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Reviews
Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Creeper (1956)
Arguably the Best Episode of Season One
This one gave me a chill. I can't even begin to imagine how it was received in the mid-50's when it first aired on TV.
A serial killer targeting blonds in the city is on the loose.
Ellen Grant is a blonde whose husband is on the night shift. She's emotionally fragile and it doesn't help that she's surrounded by some of the most suspicious characters in the neighborhood. From her hostile neighbor across the hall (who thinks the women getting killed deserve what they are getting), to the unusual new janitor (Percy Helton, who's just a bit TOO friendly), to the hostile ex-boyfriend....
You're left guessing till the end, and even when you see it coming...you'll feel the chill.
By the way, Hitchcock's postscript made me laugh out loud.
Cloverfield (2008)
Very disappointing
Well, I clicked spoiler, but the spoiler is that there are no spoilers. Nothing to the movie.
About 75% of the audience hung around through the end credits, and let me tell you, that was universally the most negative reaction I have ever seen to any movie in a theater.
Disappointment doesn't even begin to describe how these people felt (at least according to how they expressed themselves).
The movie is, fortunately, short; only 90 mins or so long. 20 mins of that is spent at a party you would leave after 10 minutes if you hadn't paid to get in--a going away party for some loser that looks like a guy from your company's mail room. Apparently this loser has been promoted (improbably) to be a VP for his company in Japan.
The party apparently is intended to set up whatever is supposed to pass for the movie's paper thin plot line. All it did for me was condition me to the intentionally awful camera-work. Yeah, I realize it is stylistic and all---but bad camera-work doesn't pass for action. No, running through a crowd jostling a camera around does not translate to movie magic on screen.
There will be internet fan boys that will tell you the movie is great, a must see, very intense. Whatever. They are deluding themselves. These people will have spent the last year or more pumping this movie for JJ Abrams and will be unable to admit to themselves or you that it is simply not good.
Columbo: Suitable for Framing (1971)
One of my Faves
One of my favorite Columbo movies for many, many reasons--a well-executed crime with seemingly no trail to follow, an exasperated suspect, and one of the best of all "Columboisms" you'll find in the series.
Columbo's criminals usually follow a pattern in doing themselves in. Sometimes its the smallest details forgotten in the commission of the crime, other times their undoing comes in covering their tracks later. Suitable for Framing follows the latter mold of Columbo's.
The Wild, Wild West's Ross Martin is an art critic who kills his uncle to frame his aunt following a change in his uncle's will disinheriting him. Martin leaves only just enough clues to arouse Columbo's suspicions, but not enough to slam the door shut.
Martin plays the exasperated criminal perfectly, becoming increasingly frustrated with Columbo's failure to take the bait on the frame-up until finally he overplays his hand, resulting in his undoing in one of the better closing scenes you'll see.
Most importantly is this movie's Columboism--Columbo falls asleep in the Martin's apartment after Martin graciously allows him to search it for evidence of the crime.