## **Avatar: The Last Airbender (2024) Review: A Visually Stunning, Well-Acted Epic - 8/10**
In a landscape crowded with fantasy adaptations, Netflix's *Avatar the Last Airbender* stands tall as a formidable and impressive achievement. While a vocal contingent of fans decries it for not being a shot-for-shot replica of the beloved animated source, judged solely on its own merits as a live-action series, it is a compelling, emotionally resonant, and beautifully crafted piece of television.
### A World Brought to Breathtaking Life
The most immediate and undeniable strength of this serie…
Read full review →
71/100
A megalomaniac plans to activate a device that will make everyone kill each other but Lt. Detective Frank Drebin (Jr.) is on the case. Perfectly capturing the style and humor of the original Police Squad movies, the film is full of call backs and gags that are easily recognizable but modernized into something unique and original. Liam Neeson is perfect for the role and the rest of the cast plays their parts with all seriousness while being laugh-out-loud ridiculous. The infrared binocular gag was hysterical. My wife and I found this both nostalgic and hilarious. -- DrNostromo.com…
Read full review →
“Jem” (Sean Bean) leaves his home in the early hours and sets off on his motor bike deep into the forest where, armed with only some scribbled latitude and longitude, he arrives at the very remote house inhabited by “Ray” (Sir Daniel Day-Lewis). It is immediately clear that there’s some sort of relationship between these two men, but to call it taciturn might be too enthusiastic. They now proceed to spend a few days together and we discover a little of the nature of their pasts, their presents and what “Jem” hopes will be a future that might help out the angst-ridden young “Brian” (Samuel Bott…
Read full review →
“Grace” (Jennifer Lawrence) and boyfriend “Jackson” (Robert Pattinson) arrive at the remote Montana home that used to belong to his uncle. She’s not exactly enamoured of the place but they are so loved up that it is quickly a case of getting down to things on the wooden flooring and making themselves a bairn. Thing is, though, once motherhood beckons “Grace” begins to feel the full effects of their isolation. With “Jackson” at work, often far away, she finds herself bored and captivated by their married and motor-cycle riding neighbour “Karl” (LaKeith Stanfield). After the birth, what appears …
Read full review →
With people still believing that the Great War would be over by Christmas, the grandees in the northern English town of “Ramsden” are facing a crisis of their own. Their choir-master has joined up, and with St Matthew’s Passion already booked for the town hall, local mill owner “Duxbury” (Roger Allam) needs to find a replacement. A chat with his sidekicks “Joe” (Mark Addy) and disgruntled undertaker “Trickett” (Alun Armstrong) sees them alight on “Guthrie” (Ralph Fiennes). Snag? Well he has spent quite a lot of time in Germany and just about every piece of music they can think of has been writ…
Read full review →
Though I did think some of the visual humour here was a bit puerile, some of the writing really does expose the concept of religiosity across almost all faiths to some fairly unflattering scrutiny, and at times holds the idea of monotheism up to some carefully calculated and potent ridicule. Of course, it’s supposed to be a comedy and much like Monty Python’s satirical “Life of Brian” (1979) it is deliberate in it’s intent to poke some fun at something hitherto left well alone by Hollywood. The story is all about God’s former enforcer “Loki” (Matt Damon) who had got tired of killing Egyptian b…
Read full review →
**_A playwright stages a play to flush out the murderer of his fiancé_**
This was released to TV in the spring of 1982 and made into a play the next year for regional & community theaters in which it skyrocketed into popularity (with school plays later being based on it).
The plot is reminiscent of the 1966 Gilligan’s Island episode “Not Guilty” in which the castaways reenact events in Hawaii just prior to their tour in the SS Minnow to determine which of them murdered Randolph Blake. Of course, this movie is a serious whodunit and not a goofy comedy but, nevertheless, the simil…
Read full review →
Kudos to Mohammad Rasoulof for making a film banned by Iran's authoritarian government. The subject matter alone demonstrates extraordinary courage: four separate stories exploring how ordinary people navigate complicity, conscience, resistance, and moral responsibility when faced with, or forced into, state-sanctioned execution.
What makes "There Is No Evil" particularly powerful is how it refuses easy answers. Each segment presents a different relationship to capital punishment—those who participate, those who refuse, those who live with the consequences, those who flee. Rasoulof unde…
Read full review →
Its amusing how we now see an over abundance of throw back series that, allegedly, tap into the vibe and spirit, of earlier decades.In this instance, the early 1990's US.
Suffice to say, the reality of "NCIS: Origins" doesn't live up to the hype. This is a fancy dress party, where everyone comes as their favourite 1990's detective but behave's like 21st century woke-ists. The results" a series that "mostly" functions but only on a superficial level.
The acting is decent and the stories more or less believable but the new age, "DEI aware" attitudes displayed, just don't fit with the er…
Read full review →
The elderly, and recently widowed “Countess Elizabeth” (Ingrid Pitt) is not quite ready to give up the ghost just yet, especially when she discovers a rather macabre method of regaining - for a time - her own youth. Of course, there’s no such thing as a free lunch, especially if you are one of the charming young girls who unwittingly end up on the menu. Initially, her devoted ex-beau “Dobi” (Nigel Green) helps her to purloin her victims but even he realises that it can’t go on for ever especially when she starts to turn her attentions to the dashing “Toth” (Sandor Elés) and really puts his nos…
Read full review →
