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Reviews
The Outlaws (2021)
An Unexpected Surprise + And No Sophomore Slump
Having just finished S2, I am adding to my original review:
I don't give out 10s a lot - may have only given the top rating to one other series.
The Outlaws, set in Bristol, follows a group assigned community service, and the initial fear is that these people - the corporate capitalist, the long-time activist, the high achiever who shoplifts, the titled social media influencer, the nerdish lawyer, the young guy with custody of his rebellious sister, the parolee - are all going to be that: types; i.e., stereotypes. But as they interact, layers are peeled away, events are given backstory and the characters - individually, in units and finally as a team - take on dimension and depth.
The plot hook is the discovery of a cache of money stashed - and found - in the building the community service workers are tasked with rehabbing, and the season ends with just enough loose threads to justify a season 2.
The trailer did emphasize the comedy and while there is humor (very solid and well-played humor) it is a character-driven, suspenseful drama.
I hesitate to single out any cast member, because the casting is pitch perfect down to the minor roles. We happened on to this series by accident - never heard of it when it was released, but it's definitely worth seeking out.
S2: Season 2 starts out on a darker note, with the crew having to compensate the drug kingpin, The Dean, for his loss, and devise a plan for his comeuppance.
When any program has such a first-rate first season, you get nervous for S2, and ask - is there any way it can equal S1? Here, the answer is a resounding "Yes." The merge of character development/evolution in tandem with the plot is not easy to pull off - one is usually sacrificed to accommodate the other - but here it's done so superbly, and with such a fitting finale that the viewer's left very satisfied with the resolution, but wanting to spend more time with this group. Not the worst dilemma for series writers to have.
I don't see how an S3 could be possible. And yet....
Ted Lasso (2020)
Did they not expect to be renewed for S2?
As other reviews have mentioned, Season 1 was pleasant, interesting setup, good sense of humor about itself. Season 2 is almost a different show - incoherent, implausible, often not funny with none-too-subtle political messaging and one episode that may be among the worst episodes I've ever seen. I'll refrain from mentioning it, but it's not one of the last two, since I gave up and haven't seen them.
The high note is. Hannah Waddingham - even when she's written into incredible situations, she manages to pull it off. Her performance holds the true line while everything else wanders all over the map.
One thing I wonder - what is the test marketing strategy for episodes? I'm referring particularly to the episodes' very extensive use of texting. Now I get it - that's the way everyone communicates these days, but when rendered on a small screen, its often indecipherable. Yes, you can reverse or pause, but that doesn't make for a very enjoyable viewing experience. It might be helpful to round up a few dozen people, screen these episodes and see whether the shots of text messages are.comprehensible.
Endeavour: Terminus (2021)
Weak End to a Great Series
Endeavour was one of the best series of the past decade, not only for the writing, the superb cast, but for the very polished production quality. The change in format has Endeavour looking no better than any of the mediocre, modestly budgeted British mysteries.
To have such an underwhelming episode, and one that looks so cheaply produced, be the end of such a terrific series is a disappointment. As for the plot, while others have mentioned Christie, there were some marked similarities to Margaret Millar's "Fire Will Freeze", both in the snowbound bus passengers setup, and the muddled follow-through.
The cast regulars are the upside - Shaun Evans, Roger Allam. Anton Lesser, Caroline O'Neill never disappoint - they deserved a better sendoff.
Reacher (2022)
A Disappointment
When he film "Jack Reacher" came out several years ago, the major issue people expressed was that Tom Cruise bore no physical resemblance to the character in the book. Well, in Alan Ritchson you have an actor who is very close in appearance to the Jack Reacher described by Lee Child. Unfortunately, all that did was highlight the fact that surface is not substance.
Not that Ritchson is bad- he's actually quite good as Reacher, as are co-stars Willa Fitzgerald and Malcolm Goodwin. The overall problem, which becomes very clear as the 8 episode season progresses is that the 8 episode season is the wrong format for the material. The Reacher novels are thrillers, and thrillers are not dramas, mysteries, puzzles that can be filmed in chapters. Thrillers are primarily about pacing, the steady, page-turning acceleration to the final good-vs-evil confrontation, which the Cruise film id exceptionally well. Here, doled out in 8 episodes, the pace of "Reacher" (even if you binge) frequently stalls, or seems out of synch with other episodes, and is hampered by an overly complicated plot device, one that is not re-aligned by the periodic fight scenes, not assisted by long passages of frequently awkward dialogue that is often delivered so quickly that it barely registered, nor is it helped by the gratuitous inclusions of Reacher's former army buddy and his interest in a neglected dog. (Okay, I'll give a pass on the dog. I'm a dog person.) It is also missing a truly imposing villain. A larger than life hero calls for a larger than life antagonist, and here the villain(s) pales when set against the ingenious casting of Werner Herzog in the Cruise film.
I've read a number of the Reacher books and liked some of them (The Hard Way and 61 Hours were probably the best); I even liked the Cruise film and was looking forward to the series, but it was a disappointment on so many levels that I'm not sure I'd be interested if they continue the series.
I Care a Lot (2020)
Two Incompatible Stories
In 2017, the New Yorker wrote an eye-opening piece about a shocking legal loophole that allowed "professional guardians" to, with the courts' help, have a senior citizen declared incompetent, removed from their home, placed in a facility, after which the guardian seizes and liquidates their assets, controls the victim's ability to communicate with family or obtain independent legal aid, and may even make their medical decision. Since that piece, which profiled a Nevada couple, similar exposes have targeted similar scams in.at least a half dozen states.
An excellent topic for a screenplay, but there is a big difference between an idea, a concept, and a fully realized plot. The concept here - the pitch - is that."A crooked legal guardian who drains the savings of her elderly wards meets her match.when a woman she tries to swindle turns out to be more than she first appears." What that implied - and I think what viewers were expecting - was that the victim - superbly played by Dianne Wiest - while appearing to be powerless, has that particular set of skills which demonstrates her to be more than a match for he predatory guardian. (An over-the-top turn by Rosamund Pike.) For the first half of the film, when Wiest's character is removed from her home and institutionalized while her assets are confiscated by the guardian, the tone approaches horror. (All good horror films are ultimately about isolation.) And then, when we are primed to see how Wiest is going to maneuver her way out of her plight, what ingenious form of retaliation this seemingly helpless old lady is going to effect - she takes a back seat to a weird battle of wits between the guardian and the woman's gangster son. The effect of the screenplay was beyond bait-and-switch - it was as if there were two different writers for the first and second half of the film. The first half was a clever and chilling set-up and the second half was filled with implausible plot elements and an odd shift in tone from horror to - what? Dark comedy? Psychological suspense? Satire? It reminded me of a comment an older television writer acquaintance had once said, that the problem with new writers is that they're not "closers." They can deliver a first act, sometimes a second act, but rarely the third.
American Crime Story (2016)
Historical renovation
If you were an adult at the time of the Clinton scandals - anywhere from upper teens or older - you will not see the events that you recall nor will you see the events as you recall them. A younger person, however, who didn't live through the events may take this for an accurate representation of what transpired or will, more likely, be utterly confused by the incoherent plot.
The heavy-handed, and ham-handed attempt to portray any woman who was an antagonist or accuser as ignorant, vicious or manipulated certainly goes against that "every woman must be believed" credo. In particular, the portrayal of Linda Tripp, who is the focus of much of the piece, is downright cruel, especially so since she passed away fairly recently, and so is not able to give her side of the events. Clinton is portrayed as troubled, Mrs. Clinton is the noble wronged woman and everyone who supported the impeachment is portrayed as gleefully vindictive.
But veracity aside - this is TV after all, and you expect events recast for dramatic effect - there is no dramatic effect. There are long stretches of "what are they talking about", players we can't put in context (today's audiences might not place people like George Conway, Lucienne Goldberg, even Ken Starr.) The pacing is poor, there is no escalating suspense and the actual impeachment itself is almost an afterthought. After watching one episode, I felt none of that urgency to see what happened next that I had felt in S1 (the Simpson case.) I watched the series, but twice, nodded off in the middle of an episode, and didn't feel like I'd missed anything.
Sarah Paulson did a decent job of imitating Linda Tripp's speech patterns and they found an actress who could nail Ann Coulter's voice, but otherwise, the casting choices seemed pretty odd and unpersuasive.
Truth Be Told (2019)
Unconvincing
Kate Hudson plays a world-famous author with a troubled, abused past and a room full of hate mail; Octavia Spencer plays her childhood friend, a popular podcaster who played a key role in solving a criminal case. When Hudson's husband and another man are found dead in what the cops decide is a murder/suicide, Spencer decides to look into the matter.
There is not one convincing or realistic note in the episode (I address only the first episode,) I never believe that the characters were who they were written to be, the dialogue was stilted, too often expository, as if they writers were unfamiliar with the professions and environment they set up, and that lack of conviction offsets any of the unsettling suspense that I think was the goal. I found it was tedious rather than tense, not interesting enough to keep watching.
The Ice Road (2021)
The Wages of Fear on Ice
If you have seen the French film, The Wages of Fear, the okay 50s remake, Hell's Highway.and the very good 80s remake, Sorcerer, you get the gist - a disaster requires truckers to carry hazardous material over dangerous terrain. Here, the truckers have to carry machinery needed to save trapped miners over icy road and frozen lakes.
There are a few well-plotted, well edited action scenes, but for the most part it's nothing that hasn't been done better.
Bosch (2014)
S7 was a disappointment
Bosch started out as a very good based-on-the-books crime drama. The performances, the filming, the character development was all first rate - unfortunately, that only lasted for the first few seasons, and then (as others have mentioned) with the introduction of the daughter into more of the plot-lines, it just went into a slump.
Season 7 was a very disappointing finale. Nothing in it rang true, not Harry's obsessive desire to see justice done in the matter of arson fatalities, not the Lt's harassment case which seemed to be a plot that would have been more credible in the 70s than 2020, nothing at all that involved the daughter - nothing in the entire season seemed authentic, organic or believable; everything seemed rushed and sloppily developed. I did wonder whether the Covid situation put limitations on filming that might account for the season's shortcomings but the unfortunate end result, in my case, is that while it set Bosch up for a spinoff, I have no desire to invest my time in it.
A Dog's Purpose (2017)
Unwatchable
I will give it a rating of 5 because I could only watch half of this film and will give the benefit of doubt that half of it may have been better.
I may just be speaking for myself, (and yes, there is some value in films about struggle, overcoming obstacles, etc, ) but watching a dog confiscated, abandoned, neglected and distressed has no upside at all. I found it extremely upsetting and can't imagine bringing a child to this film. As for the overall quality of the film, there are films that figure out how to make do on a very modest budget, but this isn't one of them.
I will give credit to the exceptional training of the dogs, however.
The Woman in the Window (2021)
There's Only One Hitchcock
The best film adaptations of popular (or classic, for that matter) books are the ones that do the best job of recreating, not just the book's text, but the pacing, atmosphere and character. I don't know what happened here, but somehow a passable, if somewhat paint-by-numbers, thriller got mired in odd visuals, implausible dialogue and - with the exception of Amy Adams and Julianne Moore - mediocre performances.
It also helps to know what film you're making - the key component of a psychological thriller is well-crafted suspense, the gradual, wall-closing paranoia that leads to the big reveal. Here, we have scenes that are composed to evoke Hitchcockian classics - Rear Window, Vertigo, Psycho - but they only serve to remind the viewer that there was only one Hitchcock.
Lupin (2021)
Excellent actors - mediocre execution
When I had seen an trailer for the program, I had thought that it was an updated version of the Leblanc stories, something similar to the modernized Sherlock Holmes of "Sherlock" or "Elementary." Not so. In the first episode, the main character has been given a book of the Arsene Lupin stories as a child, and as an adult employs the skills of the fictional character - gentleman thief and master of disguise - to avenge an injustice to his father.
If you watch this, subtitles are mandatory. The dubbing is quite bad. Unfortunately, despite some lovely photography, it also lacks the production values and polish of some of the high-end crime series like "Endeavour" and the 4-episode "Maigret." And like those series, I think this would have been much better served if it had been set in the author's/creator's era - there were just too many implausibilities for a 2021 caper.
Best thing are the actors - first rate, all of them. But there is just not the skill set backing them up to pull off an ambitious concept, and the first episode just didn't grab me enough to watch the rest of the series.
The Little Things (2021)
Disappointing - except for Denzel
The trailers I saw pitched this film as a pairing of the world-weary cop whose gift for noting "the little things", i.e., those devilish details, give him insights to a serial killer that the "city cops" are missing. It also hinted at a desire on the part of the older cop to remediate an error in his past by covering for what could be career-ending errors on the part of the younger cop.
That's what I thought I was getting. What I got was a tedious, confusing, implausible and frankly, not very interesting crime drama that seemed to waste every opportunity it was given. And when one of the viewing partners says, "Is he (the character played by a miscast Malek) the dumbest cop in the world or is this just a crap screenplay?" I knew that I was't the only one who was disappointed with the film.
There is only one upside to the film, and that's Denzel Washington. IMHO, he is the only actor who is a bona fide movie star, an actor who is worth watching in anything, who never gives less than a compelling performance and who elevates every scene he's in. If another wonderful performance from Washington is enough for you, then see the film, by all means.
Dickensian (2015)
Would have loved to hear the elevator pitch on this one...
As someone else headlined, this program should not work, but it does, and beautifully. Drawing characters from at least a half dozen Dickens works into a single universe, and shaping a very Dickensian Victorian social melodrama/murder mystery would seem to be a formidable undertaking, particularly when juggling so many separate narratives. First rate production values, excellent writing and superb performances (Stephen Rea's Bucket is just wonderful) made this one of the very few truly must-see series I've come across.
I could not figure out whether this was: A) intended to be a limited series, or B) only Season 1 of something that did not get renewed. There was a loose tying up of a few narratives, but if it was B, what a shame - so many possibilities for a continuation.
The Booksellers (2019)
Could have been better
What Truman Capote did for non-fiction - imposing a narrative tone and form on works that had mostly been a recording of facts - films like "Hoop Dreams," or "The Devil and Daniel Johnston" or "Grizzly Man," did for documentaries; i.e., they raised the bar and imposed a narrative structure on the material.
Unfortunately, as fascinating as the world of rare book dealers may be, The Booksellers seemed disorganized, often confusing without any real narrative thread. While people may recognize Gay Talese or Fran Leibowitz, people are often interviewed with no caption telling us who they are, what their job title is, and these people were, for the most part, not very interesting. The profession might attract unusual people, but the film doesn't have the "Herzog" - that skill at highlighting those idiosyncrasies in the subjects that make a documentary especially watchable.
Endeavour: Apollo (2019)
Lacks the supreme gift...
I will say that I think "Endeavour" is, overall, the best program on TV right now, and I like the attempt to create a real puzzle mystery, TV for thinkers. However, there is a difference between complex and convoluted, and I think this episode was the latter. There was too much going on, too many incidents, too much "landscape" and it reminded me of that wonderful quote from Sherlock Holmes that a man's failed attempt to fabricate a crime - failed because he added one too many details - lacked the supreme gift of the artist, which was the knowledge of when to stop.
But on the plus side, all of the actors are good, and in this and the previous episode, Anton Lesser (Bright) was just pitch perfect.
Endeavour: Colours (2018)
The "mid range" reviews nail it
We are late to the game in "Endeavour", and enjoy the series overall. I think it is one of the best-looking programs on television, and that whatever the budget may be, they are spending the money in al the right places. I also think that something "Inspector Morse" did well, and "Endeavour" does superbly is give us fully, realized, three-dimensional characters in the supporting cast. The downside of this is that often we find the character of Thursday more interesting than Morse.
Racism is central to the plot, and one thing we wondered about was whether, in the late 1960s, a beauty parlor in a major English university city would have posted a sign that said "No Coloureds". 1950s, maybe, but for us, it just rang false. Frankly, it's been an issue, that the writer(s) do(es) not seem well versed in the era - many of the depictions of 1960s culture seem taken from pop culture and border on stereotype. But you do get to see Fred and Win dance the tango (I think.) Made the somewhat predictable plot worthwhile.
That Gal... Who Was in That Thing: That Guy 2 (2015)
Should Be A Series of Docs
If' you've ever watched a TV show or gone to a film and said, "I know her face from somewhere," this is for you. Entertaining and informative, the documentary profiles actresses whose name you may not know, but whom you've seen as guest/bit/supporting players for decades. Their insights and anecdotes about Hollywood's history of "age-ism" which impacts the careers of actresses far more than of actors, the obstacles and difficulties women in Hollywood face are insightful without being vindictive or bitter. There are so many skilled and professional women in this category that I wish there were follow-up documentaries featuring other gals who were in that thing.
Inspector Morse: The Settling of the Sun (1988)
Would work better as an Endeavour episode
I had seen the Inspector Morse series some years ago, and was re-viewing episodes when I started watching the prequel series, "Endeavour." I agree with the issues others had with the writing and somewhat clumsy editing and camera work, and I found some elements to be rather anachronistic. Had it been set in the mid- to late sixties, when "Endeavour" is set, where you had characters like Thursday who were war veterans with relatively recent memories of WWII, the anti Asian bias may have been more persuasive. Also, at one point a girl (on of a group of foreign students) makes an observation that all of the books in a room are written by men - again, something that seemed more 1960s rising-of-women's-lobe era than the late '80s, And a lot of the dialogue seemed very disjointed and artificial - people were making remarks at one another rather than conversing.
On the plus side, the Morse series, like the Endeavour series, understands the importance of ensemble, something that I wish other British mystery series offered.