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Movies are the ultimate art.
They comprise nearly every other form of art: Writing, Acting, Cinematography, Music, Dance, Composition, Singing, Storytelling, Directing, Visual Effects, Conceptual Art, and at times even Painting and Sculpture.
There is so much happening in a movie that our minds quite literally cannot process it all. Every completed movie is full of tragedies and triumphs, months and months of planning, preparation, and coordination.
Every movie made is a miracle.
It is extremely difficult to make one. So much so, that the famous Movie Director, Sidney Lumet (12 Angry Men, Murder On The Orient Express), said this after making a very difficult movie, The Hill, “That night at dinner, I literally burst into tears. My wife asked what was wrong. I said I was just so tired of fighting. I’d fought for the script, for the right cast, then fought the heat of the desert, the exhaustion, the British rules about extras . . . And now I was fighting about an idiotic ad. And that’s what so much of making movies is about: fighting” (Making Movies, p. 211). Movie Directors battle seemingly infinite challenges to make each movie. And we’re all grateful they do, because without good movies, life would be so much more boring.
I’m half African-American and half Caucasian. I grew up in Rocklin, California (20 minutes NE of Sacramento). I went to Rocklin High School and played basketball where my team and I did a lot of winning. I’ve always been a very good athlete.
I’m also a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints which means I’m Christian. I served a 2-year mission in Buenos Aires Argentina and obtained my Bachelor’s degree from Brigham Young University.
While at BYU, I started writing. I’ve been writing for over 15 years and I’ve written several screenplays, outlined many more, and written a novel.
I’ve been extensively studying how to Direct movies from Masterclass, Tomorrow’s Filmmakers, Skillshare and many other online resources. My favorite Masterclasses about Film Directing are by Ron Howard (Apollo 13, A Beautiful Mind) and James Cameron (Avatar, Titanic).
In Ron Howard’s class he shows in great detail how he shoots a scene and goes into considerable depth about the process of Film Directing. James Cameron’s class is incredibly inspiring and helped me realize that if aspiring Film Directors really want to make movies, we have to figure it out.
I’ve also been taking 1-on-1 acting classes from the very talented Ailsa Marshall for nearly the past 18 months. She is both a gifted actress and acting coach. I feel very blessed to learn from her.
Plus, I’ve seen nearly every PG and PG-13 movie that has come out in movie theaters since Covid.
I’m currently in the process of raising capital to make my first movie. Once I do, I’m going to open my own Film Production company, Produce, Direct and Star in my movie.
I figure that in the meantime, I might as well share with the world the way I see movies.
One thing I guarantee: If you read enough of my movie reviews, it will transform the way you see movies.
The first thing about my movie critiques you should know is that I’m a very very tough movie critic, but I’m also fair.
Here’s how I break down the analysis of a movie:
Most people that I talk to generally give movies an A+ through an F to say how much they liked a movie. I feel that doesn’t allow for enough precision. I use a 0-10 approach with 5 being average and ten being perfect (unfortunately, there are some 0’s). I also add one decimal point, so movie scores could be something like an 8.5 or a 3.2. I do this, because some movies are very good bordering on great (8.9) while others are very good but closer to good (8.1).
I’ll also add an A-F grade because that’s what people are familiar with.
Here’s the breakdown of my reviews by the numbers and letters:
Furthermore, I grade the individual aspects of a movie: Acting, Music, Writing, Cinematography, and others. I’ll add great lines from the movie when I see them and anything special I feel is worthy of consideration.
When analyzing the Acting, I’ll go through each star’s performance and talk about different aspects of it and give the star a grade.
When analyzing the Writing, there are two main aspects:
1) Plot:
1A) Plot Unpredictability (without getting weird)—Pay attention Marvel. When we see a movie, we don’t want to know how it’s going to end from the beginning. We want to be surprised, but in ways that make sense and don’t make the movie unbelievably strange. For an example of what not to do, watch some of the recent Marvel movies (Eternals, Doctor Strange In The Multiverse Of Madness and others) that are certainly unpredictable but are totally weird—way too weird for most people to enjoy.
1B) Plot Complexity—Someone give a memo to the writers of Hollywood: A great plot should have layers of complexity that intertwine with each other.
2) Dialogue:
A great movie has great dialogue which comes in the form of witty banter, playful teasing, entertaining flirting with a lot of push and pull, veiled intentions, symbolism, metaphor, and of course, humor. Great dialogue is incredibly entertaining to watch, but it is also incredibly difficult to write. Great writers figure it out.
*A note about a third aspect of writing: Character Development
Character Development is the one aspect of writing that you hear lauded by every writer ad nauseam (for me it’s ad nausea). I personally feel that it gets way way too much attention and writers should focus much more time on creating complex, interesting, unpredictable (but not weird) plots with great dialogue, then the character development will happen naturally. I probably won’t comment on character development much because it’s a byproduct of all the other aspects of writing.
Writing Overall:
Very few Hollywood writers can master all of these aspects even one time and almost no one seems to be able to replicate it. Right now, my beef is with Hollywood writers. I feel that most of them just aren’t very good. Over the past few years, there’s only been on average maybe 3 movies or so per year that were written very very well. All the rest of the hundreds of movies were rush jobs where writers were taking shortcuts. In today’s Hollywood, the acting is terrific, the visual effects are terrific, the cinematography is terrific, the directing is terrific, but the writing is poor. I feel very strongly that for a movie to differentiate itself from the rest, great writing is the key. Unfortunately, it is glanced over far too often.
I’ll always end a movie review with My Recommendation.
There are four options:
DEFINITELY SEE IT
SEE IT
DON’T SEE IT
DEFINITELY DON’T SEE IT
Also, at times I’ll add certain groups who like a particular type of movie to My Recommendation. For example, a good action movie could receive this recommendation:
If you like action movies SEE IT
If you don’t like action movies DON’T SEE IT
This accounts for the fact that different people like different kinds of movies. So, you’ll get my breakdown for each aspect of the movie, an overall grade for the movie, and my recommendation to SEE IT or DON’T SEE IT.
People are generally looking for something to do on the weekends and want to know if any of the movies in the movie theater are good. That’s where I come in. I’ll release one movie review every Friday, generally of a movie that is currently in the movie theaters or of a movie that recently went out of theaters and is going up on streaming services. That way, you can have an expert opinion with the most in-depth analysis of a movie to help you decide if you want to see it. I’ll never give away any of the plot in a movie, at least not any more than is in the preview.
Occasionally, there are dead times when there really aren’t any movies being released. During those times I’ll do something fun like, “Best Movies Since Covid” or “The Worst Movie Last Year.”
Because I’m a member of The Church of Jesus Christ of Latter-Day Saints and I’m trying to follow Jesus Christ I don’t watch R rated movies. Movies get an R rating generally because they have a lot of F words and/or because they have explicit sex scenes.
Here’s my beef with a bunch of F words:
Isn’t a writer supposed to be creative? Isn’t the writer supposed to give us something we’ve never seen before? Then why does a movie have the same word over and over and over again? That is literally the epitome of the lack of creativity. Writers can do better.
Here’s my beef with sex scenes:
A 3-5 minute sex scene brings the plot of any movie to a grinding halt. What could easily be displayed in 10 seconds with having the couple kiss and maybe wake up next to each other takes up 3-5 minutes of the movie. You want to know why? Because the writer doesn’t know what else to write and needs to fill up time so he or she says, “Well, I don’t know what else to do so let’s have a sex scene. Everyone loves sex scenes, right?” How about you give us something we’ve never seen before? How about you give us an incredibly interesting and complex plot with great dialogue? Once again, writers can do better, much better.
So, I only watch and review PG-13 and PG movies as well as the occasional G movie. Don’t think I’m alone though. The people agree with me. As of this writing, only 54 movies have ever grossed at least $1 Billion. You know how many of them were rated R? One. You know how many were PG-13? Thirty-five. And several others are pretty close. I think the rest are PG.
It’s easy to see that I’m not the only one who believes that all those F words and sex scenes and nudity are totally unnecessary and actually make the story worse, much worse. In fact, I found an article that says in 2022 (according to Statista) PG-13 movies accounted for around two-thirds of the box office revenue in the US (most other countries have no movie rating system). So, the people here at home, in the great country of USA clearly prefer PG-13 movies to those of any other rating.
I’ll also add a Family Friendly section that briefly mentions if there are a lot of cuss words, if there’s an F word, or if there’s a sex scene or two. This is an important section for those who only want to watch uplifting movies or for parents with younger children who want to know if they should bring their children along.
No. I’ll write other articles about anything I find interesting. It could be short stories that I write, interesting events and people in history, funny stories about celebrities, or even things in my personal life. Nothing is out of scope for my site, but Fridays will always be reserved for a movie review.
Yes, I do. The name of my Etsy shop is Picturesque Shirt N Mug. I sell T-shirts, Sweatshirts, Hoodies, and Mugs. I’ll add recently listed shirts and other merch at the end of each article. You can find my shop by clicking on this link:
Now that you know me better and understand my review process, you can check out my Movie Reviews by clicking here.
