Reviews

July 2023 -- two years after release and still waiting on a follow-up or concluding series .... I disagree with the negative reviews about bad acting, bad dialog, bad plot that wasn't credible, etc., but I won't bore a reader with further explanation after all that's been written by others . The ending was disappointing, but if the producers ever get around to Season 2, Red Election could still turn out to be a good espionage thriller. If they don't, as appears more likely with each passing month, then I cannot recommend Session 1; in spite of its promise, it cannot stand on its own. It was left dangling with so many loose ends that it's still not possible to be sure who the good guys and bad guys really are.

I feel that there is a lot more to this film than at first meets the eye, but I can't tell what it is. The character of 20-something Ella is never explained. She wanders in without knocking. She wanders on up the road without saying goodbye. She is not Nora's daughter. Who or what she is is never explained nor is why she is in the movie at all. Does she represent Nora of 40 years ago (she does resemble Nora, and Nora comments that she, like Ella, loved hitchhiking as a young woman)? Does she exist only in Nora's imagination? If I understood the answers to these questions, I'd appreciate the film, but the writers, director, and editor just wouldn't give me a clue.

As it is, I still give the movie 6 stars JUST because Karen Allen is in it. She's not exactly a glamorous movie star, but she's the quintessential girl next door. She's not exactly the girl you'd want to take to a party, but she's definitely the one you'd want to leave with. I'll watch anything she's in.

Sir Laurance Olivier was asked why some of the movies he made were not up to his legendary acting skills. To paraphrase, he said, "Sometimes, you have bills to pay." Well, Bruce Willis MUST have had bills to pay for him to have had ANYTHING whatsoever to do with this dog of a movie. In fact, there's no logical explanation of why such an amateurish screenplay could ever find anyone else to have anything to do with it, either. If I'd been shown only the script and had been asked to guess the age of the author, I'd have said "an 8th grader." Where else can you see guys shot through the chest, collapse, come to, get up, walk two miles through a forest, and engage in gun battles with other guys who were also shot through the chest and did the same thing? In this movie, that happened TO THREE different characters. Sooooop stupid.

I watched the first iCarly with the kids. I thought it was cute and appropriate. My wife predicted that Miss Cosgrove would become a superstar; I disagreed, but I hoped for her success. She certainly hasn't found it if she was willing to sign on for this dog of a show. They seem to have found the writers living in tents on LA's Skid Row, and the actors seem to have gotten worse as they matured . . . Or maybe it's just that the atrociously bad scripts they're force fed would make even the best actors look awful.

To be honest, I can't tell if this "adult" version of iCarly could grow on me because I turned it off after the first ten minutes, which were so bad that they made my brain hurt in addition to the pain inflicted on my eyes and ears. The second star I awarded is out of respect for the original; this current effort doesn't deserve even one.

Before I saw it, I'd have guessed that a WWI movie would have been impossible to film in the manner that this one was - i.e., with real sets and little or no CGI. I've never seen a movie with such attention to realistic sets, such incredible camera angles, many of which seem to defy physics, and so many continuous takes. The story, alone, may have been worth 8 stars. The production values and cinematography were worth another 8. which is to say that I'd give this movie 16 stars if I were allowed. I thought that "Saving Private Ryan" was a perfect war movie, but it's not perfect compared to this one. BTW, Stephen Spielberg's production company was much involved with both. If Sam Mendes and Spielberg can ever outdo this flick, it will be a miracle.

I've never seen "Plan 9 from Outer Space," so "Minnie and Moskowitz" remains the show I hated most in my entire life. Forty-five years later, I still remember walking out of the theater after 15 tortuous minutes. It's difficult to say it's the worst movie I've ever seen because it's difficult to say that about any movie from John Cassavetes with Gena Rowlands, but I just couldn't stand it . . . or stomach it.

I cannot imagine why Miss Aniston or Martin Sheen would accept a script this hackneyed and poor. There is no chemistry whatsoever between the lead characters. The plot is predictable . . . and old. It's been done so many times before in other films, almost all of which were better than this one. There is no believable reason why any "love happens" in this dreadful, stupid movie.

This movie was so rife with historical inaccuracies that I just had to turn it off. The movie shows airmen outside a B-17, then shows them airborne in a C-47. The "medic" is a lieutenant. Of course, all combat medics were and still are enlisted men, not officers. One of the U.S. soldiers was African-American, while the others were white. African-Americans served in the US Army with great distinction in WWII, but there were no racially integrated units. The plane drew a great deal of flak, but flak batteries were not present in remote areas where this plane was dropping its soldiers. And flak was ineffective at night against a single plane. It required searchlights to ID large formations of attacking planes so that their altitude could be determined to properly set fuses on AAA shells. Then the fuselage was perforated at 8-inch intervals by machine-gun bullets while the plane is shown above the clouds. Of course ground fire could not do that at such an altitude, and there were no attacking enemy planes. After parachuting from the stricken plane, the medic attending his comrade with a broken leg, exclaims that they need to "find medical supplies," as if a combat medic would enter the battlefield without supplies. The group of soldiers is then given shelter in the heroine's barn. The temperatures during the Battle of the Bulge were the lowest in Europe in decades, but the soldiers are shown in the barn with the lights on (BEHIND GERMAN LINES at night) with their coats off and perfectly functional windows and doors wide open. The reason for the light is that the fool captain has a fountain pen and a bottle of ink working on the novel he's writing! OMG. Finally, the American captain is wearing bright, not subdued, rank insignia on his helmet and one epaulet but not the other. Of course, this display of rank would have drawn sniper fire directly to him, so only subdued insignia was worn in combat areas What finally made me turn the TV off was when the captain tells the girl that he attended "Texas A&M." However, that school was named AMC (Agricultural and Mining College) for almost TWENTY YEARS AFTER WWII. It was not renamed, Texas A&M until 1963! Believe it or not, I omitted much of the stupidity perpetrated by the producers, writers, and directors

It's clear that none of the scores of people responsible for this movie had an IQ above 30. It was perhaps the worst attempt at a period piece I've ever seen in my life -- just pathetic. It is so bad that it would actually be offensive to anyone who served in the ETO.

Many posters here have done an adequate job of reviewing all the facets of NBC's ambitious December 5th production of "The Sound of Music;" I'd like therefore to focus on only one. Several trade and daily newspapers have pointed out the deficiencies of Miss Underwood's acting. I cannot quibble with the fact that it was not great, but I thought her performance was magnificent for a first effort, and her pipes were perfectly up to the task.

I enjoyed this musical very much, and even found myself shedding a few tears here and there. What I think we have to understand is that it's quite likely that it could not have been staged at all without Carrie Underwood's participation. It takes that much star power to get the backing for a venture of this magnitude. If not she, then who?

So I'd beg others to give her well-earned plaudits for putting herself on the line in a LIVE performance like this. It must have been terrifying for someone who'd never done it before in her life. It would also be wise to remember that if this were a production prepared for the NY stage, it would have opened in Hartford or somewhere like that to get the kinks worked out before the curtain ever went up on Broadway. In this instance, though, there was NO way to polish it further -- i.e., THIS was opening night, and as such, I think it was a magnificent effort. For anyone who'd care to compare this to the movie version, just try to imagine how much better each and every scene could be with the benefit of the ten or twenty takes and months of editing that the Robert Wise/Julie Andrews version received.

Rather than decry Carrie Underwood's efforts, I'd like to propose that we may have been privileged to see a new stage-musical star being born. I simply cannot give her enough credit for her monumental first effort in this medium. She'll get better, and she may become great.

You GO, Carrie Underwood!