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Reviews
Grand Hotel (1932)
Movie an all-time classic
What more could you want? A list of great actors and great writing. I think this film was way ahead of its time. This film holds up to today's movies easily.I am reminded of Grand Budapest Hotel. Although this movie is not a satire or comedic as that film was, it has the scope and grandeur of the latter film. It refers openly to, in effect, prostitution for money in order to get a job (sounds familiar), a carefree but sad Baron (Is he really a baron?) who is broke, and charms the ladies into falling in love with him (they can't help themselves and neither can he), and a dying and lowly accountant who works for a brutish boss, and is finding true happiness finally at this late time in his life. (Joan Crawford, John Barrymore, and Lionel Barrymore)These characters and more have a tragic side which is mostly not obvious. All are flawed, and helplessly so. Money plays a central part in this movie. It shows how it can control people's lives and their choices. For example, a good and decent man, the accountant, living a miserable and unhappy life. He has been dealt a bad hand and now he is dying. Perhaps his own choices and lack of courage has controlled his life, but in the process of dying, he finds the courage to face his demons. Would we all find that a freeing aspect, though of course none of us wants his terminal illness. These actors did a great job with their roles, and there are more than I mention here. So this is a great movie, a great character study, and I don't know why I didn't give it a 10.
The Man in the High Castle (2015)
I like and I don't like!
I love the concept of this show, and the book, which is that Germany and Japan won WWII and take over the United States. We then have an alternate reality from which the Underground or Resistance can fight to overturn. So that gets the series a few stars. As well as it is WWII based which is a fascinating time in history.
Possible Spoilers:
I am writing this review based on seeing the whole series, not just the pilot.
There is no character you like well enough to root for. At least not a lot. It should be Alexa Davalos' character, Julianna, as she is the main character.
However, I am afraid that she and the other actors suffer from a problem of the writing. I like the dark mood, but does Juliana have to hang her head even when she is NOT in the presence of the Japanese?
Even in a series that is serious and dramatic, could she smile just once? Rupert Evans gives a good performance as Frank Fink and is the most likable character, so you can root for him. But root for him to do what exactly? He is a very reluctant soldier of the Underground, and really has no convictions except to survive. And to get away with Julianna, his love.
Realism: I have to say it is a real stretch to believe that Julianna and Joe spend all that time together in Canon City and don't have an affair. At least a one-nighter. Come on! Is that too immoral for the show or something? I would think no less of her. It would in fact make her more human!
Another Realism Problem: So many times in this show there is an easy means of escape from the Underground characters. Are the Japanese really that stupid for example, that they raid a place and don't cover the exits? There are many of these such escapes.
Julianna: She really bothers me. Is it the writing or the actress or both? She is so forlorn in every scene. She barely speaks many of her lines. Could she get mad? She does cry a few times, silently. Her range of emotion is very, very limited.
Obergroupenfuhrer: This guy has a threatening tone to everything he says. He is uncovering lies in every conversation he has. Or he is flushing out traitors. He also is a sourpuss, and apparently is a robot. He is stung by the discovery of his son's illness, I'll give him that. Otherwise, one-dimensional.
The Plot: Where are we going? It appears there are several alternate realities. The one of the films, the one of present reality, and then the alternate 1962 that would represent the real America in the finale.
With Rock N Roll. At least we are done with Bing Crosby.
I am so hypercritical aren't I? But I will watch Season 2. I am curiousto see if this story can be straightened out somehow. To see if a reasonable plot can be devised. Come on, Hitler can't be the Man in the High Tower!
Masters of Sex (2013)
No Shortcomings to this Series
I don't see what can be found wrong with this series, which is why I gave it a 10. I have to admit when I really like a show, I do fall in love with it. As far as I can see, the acting is great, the writing is great, the characters are great, and the time period is very realistically portrayed. This is the 1950's. It is a very conservative America. Not as much in the political sense as in the cultural sense. This was before all hell broke loose in 1964-65. The Civil Rights Movement was taking place and gaining ground in the South, but this is white upper class America we are seeing. A white hospital with white doctors and white secretaries. Because that is the way it was then.
Michael Sheen and Lizzy Caplan are terrific as Masters and Johnson. There is a dual consideration to their relationship. They do have a professional relationship as Virginia Johnson is Dr. Bill Masters' Research Assistant. She is a woman with talents. Instinct, ambition, innovative with ideas and very good with people. Dr. Masters is the most talented Doctor in this teaching hospital, but he is a reserved, even repressed man. The two are exact opposites, and yet compliment one another professionally. They also compliment one another personally, as they take part themselves in the Sex Studies that Dr. Masters has begun in his study.
Lizzy Caplan is fabulous as she is sexy, intelligent, and complex. She is an ambitious woman, like a supremely interested and involved student, and is persistent in her goal of uncovering truths for the study and keeping the study and the office working and intact. She is unafraid, and knows she wants more out of her life. She has had a somewhat shady, unsteady life up until, apparently, taking this job, which changes her life. Lizzy Caplan has been said to have a "quirky sexiness" and that she has. She is also a terrific and "different" actress.
Michael Sheen as Dr. Bill Masters is also a driven person. Restrained personally, but unafraid to be a revolutionary, and even an outcast, in his prime love affair, the scientific study of human sexuality. BUT he also has a personal side that is calculating in getting what he wants, when he knows what he wants. In Season One, he does discover what he wants, both personally and professionally. I will say that without giving too much away.
So once again, Cable TV has trumped Network TV in originality, acting talent, subject matter, and writing. Of course Cable has the freedom to be more creative.Perhaps this is what draws so many movie actors to the small screen The writers need not worry about language and are not so compelled to limit nudity to, uhhhh, the 1950's? Where Network TV seems to be stuck.
So, check out this series. The only competition to the pay channels are AMC, and the BBC, and recently, Netflix. And there will be more. Listen, networks, enough writing to the lowest common denominator. I know you are trying, Network TV, but you are still falling way short. Cable TV and others are getting the better actors, and the better writers! Masters of Sex is yet another example! I can't wait for Season Two!!
True Detective (2014)
Dark, Dark,Dark
If you like Dark, if you like Noir, this is kind of a modern Noir.With a twist of crazy. Is Matthew McConoughey's character Rust Cohle, homicide detective and former undercover Narc,crazy? Or is his intelligence, probably off the charts, just what seems crazy? Whatever, he says some really cool things. Things that make you think. Maybe he's representative of an alienated spirit that resides, a little bit at least, in all of us. He is definitely disappointed by life and has rationalized his way out of the human race. Who hasn't felt that way? The difference is Rust Cohle feels that way ALL the time.
His senior partner, Martin Hart, played by Woody Harrelson, is the "sane" side of the partnership. He has a streak of kindness and believes in the world he sees.Like most of us do. He is a family man and tries to live up to what is expected of him. Cohle doesn't live by what anyone expects of him. He probably has no idea of what he expects of himself either. I don't want to minimize Harrelson's part. He has his own deepness within that All-American Dream of being somebody who did right. Who raised his kids right, treated his wife right, has a sense of moral duty, earns enough for a middle class life. In other words, wife,family,house,and picket fence. Only he is a homicide cop and he CAN'T QUITE pull it off.
Michelle Monaghan is beautiful. She is Maggie, Martin's wife. Martin has a knockout wife, and yet things are not always so good. I hope they expand her role, who, at present, is a ticked-off wife of a cop, Marty, who cares about his job, and can't stand his in-laws.
Oh My God, is Alexandra Dadario a knockout. One punch, you're out. Check out the second episode.
There is actually humor in this dark show. How could there not be some, when Marty and his partner, Rust, are exact opposites, or Marty thinks they are. The question is what will happen next in their attempt to solve the bizarre murder they are presented with in the First Episode.
This is an anthology series which means the characters and actors will change from season to season. The writer and creator, Nick Pizzolatto, has created and written a great show here.
Hitchcock (2012)
This is a film that picks up steam as it goes along...
I found the first half of the movie to be a bit cumbersome and boring. The acting prowess of Anthony Hopkins and Helen Mirren kept me tuned into it. I think the film made up for this poor start in the second half of the film. I thought that Scarlett Johannsen did a startling job playing Janet Leigh. She seemed to have the mannerisms and voice, everything down to a tee. Not just in acting scenes but off the screen scenes as well.
The story itself, despite a slow start,picked up steam in roughly the 2nd half of the movie. I think the movie saved itself in this way. Suddenly, the relationship of Hitchcok to his wife, Alma, became interesting and important to the story. I never realized what a strong force she was behind the great Hitch! The skills of Hitchcock as a salesman, as a motivator to his actors, is brought out in sharp contrast to the self-absorbed Hitch at the beginning of the film.
The selling of Psycho to the movie executives, the censors, and then the public was fascinating. It was a film that was not believed in by anyone but Hitchcock and his wife,it seems. It had the feel of a triumphant ending. We all know what a great classic movie "Psycho: became. This is why I gave the movie an 8. Stick with it.It is very good and worth the delayed satisfaction of the second half, in my opinion.