The Leverton Review

 This is, for me, one of Bill Murray's best performances, even though it is unhinged.  He plays a network executive who is clearly unhappy with the choices he has made, and through the magic of Christmas he is visited by three ghosts like in a Christmas Carol.  It is a retelling of it, but one that is more modern, and still firm set in the greed is good era of the 1980s.  This film came out when I was eleven, and I think my parents picked up a VHS copy shortly after.  I wanted to watch a Christmas movie with my kids, and they didn't want to watch Gremlins for some reason, so I chose this one.  I remember every little detail, and the practical effects are amazing.  The rotting corpse whose arm gets torn off is still creepy today.  It's a  pretty dark Christmas film, which leads to me to wonder why were the films of my childhood a bit dark, and now films for children are so antiseptic? 

 I haven't watched a movie like this in quite some time. The plot isn't so important, it is an exploration of what normal people would do in an extraordinary circumstance. It explores race, gender and class relations, but also just basic interpersonal relationships.  A group of people wake up in a room and are standing on red dots, if they move, they get killed. One thing that really rings true is that the people in the group make huge assumptions about the world because they are Americans.  For example, they assume that 90% of people believe in God.  That's true in America, but not in other places.  I'm not sure if there are any sequels to this film, but it might be interesting to see the results of this experiment in France, for example.  A very cerebral film, that is sure to guarantee discussion after a watching. 

I have a soft spot for the DC characters, even if recent representations on film have not been that great. One thing that has always struck me as odd is that Superman has a family from Krypton that is well represented in the comics, but not shown in other media until recently. The funniest aspect of this is the fact that he has a dog, whose name is Krypto. This film is an attempt to bring the character to a wider audience, and it succeeds.  It is entertaining, and there's a lot of heart to it.  Don't get me wrong, it's not the best animated superhero movie, but you can watch this and not be frustrated.  I didn't realize that the Rock voiced \Krypto until after the film was finished.  He doesn't do a bad job, but it's unclear why he got the job, as his voice is so generic.     

 This movie is not great by any stretch of the imagination, but I don't understand the hatred it received when it came out. Jared Leto's performance as the titular character is much better than his performance of the Joker. He manages to give a restrained performance. Some of the special effects are not mind-blowing, but creative. The plot of the story makes no sense whatsoever, but it's clear what is going to happen very shortly into the movie. The problem with the film is that it lacks Joy. The Venom franchise, as hated as it is by critics, is a fun couple of movies. And even movies that are not necessarily fun have a joy of cinema to them. There Will Be Blood is a good example of a film which is not a fun movie but shows you that joy of cinema. That being said, I think nowadays there is a tendency to despise any movie that's not an instant classic. The Marvels was a good example of that. You don't have to watch this movie if you don't want to come, and you do...

This show is really well structured, for the most part the jokes are funny, and the performances of Neil Patrick Harris and Jason Segel are legendary. (reference intended). But of course what everybody talks about is the ending of the series. It seems like it was one of those things that was workshopped with test audiences is before being released, and I think it is a disappointment. The worst part of it is that the writers intended to end it something like that from the very beginning. I mean the show was on for 9 seasons and the bits where the older Ted character is talking to his children were filmed in the first season because obviously the children couldn't age over 9 years during filming. So that's the frustrating thing, the ending was always going to be bad. They destroyed the character development they had achieved with Barney and with Ted. Barney represents the too cynical view of the world and he learns to accept romance into his life, and Ted represents an idealistic...

 I have mixed feelings about this series. I think the content of each separate series is educational, there were previous ones about how to become a cult leader, and how to become a dictator. If  you have never read anything about the mafia or other organized crime groups, it is a good introduction. Even if you have read a bit about the topic or seen a few movies or documentaries, things in it that are new for you. Maybe I'm old-fashioned, I really don't like the way it's presented. I know it's tongue in cheek, and most likely no one is going to use this to go out and become a mob boss, put isn't it possible to produce an entertaining documentary about the same topic without the silliness? I think it is, fictional movies have no problem handling the topic well. Why is it so hard with documentaries? I think maybe because the field of serious documentaries has been taken up by true Crime, so that doesn't leave a lot of space for serious crime documentaries that ar...