Reviews

Godzilla Minus One redefines what can be made on a $15 million dollar budget but unfortunately it stops there. The CGI effects are decent but there are glaring mistakes, like the lack of empty shell casings on deck which makes those scenes look completely fake. They also never reload the machine gun on their mine sweeper either which apparently has unlimited rounds despite only having a single 30 round magazine.

I found no excuse for these mistakes, except that they were hoping their audience is too stupid to know anything about firearms which appears to be true. When the big guns show up they of course do nothing to Godzilla because it is invincible and thus you will need some nonsensical "plan" to try and kill it.

I still do not understand what is going with the writing of these films. This movie in particular plays out like a teenage boy's misguided dream and nothing more. You start off with a failed Kamikaze pilot who returns from WWII, is shunned for living and then takes in an orphaned child and random woman whom he never gets romantic with?

Why do I care about any of this? Why are people being brainwashed that it is "noble" to raise someone else's child or to support a random woman you have no romantic relationship with? This plot lost me early on and just drags throughout the film. I honestly never cared what happened to anyone in this film and proceeded to fast forward through most of it.

Then you meet the "crew" of his minesweeper who of course all have nicknames like "The Kid" and "Doc" who just so happens to have Einstein hair to show he is the "smart" one. "Doc" also made naval weapons during WWII, how convenient. This of course shows up at the end with a ridiculous plan by him to take out Godzilla.

Stitching the Godzilla scenes together might make an interesting short for YouTube but I cannot see recommending this to anyone as a 2 hour film unless they are looking for a good way to fall asleep.

I am of the firm belief that those who make movie trailers should just make the actual movies. This movie has a few very good action scenes perfectly choreographed with good upbeat songs and then goes off the rails because someone decided they would have Ryan Gosling crying listening to Taylor Swift? The director's attempt at humor through emasculation is cringe worthy and ruins the pacing.

The larger problem with the film though was this inane banter that is not remotely realistic dialogue and it never stops. No one talks like this, ever. Disappointingly this remake of course called for more "diverse" casting. The producer, director, "computer wiz" and prop designer are all of course "strong women" and almost every white male except for Ryan Gosling is again "evil". Yawn.

Interestingly the iconic truck from the original TV show actually looks much better than the newer model and this is coming from someone who hates the look of most '70s and '80s vehicles. Gosling, however; does his best with what he is given to work with and some of the action scenes at the beginning and middle I would watch again but there is just not enough here for what the trailer sold me on and for that this is a missed opportunity.

Civil War starts off with your unlikely band of diversity, the tough female journalist, her Hispanic partner, the sage old, fat African American man and of course the young impressionable girl. They are all on a journey to Washington D. C. by taking the most idiotic route to the city you could imagine from NYC via Pittsburgh. Their mission? Interview the "Trumpian" President before the Western Forces kill him. What has this President done you say? He has given himself all manner of leftist fetish fantasies, the third term, disbanded the FBI and of course launched air strikes on civilians!

For some strange reason as this merry band of fools drives around, the country side is devoid of much of its population yet all the grass is neatly trimmed where ever they go. When they do meet people it is always evil white men committing atrocities like Hitler's Einsatzgruppen or very "diverse" encampments in the most unlikely of places such as West Virginia. Yet none of it makes any sense. Sure some uneducated teenager may think fighting your way across the United States is as simple as drawing a line on a map but the reality would be much, much different.

The final assault on D. C. and the White House is a very well choreographed sequence that bumped my rating up far above it having any right being at. Even this though is ruined by the laughably bad female African American "infantry sergeant" barking out tactical orders. Her presence in the entire end sequence was so unrealistic and bad that it destroyed the immersion the director was going for with these scenes. I also think someone forgot to do their homework about the well known existence of a White House nuclear bunker.

In the end the Director really believes he is telling a cautionary tale when instead all he did was make a movie for dumb people.

Between the bad the CGI special effects, the comic book action scenes and the "diverse" cast I do not think it is possible to put together a more ridiculous movie but here we are. Thankfully Jason Statham plays himself so he at least puts in his same predictable but workable performance. Jeremy Irons always shines even when he is not given anything to work with as is the case here.

Following this however, the acting falls off a cliff once Emmy Raver-Lampman as FBI "Super-Agent" Verona Parker shows up and it never recovers. Her cringe worthy, "tough and resourceful", "girl-power" character made me want to vomit. I just could not watch her on the screen anymore, she either looked weird or masculine and neither is appealing in a female actress. It did not help that her partner was an emasculated, push-over either.

I absolutely love generic action movies with a basic plot, some character development and a good story arc but this film is just another bad superhero movie without the tights. Statham literally rips through dozens of 6'5'' Tier One operators, FBI Swat Teams and assorted goons like they were toddlers but it takes him more than one punch to finish the laughably bad "tough-girl" beekeeper sent to take him out.

As for my other love technology, apparently the writers did zero research on scam call centers which are not run by the wealthy elite and they are not run in the United States. Either that or Kurt Wimmer must have joined the guilt train since he has radically changed his casting choices from his earlier work. The end result is still the same, it is all bad.

If not for the great performances by Sydney Sweeney as Bea and Glen Powell as Ben this would have been rated a solid 1 or 2. Those two alone elevate all the "diverse" supporting characters and story line far, far above what this film deserves. It is a shame because I wanted to transplant those two and a few of the good supporting characters into a much better film they deserve.

First of all I don't believe Glen Powell's best buddy would be GaTa the rapper, nor do I believe the main character Ben would listen to Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten". I have yet to meet a man who would listen to this song. It is as if the script was written by a woman (hint it was). Which explains why Ben is emasculated multiple times for no reason.

Some of the banter between the two leads is humorous while the side "jokes" by their friends and family can be cringe worthy at times. The father's line about Australia sharing a "complicated relationship with their past" with American was particularly pretentious and annoying. Then of course you have the director injecting people smoking dope for no reason.

Well at least Sydney Sweeney looks good in a dress.

If you have any interest in the air war over Europe during World War II, nothing comes close to this mini-series. The attention to detail is so outstanding that I want to go back and re-watch all of the aerial battles for a second time. The cinematography, special effects and sound are absolutely incredible.

This series shows the horrors of indiscriminate bombing of civilians on both sides of the war, which should hopefully educate those with a more naive view of who the real enemy was. This is important, because it has become fashionable in more modern times to demonize all Germans during WWII as blood thirsty Nazis but by 1945 only 8 million out of 80 million Germans actually belonged to the Nazi party. The historically accurate depictions of the Luftwaffe guards being less severe than the notorious SS guards was another refreshing change.

My main gripes include it being difficult sometimes to follow which B-17 is on screen at any time because it is hard to tell the actors apart with their oxygen masks on. An on screen text notification of the B-17's Nickname or it's Commander would have easily cleared things up when the action switches to a new Flying Fortress.

The next is that while this series has the most accurate and best portrayal of the Tuskegee airmen in any film or series to date, it is disappointing to see them shoehorned in again at the expense of other WWII fighter units who have never received any screen time and actually did fly with the 100th bomber group. Unlike the comically bad Red Tails, their depiction here is much more respectable but I found it an unrelated side story that took the series off track for a short time.

Regardless, this is a masterfully produced series that really needs to be seen to be believed.

Remaking a classic action movie can always be problematic, especially when they are always done through a DEI lens.

Impressively Jake Gyllenhaal was allowed to get into incredible shape for his role and that allows him to play a respectable Dalton but he does so in some absurd alternative universe where the Florida Keys is now the most diverse place on the planet despite its actual demographics.

Right off the bus Dalton runs into just what you are "likely" to find in the Florida keys, a minority run book store who's weird mop-head looking kid played by Hannah Love Lanier is completely out of place. The forced empathy Dalton has for the kid is never developed and comes out of nowhere, making the ending not believable.

I have visited the Florida Keys and it is one of the least diverse places in Florida, Google "Florida Keys crowds" so why create an imaginary universe if not for DEI? The largest minority group are Hispanics, specifically Cuban Americans who are given no screen time here in favor of the message.

The re-imagined African American female owner "Frankie" of The Road House set now in the beautiful Florida Keys is beyond laughable and poorly acted by Jessica Williams. Her bar includes an ugly and obese bartender seen no where in America, skinny college age boys as "bouncers" and the most ridiculously diverse bar bands that do not even exist in NYC let alone the Florida Keys.

Thankfully the fight scenes are well choreographed and they give Dalton a believable love interest in Portuguese actress Daniela Melchior as Ellie but they go out of their way to make her look as unattractive as possible despite the sexier images you can easily find online. It clearly looks as if the costumer director intentionally hid her femininity.

Thankfully Conor McGregor steals the show and his presence is the most entertaining thing on the screen. Up until the very last few minutes of the final fight he may have been perfectly done, thankfully the post-credit ending takes some of the seriousness of the brutal fight down a notch.

The original film is good but not my favorite action movie and has lots of room for improvement. It is not some sacred thing that cannot be redone but if you are going to insult it with a DEI re-shoot then I can understand the concerns as justifiable. Still the action scenes alone easily make up for the paint by numbers plot and for that this deserves a higher rating.

Trying to constantly one up the last movie may have finally caught up with the MI franchise. While Tom always plays Ethan to perfection, his key supporting cast are demoted to inject more nonsensical, "tough" female characters and for all the effort into finding beautiful European locations and shooting epic panning shots, the injection of unnecessary CGI detracts from the final product.

As good as Cruise is, he still is allowing silly nonsense where women are having hand to hand combat with grown men and some how last longer than 5 seconds or even more absurd overpower them. These scenes are so blatantly bad I actually wanted to stop watching this. In these sorts of films (realistically) women would need to rely on their intelligence, cunning and seductiveness when dealing with men but that is thrown out the window here and a poor final product is the result.

Ilsa was the weakest link in the last film but in this one she is joined by villainess "Paris" played by 132 pound Pom Klementieff who throws men around like The Rock taking out the trash and the new love interest "Grace" played by 130 pound Hayley Atwell who would last maybe 3 seconds in a real knife fight. These scenes are so unbelievably stupid this film should be categorized as fantasy. Women cannot overpower men, I am sorry to be the bearer of reality based news.

Honor's Society tries to be a modern day Ferris Bueller's Day Off with the lead Angourie Rice perfectly cast but Gaten Matarazzo is just awkward in his role and not believable as any sort of love interest. The most annoying aspect is the film takes a solid foundation for the main plot line that is built upon right up until the last 20 minutes when someone decided to throw in a hand grenade. No one is talking or recommending this film because it is just bad, pretentious and disappointing. Focusing solely on the main plot line with a much more believable actor as Michael could have made this a classic, instead it will forever be known as how not to end a film.

Writers today are very confused, they do not understand that they can create anything in a fictional story and that includes a positive outcome. Instead they dwell in depressing sentimentality and the final result is films like this. I was expecting a dysfunctional group, dealing with their differences and coming together at the end but instead you get this boring, depressing film.

The acting is all over the place as Paul Giamatti is given almost nothing to work with but still manages to soldier on for a very good performance. Dominic Sessa on the other hand needs a better director to get the most out of him as he goes from solid to whiny depending on the scene. Unfortunately Da'Vine Joy Randolph comes off very amateurish and takes you out of the film whenever she is on the screen.

By no means am I one to complain about dramatic scenes taking too long but too many times in this the camera just lingers on a scene way past its welcome. The director also meaninglessly forces pot into the film during a time when around 70% of people did not use it and that was even lower in prep schools which were incredibly strict about its use and the penalty was expulsion.

Relationships in this film serve no purpose. No one gets together romantically and no meaningful friendships develop, everyone just sort of bumps into each other as if they mean nothing to each other. They kept hinting at something for all the characters but just abandon those relationships with no explanation. This includes the leads who all just go their separate ways at the end.

How much more depressing do you need to make the main character Professor Hunham (Giamatti)? They give him a genetic body odor problem, depression, an abusive father, a dead mother and getting screwed out of graduating Harvard by a spoiled rich kid. Instead of giving him some hopeful ending he sacrifices himself for no benefit. Why? To help a rich kid he briefly bonded with not get kicked out of a prep school? This film fails on every level and teaches you nothing.

Quantum Leap is simply an anthology series masquerading as science fiction with time travel being used as the gimmick for the writers to tell a different story each episode. At first it seemed novel but the luster quickly wore off and there was never any progress made towards Dr. Beckett getting home. It just felt completely random what was happening to him and you never felt like there was an overarching story line that was building on itself as the show went along. Instead the writers used the plot device to slowly unravel Dr. Beckett's backstory which was not that interesting. The limited interest the show had for me was lost the first time he "leaped" into a female character at which point I abandoned the show. This turned out to be the right decision as the show ended meaningless and depressing.

Instead of a comprehensive biopic, this film instead takes a look only into certain key chapters in the life of Ferruccio Lamborghini. For the average viewer this may be enough but for the car enthusiast it will leave them wanting more. Coming into this knowing very little about the man I feel I walked away with a better understanding of Lamborghini but only on a cursory level.

With an obviously limited budget they managed to stretch every penny to get a final product that is as polished as the cars. The acting was solid, the settings exact, the direction professional and the cars were beautiful. Sure they did not race the obviously very real and loaned classic vehicles into any danger but it did not detract much from the film which is more art than engineering.

There are a lot of garbage films out there but this is not one of them.

Oppenheimer starts off so boring and cliched that I almost turned it off within the first 45 minutes. In this time we learn nothing of value about the man. He is told repeatedly that he is a "genius" without any story development as to why they should bestow him this title. Instead we see him do such "genius" things like attempt to murder a professor he disagrees with, sympathize and mingle with communists, cheat on his wife and then abandon his child.

This film is all about politics and like a young mind freshly indoctrinated out of college we are supposed to feel sympathy for Oppenheimer's failure to understand economics. Real world examples of the Soviet Union, North Korea, Cuba and Venezuela are apparently not enough reason to believe communism is a bad idea. Naive scientists who have no concept of the real world supporting a "cause" apparently should be enough.

Thankfully the movie takes off some after the first hour and moves at a quicker pace. Disappointingly though much of the science and engineering is avoided for the politics of communism in America. I was hoping to see in detail how everything was developed but this never happened. Instead you get fragments of the development that fails to tell the full story.

An attempt is even made to white-wash the Soviet Union during WWII as anything but an ally of necessity or as they say "the enemy of my enemy is my friend". No mention is ever made that the Soviet Union invaded and occupied unprovoked both Finland and Poland, while also annexing the independent Baltic States (Estonia, Latvia and Lithuania) and part of Romania (Bessarabia) in a manner no different than Putin is trying to do today in Ukraine.

We do finally learn that Oppenheimer was apparently a good manager of scientists but it does not save the film. The politics play out but not in the way Nolan wished because it was obvious to me Oppenheimer had no business having a security clearance holding the sympathetic communist associations and views he clearly believed in. So Nolan leaves us with the left's tired political messiah "JFK" to bail out his film because there was no way to twist the narrative away from the fact that Oppenheimer was a communist sympathizer.

Norman Reedus literally carries this show on his back in what should be a farce. The problem with The Walking Dead universe is they would like you to believe things like women and children would be able to survive without grown men. In a comic book sure, in real life not a chance but Daryl makes it entertaining.

The setting is France and thankfully 12 years after an apocalypse they still have someone mowing the grass and people are dressing up like Katniss from the Hunger Games. Crossbows superseded regular bows for a reason, they did not require the same physical strength and training regular bows do so in a real life scenario without access to firearms that is what people would be using.

At least they are using firearms in this, even if they are older. In real life without access to modern machinery and once supplies of ammunition ran out, black powder weapons would be used. Bows were made obsolete for a reason. It was actually nice to see the nuns get blown away as they idiotically tried to wield medieval weaponry against firearms. The scene however was still BS as no woman is going to physically overpower a man.

TWD's nonsensical tropes are all here; women successfully engaging in hand to hand combat with men, all survivor groups are fully diverse with women or minority leaders and of course plenty of new characters to check all required boxes.

You have survivor groups choosing dumb locations to setup camp and all the "bad" guys choose things like castles. One group in Paris was living off scaffolding in a city with literally thousands of usable buildings around them. The show tries so hard to force jimmy rigged nonsense instead of logically thought out things.

So much of the show was written by a teenager, you get killer nuns, a moat of zombies but the Star Wars rip-off "Cantina" in Paris made me cringe. The best parts are when a character goes off to "find someone else" as if they just have to search 2 square blocks in a city and not hundreds of square miles of terrain in a country the size of Texas.

At 3 episodes in I am still trudging along just to see what Daryl does next.

Begin Again has a story telling problem. Instead of telling a linear story it jumps back in time without warning or explanation half a dozen times and you get to painfully rehear the same bad song that opened the movie over and over and over again. But unlike Groundhog Day it is neither entertaining, romantic or funny.

I have no idea where the "comedy" is in this movie as I never laughed once. There is literally no romantic story in this film anywhere to be found. Keira Knightly and Mark Ruffalo have absolutely zero chemistry but don't get me started on the worst fake beard I have ever seen on Adam Levine.

No movie featuring original music integral to the plot has ever done well because the "original" music is always bad and Begin Again continues that tradition. You would think the producers would hire seasoned professionals to write the songs but instead they opted for former members of the no hit, no wonder "New Radicals" short lived (2 years) late 90's band.

You know the music in a film is bad when the "sell-out" version of a song Adam Levine performs are a soundtrack's highlight. Now to be fair Keira Knightly can surprisingly sing which is why I am adding two stars to my review but it is does not save the hipsterish droning soundtrack I frequently fast-forwarded through.

As with so many Hollywood films this one is filled with an artist profession trope (musician) who of course has the tired discussion of "selling-out" and being true to the art blah, blah, blah, blah, blah. Sometimes you have to accept the reality that people like Bob Dylan may have been good song writers but were horrible singers and the best versions of their songs were refined by better musicians and producers.

Movies about music always inject the writer, director or producer's crappy playlist of songs they try to expose people to not understanding that most of these songs failed at the time they were released for the same reason they do now. They never want to accept that the majority of people think their taste in music is just bad (which it is).

This film tries so hard to be hip, diverse and apologetic for liking some popular songs that it came off cringe inducing at times. Musical taste is subjective to each individual so unless you are going with well-known hit songs you are just going to lose 90% of your audience, which is why I believe they initially gave this a limited release and it wound up bombing at the box office coming in ranking a dismal 126th for 2014.

Prelude to Axanar is a very well made short film. It fits perfectly in the Star Trek universe and captures the look and feel of the best films. The acting, directing, special effects and writing are all top notch. If not for some glaring issues this could have been one of the best short films of all time.

Tony Todd is a solid actor but he does not carry the gravitas of Denzel or Morgan Freeman so choosing him as the strategic mastermind and savior of the Federation is not very believable. Having Todd play "Captain" Ramirez would have been a better fit. This was a major oversight and obviously forced since this came out during Obama's presidency and deflated what they were going for.

It is a shame that the creator's infatuation brought down what otherwise is an excellent short film fit for the franchise.

The Fabelmans is a one hit wonder in that you should only ever watch it once if at all. This effective biopic of Steven Spielberg's life is interesting if you want to learn about how he grew up. If on the other hand you are looking for a compelling movie to recommend to others, look elsewhere.

Spielberg's life story is unfortunately depressing in that his father was a brilliant computer engineer while his mother was a selfish childish "artist" who made a mess of it. Even though he tries to make her actions a matter of the heart you literally have no sympathy for his mother and I don't understand Steven choosing to protect his mother over his father who was a decent man.

I always appreciated Spielberg's ability to film everything with a newness and brightness that makes it memorable. The effort just feels wasted here on his life story. As much as he tried to make things that happened to him memorable moments they all just came off as rather ordinary and unimpressive.

At least I now know and appreciate what made the neighborhood in E. T. so believable because he too grew up in the suburbs. His complete understanding of middle class life allowed him to reach the largest audience in the United States and give them the entertainment they were craving with his films.

The heavy handed religious and political overtones worsened the movie for me and learning how childishly he behaved in college was appalling. Why can't he live at college? "He voted for Goldwater!" Who refuses to stay in a dorm room because of their roommate's political beliefs?

Steven, please grow up.

Michelle Yeoh can usually be counted on to be in decent films but I knew this was going to be bad when it immediately starts off with their daughter dating an ugly tatted up lesbian while the manic mother (Yeoh) kept making a bad Jewish joke about actress Jenny Slate having a "big nose" yet she is the best looking actress in the entire film.

There is this odd trend in certain films of trying to make gibberish into science fiction. In this doing moronic nonsense like eating ChapStick, chewing old gum stuck under a table and giving yourself paper cuts between your fingers helps activate a plot device. I literally felt myself getting dumber the longer it went on and the more I watched, the more I wanted to kill myself.

Jamie Lee plays an obnoxious IRS agent who turns into some zombie terminator in the most cringe inducing way possible. I don't know if the writer, producer or director were all high on drugs when they decided to make this but it is painfully bad. Over and over again they inject weird and bizarre scenes with lame Kung-Fu sequences to the point of a migraine.

If I could give this film a negative 10 rating I would, as it is some sort of insane, drug-induced, deranged version of the Matrix. Avoid at all costs.

Baywatch excellently cast Dwayne Johnson and Zac Efron who were both in incredible shape for their roles and then completely squandered this opportunity with a lame script, bad CGI, overused green screen and crude humor. The supporting cast consisted of just good enough looking female lifeguards instead of the bombshells from the original TV show and the obnoxious, out of shape Jon Bass.

I added two stars to my rating just for being impressed to see actors like Efron actually getting in top shape for their role. Alexandra Daddario unfortunately is not that attractive of a woman where someone like Efron would be infatuated with so their romance felt very forced. But don't get me started with someone like Kelly Rohrbach falling for nerdy out of shape Jon Bass. It is just never going to happen.

So much of this movie looked promising when the actions scenes start but then they fall apart as soon as the horrible CGI shows up or the never ending use of green screen. I mean they were literally eating lunch near the beach but it was still shot with a green screen? Are you kidding me? Why?

I never wanted to remake a movie more than this one. How could you not make a good over the top action movie about Baywatch with The Rock's charm? All the elements were there but instead they thought crude humor was the way to go and you wind up just wanting to turn it off. The plot involving Priyanka Chopra was so bad it came off like an SNL skit.

The original TV show was never going to win any awards but you could watch an entire episode and feel like there was actually a story there unlike this movie which is just painfully unfunny.

Coherence begins with migraine inducing shaky cam cinematography that is over zoomed and blurry. The dialog is pretentious cross talk that includes pseudo-science gibberish and becomes incredibly annoying really fast. Unfortunately this is another film again filled with artist profession tropes (e.g. Actor, dancer etc...) who are apparently all over 30 yet have never experienced a power outage and never heard of a generator.

I want to know who does not own flash lights but instead conveniently has boxes of different colored glow sticks laying around? Also who thinks that the only "weapon" you can use out of household items to defend yourself is a baseball bat? Has no one ever heard of knives and tools?

As soon as they start trying to explain the plot with theoretical physics using tired pseudo-science reasoning I rolled my eyes. On what planet does a female dancer become the resident expert on comets? Let alone do a group of non-scientific people start jumping into acceptance of being in a twilight zone episode and then start thought experimenting a way out.

I cannot explain how painful it is to watch this movie and immediately recognize how some pseudo-intellectual "brainstormed" this plot with his friends thinking how "smart" he was at the time. God this movie is so sad because they really believe they set up some grand science based detective story where everyone is just piecing the clues together. Except no one at this party would think or act like this.

Everyone is acting like they are trying to figure out an escape room and everything that is happening is completely normal so long as they put the right "smart" clues together. This is bound to be another cult classic for people who think they are "smart". No cringe inducing movie I have seen before since Primer (2004) can be explained so easily by describing it as pseudo-science for pseudo-intellectuals than this.

I am starting to see what is wrong with cinema today, they are trying to reinvent the wheel. A24 is not some grounding breaking film studio but the makers of pretentious pseudo-intellectual tripe. The fact that some people find their films "ground breaking" or even "smart" is rather disturbing.

Midsommar while beautifully shot is so painfully bad and nonsensical that I thought I was watching a prank show. This film features the most unrealistic and dumbest Ph. D. students ever to walk the earth. After witnessing a cult's sadistic rituals they just hang out like they are on vacation and nothing happened.

They then follow standard horror tropes and begin to split up and take idiotic risks. No one cares where anyone went or why, they just believe whatever is told to them by obviously insane people. With complete disregard for their own safety they eat and drink every bizarre thing they are handed until it becomes so completely idiotic and predictable that I just started skipping ahead.

The cinematographer who is clearly a skilled craftsman needs to move on to making real movies and not this pretentious art house crap.

Being a big fan of war movies I was hoping this to be much better than it turned out. Watching the Director's cut at 3 hours and 28 minutes was an ordeal I did over two days since I kept falling asleep. This film is far too long for no real reason and includes tons of meaningless scenes.

The limited action scenes involve them diving ever deeper to escape attack only for the Allied depth charges to detonate exactly next to their hull every time no matter their depth. The chase scenes are set to a crappy Mannheim Steamroller sounding music score composed by the German jazz musician Klaus Doldinger that does not hold up at all.

While the U-boat set is excellent and historically accurate, the scenes of them running on the surface unfortunately look fake as if the production crew is throwing buckets of water at them. They make no use of their deck gun throughout the film even though that was their preferred way to attack ships, saving their torpedoes for bigger targets.

The best part of the film are the logistics, operation and repairs of their U-boat. So much could have been done with this film to make it so much better and still retained its historical accuracy. The far superior film Greyhound (2020) did more justice to the U-boat crews than unfortunately this did. This story needs to be told but this is not the film to tell it.

A meandering, pointlessly long movie with the same tired formula; the lead's profession is the typical artist trope (actor), the stereotypical kids always smoke marijuana and the girl has overbearing parents. Then mix in meaningless cameos to name drop faded celebrities that feels so forced and out of place.

The writer was three years old when this film was set and clearly knows nothing about the era so instead he fills the story with nostalgic nonsense as if he is selling items from the 1970s. You even get Nixon appearing on TV!

This film just wanders around aimlessly trying to tell a "love" story between a 15 year old kid and a 25 year old girl that just does not work at all. It is as if the art of good film making was lost with the steady hands of the greatest generation and there are no good writers anymore.

Whiplash invokes nightmares of the 1970s and the horrible jazz music they injected into all manner of life at the time. For this alone I was never interested in this film and it weighs it down through out, no matter how well made it is. The soundtrack echoes in your head like a droning chaos of instruments in an elevator.

While this is a very well acted and directed film, it unfortunately follows the typical artist tropes for the lead (musician) and father (writer). Yet is not surprisingly written by a pretentious writer who is trying to tell some sort a "life lesson" but is doing so using one of the most disliked genres of music.

In a way this is more of a fantasy film because "music" like the lead character's cousin correctly states really is completely subjective. If you did a poll today no jazz musician would rank even in the top 1000. So believing you are going to be one of the greatest musicians of all time in a genre most people don't care about is completely delusional.

This film confuses intensity and obsession with hard work and passion. It is right on one point, that you need to earn your spot but to do so you need to know what it is you need to earn. A teacher needs to be a little bit of everything, a coach, mentor, disciplinarian etc.. not just a drill sergeant.

At the end I really wanted to like this film but looking at the train wreck the lead left in his wake it is hard to think this is a good lesson for anyone to learn. Great musicians have relationships, families and normal lives not just their craft.

Jazz like Whiplash just really isn't very good but it is also hard to stop watching. My main problem with it though is, I hate jazz.