Movie Reviews, everyone is a critic
 

The Menu, bizarre, HBO Max, dark, but finished. .
The Tin Star, not a movie but a series, also dark, didn't finish

Your critical reviews?

The Menu was very odd.

Really liked Devotion .

Started Tin Star we got bored and stopped.

Recently finished the last season of Jack Ryan and we thought that was outstanding.

The Recruit was not quite believable but fun to watch.

Need to find a new series to watch.

Shrinking -- new series on Apple TV. Jason Segel is a therapist, with problems of his own, who decides to give brutally direct advice to his patients.

The results of that straight advice have mixed, far reaching. and interesting results. Harrison Ford plays a therapist, too. (It can be a bit surreal to see Indiana Jones growing older along with the rest of us. But he is great in the part, as usual.)

Two episodes dropped last week, with more over the next several Fridays.

Boomer

PS: Whoops. Just noticed this thread was started for movies and I threw in a streaming series recommendation.

Bones and All. Gruesome at times even by 2023 standards but has an interesting story. It is a romance between cannibals who were born that way. Passed on in genes.

That's OK, always looking for a new series including streaming, outside of NCIS, FBI, Survivor, The Amazing Race, :icon_bored:

Jack Ryan is always good. "The Valley of Tears" is an excellent WAR series about the 1973 Yom Kippur War involving Israel. The only problem with it is that it is closed captions, which some people HATE. It does NOT bother me - sometimes I need to PAUSE and go back, but no biggie. It IS so realistic that I felt ALMOST there in their desert fighting alongside them. Soldiers are killed at unpredictable times. Some shelter under the dead bodies of those they had been talking to minutes before. Early on Syria and Egypt have the upper hand with more tanks and very good ground-to-air missiles that were kicking butt and dominating the Isreal Airforce.
.........The acting was uniformly great. One FORMER Israel war veteran looking for his son was particularly moving. There was just one woman with a solid role. There was one VERY unforgettable character that was like a fish out of water - he was a very intellectual "Rainman" character that was in the intelligence gathering service. He predicted that a war would soon break out. He tried to alert his headquarters, but in typical military fashion, he was ignored by upper brass. He was NOT, not even close, to a John Wayne-type action hero. At one point he is carrying, through heavy gunfire, his pet Hedgehog "pine nut" in a cardboard box, while being kept alive by a REAL hard-nosed soldier that recognizes his value as a military intelligence specialist. They are opposites yet like Ying and Yang. It was based on a true story. I recommend it highly. It is on HBO max and is sort of a "sleeper" and not raved about because of the closed captions.

"The Last of Us" is an HBOmax series that is on about episode 3. It is a typical "after the apocalypse type of movie" and even has ZOMBIES wandering around waiting to bite into some of the survivors. But, it has some potential. The lead male actor has a polished understated acting style about him. And there is a QUIRKY teenage girl also with a BIG and good role. The latest episode had a little too much detail (to suit me) about the lifestyle that evolved between 2 men stuck in the devastating aftermath of the big disease spread. One gentleman was a loner-type gun-collecting SURVIVALIST-type whose skills were picture PERFECT for this "end of the world as we know it " landscape. The other gentleman was more of an intellectual and social type - again unlikely types thrown together and whose number 1 priority becomes survival. A very smart plot point is to show the 2 of them as they age and face new challenges in about 3-year intervals. That to me was genius by either the show writer or the director or both. So far, I give it about a B+, and at this point, I intend to keep watching. If it gets fixated on too much ZOMBIE stuff.......I might not finish it.

"Avenue 5" is a humorous Sci/Fi series that IS worth watching. "The Last Duel" is a good thriller. "No Sudden Moves" is a good gangsta movie. "KIMI" is very good. "The World's End" is funny. "Free Guy" is very good and humorous. "The French Dispatch" is good.
"A Promising Young Woman" is sort of special in that not everyone will like it. It is offbeat and about a psychologically twisted young woman that can appear quite normal at times (BUT definitely IS NOT). I liked the ending which was surprising.

The new "Deadwood" movie was freaking great. Amazing that they could pull off great after waiting so many years to get it produced.
......I watched "A TASTE of Cherry" an Iranian film about halfway through and STOPPED. I saw zero redeeming value in it.
.........."Possessions" is a strange Israel movie made even stranger because about half of the dialogue is between Israel speakers and there are NO closed captions. The other half is with an English-speaking consulate. I stopped watching it, but now I have gone back to watching it because it has some sort of curious appeal. It may be a good series about a psychological killer and will likely have many twists and turns. The lack of closed captioning however is a tremendous put-off.

To me, a series is REALLY a long movie.