Featured reviewer says he didn't know who was who, the bad guys, the good guys, he was confused, he couldn't follow the action, it was too fast., and not funny. First off, maybe that reviewer has trouble telling Italian faces apart, I dunno. Secondly, it's not a comedy. There are comic aspects, but they are are inherent in the subject matter...Italian Mafia and Italian law and justice and Italian society at large. The humor is baked in, it's sarcasm regarding the whole lurid mess that it treats here. He complains about the slapstick. It's slapstick only in the sense that feeding the guy into the chipper at the end of Fargo was slapstick. It was humor like it was funny that Farmer is in bed with her screen husband at the end, and she's a cute Midwestern Momma again after shooting the guy in the field. Fargo was funny. This serial is definitely funny, like when the parents open the giant doll box and its full of cash. It's a shame I have to waste my time pointing out how clueless the "featured review" was. The director, the writers, they play all the right notes that makes a great operatic serial. They know how to peg your attention, unlike some Amazon stuff I've watched where they just throw in tired old gimmicks, and dialog that was tiresome a hundred years ago and almost at random thinking that's good enough. But this...this really is good enough. Great stuff, love it, you will too. The only complaint I have is that there's no hint as to when or if we'll see a season 2. That is disappointment, I'm trying not to seek revenge.
Reviews
4 Reviews
The Bad Guy
(2022– )
Great stuff, clever serial, operatic, visually luscious. loved it
15 December 2022
Joe
(I) (2013)
Decent man with homicidal tendencies manages to help the deserving
16 April 2014
Warning: Spoilers
Southern Gothic, probably the best role for Nicholas Cage in his career. The boy's dad was dead-on as a dead-eyed, brain-damaged instinctively opportunistic, amoral alcoholic. Then I read he was a homeless man who died in the street 2 months after wrap. The kid too was perfectly cast. In fact, a near perfect casting all around. Cage manages the role as a decent man with a volcano of violence bubbling up inside him very well. Story is one we've seen before a lot: an ex-con trying to steer clear of entanglements that could bring out his dark side, seduced by his own decency into helping a kid whose father is an abusive, brain-damaged alcoholic. Meanwhile, the mean and demented white trash in town are drawn like magnets to challenge Joe. All are joined together in the shoot-out at the OK Corral ending, and all the violent men die together, leaving the kid and other decent people to live better without their suppressive criminality. Joe dies a hero, because he subordinated the random violence inside him to a good and righteous cause. At heart, he was a good man fighting demons, both internally, and externally.
A Cold Wind in August
(1961)
Hot, steamy, jazzy, modern
24 June 2010
Warning: Spoilers
Great movie, great title, great clothes, great idioms, soundtrack is first rate for B movie. Today, Iris wouldn't get stared at - she'd get arrested. Albright is amazing, extremely sexy, and she wastes no time seducing the boy. Stylized black and white film, jazzy, hot, and real. No nudity in the modern sense of no clothes at all, but when she strips she's gorgeous. And when she seduces the boy, you don't need nudity to get excited. Great camera work, very modern with the intimate close-ups of lips, sweat, teeth, cleavage. The gal is liberated, lives on her own terms, takes the consequences standing up. A real model for women that Camille Paglia must love. I should add that even the most casual female roles in this flick are very potent. Middle-aged, thickening Mrs. Goldberg gets excited and obviously moist talking about the attractiveness of the kid. The women and girls control the men in every scene. Dad advises his son not to be a pig, not to denigrate his own feelings. My only beef is the kid. He's an adult trying to act like a kid, and he's not convincing, despite being gawky and weak. (After writing that, I read in another review that Marlowe was 29 at the time!) I can imagine Heath Ledger, as the teenager from Dogtown, doing this role. Sorry to mix eras, maybe that's not kosher.
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