Reviews

I liked this movie because of the juxtaposition of sort of mythological California and the whole mystery surrounding California with the very pragmatic realism that now envelopes modern California. The mythology of California is juxtaposed with the pragmatic reality that has been imposed upon the cultural domain, wherein once upon a time mythology was revered, now the practical has complete dominion and dreaming and capturing a lost mythology is suspect and only madmen contemplate such fanciful non pragmatism. I give this movie a thumbs up.

The lead female characters of the series are definitely embodying Pallas Athene archetypes, that is interesting for Mexican culture, as I understand the women are still behind in the social roles they can aspire to there. In this series Alice Braga, (Brazilian not Mexican) and actual niece of Sonia Braga is given low level crud errands and kept hostage in the cartel of the Number one drug lord in Mexico, only it is his wife's division of the cartel. His wife wants to go solo and run the drug empire her way or the highway and severe rivalry develops with this husband and wife. I guess the series illustrates the severity of the narco drug trafficking culture, shades of Breaking Bad maybe, but coming from the Mexican angle of things. Worth watching, Alice Braga does a good job, characters not bad, and plot keeps you interested to where this will all lead.

Mexican culture is separate from American culture and vastly different but in this series they try too hard to be American, in their style, hairdos, morals, absorption of the narco culture via American influence, what I find about all of this is that it is sad, they have semi assimilated into Americans without questioning anything. That's what this series has made transparently obvious when I watched it. The first lady and president appear to be barbie doll perfect, all the upper echelon Mexicans appear perfect, coiffed and lipsticked to the T, that's not how I remember Mexicans. There's flashes of crowds of Mexicans, and there you see the real Mexico in the crowd. There are too many sex scenes, overdone to adnauseum, they're tiring after a while. There are too many flashbacks throughout the series. It's not necessary, it is just filler. The main characters carry on like Americans, violent,overly dramatic emotional, the characters don't behave pragmatically, rather hysterically all the time. At times it is tedious to watch, cause here we go another flashback, who cares, we've already seen this. If you have nothing better to do with your life watch this series.

Marseille, well the dialogue or script sound like some cheap french soap opera, the scenery though is fantastic, views of the city are what kept me watching this jumbled up mess of a soap opera. Excessive reliance on sex scenes seem almost clichéd, whose screwing who, got to keep track of all of that useless drivel, scriptwriters should of got on with developing some proper dialogue and in depth characterization. The characters all come across as clichéd and tiresome, dreary dreary, but the panorama shots of the city do look so good. The marvelous french architecture and historic city buildings are interesting backdrops to all of this. It is supposed to be quite the crime infested city, and I guess that is real to a point, but I wish they could have given the characters more dimension, and stop with the excessive useless tiresome overdone sex scenes.

Topic was a good excuse to make a movie. It is a very interesting time in the British music world. The plot seems choppy with the characters fighting, swearing and drugging their brains out, I guess it portrays British working society as very gritty, dingy, and inspirationally bleak. They need to be lifted up and find a refuge in the obscure soul music from America. The movie doesn't flow well, maybe due to all the violence the characters are caught up in. Dialog, plot all of it weak, but captures the essence of the era in the look and feel quite well and the characterization of working class youth going nowhere. There was an amazing radio show on CITR at one time called "Shake a Tailfeather" that played all of this northern soul, but it seemed to have come to an end, don't know what happened to the DJ or show. Anyways it is a movie tackling an obscure time in music history, worth watching.