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Reviews
Victoria (2016)
Elaborate Fictionalized and Endless Bio
Full disclosure: I read history and I try to honor it. This series is NOT history, it is fiction based upon a selection of factoids. For example, Lord Melbourne was a portly, sleepy gent of about 57 when Victoria first came to the throne. Something like a trim, active Rufus Sewell in his late 40's? You're kidding. Victoria is similarly glamorized by casting the beautiful Jenna Coleman as the actually plain young princess and queen. This makes for smashing romance, perhaps, but plausible history, no. And crediting Victoria for sympathy toward Chartist rebels is more wishful scripting. There's more, but why belabor it? It's largely idealized melodrama and should not be confused with biography.
Slow moving as well. Clearly aiming at a long run.
Otherwise, a nice production with a talented cast, but too fabricated and glacially-paced for me.
Stamboul Quest (1934)
Good Cast, Terrible Script
This sounds like a good story line: German counter-espionage efforts to foil the leak of Ottoman secrets during the British assault on the Dardanelles (Gallipoli). Myrna Loy is quite attractive and the character actors (Lionel Atwill, C. Aubrey Smith) are in fine form. The plot is absurd, however, portraying everyone except Ms. Loy's character and her beau, played by a ridiculous George Brent, as dimwits and totally unqualified for the positions they occupy. Unbelievable plot devices abound. Brent's character, for example, pops up repeatedly and usually grinning in various locales as though this how Americans navigated war-torn Europe. He's from 'Pittsboig', by the way.
The last straw for me was the ending, which actually seemed to be headed toward an unexpected and highly dramatic twist. You be the judge. Or, more wisely, skip it.
Even for the era during which it was made, this film is an insult to the intelligence of its audience. 5 stars for the supporting cast.
Pine Gap (2018)
Intelligent and Engaging
This limited series takes a bit to rev up, but several threads emerge that are convincingly woven into a complex and convincingly real plot. The subject matter is high tech intelligence and the managers and analysts who staff a massive and isolated installation The references to current events and more or less obscure geography are on the mark and lend a sense of the real thing to the story line. The characters are nicely drawn for the most part with a few minor shortcomings. And, there are a couple of (mostly unnecessary) plot lines that are not up to the overall depth of the series. Hence 8 stars and not 9 or 10.
But, by the last couple of episodes, I was truly enthralled by the growing tension and continuously twisting plot. Very good cast - not a big name among them. Well-written. In a word, this series is smart - a rare quality in screen material these days.
The Investigator: A British Crime Story (2016)
The World's Slowest Investigator
The case is an intriguing one - an odd martial relationship, a love triangle, a disappearance, a murder conviction, a lingering mystery. Get ready to spend a lot more time than necessary to pick the whole thing apart. Or, don't bother.
Sorjonen (2016)
Wanted to Like It, But...
The opening episode seemed to lay out an interesting set of characters and a new scenario. The setting (Finland near the Russian border) is intriguing and not that familiar to Western audiences. But, as the series progresses, cliches and plot gimmicks begin to pile up. The main character has plenty of potential, but the writing does not live up to the possibilities. The division of the season into two or three episode segments is a mistake - I won't detail the reason (for spoiler avoidance). There is a particular character who is almost cartoonish, but essential to the story-lines. Gets old and formulaic fast. Ho hum.
Dunkirk (2017)
Ouch!
In a word, disappointing. The film shows 300,000+ mostly brutish, selfish and hateful British troops rescued in Biblical fashion by an armada of little boats crewed by saints. Vast numbers of troops left on warships from the mole or ferried to them by the small vessels. On only one day out of 9 were more taken off the beaches as via the harbor. Poor weather actually limited German air interference over several crucial days - every day looked sunny and fair in the film. One personal observation: Not sure why these Tommies were in the service rather than in the cinema as they all looked like Hollywood heartthrobs - right down to a perfect set of choppers on every last one of them. Very artificial and unsympathetic. My rating of 6 is a nod to the superior air combat scenes.
Peaky Blinders (2013)
Wearing Me Out
I made it through 4 seasons, but I'm done. The anachronistic music, the slow-mo, the snap reversals of fortune and, most of all, the super-human qualities of the main character have left me terminally underwhelmed with this series. The latest season has far too many situations where hails of bullets from multiple weapons miss their marks when directed against cast mainstays, where the bad guys get the drop only to squander it on babble, where every character seems to have been in a dental care time warp. I'm done.
Tank 432 (2015)
45 Degree Slope Downward
Obviously, a low budget, but that a bad film does not make. The direction and acting are not bad at all and actually have some very effective sequences, but they are loaded in the movie's first half. It's the script that is the culprit and it almost seems like the screenwriter ran out of ideas or time or something.
Don't be fooled by the first 30 minutes, which are ferocious, dynamic, mysterious and very promising. Sadly, it goes downhill very rapidly and does not recover, descending into paralysis and repetition. The ending is totally disappointing.
Arrival (2016)
Thought-provoking, but preposterous
This is an engaging movie with a few familiar themes: huge and mysterious spacecraft suddenly show up, first contact with aliens, science vs. military, individual effort battling group think. But what gives this film its real pizazz is the 'flashback' under-plot that starts early on and only becomes (moderately) comprehensible after various revelations and breakthroughs that emerge gradually from the main plot. Because of this, the story is quite complex and keeps the unraveling in progress all the way.
Ultimately, however, the denouement is (to me) unsatisfying. No amount of arm-waving is going to convince me of the main premise, which shall remain unrevealed.
A very interesting movie, but left me disappointed. Maybe I should read the story it is based on.