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A Town Like Alice (1981)
Worth Seeing Many Times
I very much enjoy watching certain films and TV series so often that I have no idea how many times I have actually seen them. Bogart Films ... 12 Angry Men ... are examples. This is one of the TV series. I would watch it more often if it was available in a more convenient format -- I only have the poor quality video tape. I am also a big fan of Nevil Shute and have read this book and No Highway in the Sky many times. As an engineer/scientist, I like a lot of how he portrays people like me. He is somewhat better than most authors, but still flawed. He often strays from being rational and his politics are not particularly well hidden. Because I like his writing, I do wish the series had more of the engineering theme (in this case, building Jean's businesses) from the second part of the book. However, there is still a lot from the first part (how the women and children managed to survive) and Helen Morse is spectacular.Bryan Brown and Gordon Jackson are good and I do understand why their stories were modified for TV because of their popularity. I did not mind those changes and thought a few actually added to the story arc. What this series improved significantly over what Shute never really did well in any of his books, was develop the real chemistry between the main characters, most likely because Helen Morse is so good. My biggest disappointment in watching this many times is that, since I do not live in Australia, I have not gotten to see her act more.
Queen & Country (2014)
Very Disappointing
I am a huge fan of Hope and Glory and had high hopes for Queen and Country. The entire experience of the new film was very flat. It was like taking a cross country trip focused on making exactly the same distance every day and staying in safe hotels. Nothing stood out, except possibly some bad (over?) acting. Most of the cast was adequate, but Caleb Landry Jones and Aimee-Ffion Edwards mostly just over-acted, as did almost everyone playing someone in a position of authority in the military. Of course, dealing with a plot that made little sense probably did not help. The best part of the film takes place on the water where Callum Turner does a nice job of making us believe it was his natural habitat mostly by becoming more confident instead of the fish-out-of-water he usually is (that is about as deep as this moving gets). Unfortunately, there were also some lame scenes of filming on the water that also added nothing. The only good news for my wife and me is that one of our tickets was free, so we only wasted half as much money.
Midsomer Murders: Second Sight (2005)
The Worst of a Great Show
Like the other reviewers, I am a huge fan of this series, but very disappointed in this episode. I love the characters, the writing and the great details on English country life. I even have a lot of fun trying to recognize British cars that we never see in the US and the repeated patterns in the plots (how many times do they have to have three victims?). The idiotic psychic plot line and even the writing were terrible. It appears that they threw this together over lunch and filmed it nearly in real time (except of course for the weather). It reminded me of times when my students hope they can get by on their charm instead of actual substance (and I teach future engineers!). If the Midsomer Murders team has any standards at all, they should delete this one and never show it again.
Foyle's War (2002)
Hoping for More
I cannot get over how much I like this series. The writing is terrific; I care a great deal about the characters; and WWII has become one of my historical obsessions. What more can I ask for ... except a lot more episodes? I will be happy if we get to follow everyone for as long as the good writing holds out.
I am a voracious reader of history, so I am not entirely sure why I had not gotten to this war until about the last decade. The only explanation that I can come up with is that I am in the vanguard of baby boomers, so the era involved my parents too much. When they neared the end of their lives, I found I needed to know much more about the two most important eras they lived through ... the War and the Great Depression. My family comes from near Madison, Wisconsin not Hastings, England, but I like to think that Foyle's War captures the ethos of their generation in which millions of good people found a way to fight the extraordinary evil of the time. That they had to deal as much or more with the idiots on their own side is also a big theme as Christopher Foyle tries to do his job. Thus, I guess I see my family in this wonderful series.
Friday Night Lights (2004)
Sad Story
I am a huge sport fan and was looking forward to this movie. However, I was really disappointed in how shallow it is. Maybe it is just a sad commentary on modern America that winning in sports depends only on one's willingness to die for one's team and has nothing to do with how it is done. I assume that Coach Grimes actually taught his players something about the game and not just how to love one another. Why is that not included in this movie? At least in Hoosiers, we see Coach Dale as a teacher and not just a motivator. I came away with no sense of why Grimes is an excellent coach. He cares about his players and screams at them, but that is all. The well done part of this movie is the depiction of a community's willingness to spend too much money on sports while academics are ignored. This was done without any overt commentary or by beating us over the head with the views of the film makers. It was just obvious. We love our circus.