The Leverton Review

 This is a very weird sport. I mean, the losers win a wooden spoon.  The sport is also a very brutal one. There's an argument in hockey that helmets made the sport more dangerous because  players can hit harder. People who make that argument have never watched rugby. A hard hitting sport with barely a helmet to be seen. Also interesting to see are the motivational speeches given by the coaches, especially the Italian one.  Clearly, the Italian team is the worst in the tournament, but he's saying that they have a shot.  I wonder how motivational it would be if he had just said that he doesn't beleive that they can win. It's a good introduction to the sport, but drags a little bit.

 This is a good film, but I think that people have taken the wrong message away from it. I think this is similar to Fight Club, and American Psycho or even Starship Troopers.  This isn't a satire, it's more of an exploration of how much people will put up with in pursuit of a goal. People see Fletcher as a hard-ass, but see his actions as necessary. But after he loses his job, because the school he works for has been sued, he tells Andrew....'that he never had a Charlie Parker'.  Earlier, he tells his band that a former band member died in a traffic accident.......but it turns out that he actually committed suicide, and it was his parents that sued the school. He basically admits without realizing it that his methods are rubbish. At the end of the movie, he tries to humiliate Andrew by having him perform a song that he hadn't practiced, and then the show and film end with a great drum performance.   But honestly, I don't think it happened.  I think it's wis...

 This is a ridiculous movie, which shows why Tom Holland is not a movie star, despite his movies making billions of dollars. The reason that his movies made billions of dollars is that the character is popular, not the actor. In this poorly written film, he is given very little chance to show off his acting chops, although there are a few funny moments. But Tom Holland is not the problem with the movie. The writing is atrociously bad, and full of lines that aren't clichés but sound so stupid that they should be like, 'nothing is ever lost, it just isn't found yet'. The history is in the movie is appallingly bad, even for a Hollywood film, and the story that drives the plot makes no sense. Then we have the end of the movie where it all goes off the rails in a way that is so ridiculous it will make you guffaw.  They find two treasure ships in a cave. According to the story, they have been there 500 years, and yet they are still intact. This is a common trope in many movie...

 Another True-Crime documentary from Netflix. It does a good job of presenting the police's point of view in the first episode, expands on what was the truth in the second and third episodes. It's a very bizarre tale, and it's understandable that the police would be sceptical. However, a good example of why multiple leads should be followed in an investigation. Initially, that the boyfriend has murdered his girlfriend. But instead of actually trying to prove this, they devote a great deal of time interrogating the boyfriend. And then when the girlfriend actually shows up alive, deal of time to saying that they created a hoax. But if they had devoted at least some time to actually investigating their story, they may have found the perpetrator. One question I have about the series is that they mentioned that they were kidnapped by more than one person, no only one person has ever been convicted of this crime. That person sent multiple emails to a newspaper claiming that there...

 This is a bizarre film. Of course, there is stunning and whimsical animation. It seems to be arguing against the destruction of nature, but the human characters don't learn anything about that in the film. The way that human characters act as also strange. There is a fish that looks like a baby that becomes a human and later introduces itself to a human character who knew her as a fish, and the human character is completely unfazed by this. In the end there is this bit about how the boy can choose to make the fish girl a real girl if he loves her, and he will do this by kissing her. She kisses him and becomes a girl, so it doesn't make any sense. It's enjoyable, I think that there are better films from this studio to watch.

This show has 265 episodes which last about 40 minutes.  It was created before the era of binging television shows and it clearly shows what we have lost and gained. A bingeable television show forces an economy of storytelling - everything needs to be important and drive the story forward. That didn't use to be so important. Stories and characters could develop and grow. A danger of this would be plot inconsistencies, but Bones for the most part avoids this pitfall.  The characters are the same people as they are in the beginning, but they have grown and have more experience. I have heard that they are thinking of reviving this show, but honestly, I don't think it needs it. The ending was a perfectly respectable conclusion, and the last season was as good as earlier seasons so I don't think anyone should be disappointed about how it ended. The show is entertaining, but not without flaws, but as I hope to show, most of its flaws are those that exist in how stories are told ...

 This is one of those movies that people dismissed when it came out, but over the years have come to accept as one of the greatest sci-fi satires of all time. It makes fun of the obsession that people used to have with Star Trek that has now blossomed into other sorts of obsessions with cosplay and, comicons and things like that. But it is also done in a very loving way, and it shows why people really do love a story like that and characters like that. Tim Allen is a very surprisingly cast version of William Shatner, and he plays a Shatner like character with more grace and Humanity than a Shatner actually possesses. Alan Rickman plays an alien stereotype, but he is such a great actor, and he was the best at expressing frustration. The CGI looks a bit dated, but parts of the movie are still really funny. I think you would enjoy this if you love Star Trek, even if you don't, you'll get something out of it

 This series feels more like a throwback to Netflix marvel than to anything that the MCU has produced in the last couple of years. And I don't have any particular problem with that. It's serious without being somber, it's enjoyable without being flippant. It does tend to rely on the magic Indian trope. But the main character was pretty confident before she discovered her magic powers. I'm going to spoil the ending here to talk about it because I really liked the way it was handled. Echo has a chance to destroy her enemy and instead of doing that she tries to help him heal and even though they have a big problem with each other it is clear that they both care about the other. I like that a lot because in many of these shows and movies it seems like the lesson is if you punch someone hard enough they will learn the lesson they need to about life, and that's just not how it works. And by no means is this a new stylistic choice, but I really like how sometimes the actio...

 So a man who says that his greatest ambition when he was a child was to become a criminal, starts a crypto company with a few friends, and they raise eye-popping amounts of money because they actually do have a good idea, gets charged with a crime and gets parole because he cooperated with the authorities. It's a very strange because it seems like he was clearly viewing this as a scam and as a way to milk money from people, and the person who got the longest jail term seemed like he was at least trying to turn this idea into reality. What I don't understand though is why not just be honest with people. Say we have this idea, it doesn't work yet, ask your money, and we'll be able to come up with something that works. I think while we do hear from other characters in this drama, there is too much focus on the main scammer and there's also no pushback for any of the information that he says. It would be good if they had him say something, and then someone else involve...

 Generally I find this documentary series quite interesting, because you get to hear from the criminals who have committed these crimes, but it is done with tact and very little sensationalism. Another good thing about this series is that it shows you the mentality of the American justice system, which is a reflection of American society. For example, one of the stalkers is a lesbian, and as part of her treatment I guess she decides to go to church where they say that her natural feelings are against god's plan. That kind of makes sense because that is what Christianity teaches. It doesn't have anything to do with whether a person is a stalker or not. More egregious was the sentence given to a lady who felt like her husband and his ex were becoming too close. She decided to drop mysterious packages off at the ex's place, because the ex was a Conservative Christian she made sure that these packages looked mysterious and that they looked like they had occult origins. So the s...

 This film is a good example of when the American justice system fails. As an idea to market a harsh wilderness expedition as a way to tame troubled youth. He has no experience with counseling, is not a psychologist, nor is he an expert in desert survival. But he goes on television and his message resonates so much that his business is wildly successful. Parents would pay up to $10,000 to have their child kidnapped and sent to this camp. It was so successful that he could not properly train his employees, and one of the kids sent to the camp died. Obviously, he and his company were then charged, but after a two-year tial he was acquitted of all charges and her death was ruled accidental. Any reasonable person at this point would say to themselves I tried this idea, I failed, let me do something else with my life. He did not, he tried this strategy again in two different locations, and they both ended up in disaster. In the last case, the victims of this Camp needed to be rescued by...

 This movie falls apart with any sort of critical evaluation. There are good and funny moments of the film, but I don't think the film is going to hold up in the coming years. It claims to be an examination of feminism through the eyes of this doll. The dolls think that they have solved the problems of the real world by their existence, a trip to the real world makes it clear that this is not the case. The Kens, who are an underclass in the fantasy world, stage a rebellion and take it over. The rebellion is put down and everything returns to the status quo. And the status quo is not gender equality, it's a ruling class and a subservient class. Stripping the ideology away from the film, the story of how this universe works doesn't make any sense. The dolls are the way they are because of the way that children are playing with them. So if there is sort of a matriarchal Utopia, it's because little girls and little boys who are playing with the dolls have created it. So the...

 This is a bizarre, enjoyable film about the magic of kung fu, and the magic of cheap special effects. The film is quite silly, and never takes itself too seriously. It feels a lot like the scary movie franchise, except the gross out humor is at maybe a level two, and a level 10. But there are some moments that made me guffaw, although I think this film was directed to a much younger and a much more Chinese audience. A good thing about the film is that the mission of the main character is just to promote kung fu, doesn't care if he becomes rich or famous as long as people are using kung fu. It's a movie where the main character is not conflicted by his mission at all, nice change of pace.

 I grew up with a dad who absolutely loved Elvis Presley. He loves his music and he loved his movies. And, unlike a lot of the music that my parents listened to, I quite enjoyed it and enjoy listening to Elvis's music. Back then, though, Elvis was seen as this comic, ridiculous figure who met his end on a toilet. Nowadays, if people talk about Elvis, charges of cultural appropriation are thrown about. This movie does a very good job of explaining why Elvis was drawn to the music he was and why he sang the way he did. He was part of a community that wasn't white nor black, but very poor, which was a challenge to power structures in the south during the segregation era. He didn't do a lot to personally help those black artists at the time, and the movie makes it clear why. Although he was very talented and a musical genius, in other areas of his life he wasn't that smart because he was as I said before incredibly poor growing up. So he was the victim of incredible exploit...

 Surprisingly enjoyable for a film in which all the characters lack any charisma and the acting is almost as wooden as the tree that features as a prominent plot point. The plot is rather predictable, my 11-year-old within 20 minutes of the movie. There are some really great special effects in it, but not all the special effects are special. One great bit is when the stain glass is animated and comes to life to tell the story of the Rebellion against the Titans. A horrible example of Animation is whatever they did to the Cyclops, I guess it is hard to make a Cyclops look realistic, but this was clearly done by having the normal actor just act, and then his face was digitally altered to put one eye in the middle, and it didn't really track with the movements of the actor. This wasn't as bad as I was expecting, but it's a completely forgettable film, the new series on Disney plus is much better.

 I haven't watched the original film in quite some time, so I don't really know how this one stacks up against it. However, I can say that I did not really enjoy this one, and I thought that I had never seen it before, but I realized in the middle of watching it that yes indeed I have seen it before. Johnny Depp gives his best in personation of Michael Jackson in the height of his wacko Jacko era, and while this does provide a few Chuckles, it just makes the movie weird and not in a fun way. He's not the biggest problem with the movie though, as the biggest problem is Tim Burton's brand of weirdness. I like Tim Burton when the weirdness comes naturally and not when they have hired Tim Burton to be weird. It's kind of like the difference between Edward Scissorhands and that horrible Alice in Wonderland movie. So there's a few good lines in this movie, but I have heard that the new Charlie and the Chocolate Factory movie is much better, so either watch the origina...