davebray-56764 Reviews

Ozark (2017–2022)

A true screen turner

[10/10 · 2 April 2024]

This seven year old series is one of those well- put-together crime dramas that came along for me just when a break from the usual attention keepers faded days earlier. It has all the R rated elements that make up an intense tit-for-tat relationship based screen turner.

All of the actors were well chosen, each well able to deliver their lines with convincing and appropriate attitudes that keep the anxiety at a consistent peak.

The Langhorns, redneck trailer dwellers, come upon money grabbing and generating opportunities that cause them to switch sides, swindle, falsify whatever they convey, when formerly they possessed barely a dime in their whole crime- ridden family.

In their efforts to stay in the money and beyond the reach of the FBI, the daughter, Ruth, works for the underworld in various realized and unrealized roles learning the ropes the Byrds teach her, while the Byrds manage the core of the operation.

The action is spellbinding and not as predictable as one would think. The series is filled with vulgarity and even references to biblical texts; but overall, entertaining.

A Lesson of Love (2014)

A biblically unsupported, confused mess

[3/10 · 17 March 2024]

This film is saturated with words, actions, and belief systems that have entirely nothing to do with the principles and doctrines found in Scripture. It's about a woman who, after three failed marriages, runs around in loose clothing and pretends to fall under the control of the Holy Spirit while Pentecostal services are underway in the small, backwoods Holiness Church where she attends. Obviously, what she thinks is spiritual ecstasy it is nothing more than showmanship for the delight of the understudied and unlearned. She even has sex with an unbelieving religion professor where she also breaks out in tongues in the middle of their sexual encounter in her home. Don't, please, consider any portion of this disaster to represent Christianity as it should be lived out in the lives of those who profess being saved or born again. Where any conscience is displayed the moment is not scripturally based but more like an escape from condemnation brought on by the individual's personal instability. The devil certainly gets his way in this movie, for it is not something I would recommend the unsaved and newly saved view as it fails to represent anything Christlike.

Michael Landon, the Father I Knew (1999 TV Movie)

Could not have been worse

[1/10 · 16 September 2022]

I thought I was going to be watching a heartfelt, true telling of Michael Landon's off camera life with character traits that resemble something of his TV writings. Instead I learned he was much less than perfect and broke his son, Michael's heart, which lasted throughout every scene.

There was nothing I learned about his father other than he was an intensely selfish, lying cheater. He hurt his children, and that hurt was made to be the blame for Michael Jr's failure at SC, his inability to grow up, to move on, to be his own person minus all the financial favors his parents provided him.

How I wish the rich could walk just a few blocks in my shoes, or those of others whose blue collar, alcoholic, bigoted Archie Bunker fathers were never, one day, there for them. Many of us chose to enlist in the military and from there build our lives as we knew best, never expecting a handout, never having the sort of support the TV industry provided.

Try reaching Masters level while being the poorest pauper in the county who collected soda bottles lying alongside the highway as he made his way to class. With those bottles, I redeemed them for enough money to eat in a supermarket buffet - the one meal of my day. Such a cry baby this Michael was,

I read somewhere that Michael Landon used to give boxes of T-bone steaks to special friends, that he craved and ate red meat constantly. Could that not have created the development of his illness?