video review : Black Mass

video review : Black Mass

Use your hand to cover the “M” on the opening title shot. It’ll be the most entertaining part of the movie. Not that this Boston crime story will necessarily put you to sleep. It’s just that director Scott Cooper is a poor man’s Martin Scorsese.

It’s a case of style over substance as Johnny Depp, looking like an actor in costume, plays the role of Winter Hill Gang leader James Whitey Bulger. The plot preludes his life as a fugitive, but it’s barely interesting enough to make you care.

my rating : 3 of 5

2015

video review : Meadowland

video review : Meadowland

A man and woman lose their kid. That’s not a euphemism for death. They literally lose him at a gas station one day. The presumption is that he was kidnapped; the premise for a potentially engrossing story; but director Reed Morano ruins it by skipping to the boring epilogue. That means we’re forced to watch the parents mope as uneventful month by uneventful month goes by.

The movie focuses more on the woman, played by Olivia Wilde, as she goes down a spiral that is odd and a little absurd. Eating old cookie crumbs, smoking crack, having sex with strangers; her naked ass in the sex scene is the best part; and stalking little boys may be a part of her personality, but it seems unlikely simply losing a child of her own would make her do such things.

my rating : 2 of 5

2015