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Reviews
Finding Alice (2021)
Deranged widow spends the whole show pretending her criminal husband was a saint
The production and acting is above par.
We are meant to sympathize with the widow, the central character. That's not possible. The widow is deluded, a woman who persists in maintaining that her late husband was a saint, when in fact he was a shonk of the highest order, who left her high and dry.
She persists in her delusions and justification for her bad life decisions, attacking all those (including her own family) who try to point out that her husband's shonkiness has led to some bad, bad outcomes. But she keeps pushing, pushing: Of course I can bury him in my backyard! I don't need permission for that! Of course the house is mine, even if he gave it his parents! Of course the police don't need to see the crucial cctv evidence!
This show is tolerable if you treat it as a study of a mentally ill woman. But that is not how it is presented.
Marcella (2016)
Psycho detective destroys the lives of innocent people she hates
I have only watched season two. For reasons that elude me, we are meant to sympathize with the lead character; who uses her police power to stalk, harass, bully, and intimidate anyone who crosses her path. Through the course of the series, she destroys the lives of anyone she does not like. She suffers no consequences.
The show constantly uses the tired cliche of "Where are you going?", which might better be labelled as "WTF are you doing Marcella?". Marcella spends most of the season suddenly taking off in a car, to the perplexment and dismay of everyone else in the scene.
If this were reality, Marcella would have been fired from the police in the first episode, locked up in the second, and committed to an asylum in the third as a danger to herself and others. Marcella is repugnant.
The series also leaves so many loose ends that you could weave a Fair Isle cardigan out of them.
Year of the Rabbit (2019)
Delightfully quirky and fun
In this comedy police procedure set in late Victorian times, Matt Berry leads a team of police into a series of unlikely adventures. The plots are silly, but the dialogue, characters and meta-jokes are great.
With this and "What we Do in the Shadows", Matt Berry is finally getting the recognition he deserves. The only thing I miss is that Berry isn't allowed to use his usual bass voice, a voice so fruity he speaks in pomegranates. For that, I suggest listening to his demented BBC radio show "I, Regress".
Aknyeo (2017)
Yet another assassin move, ho-hum
Why do we need so many movies about assassins? Why do we need so many movies and TV shows about female assassins. Answer: we don't.
This is an overlong film with every cliche and every defect of every other assassin film. The bad guys could not hit an oil tanker with a bullet if it were an arm's length away. They bring swords and knives to gunfights, and conveniently forget to bring guns to a knife fight. The heroine can defeat 5, 10, 50, 100-- hey, 1,000!-- baddies in seconds.
The opening sequence seems to be a homage/rip-off of the even more ludicrous film-- if such a thing is possible-- "Hardcore Henry".
It may be full of action, but it is dull and boring. The heroine is never in jeopardy and so there is zero tension. Yawn.
Hardcore Henry (2015)
Perfect movie for pubescent boys who have just had their first wet-dream
This film is targeted at society's autists. Pubescent boys who have just had their first wet-dream. Pubescent boys who live in their mother's basement. Pubescent boys who live only to play video games. Pubescent boys with little experience of the mundanities of everyday life, because their mother delivers them pizza to their basement every day of their lives.
Really, just read the many ten-star reviews. Is it not obvious that they are written by children, children incapable of functioning in an adult world?
Killing Eve (2018)
Great acting, shame about the plot
I found this difficult to watch on several levels.
First, the protagonist, the psycho killer, a master assassin employed by a shadowy organization. We are, it seems, meant to find her appealing. What the whaty-what? I don't get. She is a loathsome monster.
Second, her antagonists, the British MI5/MI6. These guys make Inspector Clouseau look like a combination of Colombo and Sherlock Holmes. These idiots spend all their time losing their luggage, computers, passwords and phones to the enemy. Whenever chasing their devilish, cunning, and heavenly armed opponent, they do not for one second decide to bring a weapon more effective than a chupa-chup.
In the second half of the season, the so-called super-secret master assassin blows her cover twice an episode. By killing many people in a prison in the most public fashion. All caught on camera. Most impressively by dramatically shooting people over an extended time in a posh restaurant. All caught on camera. Her DNA everywhere. Her identity known to her enemies. So how does super-secret master assassin ever expect to get another job?
The plot of the last half of the season is beyond ludicrous
Dalziel and Pascoe: Foreign Bodies (2000)
More loose ends than a scarf in a blender
Of the many episodes of this series I have enjoyed, whether based on Mr Hill's original novels or not, this one has to take the cake for plot inanity. I am really hoping that the version I saw was missing 20 minutes of exposition.
In the version I saw, Dalziel's unlikely holiday squeeze manages to lose three former husbands (one French, one Japanese, one Romanian) in Yorkshire in as many days. Each time Dalziel confronts her with the corpse (how did he figure that out?) she claims not to know the body for the first five minutes, than admits she was married to him.
To paraphrase from the episode (and the brevity of my dialog is about the same as happens in the episode0:
Dalziel: So Florrie, you can't identify the corpse/photo?
Florrie: Of course not. I've never seen him in my life.
Dalziel: Are you sure?
Florrie: Well, I might have met him once. On a cruise.
Dalziel: Maybe you knew him better than that.
Florrie: All right, he was my fourth husband.
And this happens three times. Three times she denies knowing the corpse to Dalziel, and three times she admits within minutes that the corpse was in fact a former husband. Frack me! Naturally, the best Dalziel can do is... have sex with his prime suspect.
WTF? WTF? This is not the doughty detective we have come to know and love. This is a half wit.
The rest of the plot has more holes than a Swiss cheese.