This episode starts at a high pitch and holds your interest until the end. While it is easy to sympathize with the victims - a small family that has lost a child - it is the relationships, interactions and conflicts among the characters that makes you want to keep watching. Real people under stress in a difficult situation often make bad choices when trying to resolve that situation. That happens here and is part of why this episode is engaging in a story that was probably difficult to compose into a brief 45 minutes.
Reviews
4 Reviews
This movie is not a train wreck, as its creator has dubbed it
3 April 2016
Warning: Spoilers
Mr. Magorium's Wonder Emporium (2007) got terrible ratings and even its writer- director, Zachary Helm, has called it a train wreck. I do not believe the movie is a train wreck. It is rather like the four protagonists (four protagonists in a hundred minute movie is a big dancing elephant wearing red flags) all came to the same intersection at the same time from four different directions; and none of them would give the right of way. That might be okay if the story was about four characters playing chicken. But it's not.
The movie is "set in a magical toy shop which affords adults the opportunity to retain a child's sense of magic and wonder in their lives, where a clerk must decide whether she wants to run the store after its current owner Mr. Magorium passes away."
The store clerk, Mahoney (Natalie Portman), is the character whose journey drives the story all the way to its end. She is the true protagonist. Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) is her antagonist and also the pivotal character. Eric (Zach Mills) the nine-year old Hat Collector, (whose one-note, negligent mother would be a lot more interesting if she recognized that he gets free day care at the Wonder Emporium) is magic helper number one. Henry/Mutant (Jason Bateman) is charmingly bumbling magic helper number two. The only character arc in the story that really pays off in the story is Mutant's - even though one magic helper in a story is usually enough.
The biggest problem in the story is, briefly, Mahoney, doesn't know herself/her own potential yet and the writer doesn't give the audience enough hints, either. It's that simple. It just doesn't work for the audience not to discover Mahoney's potential until the moment she herself discovers it.
However, the most important reason that I don't believe this movie is a train wreck is that foreshadowing of her self discovery (virtually nonexistent on Mahoney's journey in this movie) would have added "sparkle" (that's a spoiler) to the true protagonist of the movie. My guess is there's plenty of discarded footage or B-roll from which that foreshadowing could have come to be shown in the movie.
The second most important reason I don't believe this movie is a train wreck is that making an extraneous magic helper (Mutant), who shouldn't even be likable, the most genuinely charming with sugar on it character in the movie without detracting from the through-line is impossible. Yet, that's exactly what happens here.
The movie is "set in a magical toy shop which affords adults the opportunity to retain a child's sense of magic and wonder in their lives, where a clerk must decide whether she wants to run the store after its current owner Mr. Magorium passes away."
The store clerk, Mahoney (Natalie Portman), is the character whose journey drives the story all the way to its end. She is the true protagonist. Mr. Magorium (Dustin Hoffman) is her antagonist and also the pivotal character. Eric (Zach Mills) the nine-year old Hat Collector, (whose one-note, negligent mother would be a lot more interesting if she recognized that he gets free day care at the Wonder Emporium) is magic helper number one. Henry/Mutant (Jason Bateman) is charmingly bumbling magic helper number two. The only character arc in the story that really pays off in the story is Mutant's - even though one magic helper in a story is usually enough.
The biggest problem in the story is, briefly, Mahoney, doesn't know herself/her own potential yet and the writer doesn't give the audience enough hints, either. It's that simple. It just doesn't work for the audience not to discover Mahoney's potential until the moment she herself discovers it.
However, the most important reason that I don't believe this movie is a train wreck is that foreshadowing of her self discovery (virtually nonexistent on Mahoney's journey in this movie) would have added "sparkle" (that's a spoiler) to the true protagonist of the movie. My guess is there's plenty of discarded footage or B-roll from which that foreshadowing could have come to be shown in the movie.
The second most important reason I don't believe this movie is a train wreck is that making an extraneous magic helper (Mutant), who shouldn't even be likable, the most genuinely charming with sugar on it character in the movie without detracting from the through-line is impossible. Yet, that's exactly what happens here.
Best Criminal Intent sans Goren & Eames
3 October 2015
Best L & O Criminal Intent without Goren and Eames. Strong performances from everyone. Powerful, very sobering ending. Chris Noth plays Logan's struggle with his own rage truer than I've seen in any other episode. Julianne Nicholson's professional, tough girl cop demeanor crumbling under the harangue against her by pretty Aunjanue Ellis's Carmen Rivera is completely believable; and it mirrors this episode's powerful story about the very thin, but palpable wall between the police and the black community, which is powerfully played out by the pivotal undercover cop, Sticky Fingaz's Harry Williams, and the brilliantly sadistic murder suspect, Bokeem Woodbine's Gordon Thomas. They are the muscle and guts of this episode - warriors on either side of a wall that cannot be breached by anyone.
Best L & O of all time
5 November 2011
Warning: Spoilers
The opening segment of this episode is a perfect little movie, poignantly framing the subtext of the rest of the story and perfectly establishing the antagonists as sympathetic. The fall from grace - innocence and the love of a father - never fails to make me sad when I watch this episode. "Senseless" seems not just about a crime that appears on the surface not to have any meaning, but also about the inexplicability of human tragedy, loss and grief that can and does happen to people every day, and comes out of nowhere like the three young criminals appear from the shadows around the playground. Human tragedy so often is unexpected and never seems fair, as in this wonderful story.
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