lukebearone Reviews (7)

NCIS: New Orleans (2014–2021)

Pitiful extension of the NCIS franchise!

[3/10 · 1 October 2014]

This series, in the opinion of a huge fan of NCIS and NCIS: Los Angeles, is simply pitiful. The writing, especially in the pilot and the first two episodes, is weak and puerile, so weak is the plot line and dialog, that they felt it necessary early on to drag in Mark Harmon, Michael Weatherley, Pauley Perrette , David McCallum and Rocky Carroll to prop up far-fetched story lines, like a Baton Rouge doctor starting an epidemic of bubonic plague. And their presence didn't help at all! As a New Orleanian I rapidly grow tired of Scott Bakula's character's constant references to Hurricane Katrina and how this "great city" has suffered enough. The audience has suffered enough already! The entire premise for this show is weak from the git-go -- I am sure that the Navy Department has more important cities which have NCIS departments that could be a better basis for a series than this decrepit river town of less than 400,000 residents. I give it barely 3 stars, out of a sense of compassion to all involved.

Interior. Leather Bar. (2013)

Beyond boring: Dreadful

[1/10 · 19 April 2014]

How this 60 minute piece of drivel ever got made, or was released, is beyond comprehension. It is nothing more than an extremely tedious version of what used to be known as "vanity press". Franco should be ashamed of himself. Why he, his collaborator, and the "actors" in this piece of garbage thought they had anything constructive to say about "rumored" cuts made to a 50-year old film, borders on the incredulous. Anyone can "imagine" what those phantom 40 minutes of sex in a leather bar might actually have shown. I imagine it would be a whole lot less boring and painful to watch than this waste of film (or tape). Anyone who had anything to do with this dreadful enterprise should be forever banned from film-making!

The Broken Tower (2011)

Insipid, slow and boring

[1/10 · 10 November 2013]

WARNING - CONTAINS SPOILERS This film fails on so many levels, it is hard to decide what is the worst thing about it. For one thing, the pace is maddeningly slow, and way too much camera time is spent on the back of Franco's head, or of him walking up endless flights of stairs. The incessant, long blackscreen segments are excruciatingly boring and add a further drag to the film's pace. Dialog is mostly absent, save for over-long recitals of Crane's poems by Franco, who becomes nothing more than a talking head for minutes at a time. Continuity is spotty, at best. At the film's conclusion, one knows nothing more about Crane than he knew before viewing it. I realize this was a student thesis of Franco's, but the entire project is boring, puerile, and without merit.

Hooks to the Left (2006)

Awful, awful, awful

[1/10 · 12 July 2010]

This has to be THE worst attempt at film-making I've ever seen. Verow states in the closing credits that it was shot using a cellphone, and that is really nothing one should crow about, as it is entirely unwatchable.

Aside from the opening and closing credits for Bangor Films and Verow and the "actors", for the first half of the video the images are like a fuzzy pixel-map -- not capable of being recognized by the human eye as anything familiar. After interminable minutes of this type of visual garbage, you get some footage that is ALMOST decipherable and in focus, but never is there found a clear, clean image in the whole enterprise. In not one shot can one see an actor's face or body clearly.

The "film" is so difficult to look at, that one cannot pay attention to the narration, as there are no images to associate it with. The narration, with graphic references to gay sex acts, thus comes across like a cheap and tawdry phone sex experience.

Verow's past efforts have not been THAT good, but this is absolutely trash and has no artistic merit at all. He should quit making films, if this is the best he can do.

Don't waste your time trying to watch this !

Be Mine (2009 Video)

One of the worst gay movies I've seen!

[3/10 · 15 February 2010]

This movie fails on so many levels, it's hard to know where to begin in describing them. The writing is banal, the direction is flat, the acting is wooden, and the undue emphasis on the needy women in a story essentially about gay male romance is just simply out of place and a real turn-off.

I had to resist hitting the stop button on my player's remote at least 5 times, and the only reason I didn't abort watching this video is that it is so like a bad wreck on the highway -- horrible to look at but eye-catching nonetheless. I wanted to see if the movie could get any worse as it progressed, and sure enough, the director and cast proved that it could.

Don't waste your time with this dog of a movie. A better film in this sub-genre (gay guys and fag hags) is Mr. Right.

Prince in Hell (1993)

Woefully dark and disturbing film

[5/10 · 5 November 2008]

This bleak and very depressing film has little or nothing in the way of acting, direction, lighting or sound to recommend it, and the poorly translated and extremely ungrammatical subtitles don't help at all. The story line was very difficult for me to follow, and for most of the length of the film I was forced to speculate on who was who and what motivations impelled the action. It appears that characters were introduced who had no apparent correlation to the plot, and these characters were gratuitously included in semi-graphic sex scenes.The ending was really disturbing because the film makers, at the very end, highlighted perhaps the grossest of bodily functions. Not recommended for those easily offended.

Iolanthe (1984 TV Movie)

Dreadful adaptation of a classic!

[1/10 · 24 September 2008]

This version of "Iolanthe" is a dreadful example of what mischief can be done when people of lesser ability than Arthur Sullivan and W. S. Gilbert decide to "update" and "modernize" the original music and libretto. I must confess that I am a purist when it comes to G&S, and find tinkering with the original lyrics, music and staging extremely irritating. The intrusion of stagehands into the action, the hammy performances of the performers (especially The Fairy Queen and the Lord Chancellor), the addition of out-of-period tap dancing and arcane references to Canadian institutions and politics (O CBC instead of O Captain Shaw?) were terribly annoying and not at all enjoyable. I found myself having to restrain myself from hitting the fast-forward button on my remote control several times, and was glad to see this sorry production finally end.