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Reviews
Flashpoint (2008)
GREAT Show!
I love this show! It's probably my favorite show on TV right now. The acting is great, especially the characterizations by Enrico C. as the boss and Hugh Dillon as the master sniper. The two characters they play are strong and complicated, with Enrico playing the more sympathetic role.
The two young-uns who play "Jules" and the Iraqui-War vet make all the mistakes that newbies to the force make, which is grueling when you realize how much these guys' lives are in the hands of the others. Amy Jo Johnson, who plays Jules, seems a bit weak in the arena of having her "acting chops," but she is also the gal who may or may not be coming back after recovering (in real life) from having a baby in December 2008. The script right now -- absent Johnson-- has "Jules" severely wounded and possibly not coming back; another actress has taken her place with the warning of the boss that "Jules" will be the first choice if she can come back.
I have only seen this new actress once and she definitely has more gravitas than Amy Jo Johnson who is a very petite gal to be playing in such a "heavy-weight" role.
"Flashpoint" is not made for a relaxing Friday evening when you want to doze off! This IS a great show though. Thoroughly riveting.
'Til Death (2006)
Started out Hilarious, Going Steadily Downhill; March 2007
At the beginning of this show, I would have given it 9 stars. So "something" obviously happened between September 2006 and March 2007.
I started out loving this show because it very honestly and humorously portrayed a middle-aged married couple who definitely loved each other, just had some mileage in their 20 year relationship. (I can verify its honesty because I have been married for 36 years!) The young newlyweds who move in next door make an interesting, sometimes poignant and funny, comparison though the show is funniest when they focus on Joy and Eddie Stark (the middle-aged couple). The comparisons between the couples, I thought, were most funny when they showed Eddie meting out "battle of the sexes" information to the younger Jeff Woodcock who lives next door.
Why the show has been going downhill: 1.) too many references to Joely Fisher's admittedly ample bosoms; the worst of it is, she seems to enjoy all the attention to her bosoms and most of her clothing is geared toward revealing her bosom.
2.) They don't seem to know what to do with Mrs. Woodcock, the young female neighbor and so keep changing her character. First she was a sweet young thing who likes to hike and enjoy nature; now, her character has switched to her being a "hippy"-type, having had a previous and vigorous sex life that the staid Mr. Woodcock didn't seem to know about before they married. The writers don't seem to know how to write for a woman who is 25 years old in 2007. The funniest bit that I recall being done for her was when Jeff's mother came to visit after the Woodcocks had only been married for less than 2 months. The three of them were out having Chinese dinner, a motorbike backfires and thinking they were being fired on, Jeff's impulse was to grab his mother to protect her, leaving his *wife* (the "other" Mrs. Wooodock)in the lurch, with Chinese take-out shoved into her chest. Which does not make the new Mrs. Woodcock very happy. It was a funny bit, but something that could have been written for Rob and Laura Petrie in the 1960's ("The Dick Van Dyke Show.") The funniest show, I thought, was when Eddie tells Jeff the secret about about getting time away from the wife-- who is making Jeff claustrophobic with her over-attention to him. Eddie's wife Joy, it appears, has her own secret way of having a good time without Eddie, which when he finds out about it, is none too thrilled. A hilarious show! But it was early in the season and I only wish I had a better report for what followed.
3.) Recently they have brought Eddie and Joy's college daughter in for a couple shows which made the show go further downhill...
They could rescue this show with some of the bright middle aged humor from Fall 2006 and Brad Garrett's excellent acting and strengthen the roles of the two women. They need to make up their minds about the young Mrs. Woodcock's character and PLEASE let Joely Fisher's breasts bow out of the show.
The writers should have done better for Brad Garrett who has been hilarious and meticulous as an actor in "Til Death."
Radioland Murders (1994)
Gloriously Colorful, Dynamic and Nostalgic-- But NOT PG-Rated
What a smartly-written script set against the background of the opening of the world's fourth radio station in 1939 Chicago! The frenetically-paced, highly colorful movie would have been fun and exciting enough except that the writers (based on an idea by George Lucas) "threw in the kitchen sink" by adding murder after murder which started occurring from the moment the Radioland broadcast began. In the meantime, the people backstage were doing all they could to keep the audience out front from detecting that there was a "problem" at Radioland...
Onstage a murderous Peter-Lorre look-alike threatened a sweet young thing for the secret ingredient in her potato salad, young boys cheered the famous "black whip," a Lone Ranger look-alike, and a multitude of radio favorites, real and look-alikes, passed by our eyes. Singing sisters, a commercial with a lady onstage in a bathtub advertising bubblebath, and another one with a lady dressed in a cigarette box advertising cigarettes. ("I always thought they should put some kind of warning on those cigarettes," mentions Mrs. Henderson, played by Mary Stuart Masterson, the boss's actual strength behind the Radioland show.) Probably the most frenetic and fantastic of the crew backstage was "Roger Henderson" played by Brian Benben, the head radio writer, who had become the Chicago police's prime suspect in the murders. In his efforts to solve the crime and prove to his wife that he had not committed adultery with the show's singing "Va-Va-Va Voom girl" (played by Anita Morris who died by the time the movie was released) Roger ran hither and yon trying to escape arrest. In the whole frenzy of activity, Benben ends up disguised in a whole series of costumes, including as a Carmen Miranda look-alike.
One of the radio writers under Roger is a very young Peter McNicol who would gain fame a couple years later in t.v.'s "Ally McBeal" and later in "Numbers" and a lengthened guest performance in "24." Harvey Korman plays the always-drunk and passed-out writing supervisor and Christopher Lloyd plays the Sound Effects man, "Zoltan."
Guest appearances on the radio program include George Burns who was alive at the time the film was made, Rosemary Clooney, Billy Barty and some very old-time show-people whose faces I recognized but whose names I do not know. The bandleader "Rick Rochester" was played by Michael McKean who was able to fit the 1930's to a tee with an extra dash of zing.
A tour-de-force performance was turned in by newcomer Scott Michael Campbell as the usher "Billy" who after the first murder became called upon to rush around with notes and messages backstage, even rushing onstage to give script edits to the actors and ultimately helping Roger escape.
The plot lines were multitudinous: 1.) Would the sponsors of the showwho seemed oblivious to the glitches that occurred onstage because of what was occurring backstage-- be pleased enough to continue their sponsorship? 2.) Would Mrs. Henderson realize that Roger had not been unfaithful to her but had been the victim of the Va-Va-Va-Voom Girl? 3.) Would Roger be able to discover who was behind the murders before he was arrested as the prime suspect? 4.) Would the audience discover that there was a problem behind the scenes? And 5.) Would young Billy succeed in his brand new job at Radioland and please his parents who were in the audience?
I only had two problems with the movie: This PG movie opens with Billy trying to run an errand backstage, inadvertently running into the crowded ladies chorus line's dressing room where there are irritated ladies trying to cover-up, and a couple of them are bare-breasted. The scene is rushed so I didn't even see the bare breasts the first time I watched the movie. It was the only "nude" scene and could have been changed so easily. I felt angry about this scene because it was gratuitous and unnecessary and seemed to be there just to get a more mature rating.
My other complaint: While I was crazy about Mary Stuart Masterson in "Benny and Joon" that had been made in the 1980's, her performance in "Radioland Murders," especially in comparison to the other actors, was overly low-key, in fact "in the doldrums." She was billed as the star of the show but everybody else in the cast certainly outshined her.
Other than these two problems, "Radioland Murders" was a sparkling delight of nostalgia and excitement.
Music of the Heart (1999)
Music of the Heart
The movie "Music of the Heart" suffers what a lot of similar movies "based on fact" suffer: lack of a smooth flow due to trying to get all the factual information in. It should have remained a book. The boyfriend segment that went nowhere should have been left out altogether, as much as I love looking at Aiden Quinn and watching him act. And the flow was made further awkward because here and there, we are shown the main character as not being sympathetic at all, but having a perfectionistic, difficult personality. So who is the woman who the movie was based on? Certainly not a "warm and fuzzy" type, and yet she does things that help her under-privileged community and students. But it seems like her virtues stem out of a belief-system that "poor public school students should be taught to play the violin" and "anyone can learn the violin"-- not from a fully-formed, sympathetic, "from the heart" woman.
***POSSIBLE SPOILER**... The direction is amateurish with painful cuts from happy face to happy face from an applauding audience at the finale-- including that of the boyfriend that she had left 10 years before applauding wildly like their ending had gone well, and looking like he looked in the last scene we saw him in. Questions beg to be answered. How did all those poor kids get the money to buy the fancy duds for playing at Carnegie Hall?
I believe that movies based on modern, real-life people are difficult to make; this one could have stood a LOT more effort in the making.
King of Kings (1961)
The Blue-eyed Jewish Jesus
I was very disappointed with this movie about Jesus, though I have to admit that when I saw the movie at the time it was made, I didn't really notice Jeffery Hunter's very non-Jewish looks (including big blue eyes) and I didn't know enough of the Bible to be appalled by some of the very unbiblical parts of the script. I recently read that Ray Bradbury-- a purveyor of non-Christian thought if you read his other writing-- wrote the script for King of Kings. The biggest Scriptural error that I saw in King of Kings was Jesus's teaching-- according to the movie-- was "peace" when that was more the liberal philosophy of the 1960's, not "the peace" of the Bible. Jesus, in Matthew 10:34-35, said: "Do not think that I came to bring peace on earth. I did not come to bring peace but a sword. 35 For I have come to 'set a man against his father, a daughter against her mother, and a daughter-in-law against her mother-in-law'..."
Jesus *is* PERSONAL peace for those who come to Him but as any Christian who is robust in his faith will tell you, "My family thought I went nuts when I made a decision to come to Christ, and I found that certain members of my family would no longer talk to me." And Jesus's answer for this to the Christian is Luke 9:62: "But Jesus said to him, 'No one, having put his hand to the plow, and looking back, is fit for the kingdom of God.' "
Gutsy stuff. Not this Sixties pablum-version of "love."
I *did* notice that Jeffery Hunter "as Jesus" had his arm pits shaved which took away the effect of reality from my point of view, almost making me laugh. The music was so great, and I like the parts that had Mary in-- who to me projected a Biblical Mary, so I did feel that the movie was "trying" to do a good thing. Hence, I can't completely downgrade this movie. Most of the acting was excellent.
High Crimes (2002)
Jim Caviezel Became Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's "The Passion of Christ"
I was interested to see this movie because I was very much aware of the actor Jim Caviezel-- but only because he played Jesus Christ in Mel Gibson's movie "The Passion of Christ" last year. It was great to see him in a non-religious movie. I was also grateful that though there was a loving "sex scene" in "High Crimes," it wasn't so bad that I couldn't watch it as a Christian. (I did think the sequence with the prostitutes was too raunchy.) I have seen Jim Caviezel on Christian TV and noted he said in playing Jesus, "I do what I always do when handed a script as far as studying, etc." Someone involved with Jim said about him that they immediately thought of him when casting Jesus because of his ability to portray vulnerability. So in "High Crimes" he made the perfect criminal: affectionate husband to the lawyer (played by Judd) who desperately wanted a child, could weep tenderly on cue and even pass a lie detector test when he was guilty! Can't wait to see what other movies he has played in...
Ashley Judd always plays a great strong woman, in my view, and this movie was no exception. But I particularly liked Morgan Freeman's role as it was was not as "usual" as the other roles.
The editing could have been better, especially since the show was dealing with war scenes from years before Judd's character met Caviezel's character.
Flanagan