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Reviews
Blood (2018)
What's Up With This Cat?
Enjoyed the show overall, but am faced with a question at the end of the first series. A question I never thought I'd have to ask about the lead character in any series.
What does Cat Hogan do for a living? At one point her Mam says Cat must be "rushed off her feet" back in Dublin. But rushed doing what?
There's never any expiration as to what this adult person does to pay the rent. Although whatever it is, it's clear they don't miss her at the office since she's able to spend an inordinate amount of time wandering the Irish countryside investigating her mother's death.
A minor point, I suppose. But you have wonder how Cat spends her non-investigative hours.
Vera (2011)
Mystery of the Disappearing Cast
The series initially offered some work/life balance, providing background and insight about the personal lives of regular characters and their families in addition to the crime storyline.
But all that was gradually winnowed out, with Vera's associates reduced to extras given an occasional line of dialogue. And Vera herself nothing more than a mystery-solving machine who has her crime scene booties tied for her.
Perhaps that has something to do with the strangely high cast turnover rate. Their disappearances could propel the plot for a new series, in which the star of a police drama knocks off fellow actors who might upstage her.
Beef: Figures of Light (2023)
What Goes Down, Must Come Up (In More Ways Than One)
Loved the series overall, but puzzled by a peculiar conceit of the last episode.
The cars of both lead characters hurtle off the road, plunging into a ravine. But rather than simply trek uphill to the road and rescue, they spend the next half-hour blundering around the scrubland like some Millennial production of Treasure of the Sierra Madre. It wasn't like their wrecked vehicles had sailed miles away from the highway.
True, it was a great opportunity to bond and mind-meld via ingestion of psychedelic nausea-inducing berries. But I couldn't help think that rescue was never more a few hundred yards away. Perhaps that was the point!
Spooks (2002)
Forgets Some Anglo-American History.
UK TV writers are chronically anti-American, and there's no law against that.
But it's disturbing when Harry Pearce, head of Section D, has a warmer relationship with the #3 from Al-Qaeda (the British squeeze out a 4th syllable there-Al-Kay-EE-Dah) than he does with his US counterparts.
Throughout the series, frequent snide references are made about "the special relationship" and "the cousins." Americans are consistently portrayed as controlling and coldblooded, but surely they must have at least one redeeming trait.
I can think of two. Coming to Britain's aid twice. In one century. Across 86 episodes, I wish someone would've mentioned that. Just once.
Some Came Running (1958)
Indiana Meets Hoboken
For a town allegedly in America's Heartland, the movie's mythical Parkman, Indiana, has a considerable number of citizens-Frank Sinatra foremost among them-who sound like they've never been Middle West of Hoboken.
Martha Hyer puts the wood in wooden as Old Blue Eyes' off/on/off-again schoolmarm love interest, while Shirley MacLaine's makeup appears to have been applied by Earl Scheib, an effect particularly alarming in CinenaScope. Still, she and Sinatra have a certain louche chemistry.
It's cool to see Frank and Dean in their first screen pairing, but their liberally illiberal use of the word 'pig' to describe women not up to their bourbon-marinated social standards is shocking in any context: the 1940s when the story is set; the 1950s when the picture was made; and the 2010s when TCM just aired it.
But I forgave Dino when-at a most touching point in the story-he offered a character-driven token of respect to a gal who he previously described in terms that can only be described as Baconian. The source protein, not the 17th Century English philosopher. I give it a 7.
The House of the Seven Gables (1940)
1940 Meets 19th Century
If the staid literary stylings of Nathaniel Hawthorne aren't for you, this is a swell cinematic way to experience one of his most renowned creations.
Purists rightly dispute the film's lack of adherence to the book, but in the end it's all about the Pyncheon family curse-and this the movie handles quite well.
Alas, screenwriter Lester Cole (he of Hollywood 10 fame), inserts an irrelevant abolitionist subplot that improbably (but quite intentionally, I suspect) morphs into pseudo-Bolshevik bromides about the inevitable triumph of the laboring masses. But what's a CP member to do when Stalin is playing pattycake with Hitler during the dubious era of good feelings known as the Nazi-Soviet Pact?
I quibble, as all the principals in this are terrific. Margaret Lindsay turns in the performance of a lifetime. Who knew Vincent Price could croon? While favorite cad George ("as ants to a picnic") Sanders does his usual bounderish best. Although his exit could have done without all the ham & cheese.
Here I blame the director. Sanders is a finely calibrated dramatic tuning fork who operates best within a certain elegant frequency. Don't ask him to get too excited. Not his style.
Still, I'd watch him in anything. You should too, starting with this one!
Whiplash (1948)
Van Gogh Was Saner
I couldn't get past the preposterous meet-cute opening premise: that unsuccessful artist Dane Clark was so morally outraged by the purchase of one of his paintings (his first sale!) by Alexis Smith, that he goes to her place to refund her money. I mean, what struggling painter does that? Much less enter her home unbidden to snoop around. Van Gogh lopping off an ear makes more sense.
Still, nice to see Zachary Scott doing what he does best, playing a dapper heel, albeit a slightly psychotic one with no wheelchair brakes.
Plus S. Z. Sakall, comfortably Casablanca cast as a restaurant owner. It gives you a sense of what Rick's Place must have been like after Bogie split for Brazzaville and left Carl the Waiter in charge.
Unsolved History: Inside Hitler's Bunker (2002)
Can't See the Bunker For The CGI
We're supposed to be taken inside Hitler's bunker. But after endless cheesy re-enactments and overly detailed cgi fumfery-the bane of so much pseudo-historical programming nowadays-the last thing this provides is an actual look at the premises.
It's not as if the wreckage of the Führerbunker complex wasn't amply photographed and filmed in the wake of the war. Plenty of people traipsed through there to record what they saw, although the Russians had first dibs.
But who wants to see boring black and white images? I do. They're the closest we'll get to what the last act of the Third Reich actually looked like.