Morganalee Reviews

Flight (I) (2012)

I really like Denzel, but wish I'd passed on seeing this movie

[4/10 · 27 December 2012]

This movie has a strong cast, headed by one of my favorite actors. After some needless frontal nudity and lurid scenes from the drug underworld, the film gets to the crash sequence that put the bodies into the theater seats. But that is the high point of this story. Afterward, the plot meanders around, detailing the seamy excesses of its main character and doing little else, until it reaches its highly unrealistic, highly unsatisfying climax. I thoroughly disliked Denzel Washington's character, which shows, I guess, what a good job he did, since I like the actor himself very much. But his skill isn't enough to redeem this dud of a story. Halfway through the climactic scene, I realized what was coming, and I felt very much ripped off, as though I'd been treated to a preachy and inferior remake of "Days of Wine and Roses." Gratuitous nudity, f-words, and grungy bathroom scenes notwithstanding, it's still at bottom just a corny endorsement of Alcoholics Anonymous. I cannot recommend this movie.

Gunsmoke: Kioga (1965) Season 11, Episode 6

Well-intentioned, but preachy, and rather clumsily done

[5/10 · 5 April 2011]

Things were changing rapidly in the Sixties, and, as others have suggested, episodes such as this one, in which the citizens of Dodge interacted with members of the various Indian tribes, were probably stand-ins for the show's appreciation of what was happening in the real world of the 1960s in the civil-rights movement. This is not one of the show's better efforts in that area. The wooden language of the young Pawnee (reflecting the writer's effort to depict him as that proverbial Noble Savage) is rather painful. Throughout the show, Matt was always shown as going out of his way to be fair and even-handed with Indians, but in this episode he seems to bend over backwards to befriend the troublesome young man, and there's no real explanation for that. Then there's the climax of the labored episode, in which Matt promises the Pawnee not only that the white man will hang for killing the young man's father, but that the white man knows he will. Did he really have any such assurance that a white jury would vote to convict a white man for the killing of an Indian? Earlier episodes, showing the settlers' undisguised hostility toward any and all Indians (again, always opposed by the noble Matt), certainly wouldn't leave one with that impression. And despite all the patronizing going on, a man with light eyes still played the role of the Pawnee. Some things hadn't changed. Not a favorite episode of this "Gunsmoke" fan.

Gunsmoke: Pa Hack's Brood (1963) Season 9, Episode 13

A chance to see "Goober" in a very different role

[5/10 · 30 November 2010]

"Pa Hack's Brood" recycles some of the favorite themes of "Gunsmoke" writers of the early 1960s that were aired in the preceding two seasons: grown men cowed into submission by their fathers ("The Boys," "Harpe's Blood," and others) and shiftless folk who think the easy path to land and riches is to kidnap the unsuspecting prospect and force the person into marriage ("Root Down," "Phoebe Strunk," "Marry Me"). This episode combines the two plots with only so-so results. The final scene of the episode rings false (I was minded of the old line that the person would be likely to last as long as a cockroach in a hen house) and a significant element of the plot is left dangling. Still, I found the episode worthwhile because I was able to see George Lindsey, familiar to most watchers of old television as Goober in the "Andy Griffith Show," in a dramatic role. He's under-appreciated in such roles. To see him in a really chilling role, about as unlike Goober as one could imagine, catch him in the "Alfred Hitchcock Hour"'s "Bed of Roses."

Gunsmoke: Lover Boy (1963) Season 9, Episode 2

A treat for fans of Ken Curtis

[7/10 · 16 November 2010]

As a fan of Ken Curtis, I liked this one (despite its largely formulaic plot) because we see him in what I think is his last appearance on the show--after his debut as Festus in "Us Haggens" the previous season--as someone other than Festus. Indeed, not only is he not the character who would become the marshal's deputy here, but he's the villain of the piece. He's a true lady's man, a suave cad, as at ease with the ladies as he is attractive to them. His Festus drawl is not heard (it was also considerably less evident in "Us Haggens" than it was to become in the established Festus character) and he even seems to stand taller and to be more good-looking. I liked the rascal so well that it was a pain to realize that he must be dealt with in the Old Testament style so favored by screenwriter John Meston (and no doubt dictated as well by the Hollywood code of the time).

Gunsmoke: Chester's Indian (1962) Season 7, Episode 32

One of those "hapless Chester" episodes, with something more

[6/10 · 23 October 2010]

Chester is going to visit his cousin in a town somewhat distant from Dodge for a long-planned, two-week vacation of fishing. Meanwhile, in a town that lies between Dodge and the cousin's place, plain but friendly Callie, daughter of the general storekeeper, longs for a husband but is kept a virtual prisoner by her father. A young Indian man is brought to the store, tethered like a dog, and he and Callie lock glances. The Indian escapes and takes refuge at Callie's house, where she hides him from her father and brother. Just as Chester rides up, seeking to water his horse, the Indian runs out of hiding and tries to vault onto one of Callie's family's horses. Chester shoots him in the shoulder, to stop the theft of the horse, and Callie insists that Chester take the Indian away with him to nurse him back to health. Chester protests, but, being Chester, gives in. Is Callie's feeling for the Indian something more than Samaritanism, and, if it is, will they ride off into the sunset together? Will poor Chester ever get to his fishin' hole? I thought the episode did a fairly honest job of depicting a white woman's love for an Indian at a time (the early 1960s) when television was far more comfortable dealing with a white man's love for an Indian woman. There were some plot holes: Callie has been ordered confined to the house even before Chester shoots the Indian, and her father discovers her gone from home one day when she is out tending him, yet she is still left free to slip away to see him on the succeeding days, with no explanation as to how her absences have been dealt with at home. At the end of the episode, Chester is without a horse, a matter he dismisses as of little consequence, when of course it was a big deal to be left without transportation on the prairie, and horses were expensive, and Chester was unable to save money. Like all the hapless-Chester episodes, this one left me wondering how "Gunsmoke" was able to hold onto Dennis Weaver for nine seasons. I enjoy the show, but "Gunsmoke" left his abilities all but unused. He must have been paid well.

Gunsmoke: Marry Me (1961) Season 7, Episode 13

Nothing original here

[3/10 · 22 August 2010]

Yet another variant on the yokel-kidnaps-himself-a-bride plot, this one is typical, trying to be funny but not succeeding; there just isn't much that's funny about being kidnapped. The little lady's oh-so-feminine shrieks of dismay, the kidnapper-swain's indulgent certainty that she's just playing hard to get--it's all standard and all unfunny. A sentimental turn at the lame climax of the story, done to soften up the viewer so that he won't want to see the kidnappers punished, seems forced and is unconvincing. A couple of errors against continuity also bothered me. Kitty is kidnapped wearing the sort of evening garb, complete with dangling earrings and pinned-up hair, that she would have worn in the saloon; after a day or two she is seen in the kidnappers' cabin wearing a pretty but modest daytime dress of the sort a prosperous settler's wife would have worn. Did the kidnappers wait while she packed? It didn't appear so at the time. Also, Doc is shown burning the personal effects of a cholera victim to thwart the spread of the disease; he takes no such precautions when someone else later succumbs to cholera in his presence. Seems like sloppy storytelling in a series I don't associate with sloppiness.

Madea Goes to Jail (2006 Video)

Trash

[1/10 · 2 August 2009]

How has this man found an audience for this swill? I was subjected to two—two!--of these hideous videos as a member of a captive audience (some boor decided to foist his idea of entertainment on everyone who purchased a ticket on a long-distance bus tour). Black man in drag plays loud, intimidating, violent virago—it wasn't funny in 1906, and it isn't funny in 2006. I am baffled and angry that Tyler Perry has resurrected this ugly staple of an unmourned past. There was no plot. (All pretense of a plot simply ceases somewhere in the unending second hour, when unforgivable versions of 1970's soul classics are attempted.) The writing was worthy of a seventh-grader. The platitudes were non-stop. And the cues for the sad attempts at original "songs" were so obvious that I almost wept, because I knew that another assault on my ears was coming. Perry knows his target audience: there was whooping and cheering of violence, particularly the violent punishment of children. There was gyrating in orgiastic delirium at the mere mention of "de Lawd." And where did Perry get the idea that if you scream it loud enough, you need neither poetry, beauty, harmony, nor symmetry? We don't need violent Aunt Jemimas in 2006, and, if you value your history, your intellect, and your hearing, you don't need "Madea."

The Soloist (2009)

Strong performances, unsatisfying story line

[5/10 · 24 April 2009]

I was expecting much from this film and was disappointed. The fault is not that of the two leads, both of whom did well; I enjoyed Robert Downey Jr.'s performance as the reporter, and as the homeless man, Foxx may have earned himself another Oscar nomination. But the plot was lacking. Yes, it's based on a true story, and a glossy traditional Hollywood ending was neither wanted nor possible. But I think the story's focus was wrong. I expected, and wanted, to see the story of a musical prodigy whose talent was lost to mental illness; but this is the reporter's story instead, of his evolution from seeing the homeless man first as a story, then as a project, then as a human being. It's a familiar plot in fiction and non-fiction, and one not particularly well done here. I didn't get enough sense of who Foxx's character was before he landed on the street, of what the decades of his illness had been like, of what he and his talent had meant to his family. And we see almost nothing of his interactions with his peers at Juilliard. Because we don't see much of what his life was like before his descent into schizophrenia, we don't have the powerful sense of loss we should have when we're brought back to the present and see the broken mumbling man guarding his cart full of trash. Instead the film gets caught up in sensationalistic (and admittedly powerful) depictions of the squalor and ruined faces of skid row. But I've seen depictions of homelessness elsewhere. I wanted to know the story of this lost prodigy, and I didn't see it. The film even wastes time on silly touches such as the Downey character's fumbles with his cellphone at the public toilet and his getting coyote urine spilled all over himself as he tries to battle raccoons. Comic relief for adolescent boys, perhaps, but I don't think many of them will be coming to see this movie.

Separate Lies (2005)

Should have stuck with one story

[3/10 · 4 June 2008]

I was pulled into this movie early on, much to my surprise, because I hadn't intended to watch it at all. Now I wish I hadn't. The suspense starts out well, with the hit-and-run resulting in death and the question of whether the guilty character will confess, or be found out, or (doable now, though a no-no in the old days of movie-making) get away with it. The plot's been done before--what plot hasn't--but the tensions inherent in it, with the additional complications and motivations arising out of the illicit love affair, make for an absorbing first half. Then the film abandons the hit-and-run to embark upon a misty exposition of two unrequited, all-suffering loves. The two tracks of plot--hit-and-run and unreasoning love--just don't have enough to do with each other, and that they involve the same characters doesn't bind them enough to justify the departure from the original story line. The screenwriter should have chosen one plot or the other. At the end of the film, in the midst of the movie's second funeral, I found myself thinking, "Now, what does any of this have to do with that hit-and-run?" The filmmakers may think the answer obvious, but I think the movie was plotted and executed flabbily.

Miracle in the Rain (1956)

Makes me wish I believed in miracles

[7/10 · 12 September 2007]

"Miracle in the Rain" is the sort of movie that would make a stone cry. It's also the sort of movie that's unlikely to see the light of day again: a middle-aged, virgin heroine; a squeaky-clean, hands-off hero who woos with the line, "I'll love you till the cows come home all over the world," then goes off to fight a war with just one chaste kiss; unabashed appeals to sentimentalism and invocations of the most literal, unreconstructed religion...it's a movie that sets out to bring out the handkerchiefs and makes no apologies for it. I can't decide whether it's a movie to lift the spirit (because its final message is one of hope) or whether it's so unrealistic that it's a downer, because today's equivalent of the heroine is likely to say, "Yeah, I really would need a miracle to find a man like that. I might as well pack it in!" If you're the type that can smile at corn instead of sneering at it, see this movie. It's as sweet and tender a confection as Hollywood ever produced.

Alfred Hitchcock Presents: The Glass Eye (1957) Season 3, Episode 1

A poignant warning: flee loneliness

[8/10 · 25 April 2007]

Spinsterhood is a gold mine for the horror genre, and the anthology series "Alfred Hitchcock Presents" employed a reliable stable of actors who appeared again and again on the show. When the script called for a scheming, calculating old maid who cared for nothing but money and was willing to kill to secure it, Carmen Mathews was the choice. When the storyline told of a faded beauty who had somehow missed out on the love she continued to crave, Jessica Tandy was the one. Thirty years before she won an Oscar for "Driving Miss Daisy," she appears in these old black-and-whites as a fragile, delicate thing whose unfulfilled desires have her teetering on the edge of madness. To my mind, the "Toby" episode does only a so-so job of conveying this; "The Glass Eye" does it so well that it functions as a cautionary tale against aloneness and isolation. Tandy's character makes a sad last bid for love, and I disagree that a plain woman would have been more realistic in the role. In her character's time (the 1890s), a woman who had "missed her market" (hadn't married by her mid-twenties or so) could expect to finish her life as a spinster, no matter how pretty she was, and Tandy's luminous prettiness (she was in her late forties, playing a woman "still in her thirties") just makes her character's predicament all the more poignant. She falls in love as only a woman with naught but a fantasy life would: from the audience, with a man whom she has never met, a handsome ventriloquist named Max Collodi. There are holes in the plot. Spoiler alert: I can't buy that a figure made of wood and plaster would have looked so lifelike, even from the stage, let alone from the other side of even a darkened room, that it would have appeared he was a living, strikingly handsome man. Of course, a man of flesh and blood, Tom Conway, plays the role until the crucial moment; the show was cheating there. No matter. When Tandy's character, granted a meeting with Max after a year's pursuit, impulsively grabs Max's hand and he clatters to the floor, she cradles him, so shocked that for the moment she doesn't realize that what she's holding is no man at all. Then the ventriloquist's dummy rises from his chair. He calls to her, "Madame!," and she looks up to see the "dummy" slowly stand upon the table. The dwarf's face is covered by his grotesque mask, so we cannot read his thoughts. What is he appealing for, then? Is he silently imploring, "I overlooked your small deception, about your age; can you not overlook my large deception, and the two of us undertake to find what happiness we can together?" But then "Max's" head slips off its spike and falls to the floor, Tandy's character comprehends what she sees, and all her loathing is contained in her cry to the dwarf, "YOU are Max Collodi!" The dwarf orders her from the room, his feet rattling horridly on the table top as he stamps them in rage, and Tandy's character flees. Alone, the dwarf pulls off his mask and swings down to the floor beside his fallen dummy. It is then that he sees that one of the head's bright glass eyes is missing...It's a great scene, and the reason I still appreciate this episode twenty years after I first saw it.

I Can Do Bad All by Myself (2002 Video)

Unoriginal, unfunny, untuneful, and just bad; really bad

[1/10 · 2 December 2006]

It was my distinct displeasure to be subjected to this video and to the more recent but equally bad (and largely undistinguishable) "Madea Goes to Jail" as part of a captive audience on a long-distance bus trip. Under any other circumstances, I would not have spent ten minutes of my life in the same venue as this character. As it was, I was trying to plug my ears. Black man in drag plays loud, intimidating, violent virago—it wasn't funny in 1906, and it isn't funny in 2006. I am baffled and angry that Tyler Perry has resurrected this ugly staple of an unmourned past. There was no plot. The writing was worthy of a seventh-grader. The platitudes were non-stop. And the cues for the sad attempts at original "songs" were so obvious that I almost wept, because I knew that another assault on my ears was coming. The poisoning to death of a neighbor's dog is amusing, so much so that it gets ten minutes (it seemed at least that long) of exposition as a "joke"? Young black girls are prostituted by their own mothers or fathers or both so often that this plot device showed up in two out of two of these videos? When are black people going to stop celebrating violence, stop whooping in delight at the violent punishment of children? When are black people going to stop gyrating in orgiastic delirium at the mere mention of "de Lawd"? And where did black writers/"composers" like Perry get the idea that if you scream it loud enough, you need neither poetry, beauty, harmony, nor symmetry? We don't need violent Aunt Jemimas in 2006, and, if you value your history, your intellect, and your hearing, you don't need "Madea."

All Mine to Give (1957)

If you like to cry, the story told here isn't quite unique

[5/10 · 4 September 2006]

Such a story goes frankly and unblushingly for the tear ducts, but for some reason this one didn't quite get mine. There was some quality in the stoic big brother--or lacking in the stoic big brother--that just did not draw me in. Or perhaps when the tragedy is as blatant as it is here, my remove and reserve are self-protective. Anyway, if you really do go for stories about families dismantled child by child for everyone's own good, you should look for an old TV movie, "Who Will Love My Children," from 1983. It too is based on a true story, only the stoic in this case is the children's mother, dying from cancer, who decides to give her many children away while she's still living so that she can make sure they'll be in good homes. So she packs them off, one by one, to separate families, while her alcoholic and ineffective husband fumes impotently in the background. If you like tearjerkers, you'll love this one.

The New Detectives: Case Studies in Forensic Science (1996–2005)

Watch for the entertainment value; don't rely on its statements of the law

[4/10 · 9 August 2006]

I was watching one of the typical installments this weekend (spouse dies of "accidental poisoning" and it's clear from the first minute of narration that it's murder and that the surviving spouse did the killing), when I heard a remarkable statement: "In Maryland, convictions may be had on circumstantial evidence, but Florida requires irrefutable scientific proof." Hogwash. Every state permits conviction of the direst crimes, including murder, on circumstantial evidence--and why not? Circumstantial evidence includes everything except eyewitness testimony--and eyewitness testimony is notoriously unreliable. Fingerprint evidence, fiber evidence, DNA evidence--all are highly reliable, though not "irrefutable," and all are circumstantial.

Why did the narrator intone that Florida requires "irrefutable scientific proof"? Because in the case under discussion, a trial judge (and trial-level decisions do not set precedent) refused to allow into evidence a report that potassium had been found in the victim's body. The judge refused to allow the report into evidence because potassium is found naturally in the human body, and the report did not show that the amount found in the victim was so abnormal as to be indicative of poisoning. The report, therefore, proved nothing, and should not have been admitted in any state--not because it wasn't "irrefutable," but because it didn't provide any evidence that there had been a murder.

Florida doesn't require "irrefutable" scientific evidence, and neither does any other state, because there is no such thing (think of the O.J. Simpson case). There is no evidence, scientific or otherwise, that cannot be refuted. Florida's busy death row includes many a murderer convicted on circumstantial evidence alone--be it scientific or not (and it need not be scientific).

So don't head for Florida if you plan to dispose of your spouse. And don't take weighty statements of the law on The New Detectives at face value. You're likely to get burned. Enjoy it for its formulaic, murder-will-out expositions only. It's all been done before, and done at least this well.

Honey, We're Killing the Kids (2006–2007)

Shameless

[12 April 2006]

In the first episode, we have a family of five. Dad is average-sized, Mom is–did no one notice? Obese. Guess what, Mom–two of your three kids are fat. Mom, you're overworked and you don't make the time to make nutritious, balanced meals for your kids, so here's what they'll look like in thirty years–decrepit, decaying felons, who, by the way, are also obese. We "know" that junk food causes the "epidemic" of childhood obesity, but who knew that obesity causes moral degradation, poor hygiene, marginalization, and failure, not to mention bad eyesight? Thanks to this shameless program, we know now. "Cutting-edge" technology, quietly abetted by the same tricks and biases employed in the very old technology of before-and-after photographs, tells us so. And so the reality-show takeover of the family's lives begins, with the expected clearing of the refrigerator, and the institution of regimented eating and forced exercise. It's all right, I suppose, for adults to sign up for this kind of degradation, but since children have no choice, the parents' adoption of the reality-show staple Gestapo pose made me squirm. Excuse me, but in the linking of punishment to the eating of "forbidden" foods, I see a recipe for secret eating and future weight gain. And then the audience is expected to applaud as the cameras withdraw at the end of the three weeks. Are we really supposed to believe that three weeks is enough to reverse years of eating habits–and the effects of genetics? In all the reality-show tough talk, where was the mention of the likely effect, in her nurturing and in the genes she passed on to her children, of Mom's obesity? No, it's all video games and television and not knowing that green vegetables have fewer calories than Twinkies; yeah, right. As for the show's premise, linking obesity to every kind of visible decay, did no one notice that Mom, though obese, and forty or so, was also clean, neat, attractive, and definitely did not look as though she had just stepped out of a mug shot? A shameless show.

Mr. and Mrs. Loving (1996 TV Movie)

Realistic telling of a story that needs to be known

[5/10 · 18 January 2005]

People have taken to saying that "only since 1967 has marriage been legal between blacks and whites" in the United States. That is not true. Only a minority of states, such as Virginia, still banned such marriages in 1967, and it was such prohibitions that the court was asked to strike down in the case that inspired this movie. Blacks and whites had been legally marrying elsewhere in America since colonial times. So the Supreme Court was not being asked to "create" interracial marriage in the Loving case.

I've known about the Loving case since I was a child, and I had some doubts about whether I wanted to see a movie about it. For the most part, I think this was a good effort, though far from an excellent one. Doing movies about living people is tricky. In this movie, we are shown naturalistic details that I could have done without; but holes also were left in the narrative that I'm sure would not have been there, paradoxically, if we hadn't been dealing with a true story. Many people could have missed that Richard and Mildred had known each other since childhood, an important detail that's barely mentioned. That country bar or club in the first scene that shows blacks and whites socializing together is never commented upon or explained. Yes, such a place (if run by blacks) could have existed in a time of Jim Crow and when "miscegenation" was a crime in Virginia, but its existence is a paradox, and one that's never explained and would go completely over the heads of most of the people watching. We meet people who are never identified or only identified much later, and not while they're on camera. Richard's family's reaction to his decision to marry Mildred is never dealt with at all. We see his parents only briefly, and they are all but mute. It would have been better to leave them out altogether and have viewers assume Richard was an orphan than to duck this major issue in this way. Most important, I wish we had been given some idea of what kind of man Richard is (for the story really is his) before being plunged into the love story. What motivates him? Why does he choose to marry Mildred instead of merely "keeping" her, an arrangement that his society would have accepted? We never get to know Richard, so these questions are never answered. Still, I would otherwise give high marks to Timothy Hutton's portrayal of Richard. He comes across as a very ordinary man, as no hero--and that's important. The story of Richard Loving is that of an ordinary man, a common man, and therein lies its majesty.