ligonlaw

The first episode does not compel further viewing.

Spade frowns and smokes a lot, even though he is given a diagnosis of emphysema by a doctor. As he smokes, he wanders through the rabbit warren of a dark, claustrophobic set. When he sees someone living, they engage in nasty, threatening barbs, then move on. The characters come out of the dark without much background. Who are these people?

This is story should be filled with tension. We should be concerned with what will happen to Spade and the little girl he delivers to the nuns without saying one kind thing to her.

The scenes are flaccid. We don't understood who these people are or why they do what they do. This is flabby, unfocused writing. There is some sort of connection to the Maltese Falcon of the 1930s. I didn't see it, and I don't understand what was left undone in the Maltese Falcon that required more explication 30 years later. That movie was complete, and it wrapped up the loose ends nicely.

The cinematography is fine, and the acting is excellent. The location is beautiful, but the story is meandering and is devoid of suspense.

A missionary died while attempting to reach a remote tribe in the Bay of Bengal. All of the commentary and spokespersons are devout Christians who tell the story about John Chau being killed by arrows shot by natives on the Sentinel Islands.

He spent his short life preparing to become a missionary in order to save people from hell through the word of Jesus Christ. He was inspired by evangelical religious people including Orel Roberts to undertake his mission. Evangelicals believe that people are doomed to an eternity in the fiery pit of hell if they do not receive the news that Jesus loves you.

Paul Chau's desire to convert the remote tribe in the Bay of Bengal drove him to take a boat near the island and to paddle a kayak to shore where he was unwelcome. He was shot by an arrow on his first attempt. The arrow, shot by a child, pierced his bible as he was declaring to the tribe that he was there under God's authority. He retreated only to try again. On his second attempt, he was murdered with arrows and presumed dead from his injuries. The body has never been recovered and no one has been held to account.

The people there live on their own small forested island called North Sentinel, which is approximately the size of Manhattan, and which is part of an island chain that is also home to another uncontacted tribe, the Shompen.

Paul Chau saved no one and he died in the attempt.

This is a strange movie. The first part seems like a Christian presentation because so many of the people are very religious evangelicals. They believe that their faith should be adopted and practiced by every human being on earth. The death of Chau may serve as an inspiration for some future missionary to attempt to convert these islanders.

Motion pictures are composed of snippets of film or segments of digital scenes edited together to create a story. The basic element of the motion picture is the picture or scenes captured by cameras.

The Terminal List is not alone in shooting film without lighting or adequate lighting. For example the Marin County episode is nearly completely dark. Grey shadows move around and the sound lets you know what is going on?

Scenes shot at night have very little light to allow the camera to pickup the image. This complaint about films shot in the dark is decades old. Available light may be insufficient in some scenes. That's when a lighting director lights up the set. At one time, night scenes were shot during the day and the film was processed to look like night. Day for night. The Terminal List looks dark. Shadows cover a lot of the screen. Grey moves around.

They should pay their light bill and light up scenes a little more.

The sight of smarmy, duplicitous.agents using their phoney smiles and contrived concern is nauseating. They leverage that to get the confession from a single woman that she took a document from her job at a classifed contractor's office and mailed it to a publication. The camera shows Reality Winner's vulnerability and her calm. The president was, at that time, communicating with Russian operatives, revealing state secrets to our enemies. Treasonous acts were being touted as admirable by Fox News and other anti-American talking heads. Fox News was piped into her work place, and she used her contact to classified information illegally, at great risk to herself out of frustration that the truth being lost in the maelstrom of right wing lies.

Tense script based on an actual recording of her interview with FBI as they searched her home in Augusta, GA. Excellent acting. Worth seeing.

If you think you know what this film is going to be about, you do. Hugh Grant and Julia Roberts did a better version of this plot. The world-famous big star meets a regular guy. Her fame and importance stand in the way of their doomed relationship. Hugh Grant was a much more convincing regular guy, and Roberts was more likeable as the object of media obsession.

It's a corny Rom-Com but Jennifer Lopez is more annoyng than sympathic, and Owen Wilson plays the cluelss guy with much more wisdom and intelligence than the part demands. He is never out of his depth in the world of glitz and glamour. He is always the voice of reason when everyone else are losing their minds. Where would a high school teacher get that savey?

Mostly this is a vehicle created for the adoration of Lopez. Big screen moments of her solitary fabulousness. There isn't enough tension in this movie to make it interesting. If Lopez is your idol, this movie is for you.

The producers and decision-makers who conceived this film made a serious error at the outset. This is not appropriate material for an animated film. It is understandable that a film about an artist would be look like art, especially since Charlotte Salomon is credited with having produced the first Graphic Novel. She produced hundreds of paintings about the events in her life as a young woman living in Germany as it was becoming an authoritarian hell for Jewish people. The animation is old fashioned and flat unlike what we have come to expect from Pixar, where the images and the characters are so fully developed. That kind of animation might have enhanced our experience of her life, but it would not solve the problem of animation. This is a heart-wrenching complex story about a woman who was complex and odd for her time or any time. Her family was consumed in unbelievable tragedy apart from the fact that so many of them were murdered in concentration camps. Animation is a step removed from life and this form of animation is wooden and stilted. The lives in Charlotte's story are highly emotional and such drama requires the services of excellent acting. We are too removed from the emotions and the reality of this story.

It is very sad that the author is now dead. Her story and her marriage to Patton Oswald and her challenges in preparing the story of a serial killer could legitimately be a good book or an interesting documentary. But this series is about two subjects - a terrifying rapist in the in 1970s is one story, and the trials and tribulations of the writer is a completely different story. The series spends way too much time making Michelle McNamara the center of the story. Each time the story stops being about the serial killer she is researching, it becomes a biography of Michelle. The writers must make a choice. Is this a biography or is it a documentary about a serial killer? Splitting the focus makes the documentary about The Golden State Killer seem amateurish and a ploy to aggrandize the writer. The series is lengthened by a garbage can of unrelated data about both subjects. Like many poor movies, the services of an excellent editor would have elevated this material.

This a story about a father and his son who live in San Miguel de Allende. They are interested in flying model planes and playing pranks of on people who live in their town. Both the father and the son are incorrigible. The father is extremely immature, but he and his child are buddies. The story is contrived and unbelievable from the beginning. It doesn't get much better. The actors are not very good, the script is poorly written, and the dialogue isn't real. The son in San Miguel grows up to be a snobbish, nasty boor, and he has become somehow rich. When he comes to the U.S. to visit his dying father, who he has decided to loathe, he meets his American brother. Their father was stranded in the U.S. for a generation - long enough for his two sons to grow up to become different kinds of jerks. In place of genuine emotions, the film substitutes insincere, recycled stereotypes, sentimentality and bad jokes.

Don't waste your time.

A gay couple are driving around England in an old RV, bickering and fighting along the way. Colin Firth and Stanley Tucci play the two older men. The movie begins slowly, but the camera work is beautiful. As the story unfolds we learn two things: 1 the couple is deeply in love, and 2) one of them is suffering from the beginnings of dementia. Firth and Tucci are fantastic actors. This movie is a masterpiece: fine script, top-notch acting, fabulous cinematography and a wonderful soundtrack. The film is one of the of this season.

Life boiled down to its essence is a series of boring events - showering, eating, driving, shopping, and finding a place to park your van. Life when you are broke is sad. The movie begins with the closing of a plant in Nevada where a widow played by Francis McDermott has worked for many years.

The entire town moves away, leaving the post office to discontinue the use of the zip code. She lives in her van and travels around the west on a shoestring. Lots of quiet spaces and lengthy shots of the countryside. McDermott meets a lot of poor people who share their modest philosophies and their strategies for dealing with life on the road. She takes a series of temporary jobs, then moves on.

It's not completely dreary, but it is not an upper. It's slow and depressing.

The script was empty. The cinematography was marginal. The direction was slow and there were gaps in the film that are not explained. It is difficult to evaluate the acting when the story is so vapid. It's a hard pass for me.

Russell Simmons was regarded as the king of Hip Hop and founder of Def Jam Recordings is the subject of sexual abuse allegations in this documentary. The allegations in this film were alleged to have taken place in the 1990s. The allegations are much like those directed at Harvey Weinstein who produced films at Miramax and, later, The Weinstein Company. The accounts of Simmons' acts of abuse and episodes of seduction are described in detail by several victims from the music and fashion businesses. This isn't a film one would "enjoy" because its purpose is to convey the pain and destruction experienced by the people in his destructive wake. The primary complainant is Sil Lai Abrams, an A & R person, who produced a number of major talents.

Amateur with a camera uses her demented elderly father, who adores her and depends on her, to feign death in a variety of scenarios. The daughter, in making her film, has her father die in a variety of gruesome ways as some sort of expression of her caring for him.

My wife walked out after maybe 20 minutes. I watched it all but it didn't get better. Not much of a story here. The daughter puts dad through a variety of death scenes and uses the film to describe what a great guy he is/was.

Not my kind of documentary.

The film industry has given audiences of cop shows a dump truck load of profanity over the past four decades, but the coarse language of high school children in this black and white indy film is somewhat shocking. I haven't been in high school for many years, but, if I were teaching, the language would be cleaner. Or the students would have to go somewhere else to vent,

The music is great, and the camera work is exceptional.

The acting isn't good, and the script is flat. I would not recommend this film to anyone. Comedy is hard, and this film did not make me laugh.

For some reason, none of the television portrayals of the MacDonald case mention the disbarment of the prosecutor, Jim Blackburn. Blackburn is quoted extensively in written and photographed interviews. Blackburn was prosecuted and imprisoned, then disbarred by the North Carolina State Bar for fraud in a scheme Blackburn had devised to charge his clients for work that was both unnecessary and undone. Blackburn's crimes and his apology were featured in the North Carolina State Bar newspaper's front page. That his crimes were ones of dishonesty, and that he was kicked out of the North Carolina Bar should bear some weight in evaluating his testimony in these documentaries. He is allowed to discuss his theory of the case and his strategy, but the audience should be informed that he was disbarred, has never been allowed to have a law license, and makes a living giving lectures. Blackburn hid evidence from the defense. Contrary to the requirements for a fair trial, Blackburn did not make all evidence available to the defense for testing. Days before the trial, Blackburn made a treasure trove of evidence available to the defense, but it would have been impossible to test the evidence at the last minute. None of the evidence was labeled. It was housed in a jail cell, and the defense had no idea how it would be used. The defense complained of Blackburn's dishonesty to the deaf ears of Judge Franklin Dupree. Discussion of the dishonesty of the prosecutor is a relevant point in a documentary about a fair trial. FX did not bring it up. Dupree was a prosecutor's judge, appointed by Richard Nixon. He refused to allow relevant evidence from the defense to be heard by the jury. He argued with defense counsel, and he ruled against the defense over and over, giving the impression he didn't like Attorney Bernie Segal, a jewish man who wore his hair long. I was a litigation student in Bernie Segal's class six years after the MacDonald trial. He was convinced of his client's innocence as MacDonald began his long long prison term. The bias of the judge was mentioned but not explored in the documentary. A North Carolina judge once told me that MacDonald should never have been represented in North Carolina by a "hippie jew." The prosecutor hid Helena Stoeckly from the defense and there is evidence that she was threatened by the prosecution if she told the truth about her involvement in the murders. Segal's team searched for their witness during the trial, but could not find her. She was pretty flakey, and she was a drug addict, but she was being held in a Raleigh hotel, The Blue Velvet Inn, until Segal complained to the judge. She was produced, but the prosecutors told her she would be sent to prison if she gave a different account of the crime, according to investigators. Tampering with such a key witness should have been explored by the documentary makers. Several investigators looked at the evidence in the trial and became completely convinced of MacDonald's innocence. They too wrote books, but the books and their conclusions regarding the veracity of the prosecution's case were left out of the documentary. The MacDonald case has been much-studied, and large numbers of people believe that an innocent man is behind bars. The author Joe McGuinness is responsible for several television presentations. His book, a "60-minutes" piece based on his book and a mini-series also based on McGuiness's book presented what appeared to be conclusive evidence, but it was all the same evidence. All of it came from McGuinness. McGuinness committed fraud. He was charged with fraud in the MacDonald case, and he lost to MacDonald. A judgment of nearly $400,000 was paid to MacDonald by McGuinness. McGuinness's reputation as a journalist was irreparably harmed by his book "Fatal Justice." Another book has suggested that he turned on MacDonald and wrote the book finding MacDonald guilty as a result of a calculation that his book would sell better if he found MacDonald guilty. This documentary did not mention the fraud by McGuinness or the judgment he paid. Nor did the documentary mention that the McGuinness theory of the case dominated "Fatal Vision," the "60 Minutes" piece, nor that it was the basis of the mini-series. The crime scene was a shambles. Untrained investigators marched around in the crime scene. More than a dozen people walked through the MacDonald home before it occurred to anyone that there might be a problem with contamination. This was 1970 before shows on TV discussed contamination of evidence. The cops and the MPs moved things around, walked through the place and changed the evidence forever. Nothing was mentioned in the documentary about the state of the crime scene. The final trial was conducted almost a decade later. The trial that occurred at Ft. Bragg in Oct. 1970, tossed the case out. The military judge told the investigators to search for the hippies who were present in MacDonald's house. Nine years later, the MacDonald case was heard in federal court in Raleigh. Nine years after the crimes, the evidence and the scene did not improve, but the government was ready to convict him. For 30 years, MacDonald has been eligible for parole, but he refuses to apply for parole if it means confessing to the crimes. Not mentioned in the documentary. MacDonald identified a lady in a floppy and others. A gang of drug-addicted hippies was present in his home. Stoekley confessed again and again until her death. Her friend, Greg Mitchel, also present in the MacDonald home suffered the remainder of his life with the guilt of his involvement in the MacDonald murders. He confessed several times. Finally, it must be said that the standard for acquittal changes after conviction. Until conviction, a defendant is presumed innocent, and any reasonable doubt can overturn the conviction. Once convicted, the standard becomes absolute innocence. One must produce evidence that the conviction must be overturned because the defendant was never guilty. Here, the court violated MacDonald's right to a fair trial by omitting so much evidence of his innocence and making his defense so much more difficult than it should have been. In a different courtroom or with a different federal judge, the evidence supporting MacDonald would have created a different impression on the jury. By putting his thumb on the scale, Judge Dupree succeeded in convicting a man, who may be innocent, but he did so at the expense of fair trials.

Poorly written script milks family ties while making little sense. Decisions that must be made for space exploration are not made seconds before blast-off. Tension is contrived. It's as if no one who wrote the script had ever seen any of many science fiction renditions of this subject. Those who enjoy soap operas may be pleased, but this is not what it pretends to be.

Slasher/Horror movie which amounts a series of nonsensical gross-out scenes. I didn't see chapter one, but I'm sure I didn't miss anything. The actors scream a lot and run from special effects. Hard pass for me.

Strippers living a "glamorous" life giving lap dances in clubs frequented by stock brokers. After the crash of 2008, times are hard for everyone including all the lap dancers. The dancers hatch a plot to drug men and drain their credit cards. I think the audience is supposed to like the lap dancers more than I did.

J Lo demonstrates how to use the stripper pole, and that's the best part of the movies, because it looks athletic and difficult. The girls spend a lot of time shopping with the stolen funds, buying expensive things and swearing.

Not my cup of tea.

My skepticism meter was pegging when the documentary featured Glenn Beck, Tony Robbins and Orren Hatch as spokespersons. Beck and Hatch are right wingers who have taken the dark side of humanitarian causes and, like so many right-wingers, they have been a fountain of lies. Not really sure what Robbins was doing in the film.

However, the problem and the cause is real, and, the people fighting for the release of children who are being enslaved around the world are doing good work. The documentary and its impact would have been stronger if the pool of on-screen talent were not so lacking in credibility in general. It is entirely possible that Glenn Beck and Orren Hatch are capable of humanitarian, selfless goodwill. So much of their reputation is so caustic and disreputable, it was a mistake to attempt to establish public credibility with controversial talking heads.

So my questions throughout were is this some kind of appeal from a church sect? Is this some sort of effort to attack liberals?

It was none of these things. It was a heart-rending story about the abduction of children, and the efforts of Operation Underground Railroad to locate them and free them.

The story runs into credibility headwinds and would have been better served by a cast of people who have humanitarian credentials.

If this movie were not an Orson Wells production, it would never have been released. It is scattered, fragmented, disjointed, unfinished and impressionistic. It was filmed three decades ago, presumably when Welles found extra money laying about, over a six-year period.

It is a movie about making a movie and the dialogue is thick with insider jargon and film terminology. This film would appeal a lot of film students and cineastes. There a lots of references to film schools of thought and film movements.

Because it took so long to come to the screen, a lot of the people appearing in it have been dead a long time.

It is a story about a legendary filmmaker who has a gigantic reputation and no money to finish his film. The acting and directing are immediately disappointing because the movie looks pornographic in style, but without graphic sexual content.

Overblown, pedantic and grandiose performances abound. There is a story to follow and the movie gets better. It overcomes its beginning. It's not a pretty picture. It's about a love/hate relationship with films.

Kenny Saylors goes on a fast and claims to have gone longer without food than anyone ever, who is still alive. He drinks a lot of water. This film is more or less his video diary of his journey. The problem is that, for all his suffering and complaining, he doesn't really lose the amount of weight that a person who eats nothing would. While I can't say he's a complete fraud, you have to take his claims with a few pounds of salt.

Deeyah Khan did something with this film that I didn't think could be done. She reached out to some of the most vile, violent despicable members of the far right as a woman of color and as a Muslim. She reached them and befriended some of them. She put herself in the belly of the beast and she was able to discuss their racist ideas. She challenged them with questions, and, in the process, some of them changed their minds.

Excellent documentary. Courageous work.

Minimalist story about lesbians who do not connect. Not much story here. People meet. They talk. They disagree. They hookup, sort of. Odd bits of quirkiness, but the story isn't going anywhere. The main character is a woman named Morgan who takes a long time to say things. The scenes go flat while we wait for her to think of things to say.

The pacing is very slow. There is no tension because there is nothing at risk. The name implies that there will be murder or killing, but the name is misleading. It refers to the name of a podcast.

The soundtrack reminds you of a slasher film or murder mystery, but there is no build-up, no event, no crisis, no payoff.

Poor script and amateurish acting.

There is a chance that this might be a comedy, because there are some scenes that seem like an attempt at humor, but without laughs.

"Working Girl" with Melanie Griffith covered some of the same territory in 1988. That working class heroine broke into the nearly all-boys club by ousting the other woman on the floor. The Wall Street in "Equity" fast forwards a few decades and we find the offices filled with female executives. Anne Gunne plays Naomi Bishop, an ambitious, work-obsessed investment banker who loves money and power because her mother was poor and powerless. She lives among the rats in the rat race. She is smart but she is surrounded by opportunists, including her lover and her assistant.

The story is about taking a Silicon Valley company, like Facebook, public. The initial public offering is a make-or-break event for Naomi's career. She is in the spotlight, because her last IPO failed and she was blamed for it.

The script is flat. These Masters of the Universe talk endlessly about business, and they plot against each other. It is a joyless, amoral world of money, cocktails, limo rides and back stabbing.

In "Working Girl," Tess had a moment of triumph when she, not her rival, became the super- rich investment banker rising from her outer borough origins. Here, Naomi is already rich, but her life in the skyscraper is unrewarding as she has no friends, only fellow money grubbers and she sleeps with a man who uses her for her insider information.

In the end, the back stabbers change places, and new group of greedy bastards take the stage.

Not a life-affirming message.

If Dinesh D'Souze had served a longer prison sentence he wouldn't have had time to put together another disinformation piece. He should find honest work somewhere.

He hates liberals and Democrats, and he writes dishonest books and puts together bad films which he calls documentaries. In reality, they are feature-length lies.

This particular pack of lies purports to reveal the hidden truth about Hillary Clinton and the Democrats - timed for release so that he could have some impact on the election in November. This is exactly the same tactic Dinesh used when he released the Obama film which should have been subtitled: "Reasons I hate Obama and baloney I made up about him to make you vote for the other guy." The Obama film did some box office, unlike his Hillary film. There are a lot of Fox News viewers, Breitbart readers, and right wing haters of the United States, and this film is for them. It is a film for people who do not read, who are looking for someone to blame for their own circumstances and who believe that liberals have ruined their lives.

A number of irresponsible and untrue allegations are leveled at the Clintons. Proof? Proof? He don't need no stinking proof. He never has the goods. He just makes stuff up for the gullible.

I gave this film a 1, because the scale does not allow for negative numbers.

Ten years ago, the Duke Lacrosse team became the focus of national attention. I never knew anyone who played lacrosse and have never seen a game. So the extreme national attention struck me as strange. The story was covered by every major news outlet. Reporters parachuted in from the New York Times and Washington Post. Cameras were everywhere.

The case was sensational. The Duke team competed for the national championship and lost, making them the second-best lacrosse team in the NCAA. There was a celebration off campus where the boys consumed a lot of alcohol and someone ordered exotic dancers. At some point, one of the dancers left the party, called police and claimed to have been raped by three of the players. The story exploded.

The lacrosse players were white, handsome and confident. They could have stepped out of GQ. They looked like the poster children of an American elite and they were students at one of the nation's most expensive and prestigious universities. The strippers were poor and black. The allegations were ugly, and the Durham County District Attorney took the case immediately. He told the Durham Police that he wanted to control the investigation.

The purported victim was a college student from North Carolina Central University, a traditionally black university. Chrystal Mangum gave a series of statements which formed the basis of the prosecution.

Outrage erupted at Duke. Members of the lacrosse team were suspended. Protests were regular events. There were calls for harsh action against every member of the team. Black ministers railed at the injustice from the pulpit and at rallies. News organizations and Nancy Grace screamed for justice. The District Attorney Mike Nifong moved the case toward trial as the State Bureau of Investigation handled DNA evidence which would corroborate the victim's allegations.

In the midst of the hysteria, the DNA results came back negative, but the DA lied to the press and the defense about the findings. Nifong was in the middle of an election and he wanted to keep the case alive to boost his reelection chances.

This film has many riveting layers. There is the question of rich versus poor, white versus black, privilege versus powerlessness, and questions of justice. The film explores the pack mentality in the media. It also explores the political nature of justice.

This is excellent documentary-making. Every frame was important to the story and the story took a number of twists and turns. See it.