hopkinsrs Reviews

The Time in Between (2013–2014)

Gorgeous

[9/10 · 16 April 2016]

My wife and I really enjoyed this series. The plot is engaging, and the acting is above average. Adriana Ugarte, who plays Sira/Arish, is particularly fun to watch. More than anything I enjoyed the look of the show -- the architecture (in Tangier and Tetouan Morrocco, Madrid, and Lisbon), the cars, and the clothes. I saw somewhere that the women in this show (the dressmaker and her clients) wore well over 1000 different outfits, each more elegant, in a 1940 sort of way, than the last. This isn't what I usually watch TV for, but the look of the show is over the top and it makes the whole series more fun to watch. Also, with the first half of the show set in the Tetouan, in the Spanish Protectorate in Morocco, during the Spanish Civil War, I had to brush up on some interesting history. I had imagined that Morocco was all under French control before the country resumed full independence in the 1950s, but a strip of northern Morocco was under Spanish administrative control from 1912 on. And of course Franco had started his rebellion against the Republic, and thus the civil war, by invading Spain from Morocco..

Drunktown's Finest (2014)

American Indians

[8/10 · 23 November 2015]

We contributed to a Kickstarter campaign to help get this movie finished, so last week a DVD of it came in the mail. We were very pleasantly surprised. Three intertwining stories of young people coming of age, nicely handled. The thing that struck me so strongly is that the characters are so American and so Navajo at the same time. They are finding their places as adults, and also along the continuum of acculturation.

Although alcohol plays a pretty big part in this movie, I dislike the title, which belongs to a much grittier and more knowing movie. While bad things are done by and to the characters, the overall mood is almost sweet.