Oldie Movie Review - Dog Day Afternoon

Director: Sidney Lumet
Genre: Crime/ Drama
Runtime: 125 minutes
Year: 1975
Starring: Al Pacino, John Cazale, Penelope Allen, Sully Boyar, Carol Kane, Gary Springer, James Broderick, Chris Sarandon, Charles Durning

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2022 MOVIE CHALLENGE.
WEEK 39: A MOVIE THAT TAKES PLACE IN ONE DAY
 
Description: Three amateur bank robbers plan to hold up a bank. A nice simple robber: walk in, take the money and run. Unfortunately, the supposedly uncomplicated heist suddenly becomes a bizarre nightmare as everything that could go wrong does.

Review: In “Dog Day Afternoon”, Sonny Wortzik and Sal, along with a third accomplice, enter a Brooklyn bank. On this sweltering, late-summer day, the three men try to steal money from the vault just before closing time. However, the accomplice soon gives up and Sonny and Sal are left alone. The robbery goes horribly wrong and in now time the two men and nine hostages are trapped in the bank building, surrounded by policemen, journalists and civilians outside. Sonny and Sal face all sorts of human problems during their actions.

“Dog Day Afternoon” was nominated for six Academy Awards in 1976, including those for Best Picture and Best Script. The last category was a win.

The duo of Al Pacino and John Cazale is masterful in “Dog Day Afternoon”. From moment one, the unusual combination makes you sympathize with the characters Sonny and Sal. The way Pacino portrays Sonny is outstanding.

By today’s standards, “Dog Day Afternoon” might be a bit slow and people would say action is lacking. But that is exactly why this film is so good. The whole thing is so convincing. The mostly usual clichés in heist movies, are carefully avoided. The credible acting of the cast, the oppressive atmosphere, it all adds to the tension of the film. Director Sidney Lumet managed to get fine performances from his cast and made “Dog Day Afternoon” worth watching.

Rating: 4/ 5

TV Show Review - Dopesick (Mini Series)

Season: Mini Series
Genre: Drama
Number of episodes: 8
Year: 2021
Starring: Michael Keaton, Kaitlyn Dever, Rosario Dawson, Michael Stuhlbarg, Peter Sarsgaard, Will Poulter, John Hoogenakker, Will Chase, Mare Winningham, Ray McKinnon

Description: The series takes viewers to the epicenter of America’s struggle with opioid addiction from the boardrooms of Purdue Pharma, to a distressed Virginia mining community to the hallways of the DEA.

Review: When Purdue Pharma introduced its new painkiller OxyContin in the US, the opiate was touted as non-addictive. The result was an epidemic of drug abuse that has destroyed tens of thousand of lives since the late 1990s. “Dopesick” charts the epidemic from different perspective.

For people with chronic pain, OxyContin seemed like a panacea: an effective painkiller that gradually absorbed into the body throughout the day, all without the drawback of habitation or addiction. The pills caught on eagerly, and for patients who still felt pain came pills with the double dose. And then pills with fourfold dose, eightfold dose, and so on. Now the drug is used in the US by eleven million people who have no pain symptoms at all, but are addicted to it.

The question, of course, is how on earth doctors, pharmacists and regulators could let this happen. The eight-part series “Dopesick” tries to answer that question, which is not easy. The creators portray the history through the Sackler family (owners of Purdue Pharma) and the sales representatives who convince doctors to prescribe the pills. In addition, we see the doctors and their patients, the cops who see how addiction in turn leads to crime and the drug enforcement agency DEA doing everything in its power to take down Purdue.

What makes “Dopesick” so brilliant is on the one hand the incredible but true story, and on the other the human way it is told. We are introduced to Samuel Finnix, played excellently by Michael Keaton. He is a family doctor in a mining town who initially gets great results with OxyContin, but then sees how addiction destroys lives and families. Betsy Mallum, played convincingly by Kaitlyn Dever, is one of his patients who slips into an existence as a junkie because of the OxyContin. Both actors shine in their performances and Keaton won an Emmy for his role.

Will Poulter also plays one of the better roles, as the smooth-talking salesmen Billy Cutler, who at first picks up fantastic bonuses, but then slowly  falls into conscience. This does not bother Richard Sackler (Michal Stuhlbarg): as boss of Purdie Pharma, he sees the billions pouring in. Stuhlbarg manages to portray Sackler as an emotionless businessman only wanting more. Furthermore, Peter Sarsgaard, John Hoogenakker and Rosario Dawson, among others, play some of the driven agents who want to take the pills of the market. The good fleshing out of all these characters keeps the series from becoming a documentary.

Based on Beth Macy’s book of the same name, the creators of “Dopesick” so not tell the story neatly in chronological order but jump back and forth in time. And it actually helps to see the big picture and connections without confusion.

While watching “Dopesick” you will most definitely feel many emotions and the one most presence is anger. As in how so many people could be so greedy and corrupt to allow this drama of unprecedented magnitude to happen. We never really get an answer to that, which makes it even more frustrating. But “Dopesick” is one of the most intense and realistic mini series based on true events I have seen in a long time. I loved it.

TV Show Review - The White Lotus (Season 1)

Season: 1
Genre: Comedy/ Drama
Number of episodes: 6
Year: 2021
Starring: Murray Bartlett, Jennifer Coolidge, Connie Britton, Steve Zahn, Alexandra Daddario, Sydney Sweeney, Fred Hechinger, Jake Lacy, Brittany O’Grady, Natasha Rothwell, Molly Shannon

Description: Set in a tropical resort, it follows the exploits of various guests and employees over the span of a week.
 
Review: Vacationing is something people like to do. To let go of everything, and in the case of many vacationers, get yourself well pampered at an all-inclusive resort. A single women, a family plus the daughter’s friend and a newly wed couple all arrive at the same time, at the Hawaiian resort The White Lotus. The staff of the hotel is awaiting their guests and everything looks promising. But it’s going to be one hell of a week.

What an entertaining series. In a satirical and humorous way, they basically take everything and everyone to task. No one is perfect and everyone has their secrets and struggles. And since all of the characters we follow are either quirky, peculiar, irritating or highly unlikeable, the perfect vacation they all wished for, doesn’t go as planned. And this creates some fantastic, uncomfortable, silly, hilarious and embarrassing moments.

Each character has a role in the story. Ten of them to be exact. First there is the Mosbacher family. At the head, mother Nicole, a successful business woman who calls the shots. Her husband Mark has a health scare, son Quinn is simply bored and daughter Olivia brought her best friend Paula, who just want to relax and read complex literature. Then there is the newlywed couple, Rachel and Shane. They married quick after meeting and are now on their honeymoon. Where Rachel is a freelance journalist who wants to make it in the world, her rich new husband believes she doesn’t need to work anymore and just be his beautiful wife. Tanya came to Hawaii to spread her mother’s ashes, she is a lonely woman who befriends the owner of the resort’s spa, Belinda. And finally we have Armond, the resort manager, trying to make sure every guest is happy and taken care of. Which is a big challenge with the new arrivals.

Talking about Armond. He’s portrayed by Murray Bartlett and he is the absolute highlight of this series. I love everything he does in this series, he is so funny. And as a former customer service employee, I know exactly how it feels like to always try to please everyone, even the ones that you actually want to strangle. Always with a smile on your face, but mentally slapping the person opposite you complaining once again. Bartlett got a well-deserved Emmy Award for his role and he lifted “The White Lotus” to a higher level.
 
The ending of the show wasn’t all I hoped for. At least not for all characters. I especially didn’t like what they did with Rachel and Shane. I did like Quinn’s ending though. But overall, “The White Lotus” was a very enjoyable series, easy to watch. And there is a second season coming, which will be starring a bunch of new characters and is set at a different location.

Book Review - Little Fires Everywhere by Celeste Ng

Title: Little Fires Everywhere
Series: -
Author: Celeste Ng
 
Description: In Shaker Heights, a placid, progressive surburb of Cleveland, everything is meticulously planned. From the layout of the winding roads, to the colors of the houses, to the successful lives its residents will go on to lead. And no one embodies this more than Elena Richardson, whose guiding principle is playing by the rules.
Enter Mia Warren, an enigmatic artist and single mother, who arrives in this idyllic bubble with her teenage daughter Pearl, and rents a house from the Richardsons. Soon Mia and Pearl become more than just tenants: all four Richardson children are drawn to the mother-daughter pair. But Mia carries with her a mysterious past, and a disregards for the rules that threatens to upend this carefully ordered community.
 
Review: If you want to read something completely different from a literary thriller or a chicklit, “Little Fires Everywhere” is most likely the type of book you want to pick up.
 
The story is set in the 90s, in Shaker heights, a quiet and progressive suburb in Cleveland. Everything there is planned. You can’t just paint your house in any color, each type of house has only a few color-options you can choose from. And if you don’t keep you garden in order, you will get a fine. Elena Richardson grew up in Shaker Heights and loves everything about the ordered community. Then there is Mia Warren and her daughter Pearl, who move to Shaker Heights. Mia doesn’t live life by strict rules, is open-minded. Pearl befriends the Richardson’s children and Mia even starts working for the family. But Mia has a mysterious past, that Elena wants to find out about.
 
The book stars the Richardson family on the one hand, and Mia and her daughter Pearl on the other. Mia and Pearl rent a house from Mrs. Richardson and Pearl goes to school with the children and develops a friendship with them. The Richardson take in Pearl, as does Mia with the four children, Izzy, Lexie, Moody and Trip.
 
Mia is an art photographer and takes experimental photographs. But as any artist that hasn’t gotten fame yet, money is a struggle. For the Richardson’s money has never been an issue. Elena is a journalist for the local paper and her husband Bill is an attorney.
 
The characters, their relationships and their stories are what make “Little Fires Everywhere” a success. It’s a true character study and everyone has its secrets. The life of the Richardson’s isn’t as picture perfect as they let people believe.
 
There are several subplots and I enjoyed all of them. As with the characters, most of them are very unlikeable. Which isn’t a bad thing, because I loved reading about them, getting to know more about them and learning why they are the way they are. The fact that I’m reading about characters I don’t find sympathetic and it still keeps my attention, is proof enough of how good this book is.
 
“Small Fires Everywhere” brilliantly thematizes the question of the extent to which we can shape our life to our liking, with the question of whether the affluent have more opportunities than the poor. How far can you go to give direction to your child’s life? The book is alternately touching, absurd, sharp and exciting. It holds up a beautiful mirror to the postmodern man who thinks he knows it all and can do it all and shows what a mess we sometimes make of it.
 
Rating: 4,5/ 5

Movie Review - Last Seen Alive

Director: Brian Goodman
Genre: Thriller/ Drama/ Action
Runtime: 95 minutes
Year: 2022
Starring: Gerard Butler, Jamie Alexander, Ethan Embry, Russell Hornsby, Bruce Altman, Cindy Hogan
 
Description: Will’s (Gerard Butler) soon-to-be ex-wife Lisa (Jamie Alexander) mysteriously vanishes at a gas station. He delves into the town’s criminal underbelly while running from the authorities in a race against time to find her.

Review: Still fully in denial about his possible divorce, Will takes his wife Lisa to visit her parents. After a quick stop at a gas station, Lisa does not return to the car and disappears without a trace. When Will can’t find her anywhere, he calls the police, who come his way to help him.

Detective Paterson, who meets Will at the scene, urgently advices him to wait, when they start their search. But Will decides to go look for her himself, because he believes the authorities won’t be able to give him the help he needs.  

“Last Seen Alive” is a very standard, forgettable film. The concept of the lost wife and the desperate quest to find her is a difficult one to put a new spin on. This struggle is painfully evident in the film’s predictable plot. It is just too often reminiscent of its more successful variants “The Vanishing” or “Breakdown”, who did a way better job with this trope.

Gerard Butler is always an actor I enjoy watching, and he’s doing a solid job here. But his character makes the most unlikely decisions. After only 20 minutes of waiting for Lisa, he is already beyond all reasonableness. From the first moment he resolves conflicts with a lot of anger and violence. And he also seems to get away with all of it.

Throughout this ninety-five-minute search, there are exactly zero surprising elements. And there is an explosion in the film that looks very amateurish. With that, Jamie Alexander’s Lisa lacks warmth or humanity, so you really don’t care what happens to her, because she’s not a woman you sympathize with.

It’s an okay time at best, when you want to watch a standard film without having to think or care at all. “Last Seen Alive” is a very forgettable thriller.

Rating: 2/ 5

00s Movie Review - Monster House

Director: Gil Kenan
Genre: Comedy/ Animation/ Advenure/ Family
Runtime: 91 minutes
Year: 2006
Starring: Mitchel Musso, Sam Lerner, Maggie Gyllenhaal, Spencer Locke, Steve Buscemi, Catherine O’Hara, Fred Willard, Kevin James, Jason Lee, Kathleen Turner, Jon Heder

I WATCHED THIS MOVIE FOR MY 2022 CHALLENGE
WEEK 38: A MOVIE STARRING A CHILD
 
Description: Three kids discover that their neighbor’s house is really a living, breathing, scary monster.

Review: Right across the street of young DJ’s house, is the old, run-down house of Mr. Nebbercracker. Nebbercracker is a grumpy man who always takes kids toys that end up on his lawn, never to return them to the owner. The night before Halloween, he and his friend Chowder play basketball and the ball ends up on Nebbercracker’s lawn. As usual, he takes it from them, but this time Nebbercracker collapses and ends up being taken away with an ambulance. But even without Nebbercracker being home, the house doesn’t seem empty. Or is it the house that’s alive?

“Monster House” uses the performance capture technique, just like “The Polar Express” did. There the character looked very realistic. In “Monster House” not so much. But nevertheless, it’s a very enjoyable film to watch, for the entire family during spooky season. It’s somehow a family-friendly take on the haunted house trope.

Rating: 3/ 5

Book Review - The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club by Sophie Green

Title: The Inaugural Meeting of the Fairvale Ladies Book Club
Series: -
Author: Sophie Green
 
Description: In 1978 the Northern Territory has begun to self-govern. Cylcone Tracy is a recent memory and telephones not yet a fixture on the cattle station dominating the rugged outback. Life is hard and people are isolated. But they find ways to connect.

Sybil is the matriarch of Fairvale Station run by her husband Joe. Their eldest son, Lachlan, was Joe’s designated successor by the has left the Territory, for good. It is up to their second son Ben to take his place. But that doesn’t stop Sybil grieving for absence of her child. With her oldest friend Rita, now living in Alice springs and working for the Royal Flying Doctor Service, and Ben’s English wife Kate, finding it difficult to adjust to life at Fairvale, Sybil comes up with a way to give them all companionship and purpose: they all love to read, and she forms a book club.

Mother-of-three Sallyanne is invited to join them. Sallyanne dreams of a life far removed from the dusty town of Katherine where she lives with her difficult husband Mick. Completing the group is Della, who left Texas for Australia looking for adventure and work on the land.
 
Review: The novel is set in Australia, in the late 1970s and follows five women who share a love for books. Author Sophie Green alternates between the women, so you quickly get to know them well. My favorite characters were Della and Rita, who were described most lifelike. But overall, the characters were so very similar to each other, they didn’t feel unique. Their lives weren’t similar though, each of them had their struggles and bumps in the road they had to deal with. Which made it more interesting to read about them.   
 
I always love reading books about books or book clubs. And since it is in the title, I was very excited to read this. The actual book club is only a very small part of this story. It’s more about the women’s lives and the book club is the connection between the five women. I found that very disappointing, especially since the overall story isn’t very special.
 
I did enjoy the book quite a bit, it was very easy to get through and I liked getting to know the five women. But it’s a forgettable one and I was disappointed about the book club aspect of the novel, which is not very present. I still think many people will enjoy this book, because I also did. In the end it was just okay, not bad but not great either.
 
Rating: 3/ 5