Be Kind, Please Rewind

He’s Second Opinionated. He’s the…

Vidiot

Week of July 8, 2016

In my opinion no one ever listens to my opinion. First up…

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I Saw The Light

The number one threat to a country music star’s career is their successful transition into pop music.

Unfortunately, the cowboy crooner in this biopic didn’t live long enough to employ auto-tune.

Repetitively rejected from the Grand Ole Opry for his youthful inexperience, Hank Williams (Tom Hiddleston) wasn’t able to strike a cord with promotes, fans, and later Hollywood, until he started composing ditties inspired by the spats he had with his singing partner/wife (Elizabeth Olsen).

But just as those hit records were rolling in, Hank’s dalliances, hard drinking, and drug use derailed his meteoric rise.

Although Hiddleston is able to embody the honky-tonk hero in appearance and essence, his vocal range is lacking that hillbilly twang.

Meanwhile, the laborious script and ham-fisted director are more concerned with chastising him for his faults than celebrating his triumphs.

Incidentally, sex with Minnie Pearl was not the cause of Hank's death.  Red Light 

By the Sea    

Vacations are a great way to rekindle a marriage as long as you remember to tell your spouse which country you’ll be in.

Shockingly, the languishing lovers in this drama are staying seaside jointly.

Author Roland (Brad Pitt) takes his impotent wife Vanessa (Angelina Jolie Pitt) to a coastal French village to write his next novel and hopefully stir something within her.

While the setting fails to stimulate Vanessa, the newlyweds (Mélanie Laurent, Melvil Poupaud) next-door do. So, she peeps on them through a hole-in-the-wall, while Roland drinks downstairs with the widowed hotelier (Niels Arestrup).

While writer/director Jolie Pitt tries admirably to concoct her own foreign film through risqué subject matter, long silences and minimal exposition, her biggest mistake is casting herself and her husband in what ultimately becomes a pretension vanity project.

Furthermore, holes in the wall bigger than a silver dollar are not for sticking your eye in.  Red Light

 

Miracles from Heaven

The problem with God performing miracles is that he automatically expects you to return the favour.

Which means the cured kid in this drama has one whooper of an IUO.

Stricken with an ailment that prevents her from digesting food, 10-year-old Anna Beam (Kylie Rogers) undergoes rigorous testing at the behest of her mother (Jennifer Garner) that ultimately concludes that Anna has intestinal pseudoobstruction.

It’s not until she falls 30-feet from a cottonwood tree and has a near-death experience that Anna finds relief from the excruciating pain. Even more astounding is Anna’s account of her encounter with the big man upstairs.

Christian propaganda masquerading as wholesome family entertainment, this mawkish mockup of the mother’s own memoirs emulates movie-of-the-week acting and storytelling with a side of Sunday school sermonizing thrown in for good measure.

In fact, Millennials would be more inclined to attend Sunday services if church had an omelet station.  Red Light

***Pony Express Bride***

 

Love Comes Softly

Marriages lasted so long in the Old West because men had access to whorehouses.

Regrettably, the husband in this drama won’t live long enough to experience one.

Pregnant pioneer Marty (Katherine Heigl) must fend for herself when her husband dies en route to their new life out West. Unable to endure, she marries a widower, Clarke (Dale Midkiff), who asks that she keep house and care for his daughter Missie (Skye McCole Bartusiak) in exchange for room and board.

Although it is a sham marriage, over the winter months Marty not only warms up to her unlikely husband but also his steadfast faith in Him.

Based on the Christian book series and the first instalment in the 11-part franchise, this Hallmark made-for-TV movie cleverly keeps its pious undertones hidden behind an awkward romance, and other frontier tomfoolery.

                              

Mind you, back then the good book was predominantly used for squashing rattlesnakes.

He’s an Awkward Stagecoach. He’s the…

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