A few months ago, Being the Ricardos came out on Amazon Prime, which seems to be the home of Lucille Ball and Desi Arnaz as a new documentary debuted on the streaming service. Lucy and Desi, directed by comedic actor Amy Poehler, tells the story of the iconic couple from I Love Lucy, many times through their own words on taped interviews.

The documentary goes into more specifics into the story, unlike the Being the Ricardos, which focused more on the Communist accusation. It was touched on during the doc, but it was not the main section. It included more, the ultimate downfall of the couple, the divorce, the Desilu Studios, right up to the death of Lucy in 1989.

Not only did we hear from Lucy and Desi, we heard from Carol Burnett, Bette Midler, Charo, Norman Lear, as well as Lucy Arnaz and Desi Arnaz Jr.

This doc was more about the power couple, the rise and the fall of Lucy and Desi. They were not together for a long time, but the world saw them as inseparable. The doc gives an amazing line about how both Desi and Lucy remarried and were with their new spouses for years more than they were married. However, there was always a connection between Lucy and Desi and that connection comes through in the documentary loud and clear.

I would go as far as to say the final ten minutes of the doc was extremely emotional and might bring some to tears.

They may not have gone into a great deal of specifics about the pair of them, highlighting most of the strength, but there was enough of the struggles to show how much of a bright flame they were together, that was destined to go out.

4 stars

We have had a bunch of variations on the Batman character over the years, many of them great, a few not so much. Plenty of fans were not happy when the latest actor to be cast as the caped crusader, Robert Pattinson, was announced. There was plenty of pushback because of the Twilight films, which was terribly unfair since Pattinson has made some great movies with stellar performances since then. Unfortunately, some people can not just give someone a chance. If you watched The Batman and legitimately thought Pattinson was not good, then fine, more power to you, but to do some because of something he did over ten years ago, well, that’s just not fair.

Having said all that, I enjoyed Pattinson as The Batman, and in this movie, we got more Batman on screen than I think we got in any of the other variations (perhaps with the exception of Batman ’66). There was some Bruce Wayne air time, but it was limited.

In The Batman, we were introduced to a Dark Knight in his second year of fighting crime. We wisely cast aside the origin story, because we all know about Thomas and Martha Wayne’s death in Crime Alley by now. I was always amazed that when they were doing the Andrew Garfield Amazing Spider-Man, people were whining about seeing Uncle Ben die again. Honestly, we’ve seen Thomas and Martha so many more times that poor Uncle Ben, it is stunning. Skipping that part of the story felt like a wise choice.

This was probably the most we got of Jim Gordon, too, played here by Jeffrey Wright. He was front and center in the action and the investigations, playing an advocate for Batman, despite his status as a vigilante and the opposition much of the Gotham police seemed to have for Batman. Gordon and Batman were excellent together and felt as if they were partners.

Speaking of investigations, this was the first time that we got the Detective version of Batman since some of the animated series. Certainly the first live-action version of the Detective. Batman was at the crime scene picking up details that helped make his case. It was a great trait that we have not seen enough from a character dubbed the World’s Greatest Detective.

There were two exceptional villains in the film. Paul Dano was a horrifying, serial killer-like Riddler and Colin Farrell was unrecognizable as The Penguin. There is no way that anyone who did not already know that Colin Farrell was playing Penguin in The Batman could be able to tell that it is him. His performance is great, but I would have loved to get more from him. Dano makes this Riddler his own, an original character unlike any previous Batman villain. I do think he disappeared for a chunk of time in the middle of the film and that hurt some of the character’s momentum.

At almost three hours, I do believe that The Batman was too long and could have easily trimmed about 20 minutes off of the runtime without any trouble. In fact, it might have made the story a little more streamlined than what it was. The film had some pacing problems and that was the biggest factor in the negative.

Zoë Kravitz was very good as Selina Kyle, Catwoman. She was another character that I would have liked more from, but what we got was excellent. They brought in some of the character’s story beats from the classic Batman story, The Long Halloween, which was a good choice. I liked the chemistry between Pattinson and Kravitz and I look forward to exploring this more down the road.

This was a dark film, but it was not as bleak as some of the Zack Snyder Batman stuff. There is a good message of hope in The Batman and we get a character arc dealing with hope and symbolism for the Batman as well.

The action was top notch. The look of the film was beautiful with several gorgeous shots of Gotham and the adventure that was occurring.

I had some criticisms for The Batman, but nothing that is more than a few quips. This was an exceptional film with a use of the character of Batman that we had never seen before. Pattison was a great Batman and the rest of the cast brought their best too. Though a little long, The Batman was a fabulous film.

4.7 stars

2021 was hot with musicals. We had In the Heights, West Side Story, Tick, Tick…Boom among others. Cyrano is another musical that opened in limited release in 2021, and it was another huge win in the musical genre.

The story of Cyrano de Bergerac has been told many times, usually with Cyrano being shown with a large nose. This time, Cyrano is portrayed as a midget, and Cyrano is played by the ever excellent Peter Dinklage. I wondered if Peter Dinklage could sing. The answer to that was… basically. He handled the job well, and they gave him songs that kept his range in mind. Because of that, Dinklage sounded about as good as could be expected.

The story is very well known. Cyrano was secretly in love with longtime friend Roxanne (Haley Bennett), but Roxanne has fallen in love at first sight with a new member of the guard, Christian (Kelvin Harrison, Jr). However, Christian was not good with words and Roxanne wanted more than just looks. Christian gets Cyrano to help him by writing the letters for him and even speaking for him.

There is no doubt that Peter Dinklage is the reason to watch this movie. He is absolutely brilliant in this movie. He brought such confidence, and yet an underlying pain of doubt. Intelligent, yet unable to truly express his feelings as his own. The complicated performance was deep and compelling and truly deserving the Oscar nomination that he should have received (but didn’t).

I am not sure I loved the ending of the movie. There was one scene in particular that did not make any sense to me and seemed to throw the story in a different direction. Still, there was a lot of emotion and the Dinklage performance and the music made this worth the time.

3.75 stars

So far in 2022, there are three separate films that will be fighting for the spot atop the Worst Films of the Year list in December. I hated Jackass Forever. Last week was the new Texas Chainsaw Massacre. And now was number three, the horrible horror movie, Studio 666.

I had first heard about this movie during an episode of the Geek Buddies on YouTube where they reviewed the trailer and it sounded like a whole lot of fun.

It was not.

The Foo Fighters (playing themselves) led by David Grohl, had to make a new record, which would be their tenth. However, they did not want the same old sound. So they set themselves up in an old, weird Encino house that had a history of rock-N-roll murders. The house gave the proper sound for the band and they ignored the past. When the demons started coming out and killing people, things start to get hectic for the band.

Okay, first off… the Foo Fighters are not actors. In fact, they were absolutely terrible in this film. They ranged from wooden to overacting in the same scenes. They went to the school of acting where if you make faces, you are expressing emotion, and some of the faces they made were just hilarious, unintentionally.

The story was throw away. The dialogue atrocious. Some of the special effects were decent and some of it looked like a fan homemade movie. There were some vomit scenes (which you know I always hate) that were so ridiculous looking that it did not even bother me.

None of the comedy was funny. It played like a group of adolescents with little to no adult mentality. It was one of those films where I realized about ten minutes in that I was hating this and I actually considered walking out of the theater. I stuck around until the end of this crap because … well, not sure why.

Terrible. If this is not in the top 3-5 worst movies of 2022, then this will have been one horrendous year.

0.5 stars

I have been waiting on watching this film for quite awhile now. When it first came out in the theaters (and flopped hard), I thought about seeing it. Pre-pandemic I certainly would have seen it in the theaters. I even had a ticket purchased for it, but I was not feeling well so I never saw it. The critics were not kind to it so it did not become a big need.

Then, it came available on streaming, and I considered renting it, but it was $19.99 and that felt a little pricy for a film that was getting 25% on Rotten Tomatoes. I decided to wait until the price dropped down to rent it.

However, I found out that The 355 was streaming for free on Peacock. That was the price for me!

The 355 was a film featuring a group of female spies in the realm of James Bond who were forced to work together to retrieve a piece of technology that threatened the security of the world. Jessica Chastain, Diane Kruger, Penélope Cruz, Bingbing Fan and Lupito Nyong’o were the stars of the film, each from an organization that was after the technology. Sebastian Stan and Edgar Ramirez were also in the film.

This was an impressive cast of actors, but, honestly, there was not much for any of them to do. The story itself is nothing special and the action was so-so. There were some solid interactions with the characters, as you would expect with the level of this cast. There was not enough elevation of the material to save what was here.

The story was predictable. Simon Kinberg was the director and he has had a few big time fails in filmmaking, including the Dark Phoenix X-Men film. He is not much better in The 355.

After such a long wait, The 355 was hardly worth it. I am glad that I did not spend 20 dollars to watch it. It was not the worst thing I have seen, but with the cast that this movie had, there is no excuse for it to be as weak of a film as it was.

2.5 stars

There was a new horror/monster movie out this weekend that was also a period piece. The Cursed is the latest werewolf movie, but it does set up the creatures with a little different mythos which works fairly well.

The film started out in 1917 World War I where the soldiers were getting shot from German soldiers. We get a look at the triage, with doctors trying to save the soldiers they could. With one wounded soldier in particular, the doctor was trying to remove the bullets in him when he pulled out one that was not from a German gun. It was a silver bullet.

Cut to 35 years earlier, the movie switches to its main setting of a small village in France where Seamus Laurent (Alistair Petrie) and his family lived. After a violent encounter with a group of gypsies, Seamus’s family wound up cursed and their son Edward (Max Mackintosh) disappeared.

Meanwhile, pathologist John McBride (Boyd Holbrook) came to town to investigate the dark mystery and to look into something in his own past.

The film was slow, building toward some violence in the third act that turned out extremely gory and bloody.

The film was shot beautifully and it does a strong job of building the tension of the situations and the overall tone of foreboding is done well. However, I found the first part of the film a little dull and it did not quite engage my attention as much as I would have liked.

The performances were fine. I especially enjoyed the work of Boyd Holbrook. There were no well known actors in the film which sometimes works well, allowing you to focus in on the characters they were playing.

The Cursed was a different type of werewolf film. The structure was unusual, featuring a bunch of dream sequences. It may not be the best film I have seen, but it took some chances, and I did like that.

3 stars

The newest film that is sure to spurn the internet rage has arrived in the theaters this weekend, finally. Uncharted is the next video game adaptation to try and find its success on the big screen.

The reason this will spurn internet rage is because of the love of the video game and the casting of Tom Holland as the lead character Nathan Drake. They made him younger in Uncharted the movie than he was in the video games and there have been cries of “Tom Holland is not Nathan Drake.”

Now, I never played the video game and I would go as far as to say that I had never heard of the character until a YouTube short with Nathan Fillion (everybody’s wish to play Drake, apparently) as Nathan Drake sent the geek world into a tizzy. I did not have any preconceived notions on how Nathan Drake was supposed to be represented and so I did not have to worry whether or not this movie could reach those levels. I also went into the film hearing some mixed reviews, leaning toward the low side, so I was able to adjust my expectations again.

With those things working for me, I actually thought Uncharted was okay.

Nathan Drake (Tom Holland) was a young thief working as a bartender when he was approached by Victor “Sully” Sullivan (Mark Wahlberg) who wanted the kid to come along with him on an adventure to try and find a missing treasure, the same treasure that Nathan’s brother wanted to go in search of when they were younger.

Nathan did not trust Sully but the tie to his brother, who had also worked with Sully, as well as the promise of adventure, pulled Nathan into the act.

Villainous Santiago Moncada (Antonio Banderas) was in pursuit of the treasure as well and he involved some muscle in Braddock (Tati Gabrielle), who had some kind of connection with Sully. Sully was in a deal as well with Chloe (Sophia Ali), despite the fact that none of them trusted each other and were just waiting for the betrayal, unsure who would turn on the other first.

Uncharted’s biggest strength is Tom Holland, who is remarkably charismatic and is as relatable as they come. Again, is he Nathan Drake? I have no idea, but he worked extremely well for me. He brought a fantastic physicality to the role that fit beautifully with the action and he is a strong enough actor to make the emotional beats effective.

Mark Wahlberg is fine, but he is not a standout in the film. He is basically doing what Mark Wahlberg does.

The action of the film was well done. Sure, a lot of it is unlikely and pushes credibility quite a bit, but that did not take me out of the film. There were a few times when I rolled my eyes with certain action beats, but most of it was well done, and it was well structured and shot. I could tell what was happening and it had a decent balance to it. There were only a couple of times when the CGI jumped off the screen. I saw this in an IMAX theater and I do believe that it helped make the action more expressive.

I would say that there is little that is new here. In fact, you can see places in this story/script where they were taking ideas from Indiana Jones movies, The Goonies, National Treasure and plenty of other treasure hunting movies. I was not expecting Uncharted to break new ground heading in so this was another fact that did not affect my viewing.

I found the film a decent time at the theater. I did not love it, but it was enjoyable enough for a viewing and Tom Holland was excellent as the protagonist, no matter how miscast people claim that he was.

3.3 stars

Steven Soderbergh has a new film available recently on HBO Max. It is called Kimi and stars Zoë Kravitz in the lead role, which is not Kimi.

As you discover quickly, Kimi is not a character’s name, but the name of a home assistant much like Alexa or Siri. Zoë Kravitz played Angela Childs, a tech worker who reviews data streams from the Kimi assistants, has been suffering from agoraphobia since she had been assaulted some time ago. When Angela found some disturbing information on one of the data streams, she tried to find the proper people to help her with it. The problem was that she was going to have to go out from her apartment, something that would be her greatest fear.

The film was set in Seattle during the COVID-19 pandemic, and that only added to the neuroses of Angela. A relationship with neighbor Terry (Byron Bowers) was stressed from her agoraphobia as well.

This was a lot of fun. I really liked the character of Angela because she was clearly smart and did not do dumb things just because the plot expected her to. In fact, she always seemed to be a couple of steps ahead of the people after her trying to keep what she found a secret.

Zoë Kravitz does a wonderful job showing the continuous issues and mental problems that Angela was having while still being totally competent and bright. Kravitz had to hit this out of the park for this film to work, and she does an admirable job of it.

The run time of the film was both a strength and a weakness for me. At just around 90+ minutes, Kimi is a quick and enjoyable watch. However, because the film is not that long, some scenes felt a bit rushed and packed in. Angela went from not being able to leave her place to running all around Seattle with minimum trouble. If the film was another 15-20 minutes, I think some of these character bits would work better and we would have more of a feel of Angela’s agoraphobia. It would feel like it was more of a challenge to overcome than just the minor inconvenience that you can get past with minimal effort.

Our antagonists are under written and a few more scenes would go a long way to helping flesh them out more.

Still, I enjoyed Kimi despite a few of the flaws of the picture. Angela Childs is an intelligent and kick ass female that does not take a backseat just because she has some weaknesses. She is no one’s victim, despite having faced such issues in her past. Zoë Kravitz is the star of every second of this film.

3.75 stars

Netflix dropped the new version of Texas Chainsaw Massacre, the “sequel” to the original film from 1974. The new Texas Chainsaw Massacre seemed to take a page out of the book of the new Halloween films by picking up the story decades later while retconning the sequels that came after it. They even tossed in an old survivor from the original film as a character.

A group of influencers come to Harlow to create a mecca for culture by buying up failed businesses and opening a restaurant or comic book shop. As they were there, they heard about the legend of Leatherface, the killer from the original movie who disappeared for 50 years. Hey, guess what… Leatherface is in the town! What do you know?

The group of young people, led by Melody (Sarah Yarkin), her sister Lila (Elsie Fisher), Dante (Jacob Latimore), and Ruth (Nell Hudson), come into an old, broken down orphanage where Leatherface’s mommy was keeping him hidden. When the group made the old woman leave the place, she had a heart attack (or something) and died, triggering Leatherface to start cutting off faces and other body parts.

The young influencers also came across a redneck hick named Richter (Moe Dunford) who immediately took a dislike to the group because of their liberal ideals. He called them a cult.

This film went out of the way to punish anyone who would believe in any kind of “cancel culture” or liberal agenda. The film seemed overjoyed to slice up anyone who might take that ideal.

Leatherface, like many other slashers, seemed to be able to move freely around the area without any concern for time. He was here and then mere moments later, he was there. He was exactly wherever the movie’s plot needed him to be without any need for explanation or believability. I do not think there was any kind of mysticism taking place here, although Leatherface sure seemed spry for someone who would have been in his, what, seventies, at least.

The film was filled with gore and then some more gore. It sacrificed any chance for character development for more gore. They even brought in a literal bus full of people to be nothing more than victims. Even this movie’s Laurie Strode wannabe, Sally Hardesty (Olwen Fouéré), did not have any character at all. She even had a chance to finish everything early, but she just let Leatherface go. It was an insane scene that made zero sense.

The film made Lily a survivor of a school shooting and did nothing but use that as a repulsive tag. It showed her fascinated by redneck Richter’s assault gun in one of the most distasteful moments of the flick.

The film is only concerned with being a gore fest, and that it does regularly. There were some truly disgusting kills, but there was nothing here that required a new Texas Chainsaw Massacre to be made. It seemed as if it only wanted to remake 2018 Halloween and punish those privileged Gen Z people who only want to make the world a better place. Off with their heads, I guess.

This is bad.

0.8 stars

During the DailyView, I looked for the 1978 version of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile. I was interested in seeing that first film before the newest rendition of the film from Kenneth Branagh. However, I could not find the film on any streaming services or in any other format. It remains, to this day, on the DailyView to watch list.

In the end, I was very happy that I did not see the original or read the book that it was at first, because then I approached the 2022 film with a blank slate.

Death on the Nile had been delayed several times, for multiple reasons including the COVID-19 pandemic, but I found this movie to be well worth the wait.

Classic detective Hercule Poirot (Kenneth Branagh) was on vacation in Egypt when he comes upon a newly married couple who feel that they were in danger.

Keeping the story sparse, basically there is a murder on a boat on the Nile and Poirot has to solve the case among the group of suspects.

The married couple was played by Gal Gadot and Armie Hammer. They were both very good in their roles. Emma Mackey played Jacqueline de Bellefort, a spurned fiancé of Simon Doyle (Armie Hammer), who became a crazed stalker-type character and did it wonderfully.

There was a remarkably talented ensemble cast involved besides the actors I have already mentioned included Annette Bening, Letitia Wright, Sophie Okonedo, Tom Bateman, Russell Brand, Ali Fazal, Jennifer Saunders, Dawn French, Rose Leslie, and Susannah Fielding.

Besides the main case, we actually got a lot of background information on Poirot, including a shocking inclusion of an origin story for the Poirot mustache.

Kenneth Branagh was sensational as Hercule Poirot. He brought such an energy and a passion to the role that was obvious on the screen. His eyes were as expressive as I have seen and he brought more depth to Poirot than I expected. He was also the director of the film and he created a wonderful story with some amazing visuals.

Speaking of the visuals, the setting of Egypt was filled with such beauty and amazement that there were several scenes where the imagery of the landscapes were gorgeous. Now, admittedly, there were some scenes where the CGI/green screen stood out much more than you would have liked, but those moments were not the dominant amount of times and did not detract from the overall presentation.

The story dragged a little bit in the first part of the story, but once things started to cook, I truly enjoyed Death on the Nile.

4.1 stars

There was a new documentary that appeared on Netflix this past week entitled The Tinder Swindler, and it is a compelling, amazing and eventually sad documentary about the way someone could take advantage of others who were looking for love or for solid relationships.

Simon Leviev used the dating app Tinder to target certain women and con them out of hundreds of thousands of dollars, according to this new documentary. In the film, we hear the stories of how Simon wormed his way into the life of two individual women and how he sent them into debt by borrowing money from them, both cash and with credit cards, that he never had any intentions of paying back.

The two women had different relationships with Simon. Cecilie had a romantic relationship with him, believing that she was special in his life. Meanwhile, Pernilla had formed a close friendship with him after they realized that they were not going to work as a couple. Both women were drawn close in with Simon and were used to provide him with money.

Their stories show just how dangerous it can be to hook up with someone online and how social media can be a detriment to a positive relationship.

It is not until the doc focuses on a third woman, Ayleen, who discovered the truth about Simon in an article on the internet from the journalists who had been tracking this case for awhile. She decided that she would turn the tables on the swindler, and she does so in a dramatic and fully satisfying manner.

However, the end of the documentary was a shock as the details about Simon’s current situation is revealed and it ends the story in an extremely disappointing way.

A remarkable story of greed and crookedness that is completely believable in this day and age. It goes to show you to be very cautious when online because there are criminals everywhere.

4 stars

Roland Emmerich, director of this film, made a snide comment about Marvel, DC and Star Wars movies destroying the movie business. Then, ironically, he puts out a movie like Moonfall, which is really close to a super hero movie and is just so much worse than all of the super hero movies recently.

In Moonfall, the moon falls toward earth. Yup, that was the plot. At least at the start. We were getting the Emmerich 2012/Independence Day/The Day After Tomorrow type of disaster film where the moon had mysteriously come out of its orbit and would eventually crash into the earth, causing massive destruction and death. Thankfully, a plucky group of characters including Jo (Halle Berry), Brian (Patrick Wilson and Dr. KC Houseman (John Bradley) take off to try and save the ear5th while their family members and kids try to avoid dying on the planet.

It is the same as any other disaster movie you have ever seen and felt like all of Emmerich’s films blended together into one. The group of people on the earth, which included Brian’s son (Charlie Plummer), and, for some reason the unbelievably wasted Michael Peña, were characters that I could not care about less. They were a total waste of time.

By the way, into the third act, the film changes pace and tries to escape the disaster movie genre and become a high concept sci-fi film, and it failed miserably. The HUGE amount of exposition that happened at the very beginning of the third act totally dragged any little bit of momentum the film may have had to a grinding stop.

The CGI is not great either, especially the destruction on the earth. It was very limited amount of special effects on earth, certainly no where near what you may expect in a disaster film.

Emmerich seemed to have little skill at creating realistic or compelling real humans. The dialogue is terrible. Their interactions are wooden and lacking any real true feeling. He should just stick to his overarching destructive tendencies.

Moonfall can’t even become a dumb disaster movie. It failed at most of the traits of the movie. I disliked this film. And, sorry Roland, it has nothing to do with Marvel, DC or Star Wars. Moonfall is just a crappy movie.

1.4 stars

I almost did not go to this movie. I am not a fan of Jackass and it does not feel like the humor I enjoy, but it worked out for me to see it and I went.

And I hated it.

Hated it.

I’m not sure whether the cast was more tortured or if I was.

I hate it when there is vomit in movies, so a film that featured the Vomitron, which is real vomit, is not going to be something I like.

Honestly, I may have giggled twice in the entire movie. I found nothing funny. It was just a bunch of poop, pain and more penises than I have ever seen in a movie.

All these guys standing around laughing at people who have done something stupid and are hurt make me feel as if they are nothing but a bunch of assholes, not just jackasses. They also pulled some bits that felt cruel, not funny. The thing with the bear. The thing with the rattlesnake in the dark. I was really worried that a couple of these Jackasses were going to have a heart attack doing these.

The best part about the film was when they brought out the vulture because that bird was frightening. I couldn’t take my eyes off of it. It was horrifying, and that did not include them throwing raw meat into the crotch area of Wee Man for the vulture to eat. The bird was easily the best moment.

Otherwise, I hated so much of this movie. Even a few of the moments that could have been funny had already been in the trailer (such as the Machine Gun Kelly backhand or the bicycle riding into the wall) and it was spoiled.

Oh, and the beginning introduction with the Godzilla penis thing… may have been one of the worst thing that I have ever seen.

Horrible, This was just not for me.

0 stars

I’ve always enjoyed killer shark movies.

Then there was The Requin. I had to look up that title. I guess it is French for shark, though I do not know why it is French, since it takes place in Vietnam.

This film is horrendous. It is all over the place. The characters are wooden and the acting is terrible. The effects on the sharks (which do not show up until well into the second act of the movie) are abysmal. The third act is downright laughable, and not in the good way.

A grieving couple, who have just lost a baby (I think) went to Vietnam to a beach side house (like most people do) which gets swept out to sea during a storm. Alicia Silverstone and James Tupper are Jaelyn and Kyle respectfully. They are the dumbest people.

The film teased sharks showing up throughout the first and much of the second act but just made it fish or dolphins. Oh…look… that’s not shark, tee hee.

Its very bloody with body parts at times, but none of them look realistic. Nothing about the backstory that is tossed in the film in the first act is dealt with later. It just feels like a lame attempt to fill out the time. There is only so much you can do with a shark attack after all.

Unfortunately, the shark is as dumb as the couple because the shark dies in the most inane way, practically by accident.

I can see why this went directly to streaming/on demand because nobody would go to see this in a theater. It is an early leader for worst movie of the year in 2022.

1 star

I found the God Committee on Netflix this evening. It was a film released in July of the past year in limited release.

The God Committee is the story of a group of people at a hospital on a committee that make decisions on which patients receive transplants. Dr. Boxer (Kelsey Grammar) is retiring from the committee after years, being replaced by Dr. Jordan Taylor (Julia Stiles). They receive a heart, but the patient it was intended for died when prepping. The committee had one hour to make the decision on who would get the heart instead.

The film also shows the committee members seven years in the future, dealing with the consequences of their decision.

I have to say, I was confused by the scenes in the future. It took me quite awhile to figure that out. I was especially confused since Kelsey Grammar had differing amount of hair. So much that I thought to myself…is he wearing a piece?

Once I figured out the time frame, the film made more sense. I’m not sure the story that they were telling was intense enough to spread over seven years. The acting was solid. Janeane Garofalo was on the committee as well.

There were plenty of moral decisions that the committee had to consider before rendering their verdict. The dialogue was strong and the debates in the office were the best part of the film. The interactions with the committee was the standout.

In the end, the film is okay. It has some good acting and some good pieces. The future story is the weakest part.

3 stars