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Reviews
End of Watch (2012)
Gritty and Compelling, Must-Watch!
At the heart of it is a "ride or die" friendship between two beat cops in South Central LA, Brian Taylor (Gyllenhal) and Mike Zavala (Peña) and the dangerous situations they find themselves fighting crime in South Central LA.
Shot in part with a handheld camera, it's expertly done to increase the fear they face while riding the streets. Small moments like Peña bracing a gun against the door of his squad car as he casually chats up a menacing neighborhood denizen bring home the danger of their jobs.
Realistic pushback from ICE officers who challenge their turf while cautioning Taylor and Zavala about cartel infiltration into the neighborhood sets up the last third of the movie that is pulse-pounding and extremely graphic. At no time does the violence seem gratuitous; it's terrifying.
Layered upon the friendship of these two officers are the relationships with the women in their lives: Zavala's wife who's expecting their first baby and Taylor in a spicy romance with a new girlfriend, winningly played by Anna Kendrick.
You live through the moments of these law enforcement officers' lives and the believability of their friendship is why the movie delivers such a strong emotional blow.
The First Monday in May (2016)
Beautiful documentary
I drifted along on Hulu and distracted, found myself watching the next offering served up by my viewing history, a pleasant surprise in this compelling documentary about The Met Gala.
I'm not a fashionista so I didn't expect to be intrigued much less dazzled but I was, particularly by the stunning floral displays created by genius designers and the intimate look at the many details of the meticulous planning involved in this enormous undertaking. The behind-the-scenes of the Met's museum storage were very cool.
I thought I'd watch this documentary for a few minutes and switch over to something else but I enjoyed it start to finish.
I have a new appreciation of fashion as an art form and the incredible loss of Alexander McQueen whose last show took my breath away ("Savage Fashion"?) The costume look and makeup that appeared to be melting in the rain with a dramatic, almost foreboding effect will have you asking,
"How did he do that?"
Left to my own accord, I wouldn't have chosen to watch this doc; I appreciate the Hulu algorithm knows better than I do and served it to me.
Chernobyl (2019)
A MASTERPIECE
I've watched "Chernobyl" three times and always see another detail I missed or didn't fully appreciate.
The series is deeply layered with historical, scientific, political and personal elements in telling the story of the worst man-made disaster in history.
All the characters are based upon real life people who were directly involved in the accident or clean-up except for one who's a compilation of several people.
Thousands of Ukrainians paid a steep price with their health or lives trying to contain radioactive debris, burying the dead or caring for the those dying of radioactive poisoning.
There's not a wasted frame in this series. It is frightening in its details: Observers on the "Bridge of Death" with radioactive graphite floating through the air and sticking to hair; tears of a young pregnant newlywed watching her husband's corpse be encased in layers of impenetrable metal and concrete; cats and dogs killed because of radiation risk; scientists followed by the KGB with surety they'll be executed by the Kremlin if they stray from propaganda numbers.
The people who moved me the most were the coal miners who dug underneath the reactor, a job that couldn't be done by machine. Toiling 24 hours a day/7 days a week, you see the practical and plain-speaking leader fearlessly corral the Kremlin into answering truthfully that theirs is a lethally dangerous mission and after they finish the job, they would be abandoned. There were no tears, just quiet anger, disgust and getting on with and finishing the job.
There are maybe three or four movies/series I would describe as "flawless". This is one of them. There is not a wasted frame.
Obsession (2023)
Silly and Boring
If you've seen Louis Malle's "Damage", prepare to be very underwhelmed by this slick but soulless remake that needs a ribbon of sex play from "Fifty Shades" to spice it up.
The meeting between the son's fiancée and the father is unbelievable. Their eyes meet but there's no frisson of electricity and they fail again when, at the bar, he places an olive in her mouth.
After that it's a tedious slog of silly sex scenes and characters that go nowhere ("Polly" is a MacGuffin who goes nowhere) and splices that don't make sense (what was the scene about the apartment being shown by a realtor, does he buy it, I guess we don't care).
"Damage" did in two hours what this slo-mo car crash couldn't accomplish in twice the time with a real kick to the gut of Miranda Richardson flailing and screaming and wishing her son alive and her husband, dead.
The future mother-in-law similarly fell short with the dysfunctional lines of her cracked family drawn in sharpie versus Leslie Caron's pencil featherings that lent a foreboding of what was to come.
There is no sense of wreckage like the final scene in "Damage" with Jeremy Irons, now living alone in a small French village, opening his little package with a meager slice of cheese while looking at a wall-sized photo of his entire family- plus Anna - taken the weekend their worlds collided.
ER: The Book of Abby (2008)
Ridiculous and annoying
This episode is among the weakest for a show that ran 15 long seasons. The writers seemed to want Abby to have a spin with each character (literally, with desk manager Frank) as she wraps up her tenure at County.
Abby has a confrontation with Banfield (Angela Bassett in a painfully scenery-chewing role as frosty, imperialistic ER Chief with a heart-rending loss in her past) and two ridiculous scenes: Giving a suicidal teen a syringe of a heart-stopping drug as "plan B" if he doesn't jump and the knee slapper of Abby busting in on a department meeting lecturing that the ER takes the patients nobody else wants and that Taggart (Linda Cardellini) was just doing her job.
Watching Abby spew platitudes and lecture department heads had me waiting if she was going to demand they recite the Serenity prayer with her.
Not content that she hasn't thrown out all her fairy dust, Abby has a faker of a feel-good scene doing the tango with Frank (Troy Evans) who's astonished doing the tango with a dance partner yields better results than following foot positioning stickers on the floor. It really wasn't that much of a shocker, Frank, nor did it give any warm n fuzzies.
Morris (Morris Erby) serves up another fake moment as he learns it's Abby's last day. The writers also dust off the rabbi who married her and Luka now appearing as an ER patient who's stunned "Abigail" ("It's Abby!!") doesn't recognize him.
Luckily Haleh (Yvette Freeman) saves the day and takes Abby to the basement to see the locker tags on the wall for staff who left County. Freeman makes this scene quite touching and saves this episode from its characters overacting and all the ridiculous teeny plot threads.
It was about this point I was begging for ER to be sent to the woodshed. It no longer had the touchstone characters like Mark Greene (Anthony Edwards) Susan Lewis (Sherry Stringfield) or Peter Benton (Eriq LaSalle) who helped create one of the best long-running weekly drama series and featured B level actors (Rebecca DeMornay, Ray Liotta, Thandiwe Newton, Aaron Paul, Christina Hendricks, Teri Garr, Lucy Liu and many more) in good roles.
A handful of episodes later, the series limped off the stage, much to our relief.