MetroVavin Reviews

Her Secret Life (2017)

A literate mystery and intense love story

[10/10 · 28 November 2023]

I judge a film to be great not by the quality of the acting, the script, the direction, or the production. A really great film produces a profound feeling when it ends. The emotion is often similar. It's like being struck with an arrow. I don't agree with Aristotle and Hollywood that the aim of a film is to produce catharsis and make people feel better. A great film produces a new positive emotion, not to recover and purge a suppressed one.

I can't name that feeling. It includes pain for the suffering of life and awe at the mystery and depth of it. It includes joy at the possibilities of it. It's something like what a cathedral inspires. Tarkovsky said the aim of art is to render the soul capable of turning to good. The feeling is like a fire that consumes pettiness.

This film caused that feeling in me, so for me it is scientifically proven that it is a great film. No criticism of the film can touch that precious feeling.

It has a low rating (now 5.4) on IMDB. It's not surprising. The film is adapted from prize winning novel by Véronique Ovaldé. The film is more literature than popular entertainment. Lancelot, the main character is impossible to like or admire. He is the opposite of the legendary Lancelot. We watch films generally to escape our lives and who we are and identify for a time without someone we would like to be having a life we would like to have. The second part this film does provide; the main character finds true love. One reason people may rate the film so low is that it doesn't provide a likable main character.

But that is one element that makes the film unique. There are a lot of people like Lancelot.

However uncharismatic, unattractive (my reaction anyway, with those glasses), and unadmirable the main character is in every way, Julien Boisselier portrays him exactly as he needs to be for the film. He is not the romantic antihero, the renegade criminal, or any other type of hero. He is a repressed cold fish. His love is Irene, who is confident, creative, beautiful, and outgoing. Whatever attracted her to him was invisible to me. Her attraction is immediate, love at first sight.

Lancelot is writing a book on Paul Verlaine, and he quotes the poem "Oft Do I Dream" about longing for a true love. This is a universal human desire, our core social drive. The film turns around the posibiity of true love, but not in a sugared fantasy. At times it gets so dark that I was on the brink of stopping it. This all elevates the film to the archtypal.

The excellent actor Caterina Murino plays Lancelot's lover. She is well able to bring to life the woman of Verlaine' dream.

The film takes place in gorgeous Sicilian landscapes and cities, even though everyone speaks French. The director uses the camera like a telescope to bring us close and closer to the characters, which works well because they are giving great performances. The artistically effective camera work is one of the beauties of the film. It has in many places a charming laugh-out-loud dark humor that somehow melds with the tragic tone of much of the film .

The script and direction skillfully use exposition to fit a novel into the feature film format remarkably well. That is nearly impossible to do, yet after the film you feel as if you have absorbed an entire novel in detail. Sometimes I wanted to be shown something that was told in brief summary, but it wasn't critical for the story line. It must be abridged from the novel, but you don't feel it at all.

It is interesting for such a quintessentially French film that Americans rate it more highly than the French (and for some reason Brazilians much lower.)

If you like literate and moving French cinema, or are a fan of Murino, then like me you may really like the film.

The Corsican File (2004)

If you want funny sexy romantic adventure...

[10/10 · 26 November 2023]

Some films are just totally delightful.

I love funny movies. I've seen a lot. This is the funniest film I have ever seen by far as measured by the decibels of my laughter. That's an objective fact, not an opinion.

Don't see it with anyone you don't want to see you laughing uncontrollably like a hyena.

The female lead is a heart attack. I mean she probably has to be followed around by a team of paramedics.

This morning I was an atheist. Now I believe in God. Really.

Jean Reno is king, but without her evident ability to portray hyper-realistic emotions we would never buy the romantic sub plot and the movie would fail. She gives the most convincing performance of a top tier cast. Unusually, she enters the film halfway. (Maybe that's to give the other actors a chance. ) It feels like a New Wave element. It smoothly becomes a different film in the middle without losing any cohesion.

The story is fun, unpredictable and engaging. It has the flavor of a more realistic Philippe de Broca, another maker of delightful films.

It has other new wave elements. One I adore is when the plot has been resolved and we expect the film to end, the film just keeps going. You enter much deeper into the world of the film. Another is incidents that just happen. They don't move the plot forward. They add to the simulation of reality because that's how life is. They ornament the film.

The locale is touristic, an unspoiled tropical paradise.

Reviewers mentioned the strange mystifying tower scene. Think about it after the film. When did you last see a film not connect the dots for viewers? Life doesn't always connect the dots for us. Not connecting the dots here is a gift to the viewer (unless I just missed it).

So why the low rating (now 5.8)?

Some have said it could be that the type of verbal humor doesn't survive in the subtitles. To some degree that is true here, but the French reviewers rate it even lower than the Americans or the Russians, so that can't be it. It also can't be that background knowledge of Corsica and France is needed to get it. Maybe it has a type of humor that appeals to a minority who don't find the film.

Or likely the movie is just perfectly tuned to my own minority taste.

So I can promise you that if you are me, you are really going to enjoy this film.

Astrid et Raphaëlle (2019– )

among the best tv shows ever made

[10/10 · 9 November 2023]

The most amazing thing about this show is the portrayal of autism, in the character Astrid.

It's an astoundingly convincing performance, and an astoundingly convincing script.

Everyone must fall in love with Astrid, with her simplicity, her vulnerability, and her persistence in the face of tremendous challenges. She captures the innocence and joy of a child as an adult.

Around this character is an ongoing love between Astrid and Raphaelle, who work together as detectives on homicides. Astrid is Sherlock Holmes to Raphaelle's smarter, more competent version of Watson. The affection between these two women deserves a canonical place in cinema, where a focus on supportive, loving friendships between women as the central spring of a plot is not common.

There is also a moving love story as Astrid negotiates her first love affair. The love story though serves to throw Astrid's relationship with Raphaelle into relief, rather than supplanting it.

Each episode is a complete murder mystery. The mysteries are taken seriously, but they have a comic book element, with plot elements that are magical and unusual out of a fantasy adventure for children, yet always end up with a rational realist explanation. The adventures have something of the wonderful French "bande dessinee" adult comic book novels. This adds a lot of fun.

As mystery stories, fitting the complex plots and lines of investigation into 53 minutes is a shoehorn job. A lot of the story is told in summary by characters. Often repeat characters turn out to have special knowledge or abilities exactly as needed for the plot, in coincidences that beg credulity. But this convention us allows to stay in touch with some endearing repeat characters and also moves the plot along quickly to a swift conclusion. It fits the comic book flavor. The investigations themselves are fun as adventures, and have plenty of red herrings and plot twists, but are not the most convincing crime plots.

It's also often laugh out loud funny. The show finds humor in Astrid's adaptation to life always laughing with her. Astrid herself tackles difficulties like understanding figures of speech and making jokes.

All the actors manage to give performances that are at the same time exaggerated and bigger than life, and completely credible. Lola Dewaere and Sara Mortensen do outstanding jobs. Sara Mortensen has a very challenging role and gives a gold medal olympic performance, avoiding any mechanicality in the role.

The episodes often deal with social issues in a progressive way, which gives them three dimensionality and relevance apart from the discussion of autism.

Altogether, this is one of the most moving and fun tv series from any country.

Autumn Garden (2020)

Dissapointed

[5/10 · 21 February 2022]

First, I was disappointed because the there is some confusion about the cast. The movie with this DVD cover and plot does not have the listed cast.

It stars. Choi Woo Ji, Ye Ji Won, Kang Eun Woo, and Lee Ju Seok. I did not see Hwang Jeong-eum in the film at all, and that was the reason I watched it.

The film was intriguing enough and beautifully shot enough to keep my attention. It features traditional fine art painting and ceramics and beautiful music. But I found the ending unsatisfying and the plot pointless to someone with my lack of refinement. I won't say more because I don't want to put in spoilers so people can read it because my main point is:

No Hwang Jeong-eum. None. Nada. She's not in the film.

Red Planet (2000)

Silly cliche Mars flick

[5/10 · 5 October 2021]

It's always great to see Terence Stamp and he said some wise things.

A good cast but for me the script fell flat.

The backstory is Earth is so polluted humanity wants to move to Mars.

It's not possible for Earth to be so polluted its cheaper and easier to 1) terraform a basically lifeless airless desert planet and 2) move 10 billion humans across the solar system. If humanity can do that, it can clean up the planet much more easily.

If the Earth became radioactive from war it might be impossible to fix up, but the problem is given as chemical pollution. Moving 10 billion people just isnt possible and if you want to just save the human species, you could do that easier even on a radioactive Earth.

There are too many artificial, contrived plot points to create conflict and suspense. A solar flare nearly destroys the space ship just moments before landing on Mars. How likely is that?

A meteor shower puts 2 small holes in the hull of a giant space ship. It would probably take many horse even days for the air to leak out, but to create suspense and action it only takes minutes.

The flare starts a fire inside the whole ship. Solar flares are a known risk along with gamma radiation and the ship would have been designed to survive that, not burn up.

Then the fire is put out and the ship returns to full functionality. After the whole ship was on fire and everything was broken? How likely is that.

The AI robot is a military model adapted to scientific use. But we learn they left all the combat programming in place rather than delete it. How could they be so dumb? As we learn the robot has a combat mode we know a major story line that is coming.

Mars has a strange ecosystem, one "nematode" that eats algae, habitats and humans. A nematode is a roundworm. These things look exactly like and move like locusts most of the time, crabs some of the time. Didn't they have a single expert science consultant on the film? What did these things eat before humans put algae there for them? How could a planet have on single species of animal and no plants?

The script does say "I don't know where they came from." I know where they came from. Out of a scriptwriter's anatomy.

All of those contrived plot points would be fine if the characters made sense or cool things happened in the film, or there were any real surprises. Soon after they get on the planet we see things crawling on the ground so we know there is an alien life form there that solves all the riddles.

One astronaut kills another for being arrogant. They don't screen astronauts for emotional stability before a Mars mission? He only pushed the guy in anger while the guy happened to be standing at the edge of a 3 km cliff, another contrived plot point. But why would that accident cause him to turn into an evil, paranoid and totally selfish lunatic? It does create more action. It doesn't make sense as an observation of human behavior.

The platitudes about God and faith ought rather to be in a bad sermon. The love story is superficial and mechanical, without any escitement.

The cast was good, the special effects were adequate, and the story held together enough for me to sit through the whole film. But for near future space fiction there are many other much better films. The magnificent Gravity (2013) has some similar space events in it.

Wonder Wheel (2017)

For people who enjoy great theater in the movies.

[8/10 · 3 December 2020]

Some films are good because they do poorly at the box office and critics don't like them. American cinemaa is largely escapist fantasy, like daydreaming. That's what brings in the big bucks, and critics are successful when they mirror popular sentiment. Films propagate and amplify false narratives about life, narratives so fundamenal to our understanding of life we don't even know they are there. Examining them, debunking them, especially without comic diversion, is an unforgivable sin.

But hopefully truth is more engaging and rewarding than fiction. Truth is more beautiful than lies, and more of an adventure. It brings deeper feelings. That's why Eugene O'Neill is recognized as one of America's greatest playwrights, the first in the lineage of Chekhov, showing the way to Arthur Miller, Tennessee Williams, and others. Including, it appears, Allen.

Here Woody Allen goes further down O'Neill's path. Like one of Escher's still lifes with a distorting mirror reflecting the artist, one of the film's characters, admires Chekhov and O'Neill, has unrealized ambitions to write like them, and has an out-of-control, self-centered love life. Far from an ethically admirable character, but one we probably should recognize in ourselves. Allen brings a contemporary sensibility to the inner lives of his characters informed by psychotherapy.

Critics complain the film is play-like. Actually, the film makes brilliant use of the medium of film in every frame. What is play like about the film is the focus on relationship and conflict expressed in dialog, on the scale of a small family and spaces of their routine life. These play like characteriscs are essential to telling this story about a family over a short time time period. They are celebrated and exploited, not limiting. The film self-consciously declares its stage-play genes. You might as well criticise this movie as being too much like a film.

The poverty and emotional pain of this working class family contrasts with the colorful playground of Coney Island, including the iconic "Wonder Wheel" ferris wheel and the antique carousel. It's the difference betwen the life we are promised, of our dreams, and the one we wind up with. The scenery is still charming and moody in the rain, one of Allen's themes.

This kind of realistic script, with working class characters facing challenging circumstances of poverty and , has given actors the opportunity of some of the greatest film performances. Winslet and Belushi perform the subtle inner movements of minds under stress.

The point of a film like this is not just that is is beautfiul, involving and entertaining. A real adventure is more fun than an imaginary one, and films like this invite us to contemplate how we live our own lives by portrarying real people.

A Rainy Day in New York (2019)

Enjoyed greatly more than other late Allen films

[8/10 · 30 November 2020]

This is a fantastic movie. Critics can have their opinions, but they can't change the fact that I not only enjoyed this more than any other late Woody Allen film, but I was deeply touched by it. It reached into deep places. I laughed at it more than other films.

The laughter and the delight the film evoked in me can't be mistaken. That's how it affected me. What better criterion can we have for a film? If the same film touches some people and not others, is it more likely due to a limitation of the film or the people AKA critics?

Other Allen films are funny. Other films dissect our collective hypocrisy, self-centeredness, and inhumanity. This one stands out because it sounds notes of hope and love, the importance of ephemeral moments of beauty accessible to everyone willing to pay theprice for them.

It's about a young man searching for his way in life, what life has to offer that's has genuine value. It rings the bell of the different things he loves, that lift him above the daily grind. THe movie manages to invoked moments of these magic spells for us, too.

It's also about the foibles of film makers. Funny, and pitiful. Allen is well qualified to draw those portraits.

Particularly impressive is the charm and presence of Solena Gomez. Her character radiates warmth, honesty and aliveness, profound depth of feeling combined with social adroitness.

Timothee Chalamet does a good job of presenting a character that captures the features of Woody Allen without being a parody or imitation. Allen invoked the feelings and came up with the words. It's inevitable that Gatsby will remind us of Woody Allen himself, as he is on screen. Chalamet gives us an original refreshing character.

People who demand a brand new original plot line are ignoring literary history. Sec comedy has used the same plot twists from ancient Rome, through Shakespeare, down to the present. This does film have insights into the meaning of life not found in many films.

P.S.

As far as the rejection of the film on the grounds of the accusation against Woody Allen, this is just my opinion. I respect other opinions. This is an unproven allegation based on the memory of a child from many decades ago. It's known that such allegations can turn out to be untrue, for many reasons. As I understand it, three different official agencies investigated the claim. One of them, an expert in such allegations, exonerated Allen. The other two found no credible evidence. Do we want to be a society that destroys the career of a great American artist on the basis of a single, unproven, contested allegation? I don't think that is justice.

Detective Montalbano (1999–2021)

a thinking and feeling show about realistic people, magnificently done

[9/10 · 29 April 2019]

I am trying to understand why I like this series so much, and look forward to each new episode. There is so much quality in every aspect of these films it's hard to say what specifically is so attractive about them. Although the characters and the texture is pretty much the same across the series, each film has its own significant theme that keeps it interesting. It's more a thinking and feeling show about realistic people, magnificently done, than a show about physical violence.

We follow patient detective work slowly unraveling an intriguing mystery with unforeseeable twists ad turns, never as is often the case with detective series, unrealistically improbable. The stories present intriguing puzzles, always neatly and plausibly solved at the end (unlike many TV mysteries).

Many of the shows revolve around love stories, or multiple love stories. Romantic love is often the redeeming value in the lives of these people.

Montalbano is a dedicated, conscientious detective who is above all kind-hearted and compassionate, often even with people who comitted the crimes. He does not hate or revile them, he understands them, which is exactly why is he is good at his job. He is not your typical hard-boiled, depressed detective. He enjoys life, and he loves people. He has a stable long distance relationship with a wonderful woman. He doesn't have any mysterious powers of observation like Holmes, or an amazing power of logical deduction like Poirot. He relies on the exhaustive collection of facts and his acute insight into human nature to unravel the crimes. Much of the time we are watching him interview witnesses; we learn the background facts when his trusty assistants come to his office to quickly brief him after days tedious research we never see. I suspect there is more footage of him ecstatically eating traditional Sicilian dishes, for he is a serious and picky food connoisseur, as of him looking for clues at the scene of the crime. He has a small but elegant home right on the beach. On his beach he takes a daily morning swim before savoring an espresso on his patio. In the evening, when she is in town, he makes love to his beautiful partner. After solving a case, having witnessed the depths of human suffering and injustice, he heals himself with long walks by the ocean.

One reason to watch movies is to see exotic places. The films are loaded with gorgeous cinematography of gorgeous Sicilian scenery and cityscapes, as well as many gorgeous actors. These shows have the production values of fine cinema more than of TV shows or made-for-TV movies.

The show is also hilarious at moments. The comedy is character based, the brilliant portrayals of the foibles of the various main characters depend equally on the writing and the acting. The characters are unforgettable like the cuisine, complex, spicy and rich. The actors portray them down to the bones.

Another big plus is that the show is a cross-section of Italian and Sicilian in particular, culture and society. You can see into the social issues, and the peoples lives, much more than you can by merely being a tourist. For example, some shows deal with the mafia, some with immigration, some with violence against women.

I read a review that complained of the lack of action and violence. It's true, this is a detective series with the minimum of violence to move the story forward. The crimes of violence, and there are usually only one or two per episode, are portrayed in a way to capture the horror without any grind-house indulgence in sadism. I recall only one big shootout in all 34 episodes (through 2018). If you want violence and action, this is not the series for you. The stories are a chiaroscuro in which the acts of hatred and greed, that springboard the mystery plot, serve to bring forward contrasting love and compassion.

It also complained of overacting. If you have ever seen how people can react to the sudden and unexpected death of a parent, spouse or child, you know that this cannot be overacted. The performances are true. In many cases the sentiment is distilled, like wine into cognac, as is appropriate to portray the depths of feeling in a few moments on screen. People routinely bare their hearts to Montalbano, and so to us. This is a cross-section of human psychology, and a cross section requires cutting through the surface of reality to uncover the truth underneath.

Star Trek: Discovery (2017–2024)

Any Star Trek is better than no Star Trek

[6/10 · 28 February 2019]

In the plus column:

1) It's science fiction 2) It's Star Trek 3) It has acceptable special effects by contemporary standards 4) It credits Gene Roddenberry 5) It has Klingons 6) It's Star Trek

In the minus column:

1) The tech is silly and absurd. In the other Star Treks, the technology is highly unlikely but physicist Michio Kaku is still able to show how it could be consistent with known physics with a stretch. Worm-holes created by inter-dimensional mushrooms and powered by fungus spores? That is just absurd. Even Michio Kaku could not reconcile that with science. It's so silly it makes the show a spoof.

The fact that Mycelium networks, the underground fungus stems that can connect different plants' roots together, can transport nutrients between those plants as well as extract nutrients from them. Some experiments even show the transfer of signals between plants. It's also true that some of these underground fungii are very big and very old. That might justify using them as a very stretched analogy to explain some kind of inter-dimensional space ship transport network.

On top of that this absurdly advanced technology is supposed to predate The Original Series, yet is never even referred to in all the Star Trek episodes that post date Discovery. Maybe there will be a cosmic reset at the end of the series, a cosmic memory wipe, to explain that.

The mushroom travel idea recalls the worm-hole navigators of the Dune series, where the human navigators have to take psychotropic drugs. Maybe they were mushrooms too. But there the technology works because the books are full of "magical realism"; clearly not intended to be relatively hard science, but metaphors for a mystical reality. For mystics, drugs do produce "cosmic trips". The theme of mysticism is central to the Dune series.

The Star Trek universe only had touches of that, like the Vulcan Mind Meld, but it was constrained and sensible, and more paranormal than mystical. Interdimensional mushrooms, giant tardigrades, injecting spores, none of that is even coherent. How could mushrooms- small diameter organisms evolved on earth to live off decayed organic matter or green plants - have evolved into something that grows in outer space, as well as higher dimensions and alternate universes? Or vice versa? And even if it did, what would spores have to do with navigating a mycelium net? Spores are like seeds for procreation. For me the astro-mycellium prohibits suspending disbelief, which is fine for a spoof.

And given somehow earth musrooms had relatives that colonized higher dimensions, why would there only be one such related organism? Why not a bunch of disconnected ones? There is no species on earth with only one living organism except just prior to extinction. Even the premises for a fantasy have to make a credible imaginary world, unless it's a spoof where you are not supposed to believe in the world, but to see it as mocking another work of fiction. A spoof makes sense in spite of the fact that its world cannot be entered into as if real, because it is presented as a model of something that is itself not real. It is recognized as an accurate model of the referenced fictional world, which is what makes it funny.

I spent a lot of time on this but this is perhaps the major innovation the show makes in the Star Trek universe, and it's central to plot lines. It's the peg the show hangs on.

2)

The plots are superficial. The idea of The Original Series was that the stories would examine important themes. It was a thinking person's show. The main theme was not violence In Discovery, the plots are just obviously good guy fighting obviously bad guy, bang bang the good guy wins. There's not that much more to them. Sure the shows talk about moral values, human decency, tolerance etc. but only in the most cliche, formulaic declarations. The show deserves credit for that lip service pro-morality propaganda in these dark times, but it's essentially a show about war and killing the bad guys to survive.

I would compare the plot lines more to the original Flash Gordon series of the 1950's. The show was purely action with no intellectual content to speak of.

True Discovery goes into personal relationship problems and childhood trauma in a way the old Flash Gordon or TOS never did. Those plot elements are stronger than the wars and natural disasters but still simplistic compared to other shows, even other science fictions shows like Humans, Sense8, Travellers, or The Expanse. They are not particularly realistic or involving.

3)

Plot developments are incoherent and highly contrived. The events are so improbable as to be impossible by the laws of the fictional world. For example a spaceship lands on a meteor and this is enough to drive it into a pulsar within a few hours.

Pulsars interstellar ub space are not that common. You don't just find one a few hours away from a random location. The writers needed to create an emergency so suddenly you have a neutron star nearby. I won't bother to work out the physics, but if an asteroid was within a few hours of a pulsar, a rotating neutron star, it would have had to be falling into it anyway or be in orbit. A small perturbation won't make a difference. If it was very far from a neutron star then it would take a huge force in precisely the right direction to drive it toward the star, and then it would take a long time to get there. It's all a mere plot contrivance to create artificial suspense. The neutron star is not even given any believability or dramatic weight by being shown- it is just talked about.

Dark matter is not thought to have a larger gravitational effect than any matter. Nor does it's field fluctuate. The same general theory of relativity applies to all matter- dark matter just means it doesn't interact with photons. Mass equals energy and this determines the bending of geodesics that constitutes gravity. But for the sake of a plot contrivance dark matter is assigned all kinds of properties that violate established physics, and make a mockery of theories of gravity. Ridiculous arbitrary inventions like this create unconvincing threats which are then resolved at the last minute by yet more arbitrary contrivances.

When tension is created and resolved by nonsense contrivances I just don't find myself involved. I don't buy it.

I am going to watch all the episodes because after all it is where Star Trek went. The actors do a decent job which makes the show watchable melodrama. There is a lot of competition for decent serious science fiction series, some of which are of a high quality, for example Humans, Sense8, Travelers, The Expanse. Doctor Who and Farscape are both far better as brilliant camp. The various Stargate series are more in the category of Discovery's simplified melodrama and action, but they have a much more consistent and well defined universe as well as, for me, much more involving and filled-out characters.

Murdoch Mysteries (2008– )

Hilarious and witty meet deep philosphy, shades of Hitchhiker's Guide to the Galaxy

[10/10 · 15 February 2019]

I presume you have seen this episode because I highly recommend watching it before reading these spoilers.

Because a big part of the bite of this episode is not knowing it is an out of universe episode. The viewer keeps trying to see how the writers will reset the world after the bizarre events. One of the brilliant things about the episode is they don't bother. Of course anyone can come up with "Then Crabtree woke up" or "Then Cabtree wrote 'the end' to his new novel", or even, "Then Crabtree succeeded in giving liquor to everyone in Toronto killing off all the invading alien space bugs, which bugs also suppressed human memory and repaired all biological damage." There's three ways to reset it off the top of my head and I'm not even a writer.

So why waste precious time in a short episode resetting the world when anyone can do that and we know it is just a made up story anyway. It's silly to get bent out of shape about a major continuity break in a tv show. That world doesn't exist, it's not real. Behind the goofy science fiction spoof is a serious idea- is free will for humans truly worth it when it causes so much misery to all living creatures on the planet including us humans? Would the world be better off without us? Is there some redeeming value to the authenticity of human selfishness and conflict over the mindless unity of say bees in a hive? (Truth is we just are not aware of the inter-bee conflicts in a hive. Will we ever know the true horror of the history of bee atrocity?)

At the same time the episode raises these questions about human behavior it spoofs (Invasion of) The Body Snatchers, The Day of the Triffids, The Puppet Masters, and others (War of the Worlds, Night of the Living Dead), great novels made into films. Many of the plot elements and scenes are pulled from those classic stories, played for comedy rather than drama and horror.

Many of these classic science fiction novels function as allegorical, critical views of humanity, as well as horror suspense stories. Often the criticism is linear and simple. They have been read as fear of communism as a ideology that works like a viral disease to infect humans and turn them into monsters, or even more generally as the fear of the social conditioning that robs humans in all societies of their individuality and creativity. It's that conditioning that makes racism, bigotry, exploitation, violence and abuse accepted societal norms. That conditioning, which makes us members in good standing of any society, also robs of us of our humanity.

In this episode the focus though is more on the character flaws people have, that cause inter-personal conflict and dis-functionality. What would be left if these flaws were removed by true and total submission to social mores we only give lip-service to now?

The episode names and confronts the specific flaws in each of the series' characters. Much of the comedy in the series comes from these major human flaws that spare no character. Do these flaws define who these people are? Would they be better people if the flaws were erased? Do we love each character exactly because of the defining character flaw at the center of their personality?

It's not easy to make something like that work. It has to hold together as a story and the characters have to make it all believable enough for the whole thing not to turn into a Saturday Night Live skit. It's a big demand on the entire cast to carry off scenes that are in fact horrible tragedies as comedy, and the entire cast rises to the challenge. Each actor is funnier than the next. Helene Joy is particularly brilliant recalling Madeline Kahn . Series 12 has had even more brilliant humor than usual, but episode 6 in particular has been entirely consumed by the spirit of wit leaving only fish bones.

This episode is great fun, energetic and highly charged all the way through. The courageous choice to break the convention of always strictly keeping continuity across episodes in a show, and successfully using the shock of that to draw the viewer into the plot, in my opinion raises this episode to the level of art. In episode 5 Murdoch says "Ceci n'est pas une pipe", quoting surrealist painter René Magritte.... only in this case it's hilariously not a pipe not because it is a painting of a pipe, but because it is in fact a gun.

Whatever we poor confused fans make of episode 6, it is definitely not a pipe.

Johnny English Strikes Again (2018)

the funny Johnny English installment

[9/10 · 1 January 2019]

I could not even watch the first too- too silly, not funny, and to ridiculous to suspend disbelief.

While this one is along the same lines, it clicked with me.

The plot devices in the first two were just too over the top - suitable for an SNL comedy sketch which is not about a suspension of disbelief, but suspension of belief.

In this third entry, there were plenty of highly unlikely coincidences, but not impossible ones. I was never jolted out of immersion.

The physical gags in the other two were just too dumb. They also often resulted in accidental fatalities that I did not find humorous at all. They were just as dumb in this one, but for some reason they worked for me. English's bumbling resulted in minor injuries to bystanders rather than death. I laughed out loud a lot more frequently than I usually do for even a good comedy.

The chuckles were not earth moving, but frequent and hearty. Rowan's character's similarity to Peter Seller's Inspector Clouseau were never more apparent. His timing and slapstick were at their peak... and I am not usually a fan of slapstick.

The film also had a plot and subtext with political depth- the threats to democracy of the large global internet corporations, which is a major topic today of criminal investigation and government oversight investigations in both the UK and USA. It also was about the value of pre-digital values and solutions over the software that is taking over our culture.

The film had the obligatory femme fatale enemy spy, but not much developed between her and English... at least the film side-stepped the overt sexism of the Bond films.

I gave it 9 stars as outstanding as a current entry in the silly spy/police spoof genre, which I normally find utterly unwatchable. For me though it's not in the class of great classic police and spy spoofs: 1963 "Pink Panther", 1979 "The In-laws", 1967 "Casino Royale", or Louis de Funès Gendarme films. I think one of the big differences with those films is that they are really serious about character, giving depth and life to not just the main character but the supporting ones as well. If all these films were in one bag I would have to rate on a curve and give this one 7 or even 6 stars. Ratings on IMDB though are relative to the genre and time period.

She Was Pretty (2015)

Performances as good as classic Hollywood screwball comedy

[10/10 · 10 February 2018]

Where is the charisma, charm and comedy brilliance of Classic Hollywood? All those souls realizing Hollywood has descended to the least common denominator have taken rebirth in Korea.

Joen-eum Hwang is as charming and attractive as Cary Grant, her over-the top comedy expressions are as funny as Gene Wilder or Madeline Kahn, her expressions of love and caring are as sincere as Audrey Hepburn. She plays a unique combination- a sexy and charming model type who is also a funny looking hilarious clown. I didn't expect there could be another talent of the calibre of Ji-Hyun Jun, but I was wrong.

She is supposed to be playing an ugly character, nominally indicated with outrageously fake clown freckles painted on her cheeks, but she is drop-dead gorgeous and terminally cute.

The other players also do great, especially the many supporting characters that are spot-on and totally convincing. Jun-hee Ko, her close friend, was brilliant with a difficult dramatic role. Other reviewers have favored Si Won Choi, who played a kind of crazy,lovable joker, always playing practical jokes. His character was as exaggerated as Hwang's, and provided a counter-balance to her eccentricity. I didn't think his few moments of sincere feeling were as "real" as the other main actors. The other main character is her love interest played by Seo-joon Park, who is credible but it's tough to make an impression while Hwang is busy chewing up all the scenery.

The premise is along the lines of "Ugly Betty", but the plot lines as far as I can tell are totally different.

Other reviewers have criticized the plot as having unbelievable coincidences and character decisions. Classic comedy from Plautus, through Shakespeare and Billy Wilder, uses plots based on unlikely coincidence, mistaken identity and complicated love triangles frustrated by people's deceptions. That's how the genre works to portray human behavior in a condensed, engaging format. The character's choices were mostly believable enough, for me, given their many insecurities and hang-ups. If people didn't often helplessly do stupid things there could not be any movies at all.

What I liked about the story line was that many complex story lines were dovetailed together supporting each other, all supporting the arcs of the main characters. I also liked how how the characters and situations evolved into a continuing story. The series contains its own sequels. It doesn't follow the Hollywood formula of a single big climax.

You wont see much skin or sex beyond holding hands and kissing. The characters follow a strict and hard to believe pre-marital moral code. They also have a strong work ethic; one main message of the series is that everyone should work very hard at their corporate job to attain success through team effort, which will bring happiness. It's the opposite of subversive. The outcomes for everyone are very predictable from the beginning, which is how it should be in a screwball comedy. The fun is getting there.

She Was Pretty (2015)

Along the lines of and as good as classic Hollywood screwball comedy

[10/10 · 9 February 2018]

Jeong-eum Hwang is a gifted comedian as well as actor. Her physical comedy is of the same type as Jerry Lewis, but it works better for me. Where Jerry Lewis' neurotic character makes me cringe with discomfort for his pain rather than laugh, Hwang's neurotic character while panic-stricken and shaking with fear nevertheless comes across as being strong in spite of that. Her physical comedy and her mugging is inspired... funnier to me than Lucille Ball, in the same class as Madeline Kahn or Claudette Colbert.

Beyond that, though, she is able to mix up completely straight acting, heart-warming and genuine, with outrageous clowning and make it work. She is supposed to be ugly, but it's a comedy, and the fact that she really looks like a model made up like a clown, or Little Orphan Annie, is part of the fun. She is actually gorgeous with very fake painted freckles and a frizzy hairdo to provide a pretense of ugliness.

Korean cinema is producing actors like Hwang and Ji-hyun Jun who rival Hollywood's classic best in charisma and talent.

All the actors did a great job. Si Won Choi carried off his own intensely over-the-top comic role.

Someone said the story was illogical. Classic comedy from ancient Roman times to Shakespeare and right up to the great screwball comedies of the 30's and 40's is all based on an engine of preposterous coincidence, mistaken identity, and entangled love triangles. It's wildly improbably but the conventions of the genre allow it to highlight aspects of human behavior that are dead accurate, compressing lifetimes of intensity into a few hours. The exaggeration and compression is what turns observations of human behavior into entertainment.

In fact compared to the comedic plots of Plautus, Shakespeare or Frank Capra, I found "She Was Pretty" to be much more believable as well as more complex and intricate. Several people thought the plot was unlikely, that characters would not make those choices. I found them very plausible. People in intense emotional relationships, and even in distant work relationships, don't make rational choices. They don't make good choices. At least from what I have seen, people do dumb and self-sabotaging things more often than not. The reasons the characters give for their actions might in some cases seem a stretch, unless you consider the strong emotions of fear and shame that drive them.

The soundtrack was also criticized. I enjoyed it. Lyrics are sung loudly right over dialog, where the lyrics are classic songs expressing the emotions the characters are going through even as they are barely able to acknowledge it themselves. I thought that was unusual and creative and that it helped to communicate the great timeless feelings people have about romance.

One of the themes of the film is panic, panic attacks, both from trauma and from love-obsession. The examination of psychological stress and the support of friendship gives the series a weight beyond just making us laugh, although it did that for me very well.

One of things Korean TV is not is subversive. Don't expect insightful social criticism or political commentary. The story basically exalts conventional Korean social values, as well as the worship of fashion and conspicuous consumption, in spite of some egalitarian themes. These writers would not have had to worry about being put on the Hollywood blacklist (1947-1960). Nor is it Monty Python or Douglas Adams, comedy that is often built on brilliant philosophical questioning. The Korean Wave is strictly pop culture as far as I have seen... I gather a sort of Confucian social conservatism and conformity is a Korean national value.

Have only watched about 2/3 of it so far although as such comedies go the outcome is 200% predictable after a few episodes; I don't expect to be surprised. I don't want to be. The fun is how you get there.

Missing Persons (1990 TV Movie)

Among my favorite dark comedies

[9/10 · 16 April 2016]

For the type of movie it is near perfect. I haven't seen the series or read the book. I expect since this screenwriter wrote the original novel it is true to his vision perhaps more than the series. He did not apparently write for the series which I gather is a lot less edgy.

This is a very dark, insightful comedy relentlessly portraying both the human character without the white-wash job we usually see in fictional characters and the human condition without any imaginary sugar frosting. Outside of Hetty you might find the characters unlikable because they don't have imaginary positive characteristics rarely found in nature. But what's the point of only caring about people that meet our fantasy standards? Why don't we care about people portrayed realistically, people like our neighbors and relatives and work-mates? The film focuses on the lower middle class, not people you would call successful or failures, which is a good choice for the film. These people are not suffering for material needs but they also cannot conceal themselves in luxury.

While the movie for the most part portrays common life events it is so funny and dark that at times I found myself simultaneously horrified and laughing and horrified that I was laughing. The writer proved by the end of the film that he was not laughing heartlessly at these people but ruthlessly drawing our attention to their foibles and limitations. The humor and pathos blended seamlessly like the warp and woof of a carpet.

The film was genuinely and cleverly humorous with more than the usual load of funny lines. All the performances were terrific managing to capture the pathos of the characters while keeping it a comedy.

The direction / editing kept up the pace and knew when to slow down and when to skip over. Each of the many characters had their own space in the film.

Often times a good film for me falls down in the ending. Not so in this case. For me it was exceptionally successful. The strong ending was where the film was headed all along and summed up and completed it.

The main unrealistic element is Hatty's adventures. Her detective forays form the backbone of the plot and, as in many detective films, provide a way to dig through a coal seam of characters and life situations. Because it's a comedy we don't mind so much some of the unrealistic events commonly used as plot devices.

Hatty is a remarkable yet believable woman worth getting to know. The film serves up brilliantly fun humor, striking character portrayals, and strong human feelings. Thanks to masterful work by all the film makers.

Powder Blue (2009)

Beautiful slice-of-life film with convincing performances

[7/10 · 10 September 2013]

It was criticized for being about loneliness and love. How could that be a criticism? What emotions are more fundamental to human life?

It was criticized because it asks us to believe that beautiful women can be insecure and desperately lonely and needy. Has reality been so thoroughly replaced by TV in our minds?

Jessica Biel, Eddie Redmayne and Forest Whitaker give realistic touching performances and the rest of the cast is just as energetic. Like Biel Los Angeles is stripped, flashing naked concrete and gritty alleys. The loss, despair and torment didn't seem melodramatic to me but an unflinching look at the darkest moments in life, feelings we can't look in the eye. Lovely portrayals of the awkward ways we reach out trying to cut through the barriers between us.

It's a drama with the feel of film noir, not a love story, a crime story, or an action film. Not the kind of film I usually enjoy, but it is fast paced with lots of interesting relationship developments so it kept me intrigued. The photography is gorgeous, too.

While some of the plot twists are borrowed from TV soaps, the film manages to treat them as surreal plot devices, to exaggerate and expose relationships and inner feelings, like a comic book of the emotions.

What is especially nice are some short scenes sketching interactions of attraction, repulsion, need, or desperation that are unique and strike true.