Skip to main content

Tully

😝😝😐😐😉


      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 Mackenzie Davis), those problems moved the plot along achingly slow, proven by my wife's inevitable whisper to me: where is this going?
      It isn't until the last few minutes of the film that the story becomes whole. As with my wife, to many others (mostly women or mothers I assume) this final twist will not significantly detract from Theron's fine acting or the earthiness of the situations she faced. However, for me it didn't work and, in fact, turned me against the entire film.
      A bit like having a fairly good meal only to gag on the dessert. What you taste last is what lingers.


2 Stinks 2 Blinks 1 Wink

Comments

Popular posts from this blog

Oceans 8

😝😝😝😉😉         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 ...

Deadpool 2

😝😝😝😉😉       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...

Godless

😉😉😉😑😑 On : Netflix Original, Genre : Western, Length : 7 Episodes, If you missed Netflix’s Western mini-series Godless when it premiered last November, as I did, it’s worth a belated discovery. There are so many points of cinematic quality that even when the storyline bordered on the implausible it retained its embrace of dramatic entertainment. Jeff Daniels, who plays the dark and cruel antagonist Frank Griffin, is (as usual) superb. His persona, borne of religious psychosis, sets the stage for a clash of good versus evil that culminates in the final episode. The panorama of landscapes and “Big Sky” made me yearn for extended travel to the West without regard to the story. The role horses played was even endearing. There was little evidence that the producers nickel and dimed their reproduction of the period. Character studies were deftly portrayed by (among others) Michelle Dockery (Downton Abby) and Jack O’Connell, the protagonist, leavi...