gina-95739 Reviews

In the Heat of the Night (1967)

It's 1967 in Sparta, Mississippi ...

[10/10 · 12 November 2023]

When a Northern businessman building a factory in a rural Southern town that needs jobs winds up dead, the pressure is on to find out who murdered him or risk losing the factory. The only man who has the skills to solve the crime is also the accused, played by Sidney Poitier, a black man apprehended at the local train station whose only crime is passing through the town.

It seems the burly cracker Chief of Police played by Rod Steiger has his man until the dead man's wife steps in and insists Virgil (Poitier), an expert homicide detective from Philadelphia, be kept on the case or else she's pulling the factory from the town.

The Chief and Virgil will have to team up to solve the case in a town that's against the both of them - one because he's a race traitor, the other because he's an uppity black man who doesn't know his place and poking his head into matters that are none of his concern.

It's a genius script, the performances unreal, and the direction masterfully gets the best out of both.

Still of the Night (1982)

Highly Underrated

[8/10 · 28 August 2023]

I'm a huge fan of Hitchcock, and I have no problem that others seem to suffer with that this is an homage to the Master of Suspense. Nowhere is Meryl Streep more luminous than this film. Meryl's performance as Brooke is quiet and seduces the viewer as well as the psychiatrist turned detective played by Roy Scheider. Brooke's air of understated sophistication, mystery, and vulnerability draws us through the twists and turns of this tightly constructed story of a murder on the loose.

Scheider is superb as a rational man irrationally mesmerized by a mysterious blonde, Streep (a Jimmy Stewart figure a la Vertigo), and cannot seem to overcome the impulse to entangle himself with the police's number one suspect and the lover of his now dead patient.

As we watch Scheider progressively cross every ethical line of his profession to uncover the identity of his patient's murderer, the suspense and tension grows. It's ironic then that it's his skills as a psychiatrist that help him crack the Dali-esque dream of his patient to finally solve the mystery.

All in all the film is a delicious mood film that keeps you guessing right til the end. Don't listen to the naysayers. Definitely time well spent.

The Unsolved Murder of Beverly Lynn Smith (2022)

This is an important to the family so I gave it more stars BUT

[6/10 · 17 July 2022]

... the sound design is SO IRRITATING and distracting. I'm in the film industry and I would have sent this back. It lacks mature choices.

This is a documentary not an episode of CSI. These are real people and a viewer knows when to feel and what to feel. We don't need a sound track that competes. We need to hear the PEOPLE and the INFORMATION.

I had to mute the sound to just get through it after a point. Beverly Lynn Smith, RIP.

Jesse Stone: Death in Paradise (2006 TV Movie)

Vehicle for Tom. Robert Parker's bruh?

[6/10 · 14 July 2022]

Look, this isn't a great dramatic film. It won't have you on the edge of your seat. The script is clunky. The dialogue is stilted at times. It didn't transfer well from Robert Parker's novel to the screenplay. Tom is clearly still discovering who his character is.

Regardless of these things ... Tom Selleck is just a likeable guy. Women (and men) want to be with him. Guys want to be him. Since he is so well-liked and relatable, you'll find yourself ignoring flaws and going along for the ride.

This story doesn't rely on blood and guts here. The plot is actually driven by Tom's character's demons which is what really saves it.

Viola Davis could be in a toothpaste ad and still give an Oscar performance. That woman is a force.

This is a movie that's worth the time if all your looking for is a decent story with some decent acting that doesn't make you feel like completely wasted your time and you're tired of gratuitous violence, sex, and the deviant and dysfunctional.

Churchill's Secret Agents: The New Recruits (2018)

Proof positive that gender isn't the key factor, Eye-opening without being boring

[9/10 · 4 December 2019]

What I really appreciated about this "reality series" is that it made both history and my gratitude for those who risked their lives come alive. The series is generally well-paced. Its participants showed a lot of character, and the military facilitators shined--keeping their a excellent balance between compassion and insistence on participants learning the skills taught to the actual and would-be operatives necessary to keep them alive.

Very fascinating to watch how participants were assessed and how all reacted to the training exercises. Particularly interesting was the training on concealing their true identities and real-life attempts at keeping their cover stories during interrogations.

It's really inspiring as well to see that gender is nowhere a conclusive factor in important military missions.

I would strongly recommend that everyone watch this as a reminder of the bravery, courage and untapped talents that everyone has inside them as well as of the amazing heroes and heroines who would stood up despite danger and what most have been incredible loneliness during a war which many today have no living relative who can tell them how it was.

This is how TV is supposed to be.