DOWNTON ABBEY: THE GRAND FINALE (2025)

Thomas was one of the best characters not only on Downton Abbey but maybe in the history of British TV series. He was an antagonist, from being a coward during the war to scheming against pretty much everyone in the downstairs working servant chambers... The fact he was homosexual, on the show itself, simply added to his perplexed nature... gave him a more human quality but hardly enough humanity to where he wasn't desperate and edgy, and enigmatic, interesting... 

But in the last of three movies, having already hooked up with a famous actor, here he merely gives knowing expressions of being the secret servant who is really an equal lover... deleting any significant edge the character once had... In different ways, the same could be said of everyone in the cast... by this third movie, which centers around the meager plot of royals having dinner at the titular castle, no one really means anything, and that ranges from the upstairs and the downstairs... 

None of the characters are even part of the ironical nature of the haves and have-nots since, being so beloved, their dreams came true upon the first motion picture so audiences can see them given a happy ending, from being contentedly married to becoming famous scriptwriters... So there is no tension or drama. The only b-story involves real life dramatist Noel Coward giving the same "one day we'll have rights" expression while supposedly basing his own future famous works on the characters here... Who aren't even worthy or intriguing enough to make their own movie entertaining... a series that should have ended either on TV or one farewell movie. Three is two too many. Rating: *1/2

MAESTRO (2023)

Fifty minutes into Bradley Cooper's MAESTRO, his directorial and starring-role biopic of composer Leonard Bernstein, he's discussing a possible book written about all his accomplishments, from teaching children on television to his best remembered work, West Side Story...

And yet we never got to witness any of it, instead  listening to he and classy wife Felicia Montealegre (a put-upon Carey Mulligan) within an intellectually-rambling romance from picnics to parties (in-between sporadic bisexual trysts) and not much else about the man that Cooper seems to have more fun portraying as a flamboyant and sophisticated, British-mannered, chain-smoking proto-beatnik than celebrating the legendary musical genius built right into the title... And aesthetically Cooper's cinematic influences... from LENNY to RAGING BULL to CAPOTE... are on full avant-garde display but with nothing behind it, really, except mere window dressing... with tinted glass. Grade: D

THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN (1979)

It's odd to experience such obviously catered-to-opening-night-audience mainstream fare from the 1970's, a decade supposedly against the kind of sellout cinema churned out more obviously in the decades that followed... Yet the main problem with THE ELECTRIC HORSEMAN is the title character, a has-been rodeo star played by Robert Redford, seeming so outright tired of fame that it never feels possible he was once a professional at anything... and the connected capitalism/commercialism... in the form of a breakfast cereal he's reluctantly hawking... is also too forced and overboard to take seriously...

Meanwhile the shallow corporate goons are so shamelessly unlikable that Jane Fonda... as a journalist bent on interviewing the dissociated (thus uninteresting) Redford... never has to prove herself a worthy love-interest being merely a better person than the scum surrounding her... And the buried lead plot-line, of Redford saving an abused horse used for the commercials in the central locale of glitzy Las Vegas, feels weakly tacked onto a picture that spends too much time spoon-feeding its audience, so that... after even a mere ten minutes... everything tastes the same. RATES: **

MRS. SOFFEL (1984)

Based on a true story of two death-row-imprisoned brothers about to be hanged, and then rescued by the warden's wife... the titular character played by a classic-melodrama-suited Diane Keaton... these convicted killers have very little interesting about them, while the leader, played by Mel Gibson, looks like... well... a young Mel Gibson (opposite Matthew Modine), who just about any woman would fall for...

And being a likeable, wink-at-rebellion movie-rebel countered by a bullying guard, there's absolutely no edge (or glory) to his performance that would, in a better film, provide Gibson a possible Oscar nomination... he simply plays it too safe and affable here, as does the director... Who painted a deliberately bleak canvas nicely recreating turn-of-the-century rural America in its mahogany landscapes, dire factories and the actual prison... But what's here is more a Harlequin Romance montage than either an effective prison-plot-escape thriller or true story that needed telling: because storywise, MRS. SOFFEL is more whispered than spoken and, soon after, completely forgotten. Rates: **

AMERICAN BEAUTY (1999)

The Oscar-winning AMERICAN BEAUTY, deliberately attempts to play on cliches, never fully progresses past them for the characters to be fleshed out as actual humans...Especially Annette Bening in what could be the WORST performance in an Oscar winning feature, screaming her lines as a shallow, work-motivated suburban real estate agent yuppie-from-hell as if she were in another movie altogether, or auditioning for an overboard parody of upper middle class families, and she seems created just to make our central hero look cooler and become more sympathetic, but he didn't need help since Spacey is actually quite good, charming, the suburb dad version of the usual "lovable loser" herein lusting for his bratty-deep, morbid daughter's sexy blonde friend... And how would his borderline Goth daughter be a cheerleader in the first place? 

But she has her own admirer, crushed on by the next door neighbor's even more morbid son... And his dad's a Marine who represents what Hollywood hates: An extreme right winger, homophobic, in the military, cold to his wife, abusive to his son, and get this... he's a homosexual and... well let's not spoil the ending... Overall, one of the aspects that inspired other films is the ghostly piano score, mellow, haunting, overly-moving, which you now hear the likes of in every "important" film's trailer (it used to be the more upbeat piano theme for Terms of Endearment)... Other than that, AMERICAN BEAUTY stole more from past films (or rather, cliches from past films) than it actually created yet, still, you can't say it isn't entertaining being a fun ride when not trying to be too deep, or too obviously trying to prove a point or agenda... Maybe if it were a more straight-line comedy instead of telling us to Look Closely the audience could judge for themselves what to get out of the story, because, for the most part, the themes are as forced to the viewer as Spacey's character's life was forcing him into the kind of submission he eventually dug his way out of... Or perhaps... that was the intention all along. Rates: ***

DOWNTON ABBEY: A NEW ERA (2022)

They took a breezy sit-com plot, about a movie being made in the Downton Abbey house, combined with a side-story about Maggie Smith inheriting a French villa from an ex lover, and split apart the rich and poor characters to where neither can do very much to help either story along...

For instance, Carson is the most against the production movie company's disruption of the house, so they send him to France... But wouldn't he be better batting heads with the studio? God knows, that would have made for a terrific episode... 

As for the overall drama/melodrama that the series is known for, there aren't too many shocks or surprises except for a searing epilogue, a few near-trysts along the way and, not counting a semi-intriguing history lesson about silent film stars fearing the introduction of "talkies" (already known from Singin' in the Rain), it's in one ear, out the other, and without any necessary tension or conflict... Ironically, up on the big screen, the characters seem much smaller, somehow, while the director doesn't savor the larger-than-life beauty and elegance of Downton or even France for that matter...Then again, for lightweight comedy, it's not a bad 90-minutes: Just don't except A New Era to equal the terrific British series that, for the most part, feels far too "Hollywood" here. Rates: **

OLIVER'S STORY (1978)

Poor Ryan O'Neal couldn't catch a break. Even two films now considered classics didn't make money in the 1970's upon release. His daughter Tatum's BAD NEWS BEARS beat the pants off both Stanley Kubrick's BARRY LYNDON and Walter Hill's THE DRIVER...

While the comparably mainstream and now basically forgotten OLIVER'S STORY did even worse... ironic being the sequel to what's considered the first most lucrative pre-JAWS summer blockbuster, LOVE STORY, as Ryan himself had a reason/theory of why it failed: Intellectual thinking man's ingenue Nicola Pagett (resembling cult starlet Pamela Franklin) was supposed to be the girl he winds up with as, early on, they share a blind date, which is more interesting and with far more chemistry than any of O'Neal's scenes with wooden rich girl Candace Bergen, who, being the studio's choice of perfect and pretty, made it so Nicola's third act return was left on the cutting room floor. And while OLIVER'S STORY is not a bad picture... with a particularly clever style of quick-editing so the scene being cut-from seems deliberately unfulfilled (like happens in ROSEMARY'S BABY)... there are relaxing moments within the mahogany-hued classy-to-poor New York City where idealistic rich kid Oliver, a lawyer, fights a slum lord with student employees: yet there's simply no inner peace or contentment for the titular character or his titular story: all he needed was the right girl, who was perfectly whin reach. Rates: ***

Nicola Pagett as Joanna Stone in Oliver's Story

Nicola Pagett as Joanna Stone in Oliver's Story

Nicola Pagett with Ryan O'Neal in Oliver's Story

Ann Risley & Deborah Rush are two bar girls in Oliver's Story

GOING HOME

title: GOING HOME

year: 1971

cast: Robert Mitchum, Jan-Michael Vincent, Sally Kirkland

rating: ***

This film centering on a war hero, Robert Mitchum, who violently murders his wife witnessed by his four-year-old son, who's now grown-up in the form of brooding rebel Jan-Michael Vincent, is passably entertaining fare. Mitchum lives with young trailertrash girlfriend Brenda Vaccaro, attempting to steal every scene while Jan-Michael, having just returned home, seems either bent on revenge or forgiveness for his aged yet still tough pop as they hang out bowling and drinking: making up for lost time. The best moments involve jarring situations that seem vividly real but aren't really happening (seen in Vincent's mind) (one being Mitchum destroying a pick-up-truck with a tire iron) or flashbacks viewed in present-time locations ala IN COLD BLOOD. It's an easy-to-watch character-study without much character-development, neither Mitchum or Vincent becoming fully realized or their past fitfully resolved, but it's nice seeing the two steely mavericks together either way.

THE INCIDENT

title: THE INCIDENT

year: 1967

cast: Beau Bridges, Tony Musante, Martin Sheen, Ed McMahon, Jack Gilford, Donna Mills, Brock Peters, Ruby Dee, Gary Merrill

rating: ***1/2

Ensemble cast of characters in New York City, from thugs to soldiers to an assortment of loners and couples (old and young, black and white), are introduced in various locations on a late Sunday night. When they arrive on the same subway, in the same car, the stage is set. The problem is the same thing that works. The play-like atmosphere weaves in and out of realistic intensity and the acting, at times, goes overboard, especially the leader of two thugs played to the hilt by Tony Musante who, through threats and machismo and along with his strange and dangerous partner Martin Sheen, hold the passengers hostage: driving each to individual breaking-points. But the movie really belongs to Beau Bridges as a seemingly docile soldier from Oklahoma. With genuine confidence and a palpable inner-strength he gives hope to a seemingly hopeless situation and brings the movie to a more realistic (and less dated) level acting-wise. Sheen's performance is also top-notch, foreshadowing his role in BADLANDS a few years later.

BACKDRAFT

title: BACKDRAFT

year: 1991

cast: Kurt Russell, William Baldwin, Robert De Niro

director: Ron Howard

normal movie rating: *

bad movie rating: ****

Ron Howard, former child-star turned overrated film director, throws anything and everything into the pot and ends up creating the worst "blockbuster" ever made, and grandiosely so. While focusing on the lives of two brothers, seasoned fireman Kurt Russell and new-recruit William Baldwin, who lost their firefighting dad years before in an, um, fire, the story really centers on a succession of explosions that kill seemingly random victims like something from a horror movie. There are good guys and bad guys; the good guys are blue collar, the bad guys wear suits (the same as the producers of this movie, most likely). Kurt Russell's acting is so hammy it's hilarious, and every shot of William Baldwin screams: "Aren't I a cutie pie?" Scott Glenn, J.T. Walsh, Rebecca DeMorney and Jennifer Jason Leigh collect a paycheck. Robert DeNiro, as a Merlin-like arson investigator trying to "out think" the fire - treated as a living/breathing vengeful entity - gives Russell a run in the bad acting department, trumped only by Donald Sutherland as a deranged yet helpful incarcerated arsonist (liken to Hannibal Lecter). But it's Ron Howard - attempting to turn every frame into something that'd awe opening night audiences everywhere - who really deserves the blame. Although in making a completely over-the-top disaster, he does succeed, splendidly.

KING KONG (1933)

title: KING KONG

year: 1933

cast: Robert Armstrong, Fay Wray, Bruce Cabot, James Flavin

directors: Merian C. Cooper, Ernest B. Schoedsack

rating: *****

If you love a movie enough and consider it flawless, a review will simply be propaganda. Well here comes some propaganda, which won't merit a great, or even a good, review, but more like... preaching. KING KONG is an historic film, and like anything tagged "classic" or "groundbreaking", it's often misunderstood as to what made it stand-out or, to use another cliche, "timeless". The special effects/stop-motion animation is, in today's standards, quite dated - but it's how close we are to (and move along with) the action that still makes it work. Every swing, every bite, every scream, every roar, and all the chasing-around puts us in front row seats. The sparse dialog is corny at times, and the actors aren't exactly Gable and Lombard. But there are no wasted words; every syllable leads to the main destination, Skull Island. And once we arrive we leap right into dealing with the situation (with some terrific eye-candy, especially those dinosaurs) and then, in the final third taking place in New York, we're given a climax that cannot be done today. Kong was a monster. A native-chomping, subway-breaking, woman-dropping, cold-blooded beast. And while you genuinely feel for the big guy, he's a killer, not a sympathetic Vegetarian driven to madness by evil exploitative humans, like both remakes. And in that, we can enjoy both loving and battling him at the same time. No message is needed. An anti-hero monster movie without any bullshit. That's why it cannot be outdone with political-correctness or CGI. Amen.

HOMER AND EDDIE

title: HOMER AND EDDIE

year: 1989

cast: Whoopi Goldberg, James Belushi, Karen Black, John Waters

rating: **1/2

Road movies usually, no matter what, have the same thing going for them: if they get boring there's always something else up the... road. In this film, a retarded man - because of an injury where a baseball hit him on the head - takes to the highway for no other reason than his curiosity of something outside his small town, and, after getting robbed, meets his polar opposite, a streetwise black woman who, at first, seems like a funny spontaneous crook but as the film progresses we learn she has a terminal brain tumor. She enjoys not only robbing stores at gun point but eventually killing people. The goofy interplay between the duo is hard, almost impossible to take during the first half (not helped by some horrible jump-cut editing), but when the violence begins, the film gets more interesting though never realistic. Belushi's performance embodies the typical Hollywood template when dealing with the mentally-challenged, displaying selective endearingly-childlike simplicity until a sort of "alternate wisdom" occurs: teaching us how we all should be. And Whoopi is being Whoopi, for better or worse.

KINGS ROW

year: 1942

cast: Robert Cummings, Ronald Reagan, Ann Sheridan

rating: ***1/2

There's something thoroughly hypnotic and intoxicating about this melodrama centering on a handful of unlucky individuals growing up in a strange dusty town the film's named after. Ronald Reagan, never known for his terrific acting ability, has enough charm to make you forget his limited range, and Robert Cummings is his perfect corny counterpart, always seeming ready to break into song - usually a sad one. The best performances are from the ever-competitive envy-ridden women either going insane or just about to. The camera sweeps to all the right angles, the music flows beautifully, but by the end, since most of the storyline jumps to and fro at a rather quick pace, it seems like a condensed epic, raising the enviable question: Where's the rest of it?

ST. ELSEWHERE (SEASON 1)

title: ST. ELSEWHERE (SEASON 1)

year: 1982

cast: Ed Flanders, Norman Lloyd, Denzel Washington, David Morse, Howie Mandel, David Birney, Cynthia Sykes, Terrence Knox, Christina Pickles, William Daniels, Kim Miyori

rating: *****

Putting aside the horrendous fact that the entire show could be the imagination of an austic boy (as implied in the last episode), I see ST. ELSEWHERE... at least in its primal stage... as a show about a REAL LIFE hospital stuck in purgatory and constantly badgered by a determined, pesky demon called Fate. The first season sets up how each character deals with that demon and adjusts into the purgatory setting. Ed Flanders as "Dr. Donald Westphall" gets everything loaded upon him; in his always saddened owlish eyes embody the pains of not only the patients, but the young doctors under his meek, yet always respected, leadership. What doesn't hinder "Westphall" will encroach upon his youthful version, David Morse as the heart-felt, thoroughly involving and ueber-sensitive "Dr. Jack Morrison"... trying to make things better even though that unseen yet always formidable "curse" resides throughout the hallways of "St. Eligus" i.e. "St. Elsewhere", a hospital where people "end up", seemingly without choice. Denzel Washington, as "Dr. Philip Chandler", the only actor to have, after the show's run, make it REALLY big and to win a couple Oscars, keeps his head cool with acute professionalism and, as the only character seemingly immune of the demon, is also an example to the other young doctors by always being in control. You'd think Howie Mandel, as the playful jokey "Dr. Wayne Fiscus", provides only comic relief, but his acting - and character - is on par with the others; his upbeat personality, while distracting the demon, is often made to wrestle with it head-on. Ed Begley Jr., as nerdy yet capable newbie surgeon "Dr. Victor Ehrlich", is connected with the show's protagonist, the uppity chief-surgeon "Dr. Mark Craig", played wonderfully by William Daniels, who, if it were another actor, could have easily been an over-the-top, unrealistic character... both young and old surgeon are perfect loggerheads, keeping each other in check at every turn. Terrance Knox as "Dr. Peter White" begins as a family man but then shows his darker side - this dough-eyed, spacey, robotic and often clumsy doc becomes more and more "possessed" in every episode. David Birney, who only lasted a few seasons, as the handsome, charming ladykiller "Dr. Ben Samuels", who listens to really bad covers of Bruce Springsteen and Police songs while in surgery, does a decent job as the show's sex symbol, but doesn't really fit like the others... the stranger the show gets, the more he's out of place, belonging in a more "normal" hospital. Least I forget the women: the tough-yet-not-overbearing, and downright gorgeous Cynthia Sykes as "Dr. Annie Cavanero", who never backs down to what she believes are the best decisions, even when she's wrong; Kim Miyori as Cavanero's young version - who seems like she could also become another Dr. Craig with her stubborn, often uptight perfectionism; Christina Pickles as the head nurse who becomes somewhat of an overall baseline... And rounding things out is Norman Lloyd as the show's Yoda, the seventy-two year old liver specialist ironically dying of liver cancer who gets a repreive by chemotherapy... making him wiser and a constant advisor to Westphall. (And least I forget some of the special guest stars including the then-non-famous Tom Hulce, Ray Liotta, Tim Robbins, and Michael Madsen... And G.W. Baily as the semi-regular head of the psych-ward, who, like Birney, didn't last long but did a decent enough job). All in all, this is one of the best-acted TV dramas I've ever experienced. All these doctors keeping their sanity intact within the halls of a bustling, eerie hospital where that Demon Fate not only lives, but thrives.

BORN TO KILL RELOCATED

title: BORN TO KILL

year: 1947

cast: Lawrence Tierney, Claire Trevor, Walter Slezak, Philip Terry, Audrey Long, Elisha Cook, Esther Howard

director: Robert Wise

rating: ***

CLICK HERE FOR THE NEW BORN TO KILL REVIEW AT THE NEW CULT FILM FREAK SITE

I CONFESS

title: I CONFESS

year: 1953

cast: Montgomery Clift

director: Alfred Hitchock

rating: **

I confess, I'm a big time Hitchock fan. I confess, I had never seen this movie until yesterday. And I confess, this one didn't do it for me. The Master seemed on sabbatical - I didn't feel his presence at all. I must also confess... I didn't even watch the entire movie. I guess I should now review the dream I had while sleeping through most of it...

WALL STREET

title: WALL STREET

year: 1988

cast: Charlie Sheen, Michael Douglas, Martin Sheen, Hal Halbrook, Daryl Hannah

rating: ****

Oliver Stone had the perfect opportunity to mouthpiece his politics into this film about the greedy Wall Street traders, but he didn't... at least not in an obnoxious or obvious way. Perhaps because his father (whom the film's dedicated) was one, or that he wanted to make a movie that showed both sides equally, even though one side is pretty evil. Michael Douglas must be given credit for turning the villain into not only a likable character, but a logical one... given that you're hypnotized enough to think the way he does... That the more power you acquire, not matter who you have to screw, the better. Charlie Sheen, fresh from Stone's PLATOON set, plays a young wall street cold-call climber who, freshly under Douglas's wing, cuts corners and breaks the law in order to feed his new mentor information to get himself rich, and Douglas even richer. When Sheen gives Douglas inside information on an airline where his father - played by real life pop Martin Sheen - is on the board of directors, his soul is sold. And that's where the adventure begins. While Douglas won the Best Actor Oscar for the famous (or infamous) "Greed is Good" speech, the more subtle moments, as he tweaks Sheen into his puppet, are what truly shapes his now iconic character. Martin Sheen plays not only Charlie's dad, but Douglas's blue collar counterpart with perfect stubborn pride, and a scene involving father and son arguing about what Douglas's intentions are is quite intense. I think this is Oliver Stone's best film. While it can be, at times, somewhat silly and far-fetched, it's intense, involving, and fun as hell.

THE GRAND CANYON

year: 1991

cast: Kevin Kline, Danny Glover, Mary McDonnell, Jeremy Sisto, Steve Martin

rating: *

For those who think the horrific MAGNOLIA is the most pretentious movie ever made; as Richard Dreyfuss tells Robert Shaw in JAWS: "I got that beat." This movie, about rich and poor people in Los Angeles whose lives intertwine, all discussing their own philosophies of life, takes the pretentious nasal-gazing gold medal. The otherwise talented Lawrence Kasdan penned this do-gooder doozy with his wife, Meg. Kevin Kline's car breaks down in Inglewood and is almost killed by gangsters; Danny Glover, as a tow truck driver, saves him (the best scene herein); they become friends and we follow each of their (and their friends and families) lives and basically learn: we're in different sized boats in the same raging sea.  A Hollywood guilt movie, and godawful at that. Every sentence has a POINT; every camera angle an AGENDA: "I dare you to watch this and NOT LEARN SOMETHING ABOUT YOUR LIFE", is in parentheses throughout. As one character says: "People who excel at one thing think they know about everything." I think Lawrence and Meg might have been projecting here.

THE EVENING STAR

title: THE EVENING STAR

year: 1996

cast: Shirley MacLaine, Bill Paxton, Natasha Richardson, Juliette Lewis, Jack Nicholson, Marion Ross

rating: **

This movie assumes we're a lot more into the story than the story tries to be a good one. Has the same problem as "Texasville", the sequel to the iconic masterpiece "The Last Picture Show"; this being the sequel to another classic "Terms of Endearment" (all four based on novels written by Larry McMurtrey). Takes a lightweight approach continuing from the original wonderfully tragic story of Shirley Maclaine's character, who lost her daughter, Deborah Winger, to cancer, and now has to deal with the grandkids: all grown up and doing... horribly. The youngest son drives a tow truck, the oldest son is in jail, and the precocious daughter, played by Juliette Lewis (overracting as usual), is a moody suicidal college student with a cheating white trash boyfriend. MacLaine tries her best but there's just no story here. When her endearingly grumpy character insults particular family members it's not very funny because we don't know them enough to understand (or care about) her loathing. And whenever needed, she looks through albums with pictures of the original film, thus paving the way for Jack Nicholson, returning in a cameo, which doesn't help things one bit. He and Shirley have the chemistry of two dead sea slugs as they wander around chatting about life, death, and love: which they didn't have to talk about since they EXPERIENCED these things in "Terms". Bill Paxton adds some silly bumpkin flavor as a councelor who has an affair with MacLaine, doing the best young Jack Nicholson impression he can muster. Natasha Richardson as "Patsy", who was Winger's laidback plain-looking pal in "Terms" (played by another actress), here is a spunky beautiful rich divorcee, providing a somewhat weak foil for MacLaine. And Marion Ross as the faithful maid is probably the best performance of the bunch... at least she has something to do.

STRANGER THAN FICTION

year: 2006

cast: Will Ferrell, Tom Hulce

rating: ***

Will Ferrell has his very own THE TRUMAN SHOW, centering on a mild-mannered, rut-dwelling accountant who hears a narration in his head. Someone is narrating his own life, and predicts his up-coming death. Turns out the person is a writer whom invented a character exactly like Ferrell and he has to stop her before she finishes the book. But before that Ferrell deals with the voice by visiting shrink Dustin Hoffman, who isn't as shocked as he should be about this situation. Ferrell meets a proud liberal gal who bakes cookies and refuses to pay some of her taxes (the 13% that will go to the military) and as their relationship grows (she thaws and he gets more laidback) the voice seems to lessen, as does the intensity, and initial premise, of the film. But things get back on in line when he has to track down the author before it's too late. Ferrell has a couple funny moments doing his usual I'm-just-a-tad-behind-everyone-else-but-above-them-at-the-same-time signature character, but here, unlike some of his other outings, there's an interesting enough story to give him purpose. Plus the B-side involving the eccentric author, played by Emma Thompson, who can't find a suitable death for her character, adds some vitality. And it's always nice seeing Dustin Hofffman again. NOTE: For all you Generation X'ers - if the plot to this movie seems familiar, then you, like myself, may have grown up reading Sesame Street's THE MONSTER AT THE END OF THIS BOOK, which involves Grover trying to stop the story... HIS story... from ending. "Don't turn the page!!!"