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Murdoch Mysteries (2008)
Light and Charming Entertainment, But Pregnant with Modernisms
The cases and period setting are delightful for the nostalgia of the times. But the writing, acting, and invasions of social causes never ventured in these times smacks of progressive influences, often championed by Helene Joy's character, who may have provided behind the scenes influence to fete and debut anachronistic memes, like women's liberation, assertive black women contradicting white characters in authority, challenges to parochial masculine views of roles way before their time. If you can suspend reality about the social mores of the early 20th Century, and be very forgiving about uncomfortable attempts to talk like period characters, the stories are interesting, holding that interest through sixteen seasons. You'll enjoy also the occasional inclusion of famous historical figures like Edison, Harley and Davidson, even Sherlock Holmes.
3:10 to Yuma (2007)
When Remakes Sully the Name
Remakes try to best the original, or at least equal it in interest and craft. The 2007 remake of 3:10 begins well by including storyline and character development before that of the '57 original. All actors are good to excellent. But why, oh why, blow the ending? The whole point of the '57 original is that the outlaw ends up on the train with the citizen hero despite a trail of dead outlaw buddies who did their best to prevent it. The James Mangold/Kathy Konrad production takes that classic denouement.everyone is waiting for and gives it a Junior High ending equipped with a Junior High twist just to make it different. As the train is ready to leave and the bullets fly, good guy Bale gets fatally shot, letting bad guy Crowe jump out from his cell cage, only to kill his own crew because he realizes his second in command lied to him. And to make sure the new film gets the bad guy back on the train in the cage once again, bad guy Crowe, seeing the dead hero and his grieving son, grows a conscience and boards the train voluntarily for Yuma Prison. Mission complete. Story over. So we get the most important conclusion of the '57 film remade with the silliest of endings imaginable. You be the judge.
Custer of the West (1967)
As False a Treatment As Could Be
Expectations are low for Hollywood telling history accurately, but this is a travesty. Having a Brit in the title role was a clue. But the final battle at Little Bighorn was almost frame for frame a made up set of events. First, they make it take place in a valley, when it was on a hill. Dull Knife never acted as chief of all warriors. They never pulled up in four hordes around Custer's troupe. Custer never lasted to the end as lone survivor, challenging a waiting circle of warriors to do him in. They didn't all ride off in four directions when it was over. I'm surprised the cameras themselves didn't leap from their fixtures and run away screaming of the travesty they were made to film.
Cunk on Earth (2022)
A Quart of Concern in Ten Gallons of Idiocy
Cunk On The Earth is for sure a spoof on just about every traditional piece of conventional history, perceived by Philomena as "received" and therefore worthy of being ridiculed, since we were never asked. Just about everything is put in a ridiculous light in order to show mild disdain. Like "Why are there mysteries about the pyramids? Aren't they just bricks and a triangle?" Which seems to ignore that posing to Philomena how she might arrange to lift two and a half ton blocks up beyond the reach of rudimentary cranes would give her a complex of mysteries in just thirty seconds. But why try? She's not playing anything close to a fair game; as in "Did they start at the top and work down?" spoken to a real professional. What is concerning is that for every elite intellectual who find this quirkily hilarious, there are thousands of aimless, fuzzy thinking young people who may come to believe there aren't any credible answers to the history of the past. And that would be a shame.
The Salvation (2014)
Infantile Screenwriting and Acting
Mads Mickelson is worth watching but hardly anything else is. The screenplay makes little sense after the events that become the occasion for revenge. Then there's revenge on the revenge, where the bad guy (Jeffrey Dean Morgan) gives the town til noon to find the killer (Mads) of his brother, which is ridiculous because he's nowhere near the town, and shooting town folk isn't going to find him any sooner. Henshall, ordinarily excellent, is terrible. Morgan is terrible and plays much better as a romantic. Jonathan Pryce should be embarrassed for even associating with the property. Pryce says the town is too poor to afford protection money, then a few scenes later, someone somehow has the money to build a new store. Eva Green's character is pointless since she acts like she runs the outlaw gang and wants revenge for Mads killing her relation, then at the end rides off to make a new life with Mads. The film closes by telescoping back to reveal a dozen oil derricks planted in town, despite the pool of oil seen earlier in the film has literally no focus worth dialog or action in the entire film. Clearly, there's no continuity director and the screenwriters must have been adolescents on a project from school.
Flawless (2007)
Plot Hole
During the interview at the beginning of the film, the interviewer concludes that Laura Quinn has been in prison for 40 years but that she has kept a memento from the heist, which she shows to the interviewer now 40 years later. Laura discovers how Hobbs got the gems out of the vault without leaving the building and it is revealed that all Hobbs wanted was to stick it to the insurance exec for delays that led to his wife's death. He leaves Laura to reveal the whereabouts of the gems. But when the Laura has helped investigators find the cache, chief investigator Finch only requests that she be available to help wrapping up the investigation. She's not taken away, no prison time. So what is she convicted of that would have sent her to prison?
The Last Duel (2021)
THE GOOD AND THE DEPOLARABLE
The Last Duel has good and deplorable to recommend it. We can count on Ridley Scott to give us an authentic view of the brutality of the times. Knowledge of the power of the broadsword relegated all earlier portrayals to mere child's play. Unfortunately, the character development with Damon and Affleck was disappointing. Damon didn't short-change in the battle scenes and the final duel. But it's clear he made no effort to sound like a person who lived in those times. Heston knew how to set his voice and speak convincingly in a period piece. Damon couldn't avoid reminding the audience he's just a 21st century dude dressed up in medieval garb. Affleck looked the part but was completely lost in the 14th century. You were expecting him in many scenes to say, "Wanna Brewskie?" Adam Driver was remarkably good at embracing a warrior and lover in the thirteen hundreds. Face and voice expressed the dire traditions and jeopardy of the times. Comer was hands down the best to watch. As for the 14th century, she clearly got it, and set all of us at home in the times. More than blood and swash, we're interested in what people were like in distant times, how they expressed themselves. In that respect, for three out of four principals, The Last Duel never really left the twenty-first century.
Spencer (2021)
LIfe Made to Imitate Artistic Fantasy
"Spencer" is an example of the current plight of modern directors who despoil their abilities to produce a worthy film by a predisposed disdain for the mundane reality of actual events. Revisionist authors and filmmakers can be successful when historical events have credible elements of doubt. But the inner conflicts of Princess Diana have been so well documented - even "in her own words" - that toying with fantasies about "what if she did such and such" are just gratuitous excuses to play with art. Which is, of course, a major disservice to the real person involved. Nor can it be even remotely entertained that we really know nothing about her inner struggle, so all is fair game. Patching together snipits from her childhood with things shown as real but which were merely wished for and inserted in some imaginary coherency known only to the director just create confusion and frustration. We never know why the collage is shown, except that someone has justified it on the basis that a collage after all is art.
Making up events that never happened is the kind of thing that causes many viewers to just change the channel. No matter. The filmmakers are glad to see them leave. Such members of the great unwashed never understood the merging of tragic emotion and creative art. The fact remains that Princess Di never ate pearls falling contemptuously into her soup, never walked out onto the shooting field of firing pheasant hunters and demanded her sons come home with her, never drove away unattended and alone with her boys from Sandringham House for a day of fun. We learn nothing really from this addition to her tragic life story, because the director was preoccupied with showing us his creativity in filmmaking, even if disrespectful of a noble but regrettably tragic life.
Stay Close (2021)
A Travesty on the Original
Stay Close Plot Holes
(caution - Spoilers Below)
The screenwriters made majorly bad choices in developing the screenplay for the series by deleting several key elements in the book that end up leaving the viewer in the dark as to how the deaths and characters tie up at the end.
The key missing person - Carlton Flynn - remains a mystery that is actually not accounted for at the end of the series as he is per the book. We see Kayleigh, the main character's daughter, being chased by an overdosed Carlton while running from the Vipers bar with Carlton later giving up. Some time later we see Kayleigh's father, Dave, recognizing the metallic orange car of the missing Carlton on a TV news break. Problem is - there is no scene prior where Dave would have seen the car in order to put two and two together.
Per the book, Kayleigh and friend end up pushing Carlton into the trunk of his own car supposedly to let him cool off and to allow Kayleigh to call her Dad for a ride home. At the pick up point, Dave notices Carlton's car but thinks nothing of it. Sadly, none of this is shown in the TV version, so we don't have a clue why Dave would later recognize the car on TV. Recognizing the car, Dave then returns to the pick up point and pushes the car into the lake, unwittingly drowning Carlton inside.. And all presumably to protect his daughter from a connection he has no prior reason to suspect.
Edit: (Former point on inconsistency in Lorraine's fear of dying in prison was critiqued in error)
Imperium: Augustus (2003)
Irritatingly Bad.
Writer Eric Lerner and director Roger Young find it hard to disguise their disdain for Roman history or perhaps their relish for pastiche as a means to an end. From the acting to the sets to historical accuracy, Augustus was irritatingly bad for anyone familiar with the magnificence of the real city, real people, and actual history. O'Toole and Rampling did their best to prevent a complete train wreck, but no one seemed to care that O'Toole appears as an octogenarian in events where he's supposed to be barely middle aged. Rampling was quite good as Livia, and while suspected of doing away with Julia's two sons, she would never have broached a what-if to her husband about their demise, knowing his unabated devotion to them.
Historically, Augustus was never stabbed in the forum as is done in the first scenes, he would have disdained the very idea of a fatherly chat with Julia at the scene of her nightly debaucheries.
And then the sets. The forum was an adolescent attempt at resemblance. The real rostra did had commemorative columns (which would have been easier) but never those hideous cross-beamed monstrosities we see. And why was the rest of the forum and ancient city behind completely gone? As if the city ended there with open, vacant land. And no one thought to at least clean up the visible traces of earth moving tractors used to prepare the set behind the rostra, which tells you just how rushed this was to get the whole thing "in the can."