estatelawcanada

The only reason I got to the end of this stinker of a movie is that I paid money for it.

I thought the premise for it was alright - 3 longtime friends go out on the town for their last Christmas together. As it turns out, each of them is dealing with a personal issue. One is going to be a father and is afraid he's not prepared. One is a professional athlete who is using steroids to stay in the game. The third is making excuses for why his life is going nowhere.

Then, it gets really, really stupid. Isaac's wife gives him a box of street drugs for Christmas and he takes all of them. Instead of dying of an overdose, he throws up, bleeds into a woman's drink, and generally goes around being gross. This is, believe it or not, one of the main punch lines of the movie.

Drugs are so prevalent in this movie, they are practically a character of their own. There is a superficial attempt to draw on Dickens' "Christmas Carol" by calling their dope dealer the Spirit of Christmas Present, and drug-taking in general is made out to be synonymous with partying and friendship. Even the fabulous party they finally get to after years of trying literally has a bowl of drugs on the table. And yet, for some reason, their athlete buddy is called out and shamed for taking steroids. I don't get that steroid use is so horrible when everyone else is taking cocaine, dope, mushrooms, and every other drug they can find.

I also disliked the fact that nobody in this movie could actually explain anything or say anything adult. Isaac's wife says to him that she is a "f*cking piece of sh*t". As it turns out, she means that she fears she might not be a good mother. What happened to "I'm worried" or "I feel unprepared"? Why can't anyone actually articulate anything beyond the most basic grunting sounds? These are meant to be educated people (Isaac is a lawyer) and yet they all speak like 14-year-olds who think it's cool to swear when their parents aren't around.

At the end of this movie, I just felt depressed. I feel sorry for anyone whose life is anything like these pointless characters, and anyone who thinks that the "partying" portrayed in this movie is even remotely fun.

There was no real plot to this movie. The characters are flat and uninteresting, and don't actually learn anything or develop, despite the premise of the movie. The humour is beyond juvenile. Conclusion: a complete waste of time.

Dan Stevens is terrific in this movie. He is very convincing in the role of a soldier who turns up claiming to be a friend of the Peterson family's son who was killed in action. He's sexy, charming, polite, and he stands up for the family's teenage son who is being bullied. No wonder everyone loves him, at least at first.

There is nothing really surprising about the plot. There are no real twists that we can't predict a mile away, but mostly that didn't interfere with the enjoyment of the movie. I felt that the story of why "David" is such a threat and why the military is so determined to kill him needed more explanation. There were a few sentences about how he was involved in a military experiment (no, really?) but not enough to do justice to the movie's considerable body count.

The final scenes in the high school reminded me somewhat of the school gym scene in "Carrie". They had the same feel and a similar look.

Though the plot is not new or surprising, the story is well told and the acting was good throughout. The action was non-stop. This movie won't keep you up at night pondering any deep, philosophical questions; it's light entertainment, straightforward and unpretentious. I enjoyed it.

Are some people destined to be alone? This movie suggests that is the case. John May, a simple name for a man with a simple, even stark, life exists almost in a vacuum. His job is to track down the family members of people who die alone, and he does this with care and compassion. He even keeps a photo album - with no names or labels - of all of the people whose cases he has worked on. Most of the time, nobody else cares about the deceased person, and John is the only attendee at their funerals.

In his methodical, meticulous way, he brings dignity and compassion to people who had nobody else to care about them.

John learns that his job is being cut, and he pours everything he has into his last case. Being freed from his job seems to bring a spark of life or freedom to John himself, and his world expands just the smallest bit. He meets Kelly, the daughter of his last case, and he smiles for the first time in the film.

However, just as we begin to feel that this lonely, quiet, but profoundly caring man is about to experience some small measure of the kind of happiness most people take for granted, we are jolted out of that hope. John dies suddenly, alone.

By this time, movie-viewers are likely to be in tears over John's fate, as he is so beautifully and poignantly portrayed that we cannot help but root for him. On some level though, we know that he could have had no other fate. John is the representative of the isolated and lonely, and must die alone as they did.

The very last scene of the movie says so much, despite its simplicity. Kelly, attending her father's funeral, glances around, wondering where John is. Then she shrugs it off and carries on with her life with the other people around her. That's how easily it happens. That's how individual people become so isolated and join the ranks of the invisible and unloved.

The ghosts of the people John buried over the years - the faces in his album - surround his grave. They tell us that John's life, as brief and stark as it was, was not lived in vain. What he did was important, as he provided dignity and care that all human beings need. It was a bittersweet moment, but saved the film from being overly dark.

If you judge movies on how much they entertain you on a superficial level, you likely won't enjoy this one. But if you appreciate wonderful acting, a thought-provoking concept, and a moving portrayal of the human condition, you must see it.

I wish I could say that this film left me with greater insight into the character of Charles Dickens, but it did not. I found its portrayal of him very unfocused. I understand that human beings are complex and not easily labeled, and I was prepared to see a multi- dimensional character, but that isn't really what I saw. It felt as if the character of Mr Dickens was somehow cobbled together without the script really knowing where it wanted to take him.

The film is, ostensibly, more about Nelly than it is about Dickens, but it didn't always feel that way.

The atmosphere and sets were well done. The bleakness of Victorian life for those without money or security was well conveyed. This setting is important to the story because it helps to explain why Nelly and her mother both felt that being Dickens' mistress was a good career and life choice for Nelly.

At times I wished the film would pick up the pace. There was a little bit too much gazing blankly out of windows by Nelly in particular. At times it felt that the story was moving much too slowly.

All in all, the movie was oddly paced, bland, and somewhat rambling.

Tammy is a road trip movie, with the unlikely pairing of a train wreck of a woman (Tammy, played by Melissa McCarthy) and her alcoholic grandmother (Pearl, played by Susan Sarandon). The two are sick of their lives and set out to go to Niagara Falls with no real plans or solid ideas.

Along the way, Pearl's drinking is at first funny, but eventually reveals itself as dangerous and ugly. Her treatment of Tammy is by turns loving and hurtful, and contributes to the maturing process that Tammy goes through during the movie. All good road movies should have characters who are somehow changed by their experiences, and this one does. Pearl learns to control her drinking (and the casual sex, reckless driving, insults, and breast-baring incidents it causes). Tammy learns that she must actively pursue the life she wants and not just wait, complaining, for it to happen to her.

The movie is both funny and dramatic. The scene in which Tammy sobs because she thinks her grandmother is dead was heart-wrenching. As well, the scene in which Pearl calls Tammy a fat loser was bitter. Both McCarthy and Sarandon played their parts well.

I first thought the movie was going to be pure comedy, mostly because of the marketing, but I came to realize that it was actually an adventure/road trip/romantic comedy. I have seen many negative reviews of this movie, and I believe many viewers might have been disappointed because the movie wasn't laugh-out-loud hilarious the whole time.

The plot moved along briskly, and the acting was very good throughout.

My only real criticism of the movie as a whole is the messy, somewhat disgusting character first showed to us at the beginning of the movie. There really is no reason for the character of Tammy to be so sloppy. She clashes badly with the house she owns and the husband to whom she is married. To be clear, it is not her weight that clashes; it is the ratty hair, the bloody nose, the wrinkled clothing, the lack of makeup, and the horrible wardrobe. The lessons she learns in the movie are about taking control of her life, but for some reason that is portrayed through her hair and clothing. Surely growing up means more than grooming yourself nicely. It seems to lack imagination, in that we have seen the overweight slob stereotype many times before.

Overall, I enjoyed the movie.

I'll start off by saying that I didn't watch right to the end of the movie. I couldn't stand one more diarrhea or fart joke.

There were some funny moments in the movie. For example, Sarah Silverman played the part of a woman who worked in a whorehouse and had screwed every man in town numerous times, but who refused to sleep with her doormat boyfriend because she was Christian. I also enjoyed the running joke about nobody smiling in photographs.

Generally, however, the movie's humour is more about grossing people out than making them laugh. It's the kind of humour that would appeal to 10-year-old boys. I think we are also supposed to find it funny that every character says "fuck" in almost every sentence. I'm not offended by the language but the crudity was greatly overused.

I'm surprised that actors such as Charlize Theron and Liam Neeson would waste their time on this script. I wanted to like this movie because of these actors, and I kept thinking it would get better, but it just didn't. I felt that the movie pandered to the lowest common denominator, and it felt boring, crude, and bland. Just not my kind of movie.

The story centres on a group of 30-something friends in Toronto. Two of the couples break up, causing ripples through the group. We watch to see who will get back together, who will learn something from the experience, and how the group will survive and grow.

One of the couples who breaks up is Jack and Meagan, who have been married for two years. Jack begins an affair with a waitress at a club at which the characters spend an inordinate amount of time. We discover during the movie that this is not the first time he has cheated on Meagan, and that in fact that he was living with another woman in the group at the time he began seeing Meagan. In response to this, Meagan leaves Jack and jumps immediately into the arms (and bed) of another of their friends, Jim. Whether she will go back to Jack as she has done before is one of the main plot lines.

The other couple who breaks up is Sean (played by the adorable Ennis Esmer) and Carol. Sean has loved Carol since "the first day of grade nine", despite the fact that she is physically, emotionally, and mentally unattractive. She is the sour bitch of the group, and he the doormat onto whom she pours most of her venom. She takes a new, young lover and moves out. During the movie, Carol has altercations with several people in the group, and learns something about herself. Whether she goes back to Sean - and whether he wants her back - is another main plot point.

Another friend, Caprice, must decide between her former lover (the aforementioned cheater, Jack) and the tom-catting Gordo.

The characters appear to be making decisions about the quality of their relationships and what they want and need from other people for the first time.

Though the movie is described as a romantic comedy, it is not funny at all. It might better be described as light drama. Though it doesn't shed any new light on human interaction, it is a window into how people who have been friends forever must eventually grow up and make adult decisions.

Emma Thompson and Pierce Brosnan play a divorced couple whose retirement funds and savings are stolen by an unscrupulous French businessman. They enlist the help of their good friends, played by Timothy Spall and Celie Imrie, to carry out a plan to recover what they lost. It's a far-fetched, crazy plot involving kidnap, scuba-diving, impersonation, jewel theft, and wedding-crashing. The zany plot contrasts nicely with the normal, suburban lives lived by the main characters.

Oddly enough, even with the outlandish plot, the ending is predictable. That may be due to the fact that it's really a romantic comedy dressed up in an adventure. This movie is likable, but stops short of being great.

This is one of my favourite Emma Thompson roles, largely because she has resisted her frequent tendency to over-act. She has a couple of really wonderful lines, most notably "we should nick it", delivered exactly right. Pierce Brosnan does a believable job of playing the aging hunk who is starting to realize he's not 21 anymore.

The movie is not hilarious, but does deliver several laughs. Thompson and Brosnan are funny together, particularly the scene in Paris in which Thompson cannot believe that Brosnan's driving skills have not improved over the years.

Despite silly plot failings, this movie is worth watching simply to see four really good lead actors show us how it's done.

I really wanted this movie to have a story so compelling that I couldn't look away. I wanted it to make me think about whether heaven is for real. Unfortunately, the story was meandering and much of what was included in the story seems absolutely pointless. I don't know why so much of the movie was devoted to the father's medical issues at the beginning, since they had nothing to do with the story. It felt like filler to make a short story into a longer one.

Elements of the story were not clear, such as what the impact of Colton's words had on the faith of the congregation. All we saw was that they were worried about being embarrassed. Even that issue fizzled out. It appeared that there was going to be some drama around how individual people thought Colton was either lying or crazy, but after one or two scenes the writers seemed to lose interest in that idea. They couldn't seem to decide whether the story was about the father's personal journey or the congregation's journey.

Some of the issues were dealt with by way of tired clichés. The woman whose son was killed while on military duty is cranky, then admits she is really "mad at God". Pretty much every movie that has faith as an important element has someone who realizes they are "mad at God", so that felt really weak.

Greg Kinnear's talent was wasted on this script. He did a great job with what he was given, but even he couldn't save this script. Kelly Reilly played his wife as a dimwitted hottie who has nothing to offer her husband in terms of advice or assistance. Her character is quite serene, except for one inconsistent scene in which she inexplicably smashes dishes because she is upset. Thomas Hayden Church was also very good, playing the local banker and friend.

The film was simply nothing special.

The main character is a female lawyer as imagined by a horny 14-year-old boy. She is so skanky and unprofessional, it's insulting. When reviewing video of an alleged gang rape with the D.A., she actually asks him whether it turned him on. She wears skirts so tight she can't sit down, and sky-high stilettos that would break the ankles of any actual woman trying to work in them.

The show seems to think that being sexy (or slutty, depending on your viewpoint) is a vital element of each and every character. It comes across as pretty ridiculous.

There have been at least a dozen shows about lawyers that had stronger characters, better writing, and didn't aim for the lowest possible view of the characters.

I hated almost everything about this show.

I have to start off by saying that I am not usually a fan of medical drama shows. I was never interested in ER, Grey's Anatomy, Scrubs, or any of the other shows of this kind. This one, however, I like.

I first watched the show because it stars Eoin Macken. I loved his light-hearted, somewhat goofy portrayal of Sir Gawain in the BBC show "Merlin", so I thought I'd see what he could do with this role. I'm very impressed with his work on this show, which seems to improve with every episode. His breakdown scene after his friend Topher is shot,triggering overpowering flashbacks to his time at war, is heart-breaking. The fact that he may be the most perfectly gorgeous man who ever lived is just a bonus.

The show centres around a group of army doctors who now work on the night shift at a hospital in San Antonio. Macken plays T.C. Callahan, a doctor who is suffering from PTSD, though it is never specifically stated. The cast is lively and interesting. It includes Callahan's ex- girlfriend, Jordan, as the acting chief of staff for the night shift, and a secretly gay army doctor who does MMA fighting on the side. There are also two interns, one who is capable, cool, fun, and fits right in, and the other who is "book smart" but naive. There is a hospital administrator who seems like a real stick in the mud, a psychiatrist who is having a sexual fling with T.C., and Jordan's current boyfriend who joins the hospital as a trauma surgeon.

With all of these colourful characters, there are endless story lines. There are always sub-plots alongside the main action, and everything blends together seamlessly. I have to admit that I found the first episode clumsy, as there was limited time to introduce so many characters, but after that, the show really took off.

The action in each episode is non-stop. Being army doctors, these guys often fly out to do triage at a chemical explosion, or airlift a shooting victim from a remote hunting accident. Do I think this is a realistic portrayal of an average doctor's shift at work? No. Is it dramatic, exciting, fast-paced, and fun? Hell, yeah.

Although the plot changes each episode, it always furthers the personal story line of the characters. Each of them faces insecurity, doubt, jealousy, fear, joy, victory, and loneliness. There is a strong emphasis on camaraderie, sticking together through thick and thin, and helping each other. There is the occasional make-out session in a storage closet, pranks played on their new intern, and even a male nurse helping the boss write a dating site profile, all of which lighten the mood from time to time.

Sometimes the patients die on this show. Sometimes the doctors make mistakes or have a melt down. It just adds to the drama, as outcomes are unpredictable. This is the kind of show that you allow yourself to enter, rather than sit back and observe. While it's not demanding to watch, it is intense most of the time. I've shed a tear in many episodes.

Jason Bateman plays a man filled with hatred and bitterness who enters an elementary school spelling bee. When a parent of a contestant confronts him by saying he shouldn't be competing against children, he responds with an unbelievably crude, hateful rant about her vagina. That pretty much sums up this movie. If you enjoy the type of comedy that is based on crudeness, misogyny, and mindless attacks on others, you will like this movie. On the other hand, if you have any working brain cells, you will probably wish you hadn't spent money to see it.

Though it was billed as a comedy, I didn't laugh once. I understand dark comedy, but this movie isn't dark; it's low, juvenile and puerile. The jokes included taking a 10-year-old boy down a dark alley to get a hooker to wiggle her enormous breasts for him (would it be so "funny" if it were a young girl having a man's enormous penis wiggled for her?). He calls the young boy, who is Indian, "slumdog". When Trilby meets a woman in an executive position who opposes him (Alison Janney's character), he chooses to insult her by calling her a lesbian and making strap-on jokes.

The jokes were relentlessly, depressingly low-brow and crude.

During the movie, the audience wonders what has happened to Guy Trilby (Bateman's character) to cause him to be so twisted, angry, and toxic. The big mystery is that his dad didn't marry his mom so he grew up without a father. Really? I'm not buying that as an excuse for him to lash out at everyone as cruelly as possible in every circumstance. Plenty of kids grow up with one parent and they aren't out there doing their best to poison the world and everyone in it.

The movie feels as if it started with the idea of an adult competing in a child's spelling bee, then the writers worked backwards. They had to come up with some reason why he would be so horrible, and knowing that the audience wouldn't be very intelligent, they settled on an insubstantial, clichéd scenario. There is no logical connection between his hatred of women and his father's absence.

In movies with a troubled, unlikeable, or hostile protagonist, there is generally some kind of redemption for the character. That redemption allows the audience to understand that the character isn't "bad", he is hurt or damaged in some way and remains a good person inside. Trilby doesn't have that moment of redemption. His attempt to lose the spelling bee in the very last round may have been an attempt to show that he is not a complete waste of oxygen, but it is too little, too late.

I gave this movie four stars because the casting, acting, photography, and direction were all good.

Bateman and Janney were completed wasted in this garbage dump of a movie.

The worst thing about this movie is that the leads, played by Meg Ryan and Matthew Broderick, are obsessive stalkers. He wants his lover back, but instead of taking a normal approach, he decides to set up elaborate spying equipment to watch her every move. His creepiness is matched only by Ryan's character, who conveniently shows up with listening equipment that adds sound to the visuals.

We are supposed to buy into the idea that because they were hurt by someone, we should cheer them on as they deliberately ruin someone's career, business, relationship, and reputation. And of course invade his privacy and even break his bones. It's not funny, and the characters just come across as pathetic losers who can't deal with life. I kept wanting to tell them to get over it, for heaven's sake.

It is possible to get audiences to cheer for the antagonists in a story, but this one is not told well enough or acted well enough to show us redeeming qualities that would cause us to root for them.

There is no chemistry between the two lead characters. A relationship between them is just not believable. Despite that, these two nutbars end up with each other and will hopefully leave normal people alone.

Broderick is even more vapid than usual. In a way he is well-suited to this role of a guy with no real emotions. Ryan has a few good moments but mostly seems mis-cast in her role. She is not believable as a tough, motorcycle-riding, bitter person bent on revenge, and she doesn't have the acting chops to pull off the moments in which we are meant to see the hurt surfacing in her.

I'm still annoyed, days after watching this, that I wasted my time on it.

The stories told in this series are heart-warming. I realize that isn't edgy enough or dangerous enough for some people, but when you get tired of watching bloodshed and meaningless violence, you will appreciate this show. The stories are well-written, and generally well-paced. They take you all over, in the sense that they solve mysteries and reunite people and discover secrets and do not follow a "murder of the week" sort of formula.

The main themes of the episodes are love, friendship, respect. One reviewer referred to this show as "housewifey", which is insanely patronizing, but what he probably meant is that it doesn't have any bimbos jiggling their naked boobs for the camera and isn't bloodthirsty enough for his "masculine" taste. And it's not, so if you must exist on a strict diet of sex and violence, skip this show.

The main characters are more nerdy than they are glamorous, but since when is the entire world made up of models? They rely on their brains, decency, teamwork, and perseverance to get the job done. We haven't seen characters like Rita and Norman in any show that I know of (Rita has her Sheldon Cooper moments but she is a much nicer person). I find the inevitable falling in love of Oliver and Shane to be predictable, but that's OK too; watching their story unfold is very enjoyable.

The acting is good. I enjoy the work of actors who can get across an emotion or idea with only a facial expression.

There isn't much laugh-out-loud comedy on the show. It is certainly charming and will make you smile rather than laugh. Occasionally I have small criticisms of how specific matters are done in the show. For example, I thought that when Oliver and Shane were locked in the bank vault with the young banker, it was a bit of a cop-out to have the young man take a nap to make room for the private letter-reading between Oliver and Shane. However, these things are probably just growing pains, and no doubt if given the chance, this show will mature.