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Reviews
Jacques Pépin: Fast Food My Way (2004)
Pepin Deserves Better From IMDb!!!
I can't believe that Jacques Pepin, who has forgotten more about cooking than any a-hole chef on food network ever knew, has a smaller and less detailed profile on IMDb..... than 2 hacks like Giada DeLaurentiis and Rachael Ray!!! What a joke! The once classy and dignified TV chef has been replaced by a bunch of goofy cookie cutter "celebrity chefs" with phony personalities and idiotic gimmicks! Sorry to break the news to Rachael Ray....but she did NOT invent the concept of the 30 minute meal! I was watching TV chefs make meals from scratch in a half hour 40 years ago....and they actually TAUGHT people how to cook!
The Pursuit of Happyness (2006)
A Feel Good Movie For Whom? Narcissists?
Chris Gardner is a man on a mission............ to make a better life for his son....even if it kills the kid!!! If this is what passes for a "feel good" movie in the 21st century....we're all damned to hell! I got no inspiration from a film.... showing a father... too stubborn and prideful to do what was best for his kids comfort and safety! Inpirational films feature sympathetic characters, who have run out of options, yet overcome adversity anyway! Chris Gardner, as portrayed in the film, had many options that he didn't bother to explore, because of his foolish pride, his stubbornness, and his quest for the fat buck! He could have allowed his son to go to NY with his ex-wife, but chose to use his child as a pawn, to punish his wife, for bailing on the marriage! He had the opportunity to let his son stay at a shelter for abused wives and children, ensuring his son'e safety, but again...his foolish pride wouldn't permit it, and Gardner thought it was better for his son to sleep on a public restroom floor, than for them to "be apart"! Maybe someday, someone will come forward, to tell the real story of how Gardner got into such a financial hole in the first place. His lack of sales success, and his wife working double shifts as a waitress, isn't a justifiable reason for the kind of money woes they were in, as the movie began! My father had to retire in 1969 due to a heart condition, and my mother managed to take care of a mortgage and bills, a sick husband, and raise 4 kids, on a full time waitress' salary.....so I don't know what Chris Gardner and his wife were doing with their money! An apartment in early 70's San Francisco, was a hell of a lot cheaper to afford, than my childhood home on Long Island....and my mother managed!
World Trade Center (2006)
Typical Oliver Stone....which is not a compliment!
This movie is pure Oliver Stone......long on melodrama, short on factual accuracy! How necessary was it (for example), for Stone to devote so much screen time, to showing the families of the 2 trapped officers bickering, and being worried? Yes, we already figured out that the families of the lost would be worried, scared, and short tempered! So...... showing all this, immediately causes the movie to degenerate into something you would expect to see from those formulaic Lifetime Network 2 hanky jobs, that they pump out like containers of ice cream, at a Breyers factory. All the ingredients of a Stone movie are here.......reaction shots....CHECK........flashbacks to happier times....CHECK........factual errors.......CHECK and double CHECK! I suggest that you skip this movie, and keep an eye out for all the excellent documentaries that have been made about the tragedy, and will undoubtedly be shown every anniversary week. They contain real footage, excellent reporting of the facts of each hijacked plane, survivor, and non survivor stories, and detailed expert analysis of the damage to the towers, and Pentagon. Oliver Stone is a carrier of the dreaded "conspiracy-itis", which is apparently contagious, since a disproportionate number of actors, who have appeared in Stone films, hav become conspiracy nuts!
In the Line of Fire (1993)
Even Clint Eastwood Makes A Bomb Now And Then
There is so much wrong with this movie, I hardly know where to begin! We are supposed to believe that an agent too old for his job, and easily winded, would be employed by the secret service in the first place. After that.....the "super cop" stereotypes come fast and furious. Of course Eastwoods character once guarded JFK....and of course, we are told how he was JFK's "favorite agent", and we are told how he...of course, took the blame when JFK was found with a girl in the white house. Everyone is here....the psycho ex CIA assassin over acted by John Malkovitch......the "asshole" Chief Of Staff who seems to be more concerned with poll numbers than a threat to the presidents life, the lead agent who we are supposed to believe thinks that Eastwoods character is "over reacting" to a threat to the presidents life...AFTER he and every other agent have already listened to the psycho's threat on a tapped phone call. And finally......as if we hadn't already figured out the ending 5 minutes into the movie, Eastwoods character ends up saving the Presidents life! By that time, you won't care anyway, because you will be too busy shouting "bullshit" at the screen as one unrealistic scene after the other flashes by. Take a Pass...you'll thank me for it.
Inherit the Wind (1999)
Surprisingly Bad version of this true story!
This version is just plain bad, which is shocking considering the talent involved! If you want to see the best version of this famous trial, skip all the remakes, and rent the classic 1960 film instead. To be fair to Scott and Lemmon, it's not that they are so awful, it is more like Spencer Tracy, and Fredric March were born to play these 2 characters, and they played them to perfection! Dick York, Gene Kelly, and Claude Akins, also brought a realism, and conviction to their roles of the teacher on trial, the reporter and the fire and brimstone preacher... respectively, that the actors portraying the same characters here, cannot come close to equaling. Skip this version, and rent the 1960 film, and judge for yourself.
Cast Away (2000)
SuperMan Get's Marooned!
As much as I love Tom Hanks, I don't like it when a movie expects me to suspend belief to the point of absurdity, as this film does. Tom Hanks plays Chuck Noland....a FedEx super employee( you know the type as always portrayed in movies) who's plane crashes in a storm, leaving him marooned on a deserted island. What makes this film so absurd, is that Chuck Noland seems to possess near expert survival skills. He knows the proper wood to use to try and start a fire, he knows how to make rope, and he manages to salvage everything else he needs to survive from the FedEx packages that float to his island, from the crashed plane. He can't catch fish, so he finds a dress with netting on it to use as a fishing net. He can't open his coconuts, so of course, he finds someones birthday gift ice skates! He manages to fix his own impacted tooth, and he has somehow acquired the knowledge to build the perfect raft! But he can't fight through the vicious current, and the unrelenting incoming tide. What he needs is a sail for his raft......BINGO....a piece of plastic(in the form of a sail no less) floats up onto his island as well, and he manages to get out to sea, with the beloved volley ball he befriended, and mourns when it floats away forever! Thats the other absurdity of the film........he seems to have gone crazy after 3 years on the island, and somehow gets cured out of thin air. He of course loses his girlfriend who is now married to another guy. When he goes to visit her after being rescued, she calls him the love of her life, and claims she knew he was alive all along, which makes about as much sense as the rest of this movie, because nothing says you are the love of my life, like marrying another guy!!! It's just my opinion, but it would have been much more true to life, if old Chuck had ended up not knowing how to do anything to survive, like most normal people, and had just starved to death, like most normal people would have!