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The Deputy: Palace of Chance (1960)
Lee van Cleef! Karen Steele!
A casino has opened in town, much to to the chagrin of some residents. Even the clientele are entitled to concerns, if there is dishonestly afoot! One townsperson is "cleaned out" and accuses his opponent of cheating. He tries to go Han Solo on the cheater, but ends up in the "Greedo" role. Now the question for the Deputy is whether to close down this "den of iniquity"...
The Deputy "stars" Henry Fonda (he's the deputy's boss, effectively), but in this instance (as is usual) Fonda bookends the tale, leaving acting duties mainly to Allen Case. In this episode Fonda suggests that the open casino may serve as bait for a notorious outlaw - and he encourages the deputy to "let it ride"...!
This is not a great episode and production values are poor. Let's accentuate the positives - genre superstar Lee Van Cleef appears in an early guest starring role, as the "Cherokee kid" -- he shows real menace. Legendary beauty Karen Steele is in there as a casino worker. Case does an altogether decent job in the starring role. But the denouement is confusing as some folks die after taking one bullet, others miraculously survive.
Seinfeld: The Gymnast (1994)
Nonstop hilarity in this phenomenal ep
Nonstop hilarity in this phenomenal episode. Highpoints for me were the whole George plot, Kramer's reaction to his kidney stone and, of course, Mr Pitt's ridiculous, hilarious closing oration (in dreadful taste, I might add!).
That's about it, the rest of this review is basically filler! I would say that the Jerry subplot was not so strong, and I could not summon much enthusiasm for the painting subplot.
More? Well, Michael Richards always impresses with his physical comedy skills, Julia Louis Dreyfus shows impeccable comic timing, George the perfect straight-man. And Jerry the gravitational center the planets revolve around.
Seinfeld: The Pick (1992)
Excellent Ep - but watch out for that dry desert air!
Although it's only about 10 seconds, I had to pause 3 or 4 times to get through George's ridiculous, hilarious speech to Susan about Louis and Mrs Pasteur. Alexander and Swedberg did well to get through it without "corpsing" (laughing), and it does cut away very quickly. Kramer's underwear modeling is also a scream, Richards' physical comedy skills stronger than ever. I haven't even mentioned the Christmas card subplot, Newman's scene-stealing 10 second guest spot, or the ruminations of George on Moses' hygiene in the ancient desert. This episode sustains a superb level of humor virtually throughout. Absurdly good, absurd... and also good.
Madoff: The Monster of Wall Street (2023)
Stretched to 4 hours, it's a snoozefest
So, apparently, he never looked you in the eye, and his father's many business failures made him obsessed with success. A monster with a terrible childhood? Not exactly enough reason to lift $64bn from people's pockets...
Anyway, at that point I fell asleep. Netflix's efforts to lock me in to 4 hours failed as I lasted about 10 minutes. There's a need for a short documentary about Madoff, but this 4 hour production is a snore.
But hey! Since the TV was playing with me asleep, maybe the filmmakers got credit for the whole first episode- is that their play??!
In summary, NOT EVERYTHING NEEDS TO BE A LIMITED SERIES, PEOPLE!!!
CSI: Miami: After the Fall (2004)
Counseling nein danke
This is a very good episode of CSI Miami. A lot of complexity and intrigue involving robbery, pot smoking, internal affairs, and even a kinky judge! Jonathan Togo is a very positive presence, Caruso gives a strong performance and other support is good.
CSI: Miami: Extreme (2003)
Low rent ripoff of "The Game" movie
This is an extremely weak episode of CSI Miami. There are two subplots, a kidnapping subplot, which is completely absurd from beginning to end, and the "chop shop" subplot, which makes no sense whatsoever. Eric has raided a chop shop, while he was helping a widow get a new tv, and he got beaten up by a guy who Frank is investigating for a murder... Huh?! Maybe a lot of that subplot was cut for time, I don't know. The main kidnapping subplot has an early role for the excellent Chris Pine. Other highlights in the gloaming are Calleigh's great hairdo and Caruso's customarily bizarre line readings. This is an episode to skip.
Hawaii Five-0: Ka 'i'o (2019)
Stick to acting, bud
This episode sucked. Seems like some scenes had been deleted and others shot or re-shot at the end. So was his mom a crook (bank accounts) or not (she put the bugs in the car)?
Also a "weapons cache" is pronounced "weapons cash" not freaking "cashay" !! (Cachet, pronounced cashay, means something completely different!). This error was repeated 3 times which suggests that Alex o loughlin may have skipped out on a few English classes, which you might think could have been useful for a script writer... Sheesh.
Midsomer Murders: Schooled in Murder (2013)
Cheesey Bochan
Yeah well. Not MSM's finest hour. There are too many red herrings, and other items that become irrelevant to the ultimate solving of the crime. The revelation of the killer, when it comes, is not compelling - it doesn't make much sense, and yet still manages to be somehow unsurprising. The guest cast are OK, especially Maggie Steed as the headmistress, but lifting this material is beyond them. A pity this was Jason Hughes' swansong as DS Jones, he deserved a better send-off.
Midsomer Murders: Death in the Slow Lane (2011)
A new Barnaby but plus ca change, and that's just fine.
March 2011 saw Neil Dudgeon take over from John Nettles as Inspector Barnaby. Nettles (ever the gentleman and pro) had given 2 years warning to allow the producers to select a new star if they chose to continue the series, but producer Brian True May knew that Dudgeon would need all the help he could get to blunt the poison pen nibs of Nettles' many fans. And Dudgeon got it: Death in the Slow Lane is a belter of an episode - funny, genial and often very exciting, with the usual bits of MSM silliness mixed in to leaven the dish. Guests Samantha Bond and David Warner provide some star power, and there are super turns from Luke Allen Gale as local rapper/DJ Dave Doggy Day and from child stars Gwyneth Keyworth and Daisy Keeping as the "scholarship girls". Dudgeon takes up the mantle of Barnaby pretty well - perhaps playing it (or being scripted as) slightly more intellectual than Tom, and the writers give him a little tension with DS Jones and George Bullard. But there really isn't much daylight between the character of John and that of Tom. MSM carries on in its 200+ countries and territories (!) and, while not everyone will be happy (change is always difficult!), Death in the Slow Lane was a cracking start to the new era.
Space: 1999: Death's Other Dominion (1975)
Faux Shakespeare in space
Hard to know where to start with this mess. The basic premise, including the not so shocking denouement, could be summarized on the back of a postage stamp. To summarize the indignities inflicted on the poor benighted cast by the clueless scriptwriters would take longer. Absurdities abound - the Alphans head out into -75 temperatures attired for a minor snowstorm, then much of the away team is apparently lost and Paul tells Alan there's nothing he can do, before launching a rescue mission in the next scene. There's more, but I risk spoiling what surprises there are.
Brian Blessed's comedic talents are now well appreciated, and it's a pity that he was required to recite his ridiculous lines straight. John Shrapnel, as an intergalactic Shakespearean fool, has an almost impossible task with this material, but Shrapnel and Landau do manage to conjure two or three moments of real feeling. In general, the cast acquit themselves well against almost impossible odds. The 4 is for them.
The Rockford Files: Pastoria Prime Pick (1975)
Fun but descends into absurdity
The basic idea is that a small town makes huge sums of money sabotaging cars of passing motorists, and then framing them for crimes ranging from grand theft all the way up to murder. *Everybody* in the town is in on the scam, and no one in the higher courts of California seems to have noticed. Will Rockford be able to clear his name and right the wrongs? In the end, unsatisfying and silly, since a call to NBC or the LA Times would have been the obvious move all along. Considerably less credible than the 5 episodes prior "Great Blue Lake Land and Development Company", which required only dishonesty on the part of land company.
Earthstorm (2006)
Substantial progress made in space! At last!! (possible spoilers)
I recently reviewed the documentary, Earthstorm, narrated by Stephen Baldwin, and I wish to show my appreciation for the great feats the characters achieved...
**Jessica Heafey as Major Rachel Fine.
flies shuttle with joystick from liftoff directly to moon in less than 20 minutes.
jettisons main fuel tank (usually kept until orbit) at the same time as boosters - tank (which would be full of fuel) does not blow up and shuttle does not fall back to earth.
avoids asteroids and large sections of broken-up moon - again, using joystick.
flies shuttle into middle of the moon with joystick - "it's gonna be dark down there" says the cap-com - but, amazingly, it is not too dark.
flies shuttle back from moon having jettisoned the new nuclear engines and the main fuel tank - no doubt this was done by rerouting fuel from the Orbital Maneuvering System (OMS) thruster fuel tanks to main engines - usually this would power main engines for a few seconds only, so she must has substantially increased fuel efficiency of shuttle by a factor of some billions.
**Stephen Baldwin as John Redding.
fattest person in space.
walks straight from space shuttle cabin to cargo bay.
coolly stands in cargo bay while shuttle is navigated into center of the moon - not even holding onto anything!
single-handedly holds nuclear weapon steady in hold - ensuring its safely as shuttle takes moon rock hit.
single-handedly correctly judges nuclear blast and thereby welds cracked moon back together by newly discovered magnetic process.
**mission control
successful launch of shuttle with no-gos from flight and booster.
first launch of shuttle in severe thunderstorm.
communicates with shuttle while it is on a ledge in the middle of the moon.
built expressive computer voice with ability to detect recovery of moon fault!
Pro: mission control has backup generator power - but (con - sorry!) it does not kick in automatically - and then goes out again at the crucial magnetic nuclear detonation stage.
**Boeing/NASA.
developed nuclear pulse engines for shuttle - which can be heard even in space!
installed artificial gravity on shuttle - no one strapped in while in orbit and on moon approach.
first torpedo-tube style magnetic nuclear launch from shuttle.
substantially upgraded shuttle's durability - previously vulnerable to foam and ice hits, here is can take extensive hits from moon rocks.
produced astonishingly maneuverable shuttle with high fuel economy (see above).
installed very-useful side windows in cargo bay.
in a surprise move, deployed shuttle without bothering to stock it with any spacesuits; also, this "specialized" shuttle has only one deck level and only 3 crew-members.
**Overall, pretty harmless and overall enjoyable movie, especially if you are a dweeb who likes spotting mistakes. It's a scifi (syfy?) original so you shouldn't expect Citizen Kane....
Andromeda: The Heart of the Journey: Part 1 (2005)
An unnecessary episode
By series 5, Andromeda is a sad shadow of its former self. As the Barber writing team cranks up for the season finale, little cranking up is evident. The episode begins with the revelation that Maura (the head avatar of the Lamben Kith nebula) has decided that the only way to beat the "Abyss" is to destroy three galaxies. It's the ultimate scorched earth policy! Dylan Hunt disagrees, and resolves to take Maura on a tour of key planets such as Tarazed and Earth to show her what she would be destroying. The short tour proceeds, with little excitement. At the close, little is resolved, "To be continued" appears, and you can't help feeling an hour poorer.
Ultraviolet (2006)
Terrible movie
There should be a special place in hell for people who make cool trailers of movies that suck as badly as this one. The action sequences are pretty cool but there are just *so* few of them, separated by repetitive and meaningless dialogue. Also, the action sequences get a little predictable after the third or fourth time, Milla is totally surrounded and yet ices everybody without a hair going out of place. Far, far inferior to Aeon Flux, worse even than Lara Croft 2 Cradle of Life. It terrifies me that 40 minutes was cut from the movie - I fear that one day they will catch up with me and rot my brain. Although on second thought, maybe we needed another 2 hours of cuts. I really feel like a fool having paid cash money$ to see this crapola - learn from my mishtake!
Rebus: Black and Blue (2000)
And then it hit me. Thunk.
Very enjoyable adaptation of the Ian Rankin novels, this is the first out of 4 of the superior 2000/2001 miniseries of adaptations. The two Stuart Hepburn scripted outings (Black and Blue and Dead Souls) are slightly superior; Mortal Causes is very good and Hanging Garden slightly less satisfying. John Hannah, although a bit young for the part (according to author Rankin, Hannah is a "lovely guy, lovely guy: young, good looking - all the things that Rebus isn't!"), does a great job (see http://www.bbc.co.uk/norfolk/your/extra/ian_rankin_interview6.shtml for the full quote). Far superior to the 2006 miniseries, which lack Hannah, substituting capable journeyman Ken Stott (bad), and are far less well-scripted (fatal).
Pet Shop Boys: Somewhere (1997)
30 minute version is a snore
Trio are currently showing a cut-down 30 minute version on cable which includes only the documentary portion - no performance - VEEERRRY boring I'm afraid.
Neil Tennant is the only interviewee of any interest or consequence, with Chris Lowe actually conducting most of his interviews lying down while ruminating on whether he might be able to play keyboards in a horizontal manner at some point rather than having to stand up on stage. Apparently Lowe's nickname was "Kip" (UK English slang word for sleep) in his younger days, advisable to get some kip rather than subject yourself to this 30 minute version - beware!
Logan's Run (1976)
Enjoyable nostalgia trip
For reasons best known to themselves, Fry's are selling this DVD for $5.88 - a great deal! Since the cover art alone is worth that price (it has "psychedelic" style cartoon representation of the movie, not the photo-based artwork shown on IMDb), I bought it. For an old movie it has respectable extras, consisting mainly of a commentary track with director, star (Michael York) and costume designer, recorded after the fact (but before 2000, when the costume designer Bill Thomas died), as well as a 10 minute featurette (more of an infomercial really!) and the trailer.
I won't go over the plot again. There is some clunky dialogue, especially when Logan and Jessica are expressing their astonishment at the concept of marriage. However, I enjoyed the movie and, after some disappointing DVD buying efforts recently (anybody want a copy of 2010?) found it very satisfying. The special effects are OK except for the aerial shots within the dome - which look like a Hornby train set hahahah! Michael York, Jenny Agutter (24 at the time, she looks fab!) and Peter Ustinov (the 55 year old actor caked on the makeup to play an older man living outside the hermetically sealed city) all do a good job. However, the real star of the movie, Agutter's extremely flimsy and frequently soaked non-costume, is uncredited!
The Chronicles of Riddick (2004)
Cool SciFi Movie
Very cool movie. Our audience applauded too - that pretty much says it all. Diesel does the gravel voiced thing, great fight choreography, I expected terrible FX from a local newspaper review, but actually they were fine. Not much motivation for the necromongers (i.e. the bad guys) except that they were bad guys - but that did not get in the way. Talking of which, nice performances from those bad guys, especially Karl Urban from The Lord of the Rings (Eomer) actually playing pretty much the same part - except on the side of the "Orcses" this time hahaha.
No need to have seen the execrable, dirt-cheap Pitch Black to follow this new movie, it is a sequel only in that it includes Riddick - which is just as well.
The Gingerbread Man (1998)
Tedious and Incomprehensible
This movie is like real life, by which I mean - not a lot happens in the available 2 hours or so, and not much game plan or plot is evidenced by the frequently invisible cast (their invisibility being due to the "experimental" lighting as mentioned by many reviewers).
A big bore. No big surprise that Altman helms this - he is a very variable performer (yes we all loved "Gosford Park", but "Pret A Porter" anyone? Kansas City? Dr T. and the Women? Aaargh), but the fact that the raw material is a John Grisham tale, and the excellent cast that you will perceive through the gathering gloaming of your insistent slumber - makes this truly a masterpiece of bad film. And no, it is not "so bad it's good".
It's just bad.
Lara Croft: Tomb Raider - The Cradle of Life (2003)
I was bored
Tedious and frequently incomprehensible, Cradle of Life makes Tomb Raider 1 look like Citizen Kane. We get a series of low rent James Bond action sequences: Lara and friend ride motorbikes, Lara and friend paraglide off a building, Lara and friend shoot some baddies - interspersed with pseudo expository chat, and ripoffs of other movies, such as the artifact projection trick from Mummy 2. My interest perked up when I saw Ciaran Hinds, an actor with great presence (Russian president in Sum of All Fears, among other roles) but he just spouts mumbo jumbo and runs around aimlessly, like the other characters. Noah Taylor and (Red Dwarf alum) Chris Barrie return as Lara's sidekicks, but they are underused, and the comic relief they brought in TR1 is sorely missed. In fact pretty much everybody is underused, except the motorbikes and guns. Aimless stuff.
2 Fast 2 Furious (2003)
NICE!
Great fun movie. Definitely worth the 9 bucks. More of a standard "buddy" movie than the first one with more humor and wordplay, but the action keeps coming. Tyrese and Paul Walker do a good job of keeping things going without any "Diesel power" hehehe.
Liar Liar (1997)
I've had better....
Those of you watched the movie will remember my one line summary from the movie - Jim has "hot luvinn" with one of the female characters, and when she asks him in the morning how it was he says (he cannot tell a lie) that he has "had better." Of course, you've ALWAYS had better, and this is only one example of how the curse of truth-telling provides opportunities for embarrassment and a slap in the face for Jimbo, and much hilarity for the viewing classes like meself.
This is a great flick. I've had better..but not much better!
The Cable Guy (1996)
Funny! and not as dark as people say...
At heart this is a surprisingly gentle comedy, which uses Jim Carrey's physical comedy skills to great effect - he just wants be loved. Aaaaaaah. Some hilarious scenes, of which my favorite is the homage to star trek during the medieval fight scene. Sinister? Disturbing? No way. To be honest I was a bit disappointed that the humor wasn't darker!
A pleasant way to pass 1.5 hours - catch it on cable or network.
Rush Hour 2 (2001)
At last, a 2001 movie that delivers
In a summer of movies that have disappointed on one level or another, the right strategy is to under-promise and over-deliver - and Rush Hour 2 does exactly that! You expect a series of clever fight scenes and cheap gags, and that's what you get. But the energy and relentlessness of the movie, and the likability of the stars, lifts it above B movie and into, well.... B+ movie.
My only complaint is that many of the best gags were in the trailer! But it's a whale of a time - and will make a ton of money.
The Score (2001)
For insomniacs only
If you have any tiredness or fatigue when entering the movie theater, you will have little chance of lasting through this movie. The first hour or so of planning and jockeying for position will put you out for the count.
De Niro and Brando generate real drama and emotion in one scene (set in Brando's half finished basement swimming-pool), and the 20 minutes or so of "heist" footage that rounds off the movie is riveting. But its a crime movie with a distinct shortage of crime, and too much talk.