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Reviews
Blithe Spirit (2020)
Judi Dench does a GREAT Madame Arcati, one of the juiciest roles for mature women in films or stage. Noel Coward did write Blithe Spirit with Margaret Rutherford in mind!
Judi Dench does a GREAT Madame Arcati, one of the juiciest roles for of all for mature women in films or stage.
Noel Coward had written Blithe Spirit with Margaret Rutherford in mind. It takes real skill to play her as an eccentric mystic but not be too much like a farce.
One reason I could not rate this movie higher than I did was that on the DVD, the subtitles are THE ABSOLUTE WORST DONE that I've ever seen! I don't have hearing loss, but often choose to turn on subtitles or closed captioning on Brit films in case an accent is unclear to me. On this movie, HONESTLY, DID NO ONE CHECK THE WORK OF THE SUBTITLE WRITER???
A typo here and there happens in many films, or a misheard word, but though I didn't count them up I'm sure there were 20-30 or more badly wrong instances in these subtitles. Heaven help those who DO need to depend on subtitles because of inability to hear its dialogue.
Bugs! (2003)
Bugs! was made for families - made for IMAX but it's fine viewed in 2D as well
On the DVD, watch the "Making of..." and the interviews in its Special Features. Those give a deeper perspective into why and how the writers chose to show two individual insects for the full progression, from hatching egg to adulthood. Lots more fascinating insects, amphibians and reptiles also, of course! Some reviewers had commented here that a broader, more documentary style would have suited their tastes better, but this show was aimed to engage a variety of viewers, preschoolers to mature adults. Kids engage with a personalized story-line better than with just a general documentary not focusing on particular creatures. Photography is wonderful! Dame Judi Dench provides her usual skilled performance as its narrator. Worth watching!
Matlock: The Good Boy (1989)
Well-written, well-acted,, but one guest role actor looks too old for his role
The guest role of the teenage son is supposed to be in his senior year of high school or possibly the late part of his 11th grade year (a junior). The actor who was cast looked to me to be 30+ years of age. Because I was curious, I looked this episode up in imdb. I looked at its broadcast date (1989) and the birth year of that young actor (1970).
So my visual impression was wrong -- it was an actor who was in fact younger than age 20 but he looks a decade too old for this part. It should have been an actor who looked much younger than Brian Bloom at that time, or at the very least, his wardrobe should have been styled MUCH younger. He was chronologically close in age to this role, but in appearance, Bloom looked a decade or more wrong for it. A good actor, though!
The Brokenwood Mysteries: To Die or Not to Die (2015)
An episode based on a local amateur theater group's players and crew
Mike Shepherd (Neill Rea) finds himself immersed in the over-the-top passions and palace intrigues of a collection of strong-willed amateur actors. Shepherd was in the audience when the young man playing Laertes falls dead during the curtain call, and that's no pretense of acting performance. Looking into it, Shepheard discovers decades of former and current romantic alliances and past break-ups between the members of the company. Who hated young Ben so much, or was so jealous of his role, that killing him made sense? A side note - the hair and apparel supervisor made a misstep, as far as I am concerned, in giving the actress Holly Hudson such a low hairline that she loses much of her attractiveness. On her IMDb dot com profile picture, she has a forehead of normal height, neither too high nor too low. But in this show, her hairline in front is so low that she appears sullen and dull-witted. The character in the show is overly obsessed with acting and being temperamental, but certainly isn't written as being slow in thought.
Grantchester: Episode #3.3 (2017)
More murder than ministry, since it needs to be dramatic
There are sometimes in a TV dramatic series a character showing the life of a clergyperson. But, not to be trite, a movie or TV show isn't really the place that one can show the inner life, the solitary thinking and meditations, the studying and prayers, of even the most committed pastor. SoCal reviewed this episode and the series as not showing Sidney Chambers' inner life clearly enough. But I ask you, who would watch three-quarters of an hour of a man in solitary silent personal prayer or studying on his own? Those parts of Sidney Chambers' spiritual life just aren't suited to a drama series. So my take is, this series is about the public parts of this clergyperson's life within his parish -- that is, what HAPPENS with other people, not what he internally learns and prays about. Considering that it needs to be a drama, actually one does see many aspects of Chambers being an active, committed, caring pastor in his community. I like this series a lot, and the excellence of its actors.
Quincy M.E.: Beyond the Open Door (1983)
Kim Stanley was miscast as the guest leading role
Kim Stanley was a fine actress in other different roles according to those who saw her do stage performances, but in this episode of "Quincy," she was simply too old to be at all believable in the role of the mom of a very young boy just learning to play hockey. Her son was played by an actor who was about ten years old. His age matched his role. Her age did not match her role.
Ms. Stanley had been probably about age 58 when this episode was taped. The age discrepancy was jarring enough that it diminished the story flow.
Also, this episode's plot was unusually far-fetched, even for "Quincy." Ms. Stanley played a clairvoyant, which is one type of psychic. And even within that, her character was written as her being quite an incompetent psychic. Yes, she would get the "vision" involved but she misinterpreted her vision. Two paranormal "visions" in the episode, and she batted zero for two. For both of them, Quincy had to tell HER what her vision really meant as opposed to the way she wrongly understood it.
Oh, come on! SHE'S the one who supposedly has had these visions all of her life, but Quincy (who doesn't believe in paranormal things at all) is the one who's needed to figure out how she misinterpreted them and get it right? NOT using any forensic/pathology stuff at all, but solely and specifically about psychic stuff? Which he doesn't believe can exist? That's a bad storyline -- and demeaning to women and the competency of women.
You Belong to Me (1941)
This ought to rank high on any "don't bother, a waste of time" list
This Barbara-Stanwyck-Henry-Fonda stinker of a movie doesn't really have redeeming qualities. It's rather depressing, in fact, that Dalton Trumbo had written the story on which it's built. I expect better taste from him. However, Trumbo's not the listed screenwriter for this film adaptation.
This movie came out seven months after "The Lady Eve." It must have been some desperate attempt to ride the coattails of the earlier Stanwyck-Fonda "Eve" pairing which had a certain charm even though it was just a screwball comedy. Wow, this one, though, has some rather nasty subtexts going on. First and most importantly, Fonda knows from the time he first meets her that Stanwyck is a physician with an established medical practice. Thus, he can have had no doubt that she typically saw a wide variety of patients. In a family practice, that means that she almost certainly would be treating women, children and men as well. However, this movie plot has Fonda making himself embarrassingly jealous over Stanwyck's male patients, as if they all make passes at her and that she, like some mindless tramp with no character, would be seduced by them. That's so insulting to the doctor whom Stanwyck portrays and to all women that it's shocking that even way back in 1941 anyone could have thought it amusing. If Fonda thinks that Stanwyck is or will be a tramp now, or is so stupid as to be gullible enough to be tricked and seduced by her patients, then obviously Fonda would also have to think that Stanwyck had always been just that much of a fool. If seeing male patients now would somehow make her behave as an amoral tramp, then the obvious corollary is that she already must have been behaving as a tramp with her previous patients. In that case, it's stupid to have Fonda written as falling in love with her. He just wouldn't have respected nor trusted her from the beginning.
A second big problem, though not as bad as the first one, is that the plot has a Depression-era presumption that Fonda taking a job would rob some other man of any chance to work. Maybe that outlook was a little bit understandable in 1941 because the United States had not entered World War II yet, not till December. It was wartime manufacturing jobs which finally pulled the United States out of the last of the Depression's unemployment morass. Nevertheless, it's just very stupid and shortsighted to assume that one man's job directly causes some other man to go jobless.
Oh, yeah, Stanwyck's Edith Head wardrobe is good -- but that's not enough reason to watch this.
The Lady Vanishes (1979)
A Cybill Shepherd comedy, whereas Hitchcock's original was a mystery
Remake of a British 1938 Michael Redgrave film with Dame Mae Witty and Margaret Lockwood. The 1979 version, done as a Cybill Shepherd and Elliott Gould vehicle, pushes mainly its comedic/farcical elements instead of it being s legitimate mystery itself. The political intrigues and treacheries of the years between the First and Second World Wars made a better basis for the 1938 film than the 1979 film had. Alfred Hitchcock had still been in Britain when his 1938 film was made. Hitchcock had a sure hand utilizing the looming dangers and unease of the time, just one year prior to Britain's actual 1939 entry into WWII. The 1979 film isn't rotten but it simply doesn't hold up when weighed against Hitchcock's original. If you watch the 1979 movie, do so expecting a comedy not a mystery, and do so before you ever have seen the Hitchcock version.