Reviews

I was excited when I saw Lois Smith's name in the opening credits. I first fell in love with her acting when she played Aunt Meg in Twister. Since then I've gotten a thrill every time I see her on screen (and once on stage in her Tony winning performance in The Inheritance). She has this amazing ability to take a line off dialogue that could easily fall flat and turns it's delivery into something magical that draws you in and keeps you anxiously awaiting the next word. She really should have won an Emmy for this heart wrenching performance. This episode is a master class in nuanced character portrayal.

If you're doing a docudrama about a nuclear submarine then it's critical to have a narrator that can properly pronounce the word nuclear. The reenactments look well done, but it all comes across as poorly executed by a bad narration. The producers should be ashamed of letting that critical flaw occur, particularly when it could be so easily remedied. Even now it could be easily fixed with replacement narration.

Takes 4 seasons to slog through 1 maybe 2 seasons of story at a glacial pace. Half a season of character development (how long can we stand 4 characters whining about the same life problems over and over again?). B-grade pop music soundtrack. I give it a couple of stars for occasional one-line pop-culture zingers that have me a chuckle, but that's the only humor to be found. The dead characters have more life than the scripts. Some truly dreadful directing where they seem to think that a camera bouncing around like the operator was having a seizure is supposed to be "artistic." I tried to like it. I really did. Watched all 4 seasons in a Netflix marathon. Glad it's over and I can move on to something better.

This is one of the cutest short animated films I've ever seen! I was fortunate enough to catch it on Cinemax (or was it HBO?) ages ago when they used to have short films as filler between features (when they were more interested in programming than self-promotion).

Rather than the usual formal "finished" animation, this is done with just the artist's sketches ... just black & white, no painted-in cels, no fancy backgrounds.

The story involves a little lighting store with anthropomorphic lamps. One little fella gets knocked off the shelf and breaks his light bulb. "Blinded" by the broken bulb he fumbles his way to the cabinet to find a replacement, but accidentally grabs a bottle of gin instead, screwing it into his socket. Pulling the chain to turn himself on results in the bottle's contents emptying into the poor guy.

The resulting chaos of a drunk (bull) in a lamp (china) shop results in lots of laughs.

What a pity this little gem isn't available for sale/rent. I cherish my ancient off-air copy.

Lasseter went on to get an Academy Award nomination for his next "lamp film" ... 'Luxo Jr.' ... the first computer animated film to get an Oscar nomination and the mascot for Pixar.

What a mess. I bought the laserdisc of this years ago, an impulse purchase, because of Hugh Grant. Up to that point I had enjoyed everything I'd seen him in. After suffering through watching the film, all I could think was that the writer(s) and director must have been doing vastly different types of drugs resulting in an incomprehensible train wreck (pun intended) of a film. Neither Grant's charm nor McDowell's depth and style can save this one. The re-titling of the film to "Train to Hell" is probably the best thing the distributors have done. At least they're being honest that this is a train ride to hell in a handbasket. I haven't bothered to watch the film since (just can't bring myself to torture myself that way again).