Movie Reviews
Bosch
This will be a follow-up to my review of the pilot, which was shown on Amazon in 2014. It was voted in by Amazon Prime members, and a ten-episode series was made, and shown starting in early 2015.
We are big fans of the Michael Connelly books about Harry Bosch and Mickey Haller, though I like Harry a lot better. This series is quite faithful, combining three novels into one long ... Read more »
The Man in the High Castle
No science fiction writer has had as many movies made from his novels and short stories as Philip K. Dick. No one else even comes close. There have been at least a dozen movies and several TV shows, and a few more are in the pipeline. Many billions have been made from them, and he got almost none of it during his lifetime, since he died shortly after the sale of rights for “Do Androids ... Read more »
Blue Velvet
What can I possibly say about this movie that hasn’t already been said? It got mediocre reviews when it came out, but people soon realized that it was one of those seminal movies that changed everything. After David Lynch got the awful Dune adaptation out of his system, he returned to his strange roots by making this. There had never been anything quite like it. ... Read more »
The Man From U.N.C.L.E
I had forgotten just how popular this series was. According to Wiki it lasted only four seasons, and for some inexplicable reason they decided to tamper with it after the second season, turning it into more of a comedy than a drama. Fans stayed away in droves, and it was cancelled. I can’t recall ever seeing it, but one of my best friends was just obsessed with David McCallum as Ilya ... Read more »
Rocket Science
Absolutely nothing about this total mess of a movie makes sense. Nothing at all. Anna Kendrick (in her second movie role; she was twenty-two and looks younger) is a highly competitive high school student in the state debate finals. Her partner inexplicably is suddenly struck mute. Can’t get a word out. They come in second place.
She is in search of a partner for next year’s ... Read more »
Nora’s Will
Jews are supposed to be put in the ground within twenty-four hours of their deaths, but there are exceptions. You can’t bury a Jew at the beginning of Passover, or on the Sabbath. Nora knows this, and has planned her death carefully so that she can’t be buried for five days. Jose, who divorced her twenty years ago but still lives in an apartment across the street, is hardly surprised to ... Read more »
Timecode
I’m all in favor of experimentation in the arts. Sometimes you get a real breakthrough. Sometimes it falls flat on its face. And sometimes the best you can say for it is that it was an interesting attempt. This one falls into the last category.
It is entirely in split screen, four quadrants, where things are happening simultaneously. You know that because about fifteen minutes in, ... Read more »
Fargo
(Second Season) And so one of the more unlikely television series moves on, with a new story that is many years before what was shown in the first season. You may recall that the first season dealt with events shortly after what happened in the brilliant movie. This one goes back to 1978, when Molly Solverson, the cop so nicely portrayed by Allison Tolman in the first series, is six years ... Read more »
Bomb Girls
Canada, being a part of the British Commonwealth, entered WWII a full two years before America did. Since it was too distant to be bombed by either the Nazis or the Nips, it was a great place to build war material for embattled and bombed England. This excellent series follows a group of women who, like their American counterparts later, “manned” the factories while their men were ... Read more »
After Hours
This has to be one of Martin Scorsese’s weirder films. Not that he has confined himself to violent tales of the Mafia, though he has made a lot of those. But this one is just … weird. It follows Griffin Dunne on a late night ramble around Manhattan’s downtown area, when he meets Rosanna Arquette in a diner and is invited back to her apartment. Naturally, he is hopeful that he can score ... Read more »