Change Your Image
Todd1952-SF
Reviews
Home for the Holidays (1995)
Hilarious if you have every gone home to a dysfunctional family during the holidays
This story was different from mine in the details, but I could so relate to it and I laughed. That's because I used to go home for the holidays and my family was as dysfunctional as the one depicted in the film. In this case, the cast was topnotch and the characters were very funny. The main character, played by Holly Hunter has a functional job that is highly responsible in Chicago and flies home to Baltimore for Christmas and often wishes she hadn't. I think people with families that are a pleasure to visit with during the holidays might not like this film, but for those of us where holidays with out families are or were a trial will find this film quite funny.
Doubt (2017)
Good, but it could be better
There's a lot about "Doubt" that I like, but some of it is just not done as well as it ought to be, as though who produce and write the show are either lazy and not committed to something that feels authentic, or they simply don't know any better. For one thing, I saw on the front of the courthouse where the state court cases are tried with district attorneys conducting the prosecution "United States Court House". Really? The last time I looked, only federal cases -- involving matters of federal law, with criminal trials being prosecuted by U.S. Attorneys -- were conducted in United States Court Houses. Each borough of New York City is regarded as a county for some purposes by the State of New York, and each borough has at least one state courthouse -- and New York calls that local court system "the Supreme Court of New York" (which, I admit, is a little confusing) -- the highest state court in New York state is the High Court of Appeals in Albany (which most states would call the Supreme Court of each state). But whatever you call the state court operating in and for any given county, they don't have their trials in a federal court house. So, right there, you know "Doubt" is fairly sloppy. I do like some of the actors -- I am a Katherine Heigl fan, and I think very highly of Dulé Hill. I'm impressed that Elliott Gould is in it. I also highly approve of the character "Cameron Wirth" an attorney who is openly presented as a woman who used to be man, and who is convincingly played by Laverne Cox, who is herself a transgendered actress. Where things get a bit silly for me is, for example, is that the liberal firm Roth & Associates supposedly has a policy that they will never allow their clients to present state's evidence to convict a criminal in exchange for immunity and enrollment in the witness protection program. A big deal was made out of the firm's policy and when Cameron Wirth recommended her client do just that, she was in fear of being fired. The head of the firm, Isaiah Roth, supposedly has that policy in place to prevent the firm from acquiring a reputation that it helps out the prosecution or some such bunk. So a client is expected to go to prison instead of turning state's evidence to convict someone who actually did commit a murder? I'm not buying that. I suppose my problem is I've been watching various iterations of "Law & Order" for too many years and I expect something closer to the way things are in real life, such as conducting criminal trials prosecuted by the D.A. in the state courthouse. Still, I plan on watch "Doubt" every week unless something better comes along in that same timeslot -- with the help of my DVR, I also watch "Chicago P.D." which is on at the same time. But, honestly, they could come closer to something believable and, I think, the scripts could be more convincing, too. I should mention that there are two characters I'd like to slap because they're so annoying. One is an associate attorney in the firm who is from Iowa -- she is totally neurotic and always pitching a fit about being from Iowa and all the problems that engenders. There is also a completely annoying secretary or "assistant" to Sadie Ellis (Katherine Heigl), and the assistant is so completely annoying so much of the time, no one could stand it. Sadie Ellis supposedly keeps her on because she's useful and good and comes up with great ideas that contribute to the defense strategies, but, honestly, no one that annoying could possibly justify her presence in that job.
Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency (2016)
I liked it a lot, actually
I watched the first episode of "Dirk Gently's Holistic Detective Agency" and by the end of the episode, I wasn't sure whether I'd watch the entire first season, because I found some of it slightly annoying. But I decided to watch the second episode, hoping that some explanation of the annoying elements might be found, and, lo and behold, I found myself hooked. It was mostly Dirk Gently himself I found fairly annoying, but I did get used to him and his inability to express himself coherently. Elijah Wood as Todd Brotzman was excellent -- he's a fine actor and took the part on with aplomb. In fact, I think everyone was well cast and did a great job of acting in a slightly zany comedic approach to sci fi, not exactly easy to do. In the end, I found all eight episodes to be great fun, and now I can't wait for the second season which is, thankfully, forthcoming. Samuel Barnett, I think, was a great casting choice for Dirk Gently -- he got Dirk's eccentric and slightly annoying personality just right. Dirk doesn't mean to be annoying, I note, but he just can't help it, even on a good day. But, ultimately, his oddball personality contributes to the overall humor. I got to the point that I was willing to "go along" with every premise, including a nonexistent genetically inherited debilitating psychological illness with a silly name -- because it was all part and parcel of science fiction -- with an emphasis on "fiction" with a comedic twist. I finally realized that even serious science fiction frequently contains elements of the plot that aren't realistic, so why not such elements, comedic ones, in comedic science fiction? Anyway, I've now seen the entire first season and it was well worthy my time -- very entertaining, and quite fun.
Good Behavior (2016)
I am impressed
SPOILER ALERT – some plot details are mentioned below.
I'd been waiting for quite some time for Good Behavior's premiere last night, and I'm happy to say that I wasn't disappointed. In fact, there were two one-hour episodes that were aired back-to-back, making for a two-hour premiere. I think the second episode really did need to be aired with the first one, because there wasn't a really good stopping point between the two and a goodly amount of suspense was involved. One reason I was waiting with bated breath was Michelle Dockery. I'm an enthusiastic fan of Downton Abbey and I very much liked the character of Lady Mary Crawley as portrayed by Ms. Dockery. I suspected that Michelle Dockery was an extremely good actress from the way she played Lady Mary, and I looked forward to seeing her do something very different from that role. The TV advertisements for Good Behavior promised a very different character for her in the new series, and different it is.
Letty Dobesh is out on parole for good behavior, working at a waitress in a diner or coffee shop for a jerk of a boss when the series begins. At that point, we haven't seen her doing anything wrong, but her boss fires her when she has, in fact, done nothing wrong. We soon learn that she's a brazen thief with sobriety issues. She not only drinks, but uses drugs as well. She's also capable of conning people. And those are all reasons for Michelle Dockery to show us that she can act and then some. Not only does she speak with an American accent, she uses more than one type of American accent. Letty, for example, can affect a southern accent when she's wearing a wig and pretending to be someone other than herself.
In the course of her robbing hotel rooms while in cahoots with the front desk clerk, one man returns to his room with another man. Letty hides behind louvered closet doors and overhears a plot involving murder for hire. She does her best to keep the intended murder victim from being murdered – when it comes to crime, she is unwilling to step over the line between herself and killing other people. In the process of trying to prevent the crime, she is discovered by the murderer and ends up becoming his unwilling accomplice in a further murder. People who don't like "bad" language will not appreciate the language used in Good Behavior. Since it's on a cable channel, they use every vulgar word found in American English, though they do blank out all forms of the "f" word from the soundtrack and the closed captions. (It's easy enough to figure out what they've blanked out, since they don't blank out any other "dirty" words, and context provides all you need to know that a certain present participle used as an adjective is what's missing, for example.
So the story line itself is gritty, to say the least, and the character of Letty Dobesh is not wholly admirable – far from it. However, she makes for a very attractive anti-hero. The writing here is very convincing, as to both the story and the dialogue, and the characters are always interesting. The murderous bad guy, Javier, is played by Juan Diego Botto, a handsome Argentine man of slight build who appears to be much younger than his actual 41 years – and he's a perfect foil to the 35-year-old Michelle Dockery. So far, there has been a hint that Javier only undertakes to murder people who deserve it. Add that to his attractive appearance, and it's hard to hate him completely, just as it's hard to like Letty completely. Sill, Javier is on the bad side of the mark, and Letty is doing her best to keep him from doing what he does, though so far, she has managed to fail in two separate incidents.
I note that Letty has a particularly nasty mother who is doing her best to make Letty's life as miserable as she can, primarily by preventing her from seeing her son. Letty's mother is a piece of work herself, a chain-smoking harridan with a low voice my mother would have called a "whiskey tenor".
There is an occasion in the second episode for Michelle Dockery to sing a song, which is not a bad thing. She sings very nicely, with a lovely alto voice that is never shrill. If she came out with an album of vocals, I'd buy it.
I was enrolled in the goings on by the third minute of watching the first episode and, after that, I was riveted to my TV screen. I didn't want to miss a single word of the dialogue, a single frame of the visuals, or a single detail of the plot. Me, I would have liked it a lot less if the story and the dialogue weren't as gritty as they are.
I can see why Michelle Dockery went forward with Good Behavior. I believe she wanted the chance to show an audience what she could do, acting wise, and she certainly is doing that and then some. Here is an actress who is willing to get her hands dirty and her elbows scraped, who must believe that a really practitioner of her profession is one who can take on any role and make the audience forget any past roles she's played.
Great show, not just a good one – and all the better because Michelle Dockery is so convincing as a woman who isn't completely bad, but certainly not what you'd call virtuous. Letty Dobesh wouldn't be half as interesting if she were.
Mr Selfridge (2013)
Could have been excellent but has one serious flaw
There's a lot I like about Mr Selfridge. The sets, the costumes, the overall milieu of the department store, and the characters and their interpersonal relationships. It is a highly fictionalized story, though, and doesn't always track with the life of the real Harry Selfridge. I suspect that most of the other characters, apart from his family members, never really existed. But that's fine -- I know its historical fiction and historical fiction can be very entertaining. The major negative factor for me, though, is Jeremy Piven's acting, which lacks anything resembling nuance. Whatever is happening with Harry Selfridge, he's loud and he waves his arms around a lot. High volume with lots of gesticulation is Piven's stock-in-trade, it would appear. The famous Dorothy Parker once criticized Katharine Hepburn's first performance on the New York stage by writing "Katharine Hepburn delivered a striking performance that ran the gamut of emotions from A to B." (Hepburn freely admitted in later life that she was awful in "The Lake" and had no idea what she was doing when she got on stage in that first paid performance.) I'd like to make the same snide comment about Jeremy Piven in "Mr Selfridge", but it wouldn't be accurate. Mr. Piven's emotional gamut never quite makes it from A to B. If he's trying to speak to the entire staff as a group at Selfridge's, he's loud. When his wife die and he's expressing grief, he's loud. When he's trying to comfort someone else who has lost a loved one, he's loud. I suppose it makes acting easy if you just recite the lines the same way no matter what the context happens to be for the scene in question, but even if Selfridge is supposed to have a "larger than life" personality -- and I believe he did -- I can't believe he was always loud with lots of gesturing. There must have been times when he was subdued. I have to say that every other actor and actress in "Mr Selfridge" strikes me as well-cast and excellent. Tom Goodman-Hill as Roger Grove, Amanda Abbington as Josie Mardle, Katherine Kelly as Mae Rennard (formerly Lady Mae Loxley, Aisling Loftus as Agnes Towler, Ron Cook as Arthur Crabb, just to name a few, are all excellent. Sad that Jeremy Piven isn't up to the same standard of acting. Still, so many things about this TV drama work that I've found it worth watching and I'm looking forward to the series finale this coming Sunday.