all, they have a cardboard window. In the next scene, they are jetting across the US and Canada, staying in hotels and buying groceries for their hosts--a couple of rich f*ck-ups I guess. They are jetting across the US and Canada to find a place to raise their child, with people who they will have a sense of family with. So of course, they run to visit people they barely know, should have known were absolutely obnoxious and in no way appropriate to have around children, or people don't know at all. If this is their logic in life, they really are a couple of f*ck-ups.

The "wedding vows" on the trampoline did it for me and that's when I turned it off.

Brief Interviews with Hideous Men (2009)

Agree with "snooze alert"

[5/10 · 14 May 2010]

I appreciate what this movie was trying to accomplish, but that is the problem. It tried and did not succeed. With the men who were being interviewed being cut off mid-sentence just as they were about to come to the crux of their story, with the plot stopping and starting and intertwining with the interviews, I kept waiting for the climax of this movie, and it didn't arrive. The lead actress was wasted. Most of the time she purposely stood aside like a mannequin and faded into the background.

It was obvious this movie was an adaptation from a play, and the play was an adaptation from a book. Something was lost in the translation.

I really did not like the ongoing theme that men are pigs who call women derogatory names, and even when men seem to be caring, it is just because they are after "more pussy than a toilet." I have seen this movie described as a "quirky comedy," and I didn't laugh once. I don't know what it was about. A man getting gang raped? A woman getting raped by a serial killer? A black man who resented his father for working as a men's room attendant? A woman whose boyfriend cheated on her? Who knows? Who cares?

Orphan (2009)

It just went on too long

[4/10 · 1 November 2009]

This movie just went on too long and by the last 3rd of the movie, I just didn't care any more. The main question of if "Esther" was not who she was believed to be, what was her motivation, was answered in one sentence towards the very, very last part of the film. There never seemed to be any motivation behind her bizarre actions. It didn't add up to anything along the way and I found myself losing interest very quickly.

To me, the only good parts were the very beginning and the character "Max." Aside from that, it was not the good psychological movie thriller I thought it was going to be.

Mental (2009)

Awful

[1/10 · 16 August 2009]

Desperate to find a network show I might actually enjoy, I tried "Mental." Have the writers, or anyone associated with the show, ever been to a psych unit, or visited anyone in the psych unit, or actually known anyone with a psychiatric disorder? I have! (Will let you guess which one of the three.) On the show, the psychiatrist assigned to one patients spends the entire day with her, strolling about the grounds of the hospital trying to lure patient out of her shell. Are they kidding? In reality, you've got 20 patients lined up to see 1 psychiatrist who blows in at 10 p.m. for 20 minutes, who then throws meds at the patients, hoping against hope that one will work.

Said severely, severely debilitated patient spends the day chatting it up with her family, smiling, laughing, completely normal, while behind the scenes, the staff is trying to decide where to put her away, for good, because she is so out of her mind. Yeah. The only actual clue that she was mentally disturbed was they kind of disheveled her hair a bit. I guess all people with mental problems have messy hair.

Finally, I had one of the cases figured out before the drs. on the show knew where to even begin to look for a clue as to what his problem was.

I just don't like shows that insult my intelligence. This is one of the worst shows I have ever seen as far as insulting the viewer's intelligence.

The Unusuals (2009)

I don't understand the bad reviews for this show

[9/10 · 22 April 2009]

The Unusuals caught my eye last night, and I was desperate for some decent TV fare (all I currently watch is The Office and Intervention, well, okayand The Millionaire Matchmaker, but I am just plain humiliated to admit that). I loved it immediately and then read the bad reviews after a search on the web. I was dumbfounded! Maybe the original media reviews were for the premiere episode, and I have seen only the last 2 episodes, episodes 3 and 4. This show is funny and smart and sad and real and crazy. My gosh, you've got how many millions of people watching Real Housewives or that hospital show based in Seattle where the impossibly attractive, and thus vapid, characters hang around posing like they are in an MTV video, and The Unusuals gets bad reviews? This show seems to have found the soul that Boomtown was searching for, and it doesn't take itself too seriously, which was Boomtown's downfall. Network TV--give me a reason to tune in, with shows like The Unusuals!

Weeds (2005–2012)

Eh, cant' make up my mind about this show

[5/10 · 16 March 2009]

I am half way through the second season on Netflix. Overall it is pretty good, but as I go through the series, there are nagging doubts that are bothering me, and that kind of makes me uneasy about the show's credibility. For starters, in the first season, you have the following men hot to trot for Nancy: Conrad, the college student she recruits as a dealer, the DEA agent, the black guy in the night club, the Mexican dealer who "pennies" her car. It's a little unbelievable. I am disappointed with Kevin Nealon. His performance is wooden, and I usually like him. Plus, I don't think it rings true that someone could be as much a pot head as he is portrayed to be, *plus* he is a successful CPA. Then around Nancy's house, no one will lift a finger to wash a dish when the dishwasher breaks down, and no one can be bothered to make ice cubes when the auto ice cube breaks down. There are 3 adults in the household (Nancy, Andy, and the housekeeper), yet the children are emotionally neglected (unless you count when Uncle Andy takes the 10 year old to a prostitute). I'm sure there are lazy people like that out there--please just don't expect me to be sympathetic towards them. Also, it is a little difficult to be sympathetic to Nancy's financial plight when she lives in a mansion, has a live-in housekeeper, never wears the same outfit twice, but is always crying about being poor. Downsizing would be a start! I have seen the comment that the only thing wrong with this show is it is only 1/2 hour long. I think that is its saving grace. I can take it for that long. For the most part, it is pretty enjoyable, if you can get over the above problems.