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Wycliffe (1993)
This show is amazing, but wouldn't get a chance today.
After binging 20+ seasons of Midsomer Murders, Wycliffe was the perfect show to go into next. Instead of the quirky, usually fun, but for sure brighter, HD widescreen presentation with a much more modern formulaic episode, we get a much more realistic, drawn out portrayal of policing/detective work.
Just wrapping up the last episode of season 5. What's unfortunate is that it had probably at least 2 more seasons in it, and I put all the blame on ITV. Anyway, for my experience, the first three seasons are much different than the last two, and that's not a bad thing. While those first seasons draw more from the Wycliffe books and that same format, season 4 and 5 started having several long reaching arcs that were woven well into the mystery of the week.
One of the things that might throw some people off (but if you've seen Taggart, especially those early years) is that when the case is done, many times the episode just ends on what seems to be an awkward note - still, it doesn't take long to get used to it. Today, we seem to want, or feel that we deserve, some kind of resolution for everyone, even the secondary characters.
An underlying theme of the show that becomes more prominent is certainly the conflict between the "man on the ground" and the bureaucracy calling the shots from their ivory tower, usually concerned more with politics, procedure and press releases than the actual job. This is incarnated typically in Michael Attwell's DCC Stevens, who does a wonderful job of bringing to life a character that makes you want to punch him in the face every time he is onscreen.
It's not until later in the show's run that we start to get better glimpses into the personal lives of Wycliffe, Doug and Lucy, but the common theme of trying to have a life outside of the job is what is emphasized. With Wycliffe, what starts out with just phone calls home to Helen or even one or two with his son David, eventually give way to more nuanced and fleshed out scenes with his entire family, as he struggles constantly with being there as a husband and father to two teenagers. At the same time, Wycliffe also has the benefit of having a fairly stable home life. Doug and Lucy have their own issues just trying to find and maintain any kind of lasting relationships.
The Cornish setting is a nice change,not only from other British cop shows I've watched, but from police dramas/mysteries in general. The rural-ness and for the most part what I'd consider today as low middle class to working poor as many of the supporting characters brings a different kind of gravitas to these stories as the villager or upper crust elites of Midsomer do. There's a certain feeling of despair that seems to be integrated into the personalities of so many characters on the show.
The show takes its time telling the story. There's definitely a slow burn to many episodes. Sometimes an episode will start and it doesn't make much effort to hide whodunit, and other times I was completely surprised. Over the course of its run, Wycliffe finds this odd combination between Columbo (where you know from the start who did it and you watch the heroes struggle through trying to figure out how to prove it) and the typical mystery which when well-written, leaves you guessing right up until the end.
To reference my title, it's certainly a show that wouldn't get the greenlight today. If it did, there would be probably massive changes to the scope and characterization on the show. Probably in regards to Lucy and Doug does that seem most evident. Lucy has some moments during the show where reality hits her hard, and the show doesn't hold back because she is a woman. She is forced to acknowledge that in certain situations she thought she knew more than she actually did, and it gets her into a couple of pretty rough situations because of it. If anything, the writers actually wrote Lucy as a wonderful character who struggled, had a real character arc, learned, and showed vulnerability. In other words, she was actually written as a woman, instead of the current day trend of taking a male character and just changing the pronouns. Jimmy Yuill's Doug would probably have been written off the show after the first season if Twitter was around back then, because some rando on there would have their sensibilities offended or triggered or something. While he and Wycliffe were both of the old school, Doug's struggle with adjusting to the change not only in policy but underlying culture was definitely more prevalent - and unlike Sgt Troy from Midsomer, who seemed to mellow and broaden his viewpoints somewhat over time, Doug Kersey staunchly stuck to his guns and didn't mince words over his displeasure. It's the kind of characterizations we need today in current American TV.
It is certainly a show I'd recommend. I feel like I rambled, but my coffee has worn off and I need to take a nap.
Qi pao mei tan (2020)
Miss S has its own unique identity, and yes, I think it's better than Miss Fisher.
I have watched many of the Miss Fisher's Mysteries - still haven't seen Crypt of Tears yet, so I can echo some other reviewers. While these do initially follow the basic profiles of the characters and some of the plots, the shows come off as a totally different experience for me, especially from a cultural sense. Like anyone who covers a good song, Miss S is successful in making this show its own enjoyable take.
I'm trying to avoid having to do a spoiler tag, so here goes. What did I enjoy most about the show?
1) Su Wenli is so likeable from the very beginning. I honestly think her some of her best scenes in the whole show are her interactions with Su Yun (Li Ya Zhen). Her emotion just pours through the screen sometimes. Plus, Yili Ma is just a classic beauty, looking gorgeous in every outfit and I admit I had a little bit of a crush going on.
2) The best character arc for me is Tao Zi's. She may be my favorite. Her transformation over time is just more satisfying than Dot's arc, as well as her relationship with Xiao An.
3) I have greatly enjoyed the relationship between Inspector Luo and Miss Su, much more than 'Phrack'.
4) The show doesn't take itself too seriously. I mean, there are plenty of serious moments, but the humor, though sometimes a little on the nose, just works so well.
5) I thought the acting was great. By the end of these 30 episodes, everyone seemed to have found their stride.
The only reason I didn't give it a 10 was mostly because of the production value:
1) some of the small inconsistencies with localization on the subtitles (especially when it came to describing medical conditions). Fortunately the context of the show gave no problems in identifying the afflictions or conditions of certain characters. And I don't mind subtitles anyway.
2) Props at times were a little anachronistic. Wenli browses through a PATRICIA CORNWELL book while in Inspector Luo's office. A unicycle at the cirus has a modern knobby BMX type tire on it. Little things like that.
3) Some of the set pieces were a bit on the cheap side (the jail, the walls of the sauna room in Episode 2). A couple of times I thought a wall might fall over.
Some viewers may not be used to the way the script delivers each story with its approach to dialogue, whereby there are often times when in a conversation one character may rephrase and repeat what another one just said a minute or so before. Also, people may not be used to how characters speak another character's name to express concern over their emotional condition. If Wenli was upset and crying, instead of saying "Wenli, I'm really sorry about your sister," the other character will just say "Wenli..." or perhaps use their full name. I watch a lot of shows from Japan, Korea, and China, so I'm used to this.
I really really liked that HBO didn't release a dubbed version. So much is lost in a dub. Although the 70s and 80s Shaw Brothers kung fu movies have a certain nostalgia about them with the sometimes terrible dubs, my experience has always leaned towards the slightly unfavorable. Miss S would have had a totally different atmosphere and loss of enjoyment without being able to hear the emotion and tone of the native Mandarin (and some Cantonese here and there).
If you like fun murder mysteries that have occasional crazy twists where you do find yourself maybe second-guessing what you had right from the beginning then you'll love Miss S. Kudos to HBO for bringing this to America.
Prey (2022)
Though not as in your face, "The Message" still hurts the potential for this entry into the Predator legacy.
(Mild Spoilers in this, maybe)
I have Hulu for .99 a month until November, so when the release date for Prey was announced, I said, "Why not?" This is not a film that I'd spend $$ for a ticket in the theater. It's definitely a streamer. But if you want something that doesn't require a lot of thought or grounding in real world differences between the sexes, then this is the film for you. I've seen all the other ones, except that horrible reboot a few years ago, so might as well check this one out.
The best acting in the movie goes to Sarii, the dog, and then a two way tie between Dakota Beavers, who plays Taabe, the older brother of our protagonist Naru, and the Predator, played by Dane DiLegro.
The best parts of this movie are when no one is speaking, or barely speaking. There are a couple of moments when in the midst of action, hand signals are exchanged between the Comanche, and I was much more immersed in those moments of suspense than when Naru (played by Amber Midthunder) pouted over and over through her bits of dialogue that she couldn't go out and play with the boys, pulling out her All-American accent (which everyone seemed to have), even seeming to use grammatical elements and emotional nuances that were seemingly more mid-2000s high-schooler century than 1719 Comanche culture.
Although not quite as in your face as the trailer (and maybe even all the other PR and shills) would have liked us to believe, the movie still rings hollow with its Mary Sue lead who is always right about everything, has no real struggle internally in her character arc, and apparently is completely impervious to injury from steel traps that would normally cripple any other man. From the beginning, Naru is portrayed as that girl you go to school with who can hang with the other boys playing little league football, but once everyone starts to grow up, she gets mad because she refuses to believe that she can't play as a lineman anymore against guys that are 2 or 3 times bigger and stronger than her and come away unscathed. We have hints of dialogue where her older brother is trying to help her and give her advice saying, "Look guys, Naru is an amazing tracker and knows medicine, she can help." But that's not good enough for Naru. She has skills in those areas where she can contribute to the bigger picture, but ultimately she's just another selfish, I mean, "strong", oppressed, female lead who can't stand for a man to tell her anything, whether right or wrong.
Instead of using the plot as an opportunity to give Naru a chance to grow as a young woman and work together with the rest of her tribe to use her strengths, the writers just go all in by the end to make her the only one who was better and smarter than all the men. Even though there is a "training montage" - something lacking in many modern action movies, especially with female leads, Naru is still apparently the Rey of Comanche Nation. Every hatchet throw as she practices is perfect. Her variation on the kusarigama (she uses a hatchet and rope instead of a chain and hand scythe) only takes a few tries and before you know it she is whipping that thing around faster than Bruce Lee ever could flip a set of nunchaku into the face of a thug in a back alley during Return of the Dragon. She must be using the Force to have mastered it to the degree with which she uses it by the end of the movie on the Predator. Her fight with the guy who is probably the next best young warrior after her brother of course results in her beating him up, because that's Hollywood today. And don't think I didn't miss the end shot of the film where a little girl in the tribe is shown with this "OMG Naru, you're my idol now!" look, and Naru gazing back at her with the "yes I have destroyed the patriarchy" look.
Ms. Midthunder is pretty meh in this role. Most of the film her eyes have an empty, devoid look to them. Her dialogue, though sparse, is delivered with little emotion, and when it is, it's usually always pouting about not getting to go hunt, or that no one believes her, especially when with her brother or the other Comanche guys. She's inconsistent physically, one minute scared to death by the bear as she hides in the beaver den, but then seemingly super strong and agile as she fights against the even more formidable Yautja at the end (this is after being given a concussion by the French guys and stepping into a steel trap).
I loved the look of the film. The landscape shots were very cool. Some nice overhead drone shots of Naru walking. The cinematography was fairly good.
It was great seeing the Predator as mostly a guy in a practical costume, using CGI to enhance some of the aspects of his look. I appreciate Dan Tractenberg's move on that. This was obviously a young Yautja, who was on his own coming of age hunt to prove himself. So we have this juxtaposition of the protagonist and antagonist (well the Predator is one antagonist, the other being white French colonialist fur traders) on a similar path, but the physically outclassed teenage girl who spends her spare hours when she can slip away from gathering herbs and roots throwing her hatchet is able to defeat the one who is trained from birth to hunt and use technology far beyond that of his prey. This Predator is physically not on the level of the original movie, definitely an adolescent or young adult. He also doesn't have the overwhelming invincible nature that is projected in the original film. This Predator seems to be more easily worn down and affected by his fighting with the humans, making him a somewhat easier opponent for Naru by the end.
The best scenes in the film are the action sequences, with the best fight, though short, being between Taabe and the Predator. Taabe is the real deal. One on one, he's really the only one able to go toe to toe with the young Yautja. It's unfortunate that in the midst of the fight the writers decide to just have him "nobly" give up so that his sister can be elevated in the plot. I mean, he just stands there and makes this little speech to her then lets himself get wasted. The Predator versus the bear was good too.
I have mixed feelings about this film. It's about 90 minutes, which was nice. It told the story, I got through it, and didn't feel like I wasted my life. It was good to see the Native American setting. That felt pretty authentic with the scenery and costuming and the little bit of Comanche we heard spoken. The couple of action scenes were pretty good, and the real bright spots in the movie. I wish that there hadn't been any English at all. If there's anything that we've learned about films, there is a way to make a good movie accessible to everyone where understood, spoken dialogue is not the primary form of communicating the story. The fur traders speak untranslated French, but you get what they are talking about every time they look over at Naru. The acting was spotty. The whole eating a flower in place of covering up with mud to hide from the Predator's infra-vision was a little bit sketchy, but at least they tried to keep Naru from completely copying every tactic that Arnold used in the original film.
One thing that throws me off about movies today, is that every one coming out is used by the showrunners or actors as some platform to draw attention to their activism. In interviews, Amber Midthunder talks more about representation and all that jazz instead of trying to sell that it is a good story with great action. Don't get me wrong, I think it's great that we see a story in this setting and seeing Native Americans front and center as the main people. There should be more. But you only normalize things if you stop talking so much about it EVERY SINGLE TIME and just do it. People love a good story, and if your PR time is spent talking more about the strong female lead that girls can look up to and that your ethnic group is getting represented, then it begins to beg the question "Why aren't you talking about the story and the movie? Is it that bad?" This is why the Wheel of Time adaption was awful, the MCU is trash now, Star Wars has lost its way, we get films like The 355, and why Rings of Power from Amazon is going to be just awful.
Of course, if you watched the end credits scene, then Naru's little victory doesn't matter anyway.
The Wheel of Time: The Flame of Tar Valon (2021)
All I can do now is shake my head.
Oh Amazon. As the Wheel spins under your watch, it spins further out of control each week. The casting of Siuan, the exaggeration and misapplication of the idea of "pillow friends", Moiraine being nerfed to singlehandedly cure Mat of the power of the cursed dagger, Lan tweaking out like a crackhead during the obscenely long Stepin funeral (that was the previous episode I know, but I'm not wasting time writing a separate review) - all of these put the final nail in the coffin for me with this show.
No wonder they focus the show on Moiraine. Rosamund Pike has a supporting cast of a former Power Ranger, a CBS cop, a bit part Aussie TV actress and a bunch of other B-listers.. What are they going to do during the very long segment of time when Moiraine is thought to be dead and not really part of the narrative? Can these other actors carry the story?
I will say this, it's still better than Santa, Inc.
Zack Snyder's Justice League (2021)
The Real JL Movie
This is the only version that should have been released, yet the original one makes me appreciate this version SO MUCH more. The WB money machine initially put out a sorry product. Thank you Zack Snyder for coming back and taking the time to give people a good movie - especially after everything you had to deal with personally in the midst of making it.
This film showed what DC/WB is capable of, and now (maybe except for the new Suicide Squad) they are descending into the chasm of woke/agenda-driven movies created by Marvel/Disney, and all is lost.
Max Payne (2008)
Max Payne put me through pain....
I finished watching Max Payne last night after having to start and stop it a couple of times due to other things being much more important than watching it. Needless to say, I think I understand why Mark Wahlberg's face looked like it did throughout the movie...he was in pain too.
Of course, this movie has been out for 9 years now...so why watch it now...I think mostly it was because I had it on my long list, and finally had a few minutes here and there to waste.
I'm a gamer, and Max Payne (as well as it's shorter sequel Max Payne 2) stand out for me as milestones in my gaming history. The presentation and development of Max's character and backstory were top-notch and the ending was gratifying, not to mention all of the action in between. Based on Hollywood's game adaption history, I wasn't expecting much at all from this, although Wahlberg is one of my favorite go-to actors when I just want to see good action.
Wahlberg tries really hard to bring Max's grit, pain, and determination to the screen, but he just never quite captures it. Most of the movie he tries pulling a Stallone in First Blood, rarely speaking, and when he does, the dialogue is terse and unemotional. Mila Kunis tries really hard to come off as a sexy but streetwise woman with a rough edge but all I kept waiting for was for her to either start talking about Jim Beam or cracking a joke. Trying to not compare her to the Mona in the game was more difficult than Wahlberg as Max.
Beau Bridges...well, I'm not even going there. I think the only reason he still gets acting jobs is because of who his dad was. Ludicrous's portrayal as Lt Bravura was laughable to say the least...and Chris O'Donnell's Jason Colvin...he must have needed mortgage money at the time (it was before NCIS:LA...).
The effects are so-so, and the "homage" to bullet-time was pretty ludicrous...you'll see what I mean when it happens. I just had to roll my eyes.
I had to force myself to watch this because I'm not going to let a movie beat me. I mean, if I can sit through Leonard Part 6, I can handle anything right?
Fuller House (2016)
Fuller House is like Full House, but not like it at all
**Very slight possible spoiler in a paragraph below** I grew up watching TGIF. Between Full House and Family Matters, I had plenty of stuff to watch. When my wife and I found out about Fuller House coming to Netflix, we were obviously excited...one, because Full House is not on Netflix, and two, it's always interesting to see how the Tanner saga would continue. I watched the teaser and read the articles out there, getting the feeling that even though it might be cheesy, just like Full House was, it would be one of those things where having the original cast, and even production staff would easily capture the nostalgia and magic they were hoping to recreate.
I knew it wouldn't be a 10 star show, but I can barely give it 6 stars. My wife and daughter watched the first episode and then I joined them to watch through the 5th one, which we didn't finish. I turned it off. I can't agree with Netflix that Fuller House is "Family-Friendly". Episode after episode the sexual innuendo and jokes increased more and more. Eventually, the naughty plumber bit in episode 5 was just too much.
It was interesting how several plot devices were reused, as well as instances where the adults would reach back into the Full House past to share a tidbit of history as a life lesson for the kids. It's great that they don't forget their roots. But even as an adult who eats up episodes of Daredevil or doesn't flinch at the 1000+ F-bombs dropped in one of my favorite mob movies of all time, Casino, it just didn't
feel right that characters in the Tanner household were using even the slight language they were or using the insinuations that they used. I guess it didn't feel right either in front of my own daughter, when my experience watching the original show didn't have any of that and didn't need it.
I get it. Netflix is not network TV. I mean
they have Orange is the New Black. But why the need to write scripts with so many sex jokes? I think if they were up front and said, this is for everyone who watched Full House when they were a kid, so let's see what it's like for them as adults, that's one thing
.but passing it off as Family Friendly? I think dirty old man Bob Saget must have helped write the scripts. Really surprised Candace Cameron Bure was OK with a lot of the jokes and costumes, considering her very public stance on modesty and Christianity. Jodie Sweetin's
"looks" were really
.focused on
too much. Andrea Barber is the bright spot in the show though– Kimmy Gibbler is the only one that made me laugh.
We may watch the rest of the season as a family, but the parents will be checking out the rest of the shows first.