Change Your Image
afpope
Reviews
No Hard Feelings (2023)
Nice try, but....
I applaud a studio for trying to revive the 1980's "rom com with nudity" genre however, the 1980's had a number of these kind of films and the movie that comes closest in comparison is "Private Lessons." Private Lessons also had an age gap in the protagonists (15 and 30 as compared to 19 and 32 in No Hard Feelings). Whereas we all knew that the Private Lessons love affair would be a summer fling, the door was left open in No Hard Feelings for the affair to be an ongoing thing. This displayed a sentiment stated in a recent critics video that a big problem with recent movies is that screenwriters are immature with no life experience and therefore they crank out insipid stories. A director, heavily influenced by TV shows like Entertainment Tonight as a teen, surrounded by like minded individuals in college and then moves to California, to again be surrounded by like minded individuals, thinks that the story written by an immature screenwriter is spot on and doesn't do any tweaking. It's like the comparison between The Longest Day and Saving Private Ryan. Both are D-Day movies, but The Longest Day had actual World War 2 veterans and D-Day veterans and Saving Private Ryan didn't have any. Which movie was more accurate? Saving Private Ryan defenders say "Oh, but, Saving Private Ryan had 'consultants' that were veterans." First off, I'm an eleven year military veteran and a mentor of mine in the military was a military consultant on a number of movies. Second, whereas this former mentor was a straight up strong personality in the military, he transitioned into a name dropping lackey whose movies just absolutely stunk and lacked reality. We have a similar situation in No Hard Feelings. The screenplay comes off as written by a video game playing introvert familiar with a place none of us could ever afford as opposed to a life seasoned screenwriter that knows that with any rom com you have to create an atmosphere of unreality that is still connected to reality. The best example of this is when the rich guy comes to the bar at 11:57 and tries to order a drink. In No Hard Feelings, our protagonist becomes difficult, but a seasoned screenwriter would have the protagonist accept the twenty dollar bill from the man and later tell a confidant that "the experience made me feel cheap, as if I was prostituting myself." Then, when the rich guy returns the next day, he would approach the protagonist and say, "I have an introvert son that needs to get laid" and after her initial refusal he states a figure large enough that the protagonist would swallow her pride and agree to seduce the son and later, after doing so, tells the son "I'm just an illusion" takes the money and sells her house and moves to a place far away and completely different where she can go to school and start a new life far from the people she hates so much.
Tales of the Gold Monkey (1982)
All aboard for adventure!!
The series did make the BIG mistake of Jake being a former "Flying Tiger", four years before the Flying Tigers existed, but lets let that go. In the pilot episode you had a former fighter pilot (Jake), his troubled mechanic, an interesting and quirky dog, exotic south seas locale, and a bar on a south seas island run by a Frenchman with a checkered past. Enter an American secret agent, Nazis after a fabled treasure and an island with a reputation so evil that no one will go near it (and it is where the treasure is). The end of the pilot was stunning.
The rest of the series, however, the writing seemed to meander and the series quickly lost focus. New characters were introduced, but the writers weren't sure where to go with the story. As this was early 80's TV, the series was allowed to run it's full season, then was quickly cancelled.
I was sorry to see it go. American TV series seem to do things on the cheap (the original Star Trek series had a stuntman under a thrift store rug as the villain in one episode) and so no real plans were made to advance the series. As Jake flew deliveries and passengers to other islands, if Bellasario productions actually had access to an island, instead of a studio set, the series could have gone somewhere and done some interesting things, but alas, it was not to be.
Shining Through (1992)
Magnificent Achievement
As a fan of war films, this film sticks out, but in ways that are drastically different from other war films. This film is the first war film, post 1950, to get hairstyles correct. Find a war film from the 1950's (about World War Two) and the women have 50's hairstyles and so on. In Shining Through, the hairstyles are era appropriate. So are the planes, trains and cars. I mention this because imagine how hard it was to find era appropriate cars, which is a challenge. Taking it up another notch, an era appropriate train in an era appropriate train station. Finally, DC-3 passenger planes aren't exactly easy to find.
Agreeably, Melanie Griffith butchers the German language throughout the film in cringe worthy ways. Sir John Gielgud and Joely Richardson either already speak German as a second language, or they paid very close attention to their dialogue coaches-their German is flawless.
There are issues with the uniforms, but for the most part they are era appropriate. The dresses the women wear, great attention to detail.
People pick apart inaccuracies in the plot, but I could sit here and write 5,000 words on how contrived and convoluted the highly popular Marvel films are. The important thing is that war films are eternal, whereas other films usually vanish from memory after ten years. It is 2020 and we are discussing a movie made in 1990. In other places on this site you will see discussions about war movies made 50, 60, and 70 years ago. Fans of war films are very passionate people and they have their biases. If I was to teach a course on World War Two, I would include this movie and three other fiction based WW2 movies as teaching tools (along with the correct, Tora Tora Tora, Battle of Britain and so on).
If you are a serious fan of history, I hope you watch this movie. It is worth your time.