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Reviews
Eye for an Eye (1996)
Great Winter movie
When it is cold and snowy outside or one of those days it is just pouring rain and your pickle ball tourney is cancelled, this is a good couch and popcorn flick. It scratches an itch. I saw it in February 96, much in the same way...something to do on a dreary day. A rewatch in early 24 suggests it aged well enough. I left the theater back then thinking I was glad I caught the matinee, however, but liked it. Sally Fields is pretty good in this one. Believable. Joe Montegna was pretty solid, too, but in the wrong role. Contrived and predictable to have him as the detective. Kiefer Sutherland is miscast, in my opinion. I think he should have played the caring husband and Ed Harris, the detective. I see Joe Montegna as the undercover FBI agent in the infiltration role, which needed more character development, following or trailing Sally's character a little bit, for example, and both worried she will commit a crime and empathetic to it. I submit he lost his older Sister to a murderer in L. A. and that is why he went into law enforcement. I would have written the "pee scene" as the bad guy pleasuring himself. And that bad guy should have been Gary Busey. We learn he is an ex-con, too, not just some random dude. He is paroled and back at his ways not long after getting out for attempted sexual assault in the late-80s. And there should be no courtroom scene and DNA bs. Wasted time. He is a skilled rapist and killer and a "serial" theme soon develops. When Sally breaks into his apartment later on, she finds "trophies" such as underwear and shoes, necklaces, etc....of victims including her daughters favorite style of panties, which she always wore. She catches on to Busey after Montegna slyly tips at the survivors club he heard he is a suspect in a different murder and could be the dude. And knows where he works and thinks he could have been the one who killed his sister in 88, as well. And that is how she ends up trailing him. Rather than the courtroom scene, it should have been another rape-murder, after her daughter's, perhaps a pretty blonde on roller blades in Venice Beach, brutalized in her apartment in a similar fashion, but there needed to be more fear and horror to anger the audience. Perhaps, the roller blades woman wets herself or vomits. Something visceral like that.
The movie lacked overall character development and enough "stuff" to seem like a true thriller, relying on cheap cliches. But it ok overall. I just think the plot or changes I made here would have given it some guts.
77 Minutes (2016)
Good Production Values - Terrible premise from self-serving Producer
I remember this terrible moment very well. It was a beautiful Summer day. A happy time. School was out. The Padres were winning. The Olympics were in L. A.
Great movies were out that year! Ghostbusters. Indiana Jones and the Temple of Doom. Gremlins. Karate Kid. And the Music happening too. The Jacksons Victory Tour was on! Prince, Van Halen, Duran Duran, Lionel Richie, Dan Hartman's "I Can Dream About You" was on the radio all the time. We had MTV and VH-1 playing music videos 24/7.
The weather that summer was superb. Mission Bay was happening every Summer day. I was 17. What a great time!
And then this. This surreal, awful afternoon. I knew nobody involved and had not been in that McDonald's, only driven past it. But it was a punch to the gut. A hard one. The collective gut of San Diego. We had not felt such despair since September 25, 1978. The raw emotions we all had. One had to be there in San Diego, Summer 1984 to understand. It was devastating.
I don't believe we'd had a mass shooting of that magnitude in this country since the Texas Tower shootings at the University of Texas, 18 years before. What we have become so sadly accustomed to now, as if the death toll were just ball scores read off, was a mouth-dropping horror back then. This was a BAD, BAD day.
I always wondered if someone would make a feature length movie or documentary on this. After all, there had been one about the UT shooting. Years went by. Nothing. Many in the South Bay had never even heard of this event when it came up in the news on an anniversary date or in simple conversation around a cocktail party or some Chula Vista backyard BBQ. "Really? How awful! When was this?" was an often heard response.
Then came along 77 Minutes. It was a shock to learn it was even happening. I wondered what it would be like. Many did. The Producer has some positives here. The production values are solid if unspectacular. The usage of newsreel is just fine. Impactful. Historical. He paints the story as it unfolded and does well. The concept of "77 Minutes" having elapsed, as it is presented in the film, is chilling and surprising. And meaningful. Taking us inside, horrific as it is, an evil necessity. People should know what it is really like. The absolute devastation. The death. The horror. The interviews with those involved are solid, but only good because of who is being interviewed. Fantastic people, survivor, witness, Police, media...all who lived it.
What makes this documentary a failure is Minn himself. His childish, belligerent agenda lacks insight, intelligence, professionalism and, therefore, credibility. It is amateur and high school first-year student paper at best. He is creepy. He invokes a racial element for no compelling reason.
Minn would have been better off doing the production values and letting a skilled interviewer do the questioning from a studious and objective point-of-view, without pre-conceived notions based on nothingness. Carlos Amezcua would have been perfect, telling the story as a narrator through his own experiences that day and then having "conversations" with the others. This was what would have worked.
All else was fine. The concept, the storyline, the production values. Even the "old school" graphics were ok as they reflect what we saw on TV, fairly closely, in those times. It gave the documentary historical, period flavor.
What ended up happening was Minn made this and whatever ails him upstairs, all about him. It should be called "77 Minns".
Dragnet 1967: The LSD Story (1967)
A fun little trip
This episode was the first Dragnet in color, appropriately. It is a cool little episode and a lot of fun. Just don't take it too seriously. Don't be all Friday about it and just go ahead and let your hair down and get groovy.
Tôkyô Joshi Zukan (2016)
Bravo!
Outstanding! Compelling. Intelligent. Touching. Profound. I found myself rooting for Aya at every turn in finding her true self. If she really existed I would surely want to know her and root for her in my heartfelt hopes for the eventual outcome that made me, a grown American man of 54, choke up a little at the end and then smile. Bravo! Bravo! Bravo! Bravo Japan! Pure class! Just beautiful.