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Dick Wolf's crime drama TV shows like Law & Order would have you believe all of NYC's violent crime is committed by privileged Wall Street millionaires or their smug, punchable-face prep school sons.

But as we learn here, most crime in real life is committed by exactly who you'd expect, for either a lame motive (shoot 5 people for $2800?) or no motive at all. Sad and frustrating.

The cops have interesting tales of how police work is a grind until you find that one clue or dumb lucky break that blows the case open. Their dogged patience is impressive, but the editing and lighting attempts to create drama that is unnecessary.

A perfectly good crime documentary but nothing to make it stand out from the many other options on streaming or Investigation Discovery.

Leonard Bernstein took the Arthur Fiedler formula of popularizing classical music for "the masses" to new heights through television, constant touring, and musical theater. (the mantle taken by John Williams in the 1980s and beyond)

And apparently he was a very good conductor, as his overnight success proves.

But this film never tells us what makes a conductor a genius, vs some guy just waving his arms around. Movies like A Beautiful Mind, Moneyball and The Big Short took arcane concepts and cleverly explained them to the viewer. But Maestro never shows *why* Bernstein is a genius, just that he is one.

The film revolves mostly around his semi-closeted gayness, which is probably the 10th most interesting thing about the man. But hey, it's 2023, and Identity matters more than Artistry.

The performances are very good, the long takes are fantastic (unless stitched together with CGI?), and the aging effects must be seen to be believed.

The lesson is: When the going gets tough, and even if they can help, the government will stand back and let you die.

Brave civilians, not police or coast guard, are the heroes here. Coordinating themselves, private citizens and friends came to the rescue of dozens of burned and injured tourists on a desolate and dangerous island after an unexpected but fortunately brief eruption, 90 minutes from the mainland. The use of actual video footage is especially powerful and tragic.

After seeing this event, which happened right before Covid, I now understand the New Zealand government's oppressive lockdowns a lot better. Embarrassing and disgusting.

Though "Walk Hard" was funnier and more biting, "Weird" is ridiculous fun, an overlong Funny or Die sketch that is completely preposterous. Daniel Radcliffe once again says: I have F U money from Harry Potter, so I am going to jump right into a goofy small movie and have a great time with it.

I'm not sure if Radcliffe got ripped for this movie or looks this way all the time, but Zac Efron now has competition. The supporting actors and characters are not very interesting, though the disappointed dad says all the right things about Working At The Factory and how The Wrong Kid Died. Wait, that was Walk Hard. Anyway.

Takeaway quote: "Pablo Escobar, you've just made the biggest mistake of your life."

As other reviewers note, the case goes all over the place... but that's police work, especially in Italy, especially in the 1980s.

While watching, I wanted to employ Occam's Razor: what is the simplest explanation for Orlandi's kidnapping? But in that time, in that place, it really *could be * plausible that the KGB or Vatican Bank or church pedophiles or Mafia might be responsible. Or all of them.

The music video-style editing and repetition is tiresome and an insult to the seriousness of the subject matter. But as an Italian speaker, I commend the accuracy of the translation/interpretations.

In any case: RIP young Emanuela Orlandi, wherever you are.

Two indistinguishable men, both awful and with similar names, woo a woman with a million-dollar dry-clean-only wardrobe in the clean, insect-free swamp. She is accused of murdering one of them. White men are portrayed as evil (except for the Foghorn Leghorn defense attorney), black people are benevolent cartoons, and did I mention the swamp had no bugs or snakes?

This is a Lifetime version of To Kill a Mockingbird, with a courtroom the size of a basketball court.

That said, the movie looks fantastic and the star does a good job. David Straitharn is always solid.

Not awful, just ridiculous. Your wife or girlfriend will love it.

What should have been a serious evaluation of a tragic and fascinating tale is distracted by jump cuts, extraneous music, as if the director thought "Inside Edition" was the goal. If this film was re-edited, then it could be very powerful.

The music video production style, the weird interview locations (a bank vault?) etc we're a disservice to a genuinely interesting story. Read the Wikipedia entry first, get some background, then watch the documentary.

If you like cringe humor, and the Curb Your Enthusiasm theme of where social convention has its gaps, you will like this show. If you love Branson Missouri standup, then you will hate this.

Remember books like Needful Things that were a thousand pages long, and literally nothing happened until page 287? That's Midnight Mass.

Other head scratchers: the island has 127 people, yet a dozen people are at the AA meeting. And of course, being 2021, a tiny American fishing island has... a Muslim sheriff. And everyone has $90 haircuts. And an inordinate number of black Catholics. It's like a Norwegian read an article on the USA, saw a Verizon commercial and wrote a series.

Kansas City thug Mike Milligan was one of the more interesting characters of Season 2, so it's fun to learn more about the KC "black mafia" in Season 4. Plus, I was excited to see Italian actor Salvatore Esposito (from Gomorrah) in Season 4. But there are some flaws: Chris Rock is a very funny comedian and a likable figure, but he is not a very good actor. In fact, none of the characters is likable or relatable, including the polite, smart high school girl that we're supposed to identify with. Every white/Jewish/Irish/Italian character is a violent, murderous, irrational, or just plain stupid goofball--especially Esposito's character, who literally bulges his eyes with craziness--whereas every black character, including the criminals, is wise, well-spoken, and educated. This makes for boring television, because we know what every character is going to do or say.

Twister has always been my benchmark for Film Awfulness. And Suspiria is worse. Every negative review here is accurate. And I generally like off-putting art house films.

Why didn't the criminal crew just murder Audrey Hepburn and ransack the apartment to find the doll? They killed the blond at the beginning. Not sure why all the elaborate ploy to find the doll. Just sayin'

We already saw the creepy doll house gimmick in Hereditary. And odd rural creepy with cults in Midsommar. This is more of that, except we couldn't care less about the characters. And for you art historians: since when does the Annunciation by da Messina have a halo.

***Huge spoilers ahead*** I admire Mr. Muhammad's passion and dedication to this story. There are really three crimes here: 1. The murder of Malcolm X, of which the deadly shotgun blast was fired by William "X" Bradley, a member of the Newark mosque. 2. The FBI coverup that Bradley was an informant, and the FBI would rather let two innocent men go to prison for 20 years than to give up Bradley as the gunman. 3. The gang culture of the NOI; the Newark membership knew everything about 1 and 2 above, yet also allowed two innocent men to go to prison for 20 years rather than snitch on their fellow gang--sorry, masjid--member, William X Bradley. The elderly members of the Newark Mosque and retired NYPD came across like the criminals they were, and not respectable figures.

When in the climactic scene of the final episode of Season 3, the bad guy tells Harry "We're not so different, you and I" I had to laugh-at the dialog, and then at myself for wasting 8 hours on Season 3.

... can we get a TV show for beautiful l*sbian redhead prosecutor Amanda Green? Whereas Making a Murderer was a sad tale of murder and suspects too dim to advocate for themselves (and cops who take advantage of that), Tiger King is a celebration of meth head knuckleheaded egomania.

What, an Eddie Murphy comedy from 1982 compared to the Palme D'Or winning "Parasite"? Yes, because both are excellent class-distinction films but mirrors of each other.

Trading Places has likable characters that, faced with Fate (the evil Duke brothers), team up to defeat the bad guys at their own game. Even the homeless black con-man Billy Ray Valentine--who is a completely decent man--can work with privileged, out of touch white Ivy Leaguer Winthorp--who is a completely decent man--and respect each other, to beat the Dukes. An American movie: an optimistic, improbably fairy tale of the American Dream.

Parasite, on the other hand, has unlikable characters who have no way out of their predicament. The poor Kim family actually *aspire* to be like Billy Ray Valentine, because they have no choice in a culture like Korea's. And the Parks--basically Winthorp--cannot once consider the Kims to be human beings worthy of respect. So instead of everyone ending up on a beach eating cracked crab, we have a bloody murder scene in the back yard.

Summary: boring, plain, promiscuous, bowling-pin-shaped young woman is stalked/manipulated into love by the star of the show, who is a friendless sociopath murderer. But the young woman's friends are typical New York Millennial shallow, smug, useless, pretentious and condescending idiots, so we don't feel bad when they are humiliated or murdered. It's a creepy show. Well done, but I can't stand any of the characters.

Great acting, good movie, worth watching, but it's about as politically nuanced as an episode of Law & Order: SVU.

Griffin Dunne, Billy Bob Thornton, Dennis Quaid, William Hurt, Lou Diamond Phillips, Beau Bridges? The excellent supporting (mostly unknown) female cast? How can you go wrong? With the many plot holes and goofy motivations, the writing goes wrong. A lot.

Much better than the similar The Report, but it's ironic that the heroes here are a traitorous unelected bureaucrat-not a "whistleblower"-who assumes she knows best, and a media that openly admits they don't report facts but try to sway opinion. In 2019 this all seems stale and outdated anyway. But well acted and deserves 7 stars.

Preachy, biased, dull, outdated. This movie would have been relevant maybe 6 years ago. Today, with such a different world, it just seems stale.

Although Daniel Craig's Louisiana? Mississippi? Who knows? accent could have used work, the ensemble and story really worked well. It was convoluted but airtight. And fortunately it didn't take itself too seriously. Obviously Rian Johnson loves Ana de Armas--the Cuban Jenna Coleman--because every shot maximizes her flawless face. Aside: there is one scene in which the characters discuss politics, and as an NRA member right wing Trumpster, I thought it was perfectly fine--though completely unnecessary to the plot.

Not a single memorable scene, no "you talkin to me?" or "funny how, like a clown?" or "I smell a rat." Just a well acted, generally interesting but overlong 3.5 hour procedural filming of a Wikipedia article. It was fun counting all the former Boardwalk Empire actors. And Diane Narducci is still hot.