Reviews

This film was awkward and embarrassing to watch. Every scene, every character motivation, every action, and every plot point was awkwardly played and terribly directed.

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Poor Gina Gershon. She is adorable and a good actress. But they saddled her with this hokey "English" accent that she could not pull off and it takes you out of every scene she is in the moment she opens her mouth. It had the effect of keeping us at arm's length from the character. She actually is a good actress, but she is terrible in this film by being forced into the accent. The crazy thing is, the accent had zero point in the story. It's filmed in NY. She could have just spoken American English. There is one line about "our visiting scientist" to account for the fact that she has a so-called British accent, but it did little to make us believe she was really from the UK.

The accent also had me thinking throughout the movie, that she really was American and was lying about being British for some reason that would be revealed. But no. It was just a terrible, fluctuating accent.

Matthew Modine had no business being a leading man in this film. He was more suited to being a guy buddy of a lead man. He just couldn't carry it.

The whole bit of him falling head over heels with a married woman and then stalking her.... well... it was just plain creepy and unbecoming. Yuck.

And then when he does a switcheroo at the end and goes for Ginger, it felt yucky, as if he was so desperate, he had to take the next best thing. And Ginger rightly called him out on it. It was absolutely not plausible that he could be in love with her so fast. Side note, why is Ginger named that when she looks Italian and has dark hair?

The scene with them crawling on the floor looking for the frog was cringe-worthy and felt like it was from a Jerry Lewis movie.

Why was Matthew Modine handcuffed to the bed in the very opening scene? It had nothing to do with anything. Speaking of unrelated elements, why is the film called "Kettle of Fish" when it had zero to do with anything in the movie. "Kettle of fish" implies there is more than one. So I kept thinking there were going to be more fish. But no. It was just a single gold fish in a bowl.

When the married woman does a "sexy" dance for Matthew to seduce him, it was so dreadful that I was literally embarrassed for the actress that she had to do that dance.

Gina Gershon is smolderingly sexy as an actress, and it was all wasted in this film, as she was reduced to a jokey fake Brit with zero charm, charisma, or believability. And if the part was not meant to be sexy, that's fine. But why make her character into a cardboard clown. She could have been real and had real heart.

When she is supposedly on a date with the other scientist from work, nothing about that scene, not one single thing, felt real or compelling or funny or anything. The scene felt about as engaging as watching a some previously spilled popcorn on the movie theater floor.

Rom-com's are my favorite genre. That's way I was so put off by this drivel. But to be fair, I had just watched "Jerry McGuire" the day before. I guess that kind of set the bar pretty high. But I have enjoyed countless other low budget rom-coms at the level of Kettle of Fish. The difference is, writing talent, director talent, and believable casting. Now if you will excuse me, I gotta go take a shower to wash off all that creepy stalking from the elevator scenes.

This film was a delight to watch!!! From the poster, I had the idea that it was going to be a drug-fueled gritty movie like "White Girl". But surprisingly, it was a full on romance set to a caper background plot, The lead actors had every bit as much chemistry together as Rachel McAdams and Ryan Gosling in the Notebook. The thing that made this movie so cool and fun to watch was how it avoided all the excepted cliches.

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There were so many times when I was pleasantly surprised by the omission of old cliches. For example:

There was no cruelty or violence or people tied to a chair getting beaten up, a staple aspect to most caper movies.

When they were romping through the stranger's house and sleeping in their pool house, nobody caught them. This breaks all the stereotypical treatment of those scenarios. But surprisingly, there was still tension because we were expecting it.

The item in the briefcase was the best!!!!!! It was of value to nobody except the ex-wife and her former husband. It was literally worth no money but it had such high stakes retrieving it. This was a brilliant and satisfying choice.

At the metro, Danny is desperate to catch up to Ellie. But rather than jump the turnstyle, as one would expect, he offers a guy $100 to get him through legally. This shows that Danny has real morals and a heart.

And the biggest one of all, the movie ends with Ellie's somewhat reserved reaction to Danny's kiss. It was so brilliant that they didn't go full on... like every other Hollywood romance. It was absolutely sweet and their connection was beyond adorable.

This movie is a winner from start to finish!!!! Bravo

The acting in this film was gripping. The tone was amazing and super compelling. The scope of the film was perfectly suited to highlight the small town drama. However, this film was overly bleak and too uncomfortable to be enjoyable to watch!

*************** SPOILERS **************** The problem with this movie is that it had very few moments of joy or goodness to offset all the misery it presented. It was brutally graphic and raw... but out of balance. I really needed a little sunshine to counterbalance all the evil. Luckily, Bear, the truck driver, and the diner boss lady, were in Katie's corner. But it never they never got a chance to shine as a hero or mentor for her.

Every little bit of redemption or hope was missing or hidden from the audience. For example, when the mechanic goes to beat up the rapist, we didn't get to have the justice of seeing the revenge on screen. In stead, they just cut away. It was frustrating to not get closure on seeing the rapist get his due.

And even in the very end of the movie, we see Katie is finally choosing to overcome and move on. But she hitchhikes to a semi truck and we know she is just going to get abused again. I wish the semi pulled up, and a really friendly and motherly lady trucker was at the wheel. Then we would have felt like Katie was going to be ok. But instead, we know exactly what will happen in that truck.

Overall, my feeling felt like... If you are getting hit on the hand with a hammer for 2 hours, it feels really good when someone stops hitting. Like when Katie finally chooses hope at the end. Sure, she chose hope, but after being hit with a hammer so long, any break would feel good. It felt manipulative in that way, gratuitous cruelty with the end goal of relief.

This movie fits the genre and its franchise. It is very solid on action scenes and car chases. The action scenes were pretty standard. Too bad they weren't more creative like in John Wick 3.

It was fun to see Martin Lawrence and Will Smith together. Their chemistry is familiar and nice, but falls flat in this film. The dialogue and relationship were overly formulaic and lost a lot of charm because of that. It seems like their barbs and jokes to and about each other were written by a committee... and then rewritten by another committee, causing them to lose wit and charm.

The sound mix was first rate. The epic final gun battle was awesome to hear in the theater.

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I was taken out of the movie a couple times by production issues and it was frustrating with such a big budget. It was like pulling back the curtain on the Wizard of Oz and completely pulled me out of the story.

1) The parkour stunt double who (was fighting Will Smith on the roof) looked nothing like the body type of the guy Will Smith was fighting, so it looked silly.

2) MOVIE MISTAKE: Vanessa Hudgens shoes literally change from one shot to the next and it completely pulled me out of the movie. This happens when the cops all meet in the headquarters lobby and head down to the armory to check out their cool gadgets (like the tricked-out food truck.) In the lobby she is CLEARLY wearing black booties and pants and in the very next wide shot wears black pumps.

That caused me to drift off into a bunch of thoughts about if they had shot the two scenes months apart in completely different locations and literally forgot to bring the right shoes.

3) When Michael Bay, the famous film director, shows up for a cameo, again it had the effect of taking me out of the movie and thinking about Michael Bay.

4) It really bothered me how they are always talking about the Bad Boys song. It felt forced and also felt like they were breaking the "4th wall" and talking to the audience with a little jokey joke. I'm sure many folks thought it was hilarious, but to me it just felt phoney... again, taking me out of the story.

Anyway, it's probably a fun ride if that is genre works for you. But the joy, charm and spontaneity of the franchise and characters seems officially tapped out.

This movie was a delight to watch!! From the very first frame until the very last one, it delivered smiles and a great feeling all around.

The acting was superb! That physical casting was a little off between the two sisters, unless I missed something in their relationship where they had different parents. But even so, it was still super nice to see their acting together.

I LOVED ALL THE RELATIONSHIP DYNAMICS!! The two parent leads (the home owners) were superb. All the others were incredible also.

To be honest, I bet this film would be a difficult and boring script read due to the ensemble slice-of-life style. But the writer and director were the same person and he really had a handle on bringing his vision to life. Every nuance, every detail, added to the overall emotional transport this film delivered.

There were so many memorable scenes that were a blast to see unfold.

It was so fun watching every single actor in their roles. Even the twins had me in hysterics.

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The only reason I gave this film a 9 instead of a 10 is that it's wrap up after Christmas was not very compelling. I was hoping for more of an electric culmination of events, but it just kind of go solved in a non-dramatic way.

Still, it is a great film that I will love to watch again and again. Kudos to the director for creating his vivid vision and kudos to the actors for being so charming and awesome!

This show was amazing for season 1. It was compelling and had great characters. The finally was awesome. But in season 2, things started to go downhill really quickly. The series turned into a sappy, incestuous, soap opera.

For me, it was clear they ran out of material in the episode when the power went out in the restaurant. But it seemed like it might be worth the time to check out one more episode. Then "Unleashed" happened (S2,E6).

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In "Unleashed" the script was a schmaltzy disaster, coupled with a heavy-handed and melodramatic director that made dramatic scenes laughable. Literally, we were laughing out loud at the supposedly dramatic moments.

The inciting incident of Gary's dog running away, was given outrageous importance! The whole gang assembles with great desperation to find the dog. It had the urgency of searching for a toddler who had been abducted. Wow. The energy, thanks to the on-the-nose script and the insanely heavy directing, made the drama into a farce.

When Gary runs a stop sign and gets pulled over, he is so wildly over the top that you would think the cop was literally going to find cocaine in Gary's car. But instead, the cop turns all "Howdy Doody" in an instant, letting Gary off with the most cliche apology ever.

That's just one tiny example of the whole show's tone.

When the entire group is running down the stairs in slow mo to see the dog, it was almost like a Saturday Night Live sketch. NOBODY would do that. It would just be like "Hey, they found Garys' dog, awesome." And that would be the end of reaction.

I felt bad for the actors having to do all this silliness. Like when the son has to hold the daughter's hand to pretend they are a couple. C'mon, that was just stupid, especially since we never saw the girl's reaction when he grabs her hand. And the dad yelling across the street from his car window was comical. He looked like central casting... "Time to insert the shot of the dad." It felt like a bad script note.

Overall, this script and directing were absolutely caricatures, schmaltzy, and beyond trite.

The very best elements of the series are the casting, the sound mix, the production design and the cinematography. The acting is awesome. It's a shame to force all that greatness into a dopey soap opera.

Loved season 1, but I'm outta there.

This movie was well-made and super compelling. I would give it 8 out of ten stars if I were a fan of this genre. Its set up is fantastic and its execution is really strong. Both the acting and directing were first rate!

My problem is, I don't know anyone would make a movie like this. The premise is sick: a woman is kidnapped, held prisoner and sexually abused… with plenty of detail at each point. But I felt it was disgusting to watch. It felt yucky to give my time to a movie that is all about the the dark and sick side of humanity.

If you like that kind of thing, then this is a really solid and creepy movie that would be great. It's actually an excellent portrayal of a sick human. It's just not my cup of tea.

It also felt like the theme and story was lazy story-telling. Basically, get a creep, have him sadistically dominate an unwilling female, and then…

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have her turn the tables and get revenge. You could take any sadistic loser, have him kidnap anyone weaker, and have instant screen drama. That's why I say the storytelling is lazy. With some adequate directing and acting, this story could have been made by anybody.

My big problem, apart from the sickness of the theme, was the implausibility of her captivity… as well as her inability to escape.

There could have been a thousand times where should have hit him over the head with a frying pan or stabbed him in the heart, but it never happened and was never even considered by the victim character, Claire.

Additionally, her attempts to escape were pathetically weak. The windows were "reinforced" but she could have easily dug out the wooden window frames that were holding the glass. She could have tried to break through walls. She could have lain in wait to kill the guy when he came home. And on and on. A truly desperate person would have been able to escape that place, especially when the captor is away at work the whole day, every day.

Other than the implausibility, this movie would be engaging and dramatic to watch… if one is into that kind of thing.

— The acting in this film was super solid, as was the directing. The story, a pretty standard infidelity theme, was unoriginal but superbly executed.

— My favorite thing about this movie was the romantic development at the start of the relationship of the two leads. It was really satisfying to feel the hunt and chase in action. It was all super plausible and believable.

—- The Toronto setting was beautifully shot. The cinematography was perfect.

About the sex scenes:

—- Honestly, this movie draws a very blurry line between porn and art. It may be one of the most sexually explicit films I have ever seen. In fact, it is so explicit, that sometimes it took me out of film by wondering things like:

—— Are they really doing it on the set in front of a whole crew? —- Are they really aroused on set? I mean there is full contact with all the erogenous zones —- Was it uncomfortable for the crew to watch?

—— etc.

The point is, as beautiful and steamy the sex scenes were, they ended up being a distraction to the emotional connection of the film. I mean, there was full on nudity with full-on lesbian sexual action. Everything from masturbation to sex toys was covered in explicit and stunningly beautiful cinematography.

Also, I happened to have streamed this film alone, but the experience made me think I would have been far too embarrassed to watch it with anyone else such as a friend, wife, relative, girlfriend, boyfriend. I can't imagine watching this film with another human without strong reactions about comparing one's self or sexual activity to that which was depicted on screen.

Still, I loved this film. It felt very sincere. As a giant fan of indie romance films, this film was firing on all cylinders!

I happened upon this movie after browsing my favorite Netflix section: "Independent."

Without knowing anything about the film, I was immediately drawn in by the stellar casting of Julianne Moore, Amanda Seyfried, Liam Neeson, all of whom are insanely talented and believable actors.

While some elements were predictable, it didn't matter because the execution on all levels was so captivating. A story is a story, but the telling of the story is what makes for the emotional connection.

For a slow-paced psychological mystery, this film does an outstanding job of delivering masterful scenes one after another.

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One of the hottest scenes in cinema is when Catherine has revenge-jealousy-anger- exploratory sex with Chloe. With so much tension wrapped in lead up to the scene, it is beyond satisfying to see it play out so solidly and solemnly. The big twist for me was that Chloe actually fell for Catherine. For someone who is detached from the people she has sex with, it was extraordinarily powerful when she let her guard down and fell for Catherine.

The weight of this scene and relationship was revisited in the end when Chloe forces Catherine to kiss under the threat of being killed. Even though it was super suspenseful (for fear Catherine would be murdered), it played as one hundred percent erotic, filled with all the emotions of the relationship between the two women.

Side note, the way Chloe managed to have sex with all three members of the family was completely brilliant and plausible. I loved the angst the film brought by letting the audience know how Chloe was sleeping with everyone behind each of their backs.

Then when I saw the credits roll, I was pleased to see that it was made by the director of one of my favorite films called Exotica. Atom Egoyan. An incredible director, he has a talent of bringing sex into real world relationship dysfunction.

My one gripe with this movie is that I wish, somehow, they would have all reconciled and that Chloe would end up healthy. I so badly wanted somebody to love her. The ending was a downer for me and I really wanted Chloe to end up feeling like she discovered a new place in the world.

Still, a strong film that I highly recommend for those who enjoy relationship dynamics.