Winky & Stinky

Obviously working off a miniscule budget, producer/director/screenwriter Bo Burnham managed to put together a video poem or ode to a trial of childhood most of us are familiar with - middle school. However, the parade of aching situations endured by Kayla (aptly performed by Elsie Fisher) during her last week of eighth grade seemed more allegorical than real. From her isolated immersion into cyber fantasy (presumably, as you never really see what she's spending all her alone time looking at), to her acne, to her estranged relationship with her sole parent, to her being the only (slightly) chubby eighth grader at a large pool party, to her struggle with language, well...absolutely nothing is going well for poor Kayla. Even an exciting preview of High School ends in profound distress. Although you may feel the distant plucking of heart strings as you sympathize for Kayla, I don't see the film as a whole representing what middle school is for most a...

😉😉😉😝😝 Okay...you've bought your ticket and enter the theater to see a Dwayne "The Rock" Johnson movie. What are you expecting? A movie with "The Rock" in nearly every scene? The Rock performing feats of muscular endurance that test the imagination? A steady march of mini-cliffhangers? Good conquering Evil with the certainty of a "Rock" one-handed pull-up? WRONG! Just kidding . Actually...it would be all those things, but only add "The Rock" doing it while missing one of his legs. For "The Rock" it's all easy-peezy-lemon-squeezy. I liked this film. It had all the entertainment value of an amusement ride at Kings Dominion. Each virtually impossible feat Dwayne overcame was like a dip on a roller coaster, and even with all the implied drama still left me giggling each time. The special effects were state of the art, immersing the viewer in the fantasy. The skyscraper itself showed that the artists who create this make-be...

😝😝😝😉😉         If you like the genre of greedy criminals being the "good-guys" then Oceans 8 will have some appeal for you. Nevertheless, wait to frivolously spend your 110 minutes of precious life and watch Oceans 8 on a couch in your family room. Skip the theater. Watching endless scenes of Sandra Bullock looking like one of the Witches of Eastwick deserves multiple breaks for snacking.       Oceans 8 was a bit like putting together a jigsaw puzzle that doesn't have a picture. It would be complicated, time consuming, at times tediously boring, and when you done you're not left with anything pretty.       The hook for this film was, of course, that this was a female replacement of the almost all male Oceans trilogy led by George Clooney and the 1960 original Oceans 11 starring Frank Sinatra. That has a certain sense about it given current social considerations. I would have ...

😝😝😝😉😉       If you are the least bit saturated with "action" films then wading into Deadpool 2 will simply leave you ever more damp.       Even with all its campy dialog, humorous one-liners, and clever sub-scenes this Deadpool, more than the first, adds tons of "action" that only supplants what little story there is.       Am I the only one? Whether it's Marvel or DC, as the bodies are being blown up, dismembered, liquidated, or simply punched, I can no longer see how one differs from another. Deadpool and Deadpool 2 come close to satirizing the Action genre, but don't quite get there. There is just as much emphasis on severed hands and heads as John Wick blowing holes in a virtual army of foes. It's just all too numbing.       The writing, on the other hand, is filled with snappy gags (for example comments directed at the theater audience...

😝😝😝😉😉       This most recent Melissa McCarthy vehicle is just another example of the Peter Principal in play. The Peter Principal , in a nutshell, says that an individual's advancing career often rises to a level of incompetency...more simply put: just because you're good at one thing doesn't mean you'll be good in something related.       McCarthy, at age 48, has grown into a first class comedic actor. She takes a plainly cute pudgy face and a body challenged by gravity and molds them into a variety of roles from male political figures to hilarious debs. However, this movie, her second failed attempt at screenwriting, screams out her limitations. The same is true for the comedic actor Ben Falcone, director and co-screenwriter for Life of the Party.       If you subtract McCarthy from the film you're left with essentially nothing. Nothing funny, nothing clever, no story, horribly...

😝😝😐😐😉       It is difficult to review Tully fairly and avoid revealing the hidden concept behind the plot. To me Tully was really two different movies.       On one hand you have a genuine struggle with 21st century motherhood that most mothers today, older or younger, can find some identification with. These real life perils, amply demonstrated in the ads and trailers for the film, are engagingly portrayed by Charlize Theron.       She gives a convincing performance of a mother in the last week of the pregnancy of her third child and the post-partum stress that combines raising an infant with two other demanding children, ages 5 and 8, and a less-than-empathetic husband (a one-dimensional performance by Ron Livingston).       Although I could wince along with her trials, somewhat relieved with the introduction of Tully (nicely played by Mack...