Movies I Wish Were Better

The remake of The Saint, starring Adam Rayner and Eliza Dushko who is so thin she looks like a cancer patient.

Roger Moore and Ian Ogilvie, both of whom also played The Saint, appear in cameo roles. I couldn't get past the first half of them movie.

Sadly, this remake misses. What should be lighthearted and witty is a paint-by-numbers cliché. What a shame to waste such talented actors.
Van Helsing borrows from popular vampire and zombie movies and TV shows. "Waking from a coma, Vanessa finds soldier Axel protecting her during a vampire apocalypse known as The Awakening." Yep, The Awakening was the first season of Buffy, the Vampire Slayer. The twist? Vanessa now has supernatural powers.

I made it to the middle just to see if something compelling happened, but my time was not rewarded.

A Kind of Murder, a retro thriller, also suffered from poor pacing. Obsessed with an unsolved murder case, a crime novelist fantasizes about murdering his wife. Then she turns up dead.

Starring Patrick Wilson and Jessica Biel. This was billed as a sixties film, but the vibe is more like mid-fifties.

Handsome, a Netflix Original, was a disappointment. I really wanted to like this take on the detective genre, but what should have been funny and/or quirky seemed forced and artificial rather than organic. Maybe they just tried too hard.

Takeaway Truth

Movies, like books, can sometimes fail despite a great cast, an interesting story, and good directing.

Sometimes all the elements just never come together in a compelling story.