The Aftermath

The Aftermath (2019)

Starring Keira Knightley, Alexander Skarsgård, and Jason Clarke

Directed by James Kent

Written by Joe Shrapnel and Anna Waterhouse

Click here for my Letterboxd review

The RyMickey Rating:  C

TV Review - Big Little Lies

Big Little Lies (2017)

Starring Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, Shailene Woodley, Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, Alexander Skarsgård, Adam Scott, James Tupper, Jeffrey Nordling, and Iain Armitage

Directed by Jean-Marc Vallée

***This show is currently available via HBO Now/Go***

I don't usually delve into television all that much here on the blog, but the star wattage of HBO's Big Little Lies was undeniably calling for me to at least check out the first installment of this seven episode limited series.  Reese Witherspoon, Nicole Kidman, and Shailene Woodley headline this intriguing mystery series set in the beachfront community of Monterey, California -- a town where the wealthy adult inhabitants trash-talk one another behind their backs as if they were petty high school gossipers.  As the series opens, someone has died at a hugely popular fundraising event for the town's public elementary school.  We don't know who is dead, but we know that the police are investigating the scene as if something malicious occurred.  As the various residents of the community talk about the backstabbing, strong-willed moms and dads who attended the event, we flashback a few weeks to the start of the school year and that's where all the fun begins.

Single mom Jane Chapman (Woodley) has just moved to Monterey with her first-grade son Ziggy (Iain Armitage) who is quiet, subdued, and perhaps a bit of a pushover -- traits Jane carries as well which don't particularly fit in with the uppity community of Monterey.  After the first day of school, Ziggy is called out in public by classmate Annabella as having tried to choke her during class.  Annabella's mother is Renata Klein (Laura Dern), a strong-willed executive whose guilt about returning to the workforce makes her virulently appalled anytime her daughter is wronged.  Ziggy denies hurting Annabella and the wealthy Madeline Martha Mckenzie (Reese Witherspoon) immediately comes to Jane and Ziggy's aid, in large part because Madeline and Renata are seemingly the two den mothers of distinct large packs of Monterey elite with neither caring for one another in the slightest.  Madeline is also good friends with Celeste Wright (Nicole Kidman), a retired lawyer and mom of twin boys, and while Celeste is a little more hesitant to simply believe Ziggy's innocence, she's frankly got more personal things to be worried about -- she's in the midst of a horribly abusive relationship with her husband Perry (Alexander Skarsgård) that she can't get out of...or perhaps doesn't want to remove herself from.

Yes, I realize the brief summary may create some confusion, but that's not even half of the web of interpersonal relationships that play a role in Big Little Lies and despite the tangled web, it's all incredibly crystal clear where and when allegiances are forged and tensions are raised.  David E. Kelley's script is pitch perfect at creating an uppity liberal atmosphere where wealth and bitchiness equals power.  Yes, the women presented are all strong, but they're all battling with the fact that they feel they have to exhibit nastiness in order to get their way in their town.  This inner conflict in all of them -- they so obviously don't want to act the way they do -- is a pivotal aspect of the character development here and Kelley nails it.

Not only does Kelley succeed, the actresses in this piece are all stellar.  Shailene Woodley is an actress I hadn't yet loved, but here she's spot-on as the beleaguered mother who desperately wants to believe her child's innocence, but begins to question it as the community begins to rally against her.  Reese Witherspoon is perhaps the best she's ever been (dramatically speaking) as Madeline whose past indiscretions begin to rear their ugly heads as the series progresses.  For the first several episodes, I thought she was going to be the MVP here, but then along comes a tour de force performance from Nicole Kidman in the final three episodes and I had to concede the MVP title to her.  As a bruised and battered wife who feels unworthy of love and affection, her Celeste is heartbreakingly numb to her surroundings and her pain is palpable throughout.

Director Jean-Marc Vallee (whose previous films Wild and Dallas Buyers Club failed to impress me) not only gets great performances from his trio of leading ladies, but from his entire cast including Laura Dern, Zoë Kravitz, and the young Iain Armitage.  Along with a heavy dark, muted color palette that morosely paints most of the visuals, Vallee's camera often lingers in scenes, making us as viewers sometimes feel uncomfortable as we impede on the lives of these strong-willed, flawed women.  In the end, though, we don't want to leave.  At seven episodes, Big Little Lies was much too short.

Movie Review - The Diary of a Teenage Girl

The Diary of a Teenage Girl (2015)

Starring Bel Powley, Alexander Skarsgård, Kristen Wiig, Madeleine Waters, and Christopher Meloni

Directed by Marielle Heller

San Francisco.  1976.  Fifteen year-old Minnie Goetze (Bel Powley) has just lost her virginity, finding herself newly sexually awakened, but still unsure of her beauty and worth in the world. Complicating things ever so slightly is the fact that Minnie was deflowered by her mother's boyfriend Monroe (Alexander Skarsgård) which, despite the obvious "ick" factor, leads to complications keeping this from Minnie's bohemian and laid-back mom/Monroe's girlfriend Charlotte (Kristen Wiig).  Minnie soon finds herself exploring not only her sexuality, but also the drug-fueled landscape of the 1970s which makes the young teenager even more of an emotional mess.

A dramedy of sorts, The Diary of a Teenage Girl - the debut of writer-director Marielle Heller - is a strangely uncomfortable watch...but I guess that's partly the point.  As Minnie explores her teenage years, the audience feels her confusion right alongside her.  Twenty-four year-old Bel Powley does a great job of showing the conflicted, carefree, and emotionally befuddled mind of a teenage girl who sees no great problem in falling for a man two decades her senior.  Monroe is never made out to be a sleazy guy by either Heller or Alexander Skarsgård and your mileage may vary as to whether you agree with that interpretation or not.  For all intents and purposes, he's a pedophile, but this film never makes that law-breaking its driving force -- or any force, for that matter.  While certainly treated with the emotional baggage that such an odd relationship would carry, you do find yourselves sometimes questioning the way the connection between Minnie and Monroe is portrayed.

Ultimately, The Diary of a Teenage Girl never quite clicked with me.  While Powley is captivating and capable of carrying the hefty film on her shoulders, I was never drawn in to her character's plight.  I think part of the reasoning for this is that her initial exploration into her sexuality was treated with humor and lightness.  When the film switches to a more serious tone -- the time when I really thought I should be "feeling" for Minnie -- I never connected on an emotional level with the characters.  Perhaps it was the tonal switch or perhaps it was just some unconscious voice in my mind saying that "she got what was coming to her," but despite wanting to become invested in Minnie, I never got there.  That said, the film shows promise for writer-director Heller and places young Bel Powley on the map of up-and-coming actresses.  Here's hoping for a bit more solid cinematic contributions in their future.

The RyMickey Rating: C+

Movie Review - The Giver

The Giver (2014)

Starring Brenton Thwaites, Jeff Bridges, Meryl Streep, Alexander Skarsgård, Katie Holmes, Odeya Rush, Cameron Monaghan, and Taylor Swift

Directed by Philip Noyce

I never read The Giver growing up so despite the Lois Lowry book being a staple of many folks' youth, it held no revered place in my mind.  I thought that may help things given how the general public opinion of director Philip Noyce's adaptation was that of disappointment upon the film's release this summer.  Unfortunately, it didn't.  While visually appealing, The Giver fails to deliver anything new on a science fiction premise we've seen before.  (Granted, perhaps the novel The Giver gave us this premise first...but in the cinematic world, this movie feels like old news.)

The year is 2048 and following some horrific events, a community has decided to erase all memory of its inhabitants in an attempt to create a "perfect" city in which everyone lives peacefully together.  The experiment is seemingly working as sixteen year old Jonas (Brenton Thwaites) is assigned his career at the annual graduation ceremony.  Jonas is deemed "special" and is granted the right to visit The Giver (Jeff Bridges), the only member of the community who retains the memories of the past.  These memories are utilized by the Giver to advise the Chief Elder (Meryl Streep) to shape the community's actions.  Aging, however, the Giver begins to pass on his memories to Jonas who finds his community's robotic and sterile atmosphere disturbing and decides to do something to shake things up a bit.

Unfortunately, this "utopian" society thing feels so played out nowadays and The Giver comes at (one can only hope) the tail end of this sci-fi subgenre.  While visually appealing (director Philip Noyce begins the film is stark blacks, whites, and grays and only introduces colors as Jonas begins to receive memories), the film feels simplistic and childish at times.  It lacks the metaphorical messages that I assume it wished to espouse.  The young Thwaites is fine, but he's really quite emotionless and his character's romantic subplot with a young gal just weighs the film down with unneeded teenage angst.  Meryl Streep is okay, but certainly nothing special, and Jeff Bridges mumbles so incoherently at times that I felt like I wanted to put on the subtitles.

The RyMickey Rating:  C-

Movie Review - Disconnect

Disconnect (2013)

Starring Jason Bateman, Hope Davis, Frank Grillo, Michael Nyqvist, Paula Patton, Andrea Riseborough, Alexander Scarsgård, Max Thieriot, Colin Ford, Jonah Bobo, Norbert Leo Butz, Haley Ramm, Kasi Lemmons, and Aviad Bernstein

Directed by Henry-Alex Rubin

Disconnect is one of those movies where a bunch of apparently unrelated storylines have tenuous connections that allow the players from one tale to have interactions with players from another tale.  I typically really like these kinds of films and while Disconnect generally works, it's not nearly as deep and profound as it aspires to be.  Taking on the internet, Disconnect attempts to tell us that we enter this (not so) newfound technological breakthrough at our own risk -- but is that really new information for us?  Aren't we all aware that bad folks are ready to prey on us online?

Still, despite the obvious, we are treated to some good stories here.  The best involves a young high school kid named Ben (Jonah Bobo) who just so happens to look at two of his classmates Jason and Frye (Colin Ford and Aviad Bernstein) in a disdainful way as they play a trick on someone in a mall.  Jason and Frye get ticked off and decide to get back at the shy introvert Ben by befriending him on Facebook with a fake female profile.  Ben finds himself falling for this fake profile as Jason and Frye continue escalating the relationship until Ben is eventually humiliated at school.  Needless to say, the humiliation ends in tragedy, changing forever the lives of Ben, his parents (Jason Bateman and Hope Davis), and Jason and Frye.

Another major story revolves around a news reporter (Andrea Riseborough) who investigates and befriends a young man (Max Thieriot) who was willingly hired to work on an internet porn site catering to those wanting to video chat with young men and women.  The final tale focuses on Cindy and Derek Hull (Paula Patton and Alexander Scarsgård), a couple who recently lost their only child.  While Derek tries to suppress his grief by online gambling, Cindy has taken up visiting grief community websites where she befriends a guy who says he recently lost his wife.  When the Hulls find their credit cards maxed out and their savings depleted, they begin to investigate whether Cindy's online "friend" is the culprit.

While all of these stories are perfectly acceptable and never teeter into "boring" territory, they also fail to be fresh.  I couldn't help but feel that I'd seen all of these tales told before on daytime television.  Thankfully, the acting ensemble is all pretty great from the youngest actors to the oldest ones and they elevate the material beyond the obvious.

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - The East

The East (2013)

Starring Brit Marling, Alexander Scarsgård, Ellen Page, Patricia Clarkson, Jason Ritter, and Julia Ormand

Directed by Zal Batmanglij

My conservative mindset certainly doesn't necessarily sympathize with the ecological terror group known as The East who take it upon themselves to secretly invade the homes and offices of big businesses and cause great harm to those whom they believe are corrupting the American people and the US soil on which they live.  However, director Zal Batmanglij and his co-writer Brit Marling give us a lead character in Sarah (also played by Marling) who, upon infiltrating the group as part of her job, questions The East's integrity particularly as the anarchist collective revs up their attacks, elevating them to more serious and possibly deadly retribution events.  Through the character of Sarah, a former FBI agent now working for an elite private intelligence firm, the audience at least gets a modicum of moral questioning of the group who aren't quite given a free pass.

Admittedly (and anyone who disagrees with this just doesn't want to face the facts), The East certainly portrays its titular group as the more morally correct figures here.  The group's leader Benji (Alexander Scarsgård) is romanticized by both the lens and the character of Sarah herself.  However, the film doesn't necessarily let the members of The East get off scott free -- and they absolutely shouldn't considering some of the truly terroristic acts they inflict on others.

Brit Marling has been on my list of impressive up-and-coming actresses ever since her turn in 2011's Another Earth and she continued to showcase her talents in the fantastic and underseen Arbitrage (which is streaming on Netflix...so watch it).  It's obvious Marling is a smart cookie -- she co-wrote both Another Earth and this film, both movies that don't dumb down anything for their viewers -- and I love that she imbues her characters with the same intelligence she must carry with herself in real life.

However, once you move behind Marling's Sarah, the film doesn't give its other characters as much depth as they probably should have.  It also doesn't help that the film flounders a bit in its epilogue-like final fifteen minutes.  There's part of me that feels the film cops out a little bit and then there's another part of me that realizes it was really the only way the writers could've ended it without alienating one side or another of the political spectrum.  But then I ask myself, when has alienating one side of the political spectrum stopped Hollywood before?

The RyMickey Rating:  C+

Movie Review - What Maisie Knew

What Maisie Knew (2013)

Starring Julianne Moore, Alexander Skarsgård, Onata Aprile, Joanna Vanderham, and Steve Coogan

Directed by Scott McGehee and David Siegel

What Maisie Knew is a movie you desperately want to end a certain way, but you figure while you're watching it that it never will pan out the way you hope and it causes a depressing pall to ceaselessly hang around.  I say that not as a criticism of the film at all, but instead as a credit to the screenwriters Nancy Doyne and Carroll Cartwright, young actress Onata Aprile in the title role, and directors Scott McGehee and David Seigel who craft a movie told essentially entirely from through the eyes of a six year-old girl being used as a pawn by her parents (Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan) in a bitter custody battle.  What Maisie Knew isn't without its faults, but it's a film worth seeing thanks to the unique perspective we witness to decidedly adult situations.

As the film opens we see black screen with a female and male voice arguing with each other using decidedly adult language.  We soon discover that these voices belong to Susanna (Julianne Moore), a pushy rock star who likes to live life a little on the edge, and Beale (Steve Coogan), her live-in long-time significant other who's had enough of her rough persona, but seems a bit too egotistical for his own good.  This argument between Susanna and Beale happens within earshot and eyeshot of six year-old Maisie (played by the aforementioned Aprile in her first film role) and it will be the first of many times we see her subjected to listening to her parents duke it out with one another and then later try and convince her that the other parent is "the bad one."  With Susanna and Beale fighting in court for custody of young Maisie, they both decide that they'll look better in the court's eyes if they find someone to "love" again, thereby raising Maisie in a two-person family.  Beale hooks up with Maisie's nanny Margo (Joanna Vanderham), a fellow Brit whose innocence makes her actually believe Beale has no ulterior motives to marrying her.  Susanna finds Lincoln (Alexander Skarsgård), a guy who at first glance seems to be a lackadaisical loser, but just may be the kind of loving support young Maisie needs.  Both Margo and Lincoln are simply props in the vicious game Susanna and Beale are playing and despite the fact that they're simply being used, they both find themselves growing to love young Maisie and hating what her parents are putting her through.

What I find refreshingly original about What Maisie Knew is that the entire story is told from the perspective of the six year-old Maisie.  I'm not sure there's a single scene that's depicted that doesn't have Maisie either in it or peering in on it.  Kudos to the directors for keeping things squarely focused -- it may not be the most technically fascinating film, but this perspective (and the willingness to not shift from this framework) certainly aids the movie.  

Whereas Maisie's innocence may not allow her to fully understand everything her parents are doing to her, we in the audience grow to have an intense hatred for the way Susanna and Beale manipulate her young mind into kowtowing to their intentions.  Little Onata Aprile gives a very nice performance in a role that never once feels as if it's being "acted."  Granted, Aprile's character isn't necessarily forced to do anything outwardly that gives her a fantastic "moment," but I was certainly impressed with the young girl's ability to communicate all we needed to know with simply the naturalness of her wide eyes or hushed silence.

Unfortunately, the film falters a bit with the performances of Julianne Moore and Steve Coogan.  Much focus is placed on their relationship and I found both of them to be playing their roles a bit too one-notish.  Neither adult seems fully developed, but rather portraying caricatures of who they are supposed to be.  Additionally -- and there's a slight spoilerish aspect that comes along with this final comment -- the film ends in a wholly unexpected way that seems a bit too farfetched to be truly believable.  I simply couldn't imagine the narcissistic parents we've grown to hate throughout the movie doing what they do at the film's conclusion.  Fault for this lies in both the screenwriters and the actors and it does ultimately knock the film down several notches despite its other positive attributes.  

The RyMickey Rating:  B-

Movie Review - Battleship

Battleship (2012)

Starring Taylor Kitsch, Alexander Skarsgård, Brooklyn Decker, Rihanna, and Liam Neeson 

Directed by Peter Berg

Movies like Battleship make me wonder why I like the cinematic medium as much as I do.  When such dreck can be produced, mass-marketed, and proven successful (at least in the overseas territories), I have to question the taste level of our world as a whole.  There's nothing to like about this movie.  Nothing at all.  It's not like it's the worst thing ever created, but it's simply a waste of two hours that simply shouldn't exist.

It's as if the film was created solely using focus groups trying to determine what the mass populous likes in the broadest sense possible.

1. Tropical Settings -- Hawaii should work, so let's set this thing there.  Plus, it's surrounded by water and since our movie's name is Battleship that means we have to spend time on boats.
2. Military Men in Uniform -- Ladies love that, plus it implies "war" and that appeals to the men.
3. Sports Illustrated Models -- Brooklyn Decker fits the bill, trying her hardest to make you look anywhere other than her breasts. (FYI -- she doesn't succeed at that task.)
4. Aliens -- They've proven successful in terms of entertainment value in the past, so let's have some aliens come to earth...and they won't be friendly...but they won't be real nasty either...
5. War -- As mentioned in Point #2, let's have the military men go to war against the alien beings.  Men can relate to the machismo, while women can swoon over a guy like Taylor Kitsch who can save the day.  [Poor Mr. Kitsch -- after this and John Carter he's not a guy you can bet on for quality, that's for sure.]
6. Top 40 Music -- Can we just throw some urban singer in the movie since our cast is mostly caucasian?  We need to appeal across the boards here.  L.L. Cool J isn't available? Okay, Rihanna fits the bill.  Doesn't matter that she hasn't acted before and doesn't exude any charisma.  She's popular.  That's all that we need to worry about.
7. Sassy Side Characters -- See Point #6
8. Action, Action, Action! -- People like explosions.  People like gunfire.  People apparently like to watch a movie where the action sequences make no sense and are pieced together in the most ridiculous ways creating a sense of incoherence.
9. "Pearl Harbor" Romance -- Remember in Pearl Harbor how people loved that the first hour was filled with nothing but Kate Beckinsale flip-flopping between whether she liked Ben Affleck or Josh Hartnett?  People loved the fact that we held off seeing the action, right?  Let's not copy that exactly, but let's take forty minutes before anything happens.  Ms. Decker and Mr. Kitsch should be more than adequate to hold an audience's interest.
10. Gaming Culture -- We're a culture of gamers and while I know that tends to mean video gaming, why not go retro and create a movie around a game like Battleship?  Isn't that what focus groups were asking for when they said they liked gaming?

The problem with Battleship is simply that it takes too many basic concepts, throws them into the pot, and lets them simmer without allowing any cohesiveness to form.  Director Peter Berg has crafted his worst film yet by a mile.  Not only does he fail at creating decent action sequences, but his quiet character moments are laughable and painful to sit through.  Quite simply, there's no reason Battleship needed to be made and it's certainly a waste of time.

The RyMickey Rating:  D-

Movie Review - Straw Dogs

Straw Dogs (2011)

Starring James Marsden, Kate Bosworth, Alexander Skarsgård, and James Woods

Directed by Rod Lurie

When screenwriter David Sumner (James Marsden) and his actress wife Amy (Kate Bosworth) move back to her childhood hometown in Mississippi, they're hoping for some peace and quiet away from the Hollywood spotlight so David can work on his new screenplay.  The couple hire a group of hicks (and, yes, I'm using that word derogatively because like in every Hollywood movie, the Southerners here are all hicks that spit a lot and carry shotguns around with them) to fix up the roof of a rotting barn at their secluded house.  The workers, headed by Amy's former boyfriend Charlie (Alexander Skarsgård), look like trouble from the get-go -- so much so that the thought that a smart guy like David would hire these guys is completely irrational and ruins the movie's plausibility right in the opening act -- and the group proves to be a handful.  Needless to say, Straw Dogs (and the original 1971 movie upon which this remake is based) is touted for both its violence and its message that even a civilized man can resort to heinous acts to save the ones he loves, but that isn't nearly enough to recommend this flick.

The problem is that beyond that overly violent final act, Straw Dogs has nothing going for it.  It's built upon a premise that's simply unbelievable -- David is a smart guy (he plays chess so we know that's the case) and yet he hires this grungy looking group to fix his house.  The movie tries to play it up that he was just trying to be nice to some hometown guys, but as soon as he hires this construction crew, all realism went out the window for me.  And, if I'm being completely honest (and this may make me sound awful), I wanted the violence to come into play a whole lot sooner than it actually did.  There's a particularly heinous act that happens about halfway through the movie that should have precipitated the ending to come a lot sooner, but the film just lingers around for nearly an hour more.

James Marsden and Kate Bosworth are fine, but I found their relationship to be rather odd and off-putting and I don't think that was supposed to be the point.  Alexander Skarsgård is kinda creepy, but he's certainly not bringing anything new to the table.  And the less said about the overacting James Woods whose character precipitates the third act's violence the better.

But at least this flick gave me a better appreciation for using bear traps as a means of enacting revenge on your worst enemy.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+

Movie Review - Melancholia

Melancholia (2011)

Starring Kirsten Dunst, Charlotte Gainsbourg, Kiefer Sutherland, Alexander Skarsgård, Stellan Skarsgård, and Charlotte Rampling

Directed by Lars von Trier

***An early review -- This film arrives in local arthouses on Friday***

Melancholia is, by definition, a sense of sadness and the dour atmosphere of Lars von Trier's Melancholia is enough to send one into a depressive state.  This is a film that just reeks of self-importance and self-indulgence and despite some solid performances, I found myself unequivocally disinterested in the whole affair.  Ultimately, the overarching problem with the film is a main character who is so oddly unbalanced that I never once got a sense of who this person was or why she was acting in the manner that she was.  This proves to be a nearly insurmountable problem with Melancholia despite a final hour that was surprisingly tense and well-executed.

That aforementioned problematic character is Justine (played by Kirsten Dunst who won Best Actress at the Cannes Film Festival this past May), a young woman whom we meet on her wedding day as she arrives at the reception held at a fancy country club owned by her brother-in-law John (Kiefer Sutherland) and her sister Claire (Charlotte Gainsbourg).  She is seemingly happy, fawning over her new husband Michael (Alexander Skarsgård).  Sometime in the night, though, things seem to fall apart for Justine and she retreats from the festivities, falling into a depression that just simply doesn't seem warranted (or, if warranted, comes on much too quickly and intensely), causing her to do things that seem so incredibly out-of-place thereby ruining the "credibility" of the character for me.

Part One of the film focuses on "Justine," but the much more successful Part Two focuses on her sister "Claire."  At the beginning of the film, we are treated to an odd eight-minute long wordless dreamlike sequence set to classical music detailing an apocalyptic moment.  It is in Part Two that we begin to realize what the heck that opening barrage of images was all about.  After having welcomed an almost catatonically depressed Justine back into their country club home, Claire is worried about the fact that a rogue planet called Melancholia is set to pass by Earth, just missing a catastrophic collision.  While her astronomy-nut husband John tries to console her, Claire finds herself slowly slipping into a state of depression.  Unlike Justine's depression, however, Claire's emotional state feels legit -- she's got a young son and the thought of the world ending is intensely foreboding.

While I may not have understood the emotional state of Justine at all, I will say that Kirsten Dunst is in top form and I blame director-writer Lars von Trier for crafting an unbalanced character rather than harp on Dunst for the flaws.  Dunst particularly shines in Part Two (as does the whole movie in general) thanks to interactions with the wonderful Charlotte Gainsbourg who, unlike Dunst, is given a character with an arc that is fully believable.  Because of this, Gainsbourg's emotional journey is the one which the viewers will respond to the most and the film's final moments are rather riveting because of this.  [I should also note that I was rather surprisingly impressed by Kiefer Sutherland here, portraying (at least outwardly) the only sane person amidst this group of crazies.]

Melancholia is at times a beautiful film.  There are images that are sometimes stunning to look at.  The film's final moments are pretty good (perhaps even verging on great) cinema.  However, the great forty-five minute finale can't negate the fact that the film's opening ninety minutes are intensely flawed due to the fact that the main character rings so untrue.

The RyMickey Rating:  D+