Winky & Stinky

😝😝😝😉😉       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...

😝😝😝😝😉 On: Netflix Length: 10 Episodes       To say I sacrificed for the greater good by viewing this first season of the Netflix original series Lost In Space would be hyperbole. Yet somehow that's how it feels.       I do like science fiction a great deal, even science fiction that incorporates wild imagination. However, this latest version of the 1965 television series (ran three seasons to 1968) seemed to make a particular effort to remove the "science" from the genre "Science Fiction". At least in the late 60s, the quirky stage sets and absurd plots lent itself to the sitcoms of the times, with occasional droplets of drama.       This 2018 version, which ends with a "cliffhanger" for season 2, uses current digital video magic and actual landscapes to add realism to the production. That demands, in my opinion, that the story also incorporate real science into mix....

😝😝😝😐😉       Imagine you know a handful of restaurants where you've had decent or at least passable meals. Now suppose you go to a new restaurant and find them serving you just the meats from every other restaurant you've been to, bringing them to your table non-stop for two and half hours. That cuisine was exactly what Avengers: Infinity War served up for me. I left the theater over fed and less healthy than when I had entered.       What makes superhero movies interesting is the story line behind the mystically powerful character. How they got there and how they deal with their powers and dilemmas. The action is the whipped cream on that yarn sundae. This film had none of that. It essentially starts with the dilemma or conflict, injects every Marvel superhero character and a bunch of evil supervillains, and then lets them go at it from beginning to end.        The story is ridiculously ...