I grew up watching Musicals. Singing in The Rain, Seven Brides for Seven Brothers, and My Fair Lady were regular viewing fare. There were plenty of bad musicals as well. Chitty Chitty Bang Bang and The Little Prince didn’t quite measure up for me. The last Musical that I really loved with Julia Andrew’s Victor/Victoria, and it was more of a modern twist on the musical, since all of it’s songs were preformed on a stange, as opposed to everyone just breaking into song for no reason. La La Land opens with a song and dance number on one of…
Author: Jon Herrera
Writer, Photographer, Blogger.
Manchester by the Sea
Casey Affleck has won all kinds of awards for playing the role of Lee Chandler. This was the main reason I decided to watch Manchester by the Sea. As is often the case when I go into a movie expecting to see something great, I was a bit disappointed. Our hero, such as he is, is lonely loser who has a crappy job as a maintenance man. He lives in the tiny basement apartment that comes with job and has no patience for the people who bitch and moan about life as he tries to repair whatever needs to be…
Rogue One
Many Bothans died to bring us this information. Many years ago, when computers were first used in films, someone predicted that one day there would be digital Marilyn Monroes and digital James Deans. But what, he asked, if the CGI actors couldn’t act? We find out the answer in Rogue One, where several characters from Star Wars, The Empire Strikes Back, and The Return of the Jedi make cameo appearances. The most jarring of these was a stiff and emotionless Peter Cushing composite playing Grand Moff Tarkin. It was very good, but still not perfect. Of course, it is only…
Annual Dallas Cowboys Rant
“A little too much time on the clock,” Rodgers said of the 35 seconds Dallas left him. So, what’s worse? A team of complete losers that goes 4-12 and has no chance at all of returning to the Glory Days when the Dallas Cowboys won the Super Bowl on a regular basis? Or a team of posers that go 13-3 only to crash and burn like every other Dallas Cowboys team of the past twenty years or so? The local sports media are still high from the past season. The loss to the Green Bay Packers viewed as a mere…
Travelers
Kind of Invasion of the Body Snatchers meets The Terminator. We start off by watching someone die as a clock counts down their death. They fall down and die, only to come back to life as the clock starts counting up again. As in the brillant and far too short lived Brain Dead, the aliens who take over the bodies continue to pretend they are the bodies they are wearing. Our Cell is made up of five Travelers from the future who, like Kyle Reese, want to save the future. They have cool future tech and of course know things…
The O.A.
Spoilers In eight episodes we follow the adventures of a woman who may or may not be crazy. Who may or may not have been held captive for seven years. May or may not have died countless times. It has something to do with a bit of really bad Air Bending or maybe some Tai Chi performed by people who never really saw it performed properly. The show opens up with a woman jumping off a bridge. When asked why, she says she was trying to get back to her friends. We never find out how she survived this jump…
I’m Thinking of Ending Things
Iain Reid’s novel is short. A couple of hundred pages. The story is broken up into small bits. A snippet of a love story. A bit of a horror tale. A little mystery. What is the meaning of the title? What things are they thinking of ending? Who is thinking this? I’m thinking of ending things is a highly stylized book. It reminded me a bit of Flowers for Algernon. It’s not quite as good as Flowers for Algernon. Few stories are. The stylistic tick here. Is the use of short sentences. Sometimes. Very. Short. Sentences. A little of this…
Miss Peregrine’s Home for Peculiar Children
I thought this was going to be a blatant ripoff of Harry Potter and The X-Men, but turned out to be more of a ripoff of, well, all the terrible movies featuring teen heroes from the past decade or so. Kids are smart, adults are idiots, and the new kid who should be killed right off the bat turns out to be smarter and more powerful than everyone else. On the plus side, I did kind of like it. This is a Grade A turn off your brain while you watch it film-nothing makes any sense. And I mean, Nothing.…
Bridget Jones’s Baby
At first I found Renée Zellweger’s looks and Hugh Grant’s absence a bit distracting. But McDreamy does a good job standing in as Bridget’s other love interest, and Renée still sounds like Bridget. It’s not that she looks old, it’s that she looks so different. We’re talking Darrin 1 and Darrin 2 from Bewitched different here. Anyway… We find Bridget a bit bummed out about turning 43 and still being alone. One of her younger and hipper friends takes her to a Festival, where she meets a love guru played by Patrick Dempsey. Since it’s a movie, they hook up…
Gilmore Girls A Year In The Life
Gilmore Girls was always a wonderful show filled with gags about current events, heart felt moments between lovers, and a cast of oddball characters worthy of a great Britcom. Everyone still alive seems to have come back to revive their roles for A Year In The Life. It’s been ten years since the show went off the air and everyone looks pretty amazing. Of course, I have seen the bulk of the cast in other roles over those ten years. I loved seeing them all again. I loved all the gags. The reference to Inside Llewyn Davis was a hoot.…