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Chico and the Man: Mucho Macho Ed (1976)
Weak and distasteful plot.
I've been binge-watching this show on Tubi for the past week or so and I've been enjoying it for the most part, but this episode didn't sit well with me.
The plot for this episode involves a Mexican woman who is four months pregnant claiming Ed Brown is the father of her child. The story she gives is that she delivered room service to him at at a mechanics convention. She felt faint and passed out. When she awoke she saw Ed looking down on her in his pajamas.
First of all, this would not prove anything. Second of all, if this weren't a sitcom episode and the woman's story wasn't an attempted con job to try to get $500, this would constitute a suggestion of rape. Even if the show doesn't suggest it, it's logically what would have had to have happened if it were true.
Of course, the identity of the true father is revealed and it's discovered that the $500 was needed to bring him from Mexico to L. A. But Chico feels it's important for Ed to go on believing he is the father of the child so he can feel vital again, or something.
Really not a very good episode, in my humble opinion, and it left a bad taste in my mouth.
Murder in the First (1995)
VERY loosely based on true events
I saw this as a "leaving soon" movie on Tubi. Like (presumably) many others I was under the impression that, while certain facts were certainly likely to have been changed, the movie was reasonably close to real events. I also found the movie quite watchable, which reinforced the impression. But I was disabused of that notion just after reading the Wikipedia article.
This movie's disclaimer is "Inspired by a True Story" but I don't think anyone involved in its making was inspired by actual truth. It doesn't seem as if any of the events discussed or depicted actually happened and I think at least some of the characters are entirely fictional (such as the assistant warden played by Gary Oldman).
Perhaps the most egregious untruth shown in the movie is the time Henri Young spent in solitary confinement. The movie tells us it was three years with half-hour breaks every year. This is a boldly outrageous lie, even for Hollywood. According to Young's own testimony it was 13 days! Almost equal to this lie is the reason Young was incarcerated in the first place. It wasn't for stealing $5 to feed his sister. He was already a hardened criminal who committed armed robberies, took hostages and killed a person.
I do want to address one thing I've seen in some reviews here. That Young, having skipped parole in 1972and disappeared from any further records, may still be alive. That may have been true in 2004, 2005, maybe even 2011, the years of some reviews. But I've seen one review from 2023 claiming he remains free to this day. The one problem with this statement is that Young was born in 1911 (not 1913, as the movie says). I very much doubt there's a 112-year-old man on the run out there somewhere; even 100 is pushing the bounds of believability.
But I digress. Again, I found this a compelling, watchable movie, which I might otherwise have given a 7. But after doing a modicum of research I'm compelled to rate it a 1. I cannot stand behind or support such a blatant untruth.
Manhattan (1979)
Unrelentingly dull.
I couldn't connect with this movie at all. People babbling on and on and it's supposed to be realistic dialogue, I suppose, but it just doesn't resonate with me. Couldn't find anything or anyone to care about except I guess I could appreciate were the shots of New York City in black and white.
It's odd because I remembered liked Annie Hall but I just tuned out with this one. I might have to reevaluate 'Annie Hall' but, honestly, I'm afraid of watching it again, for the fear that it might not be as good as I remembered.
As far as the Woody character's 17-year-old girlfriend, it certainly does come off as creepy, in view of real-life events, but apparently the age of consent in New York is 17, though when the 17-year-old says she turned 18 she says she's now "legal". Just what the heck?
I don't know. I just found this movie is seriously weird, yet intensely uninteresting.
Soleil rouge (1971)
Never bring a sword to a gunfight.
In this culture clash, a Japanese embassy travels via train to Washington. When the train is robbed, one of the train robbers, named Gauche (Alain Delon), takes a special ceremonial sword meant as a gift for the President. One of the two samurai guards tries to get the sword and is shot dead by Gauche. The other guard, Kuroda (Toshiro Mifune), swears lethal vengeance against the shooter. He is also given the task by his master of retrieving the sword. He must do it in seven days or commit seppuku (ceremonial self-disembowelment).
One of the train robbers, Link (Charles Bronson), is betrayed by Gauche, who absconds with the loot and some of the other train robbers. Link is then tasked by the Japanese master with helping the samurai get the sword. That is the basic plot. Along the way, Link tries to get Kuroda to swear to leave Gauche alive long enough for for him to get the location of the stolen loot. Kuroda agrees after some coercion, but this amounts to nothing as will be seen later.
Link and Kuroda also avail themselves of the services of a brothel. Where they encounter Cristina (Ursula Andress) who has minimal function in the actual plot. Link enlists her unwilling aid in tracking down Gauche but she escapes and incurs the ire of some Comanche raiders. Link and Kuroda rescue her and kill off most of the raiders but one of the Comanches escapes.
Our protagonists track down Gauche and his gang in an abandoned villa but the latter has the drop on them and holds them at gunpoint. But the Comanches then attack forcing an alliance. When the Comanches are finally killed or driven off, Kuroda has a chance to kill a wounded Gauche. For some reason, he is warned by Link who turns and shoots Kuroda fatally. Link suddenly has a change of heart and shoots Gauche dead. Then he promises Kuroda to deliver the sword to the President. However, he instead leaves the sword hanging from the cable of an oncoming train, presumably the one that was transporting the Japanese embassy. The End.
That's basically the movie. A decent premise, but there's too much padding and an awful lot of people die. The film also sells the mystique and power of the samurai, but can't hide the fact that a samurai sword is no match for a six-shooter. Or perhaps that's the film's purpose all along, stringing the viewer along into thinking the samurai will get the better of the gunfighter but ending up like his unfortunate comrade on the train and needing the other gunfighter to win the day. If that was the point, I'm not sure I get it.
The Adventures of Tintin (2011)
Lots of action, yet somehow boring.
I have to admit I wasn't paying close attention as I my attention was also engaged with some other task at the time (I also caught this film on PlutoTV where the film was already about half an hour into the running). So I can tell you next to nothing about the plot.
But this film is almost nonstop action, and never have I been so bored by such an action fest. It's just one action sequence after another. The animation is a marked improvement over similar efforts by Robert Zemeckis (to be fair to Zemeckis, the technology had advanced considerably since his last such movie). But the action didn't pique my interest. It just made me feel jaded.
The score didn't help. I found it incredibly overbearing and distracting, such that I couldn't really concentrate on the story. There is just too much of it.
I suppose I should give this movie another fair shot, but I feel I've seen enough of the movie to know that it probably wouldn't interest me.
C.H.U.D. (1984)
C.R.U.D. (crudely rendered unremarkable drek)
I'm watching this even as I watch this. A woman calmly takes a shower, not long after finding a dog hung in her basement. Suddenly, blood explodes from somewhere and the woman covers her eyes (no other reaction is present that I could see? Admittedly, my attention wandered for a second so I didn't notice what caused the explosion of blood but when we cut back to the woman she does not seem to be at all disturbed about the incident in her shower.
In another scene two cops (one played by John Goodman) walk into a diner and flirt with the waitress/cook. Suddenly, two monsters appear at the window and break the glass. Cut to a homeless man looking to his left with a shocked expression. The homeless man gets up and flees. Cut to something else. Huh?
I know this film had a minuscule budget ($1.25M according to Wikipedia) but you have to give your audience something other than reaction shots. To quote the immortal words of Bart Simpson, "You know what would be scarier than nothing? ANYTHING."
Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade (1989)
Was this trip really necessary?
Kind of comes off as a rehash of the first movie. Just as in 'Raiders of the Lost Ark' we have a situation where the Nazis must be stopped from obtaining a powerful artifact or they will take over the world...
....except, they manage to find the artifact and the problem just takes care of itself. As commonly known, Indiana Jones in the end cannot stop the Nazis from getting the Ark. But, wouldn't you know it, the Nazis have no idea how to harness its power and end up with melted faces and exploded heads. It's hard to fathom what impact Indy has on this story, exactly.
In 'The Last Crusade' we find that there's a man, Donovan, who allies himself with the Nazis (for... reasons). He doesn't care about the Nazis' goals, he just wants eternal life, which he believes he can obtain by finding the Holy Grail. This time Indy must also find his missing father, the first man recruited to find the Grail.
Indy finds and rescues his father, but decide to go after the diary and then Donovan and his Nazi stooges before they they can find the Grail but cannot stop them from finding the Grail. However, they have no idea how to get through the chamber where the Grail is kept because none of Donovan's lackeys can figure out the riddles and when they try, they die.
Enter Indy who is tasked with figuring it out, on pain of his father's death. So is Indy has no choice but to solve the riddle and open the way to the Grail, which he successfully does.
Donovan enters the chamber and picks the wrong cup, drinks from it, and dies. Indy cures his father, but the Grail cannot leave the room, and the room shakes and crumbles. The end.
So, basically, if Indy and his father went home instead of going after the Grail, it wouldn't have mattered. Donovan and his men would not have been able to solve the traps guarding the chamber. Even if they had solved the traps they would not have been able to take the cup with them. So, this was basically all for nothing.
One thing I'm not clear on is why, if Henry, Sr. Was against the idea of anyone finding the Grail, he wrote an elaborate diary containing instructions on how to access it. I get that he was probably kidnapped by Donovan so that Indy would be forced to look for him but why would he keep a diary at all? And why not destroy it rather than mail it to his son? It doesn't really make sense to me.
And, again, Donovan doesn't need Indy to find the artifact's location, only how to get past the booby traps into the chamber. So he would actually fail if Indy fails to show up. The movie is entertaining enough but, like the first film, it ends up being a tale of sound and fury signifying nothing. The movies are well-made but it kind of feels like nothing significant has happened.
Say what you will about the second Indy film. It gets a lot of flak, some definitely deserved. But one thing it has that the others don't is a meaningful role for our hero in defeating the bad guy.
The King of Queens: Icky Shuffle (2004)
Okay episode, undone by Carrie being a jerk
The main plot is Arthur needing to beat a rival at shuffleboard and recruiting Doug to help him. But Doug is bad at shuffleboard which makes the prospect of beating the rival bleak. When Arthur finds that Spence is excellent at shuffleboard he drops Doug. But Spence quits for personal reasons and Arthur is forced to recruit Doug again, the end result being that they lose. I have no problem with this plot. It is quite good and Arthur never fails to amuse.
My problem is with the other plot, in which Carrie is sick with the flu. After Holly brings her food and offers to bring her more, Carrie takes advantage of the situation to the point that she bosses pushover Holly around with the end result being that Holly ends up being sick and still getting Holly food, even after she has recovered from her illness. I'm sorry, I don't find this amusing at all. Carrie's behavior is appalling and she never learns from it. It's never a good thing when a show makes their character a complete jerk (I would use a stronger word her if it were allowed) with no lesson learned. I find it distasteful and not funny at all.
The Shining (1980)
Skillfully made, but lacks a soul
It's been ages since I read the book so I can't really compare it to the movie, but even without looking at the source material the movie kind of fails at conveying depth, whether in the story or the characters. It's all just mood and camera angles.
One thing I do remember from the book is that the character played by Jack Nicholson in the book, Jack Torrance, is a sympathetic character. His descent into madness is a tragedy. In the film, that is basically out the window. Nicholson is from the start gruff and unlikable. He says he loves his wife Wendy and son Danny, but it appears to be only lip service; his attitude towards them seems to be nothing but contempt.
And his descent from a grump into an axe-wielding maniac is too quick and too expected. When it happens, we are not surprised. There is one scene where he wakes from a nightmare in which he dreamt of killing his family and cutting them to bits and he cries about it.
But that is all we get, the end of anything that might be construed as a sympathetic character. From there his transformation is almost instantaneous and he loses any sympathy he had. It starts when Wendy tells him about a old woman his son saw in a hotel room bathroom he goes to investigate. In the bathroom he sees a comely naked woman who makes advances on him. Does Jack resist? No, he is all too welcoming. Until he sees that the beautiful woman is actually an old hag with a rotting body and he flees the scene. When he rejoins Wendy he lies about having seen the ghost woman.
Then there's the bar scene where a ghost convinces him to kill his family, and he all too readily agrees. There is not even the hint of a struggle. It's just, okay, sure, I can do that for you.
The film gives us nothing to root for, except for the character to die an unpleasant death, which he fortunately does. But in a better movie, we would mourn such a death, not applaud or look forward to it.
This movie is very well shot and the performances by the main cast are all exceptional. But the film lacks a strong core. It's very good to look at on the surface but there's nothing underneath. The story is very much by the numbers.
Mechanic: Resurrection (2016)
Ludicrous
Tuned into AMC and got to the part where Bishop, a retired assassin, is given three targets to eliminate or his girlfriend dies. The targets all are international criminals but the man who has captured Bishop's girlfriend is a scumbag himself so he is probably a rival; I didn't see the start of the film so I'm just guessing. Each of the kills must be made to look like an accident. I don't why and I may have missed the part where this is explained. Anyway, moving on.
One of the targets is an African warlord imprisoned in Malaysia. Bishop gets himself sent to the same prison and gets himself into the warlord's good graces. How does he do this? By saving life. Yup. His plan to kill the warlord involves saving his life.
Uh... come again? Why is it important that he himself kills the warlord? And is it that important that the slaying look like an accident? What's the difference? Was Bishop meant to get information from the warlord before he killed him? I don't get the sense that he got very much intel from him. There wasn't much time between Bishop's saving his life and ending it. So what gives?
Sh-h-h-h-h-h (1955)
Kind of a downer, really...
I'm not a fan of cartoons where some poor slob, be they a cat, dog, mouse or man, who's just minding his own business, gets abused for the entirety of the cartoon, and their abuser never receives any kind of comeuppance.
In the case of 'Sh-h-h-h-h-h' it's a man, Mr. Twiddle, one who can't take the noise from his job as a percussionist at a jazz night club where horns are blown into his face all night. He seeks advice from his psychiatrist (and his nurse wife), whose prescription is rest in a quiet place or else he'll lose his temper and literally blow up.
Mr. Twiddle checks into the Hush Hush Hotel, which seems to pride itself on its keeping its premises completely quiet. When Twiddle he is taken to a soundproof booth and whispered instructions about how he is to be completely silent. Even sounds are manifested as written words on cards.
Twiddle, glad of the quiet, settles in for a peaceful night's sleep. Until rude reality intrudes and he hears the sounds of a horn and the obnoxious laughter of both man and woman in the next room. He attempts to get them to stop, first politely, but then resorting to extreme measures when the neighbors fail to listen. He is thwarted every time.
Finally, exasperated, he opens the door to the neighbors' room only to find it's his psychiatrist and his nurse wife. Twiddle is about to go into a rage when the psychiatrist warns him to keep his temper. But it's too late. Twiddle explodes, prompting the psychiatrist to say that some patients don't listen to their doctor's advice. He and his wife then go back to laughing obnoxiously while he blows his horn.
Okay, so I found this more annoying than funny. And I was actually kind of appalled by it, especially the ending. Why can only Mr. Twiddle hear the horn-blower and his wife. Why doesn't Twiddle complain to the management? What the bloody hell is so funny about blowing a horn in the wee hours of the morning? This is only a short film so it's perhaps this is nitpicking. Still, it's annoying. And, overall, I'm not a fan of this cartoon.
That said, I can recognize that there's a sort of brilliance to it and not just because of the skill of legendary animation director Tex Avery (none other than the man who directed 'A Wild Hare' the first official Bugs Bunny short). It kind of comes off as a eerie horror short that I almost feel merits another view just so I can, er, analyze it further.
Bonanza: The Last Haircut (1963)
Weird episode
A trio of gunslingers enter a barbershop. One, Duke Miller, wants a haircut and forces Little Joe out of his chair at gunpoint to get one. Joe reluctantly complies, but another man, Ramon Ramirez, takes Joe's place in the chair and getting killed for his defiance.
Two of the gunmen are caught, including the actual killer. They are brought to trial but are declared innocent because of a lawyer's trick. The trick? To bring in another man who just happens to look like the third man, the one who escaped capture. The barber and a patron both positively ID the man, despite his hair color being dark and having a scare, whereas the actual man's hair was blond and scarless. The defense attorney then points out that the man is a convict who has been in jail for more than a year, thereby discrediting the eyewitnesses' testimony and ultimately procuring the 'not guilty' verdict. Also crucial to the decision is that Joe was knocked unconscious just before the murder. The defense has also brought up that one of the witnesses is old and the other, the barber, was terrified.
The son of the murdered man, Paco, wants to exact vengeance and Joe is ready and able to exact it for him. When Joe's father convinces him otherwise Joe must then convince the boy. His reasoning? That bad people go to hell and God will punish the man. So the boy agrees to go to live with his parents in Mexico.
Not long after, as Joe and Paco are making a stop in town on the way to Mexico, another encounter occurs in a barbershop where Paco cannot resist his impulse for revenge and tries to shoot Duke, but he is stopped by one of his confederates. Joe enters the barbershop to make sure Paco is okay, which he is. Paco is ordered out of the shop by the bad guys. Joe tries to follow but Duke, who is in the barber's chair, orders his men to rough Joe up. But Joe beats one unconscious and another (incidentally, the one who evaded capture before) flees. The barber, meanwhile, restrains, and even tries to strangle Duke with a strop so that he can't interfere. Once Joe is done with the other men, he tells the barber to stop strangling Duke, then fistfights Duke and wins. He then orders the barber to shave Duke's head. Duke, horrified, and apparently vain, is forced to endure the stares of the townsfolk.
A few things wrong with this picture. How likely is it that an exact doppelganger of one of the gunmen could be produced by the lawyer? A complete match except for the hair color? How likely is it that such a man would even exist? The very idea is simply preposterous, especially as the lawyer had never even seen the other guy. Second, even if Joe was unconscious at the time of the slaying, he can still positively ID the defendants and can attest to the fact that he was told to get out of the barber's chair at gunpoint. How plausible is it that his testimony could be completely disregarded by the jury? How likely is it that some other men of similar description entered the bar and committed the murder? How reasonable is this doubt, really? It's all a bit too far-fetched.
There are other problems. Joe telling the boy that God will punish Duke seems like cold comfort to me. Also, Ben tells Joe not to go after Duke, and if he does happen to run into him, not to use guns. So, if Duke is armed and tries to kill Joe, should he then just let Duke shoot him? I don't get it.
Finally, it was somewhat satisfying seeing Joe beat up Duke and his men, but the so-called punishment of Duke having his head shaved is not really punishment at all. It's more like a time out. As other reviewers have pointed out, hair grows back, but the dead remain dead. So, all in all, not a great episode. It's engaging throughout but the ending leaves something to be desired, which is par for the course for this series, I must say.
A couple of random final observations I find the casting of Perry Lopez as Duke a bit odd. Here is someone who is clearly not white yet here he is carrying on as if he were; for instance, his name. I found it a bit disconcerting and just a bit of an odd casting choice. Also, Hoss and Adam appear in this episode but very briefly and they don't seem to have any lines.
Monk: Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic (2005)
"Mr. Monk Gets Stuck in Traffic"
The setup is not bad but things get kind of silly at the end, and this episode also contains annoying side characters such as a shyster and a homicidal truck driver.
The environmentalist is threatening to sue a developer over construction of a mall on a site, the only place where an endangered species occur. So the developer offs the environmentalist, puts him in the seat of his car, which he puts in his dump truck and drives off intending to dump the car onto the highway to make it look like a road accident.
But he passes Adrian Monk and his assistant, Natalie, who is driving; in the backseat is the assistant's daughter, Julie, who has to pee really badly (another annoying subplot, which nevertheless becomes relevant to the plot later).
The car is dumped as planned and it causes a pileup. Monk goes to examine the accident and notices several things that are off, including that he never noticed the car passing him (having OCD, Monk is able to notice every detail in his surroundings). He tries to raise these concerns to the state police sergeant but is gruffly ignored.
Meanwhile, the murderer has noticed that his phone is the wrong one; in an extraordinary coincidence, it is the same exact model as the one owned by the man he murdered. So he goes back to the scene of the crime to try to get the phone back, which he does by. Killing a paramedic and taking his uniform. But he is ordered by the police sergeant to see to Natalie first to treat a sore wrist she sustained when she braked hard to avoid a collision with the pileup. Monk notices things wrong about this man too including, most importantly, that the man's phone rings, yet he doesn't answer it. Monk also sees that the call is coming from "E. G. G".
Monk takes Natalie's daughter to try and find a potty, which he does when he finds the tour bus of the band Korn (who were popular around 2004 when this episode aired). While Julie is in the bathroom, Monk learns from members of Korn that the murdered man was an eco-activist who was a member of the Environmental Guerrilla Group, which Monk quickly realizes is what 'E. G. G' stands for.
He attempts to tell the cops again but is not only ignored but handcuffed to the inside of a cop car. But he somehow convinces Natalie to investigate the perp's dump truck. However, the perp proceeds to drive off with Natalie still in the truck. Monk tells the police but they continue to ignore him.
The sergeant finally notices the corpse of the slain paramedic and believes Monk's story. He pursues the perp, with Monk in the passenger seat. The perp notices Natalie in his truck and tries to dump her. But Monk, armed with the cop's gun, manages to shoot the fuel line of the truck, causing it to stop. The cop then arrests the perp. The end.
Okay, so if the nutty part isn't already evident, I'll highlight it. The cop pursues the perp but never puts on his siren. Nor does he ever radio for backup. Somehow it makes more sense to this policeman to let a civilian use his gun to shoot the fuel line of the truck.
Meanwhile, the perp is aware he's being pursued by a cop but doesn't seem to care. And he is attempting to murder somebody in broad daylight, on a busy highway, and in full view of the cop. He also sees Monk in the passenger seat, which probably means Monk has convinced the cop; also that the body of the paramedic is found. The cop must know the license plate as well as the name emblazoned on the side of the truck. What is the murderer's plan at this point? Where is he planning to go? He's not some shady underling; he's the owner of a construction company. So where can he possibly hide? The behavior of the criminal possibly makes even less sense than that of the cop.
Just kind of a lame resolution to an episode that was not great in the first place (imho). Plus there are the aforementioned annoying side characters like the shyster and the truck driver who threatens to kill Monk because he reported her dangerous driving; somehow she knows this because her supervisor played the recording of Monk's call back to her (which I'd bet is not something that actually happens in real life). Also, I guess this woman should just be allowed to drive like a maniac? Neither of these characters or subplots add anything meaningful to the episode. Then the there's the subplot about Julie needing to pee, which does lead to the revelation about what EGG stands for but, meh. How about finding a bush? Finally, there's a truly awful Korn song that plays when Monk is in the tour bus to add to the general discontentment.
This episode also misses the presence of Stottlemeyer and Disher.
The Little Mermaid (1989)
The least heroic Disney heroine of all...
Given the recent controversy over the Disney remake of 'The Little Mermaid' and how unfavorably it has often been compared to the original, I became more and more curious to watch the 1989 film. I have long disliked it given the motivations of the title heroine but perhaps there was something I missed. So I buckled down and watched it again after many years.
The film itself is well-done, overall : it's excellently paced and well-animated for the most part; also, the musical numbers are catchy. But the problems with the titular character remain. There are other Disney princesses who have little to no agency in their own stories: Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora from 'Sleeping Beauty', to be specific. None of these characters do a whole lot to help themselves; all of them require rescue. None of them experience any sort of growth or character arc.
Ariel, the titular Mermaid, takes this trope up a notch or two. Not only does she ultimately require rescue by others, SHE is the cause of all the trouble in the first place. She may have agency but it only leads to near disaster; none of it is used to make things right. Others have to clean up the mess she makes. At least in the cases of Snow White, Cinderella and Aurora, all three are innocent victims of malice by others. Ariel willingly signs a deal with the devil.
It all starts with Ariel being infatuated with the surface world for some reason. I'm not sure why we should care, but there's your setup. She is so enamored of the world outside the sea that she keeps her own little private museum of artifacts from the surface world.
Her obsession gets worse when she falls in love at first sight with a human prince on his ship. The ship is destroyed by a storm and, to be fair, Ariel here performs a heroic deed in the film by saving the prince from drowning. But this only leads to the trouble, and it's the last of any heroism you'll see from this princess.
The prince falls in love with Ariel, or rather he falls in love with her voice, mostly, as she sings about how she wants to be with him as she looks upon him lovingly on the beach. Ariel goes back home keeping a statue of the prince as a souvenir to dotingly dream upon. Anyway, to fast forward a bit, Ariel's father, King Triton, who finds out about Ariel's little collection of mementos and her prince-saving adventure. In a rage he destroys all her stuff, including the statue. Triton leaves with some regret as Ariel sobs.
Enter Ursula the sea witch, who sees in this an opportunity to take down Triton and rule the sea. She entices Ariel with an offer to get what she wants with a few conditions. Now, whatever the conditions are and however evil Ursula might be, she doesn't force Ariel to sign the contract. Ariel knowingly makes a pact with an evil witch for a chance to be with the one she loves and signs the contract proffered without even reading the damned thing.
Ariel ultimately fails in fulfilling the terms of the contract and so becomes Ursula's slave, so Triton must give himself up in Ariel's place. Then she has to be rescued again when a gigantic Ursula tries to smite her with a trident, and the prince kills her with a ship (that Ursula has unwittingly and ironically brought to the surface from the sea floor by displaying her newfound power).
So, that's twice Ariel needs to be rescued. And for what? Her bizarre fetish? Her teenage hormones? These seem rather trivial and selfish reasons for her almost selling out her family, indeed her whole civilization? Again, Ariel is no innocent victim like Snow White, et al. She enters into a contract with a known enemy, WILLINGLY. That is not only not heroic, that is downright treasonous. And what does she get for her treason? She gets what she wants. Despite nearly wrecking her father's kingdom, she gets the guy. Also, she learns nothing from the trouble she causes; there is no character arc. Just a spoiled little princess getting her way in the end.
In summary, I see no reason to sympathize with Ariel's insipid desires and don't care that her father forbids her to see the surface world. It's not something that I find very compelling and I don't see why Ariel should be rewarded rather than punished.
On a final, we are to identify Ariel as "the little mermaid" which is odd since she spends most of the movie wanting to not be a mermaid. By her own motivations and desires, she is not even deserving of the title of the movie.
Luca (2021)
Just not very interesting
Just not very interesting seems par for the course with Pixar lately. I didn't hate this movie but I wasn't at all affected by it either. I couldn't find much to invest in with any of the characters, besides wanting the villain (a rarity in Pixar and Disney movies these days) to get his desserts, but when it happens it's not very satisfying.
The main thing I want to comment on is the film's central conceit, which is that sea "monsters" turn human when they leave the water. Somehow this enchantment, adaptation, whatever it is, includes clothing to preserve the sea creature's dignity. Um...okay? I guess we're just supposed to accept this without question. Oh, very well.
The weird thing is it's any kind of water, not just salt water, which would at least make a kind of sense. But these creatures can't get wet. Even a drop of water will uncover their true nature; for instance, if they get their hands wet, they revert to sea monster hands. But no problem, the water can just be rubbed off instantly, turning the creature back to human. It just strikes me as silly and lazy that this is a thing without any explanation whatsoever. It just exists as a plot device.
As for the plot, it starts with a young sea monster (the titular Luca, a fishherd; why he herds fish is left to the viewer's imagination) being fascinated by with the surface world (sort of like Ariel from 'The Little Mermaid'), meeting another such young sea monster (Alberto) and both of them hitting it off. The boy's mother doesn't want him near the surface world (sort of like Ariel's father from 'The Little Mermaid') and when she finds out he's been to the surface world, she plans to send him to the deep to live with his weird uncle, causing him to run away.
Luca and Alberto decide they will go to a town to try to acquire a Vespa. For this they must earn money which they can do by entering a race. Various things happen and the boy ends up winning the race, with help from his friend and a human girl (Giulia) who has also entered the race. But the girl has introduced books to Luca, sparking an interest in knowledge, so along the way Luca's motivation has gone from acquiring a Vespa to going to school.
I'm sorry, I just didn't find any of this interesting. Nice to look at, perhaps, but not very engaging. The boy's motivations throughout seem rather selfish (again, sort of like 'The Little Mermaid') whether it's to get a Vespa (even if it's to share it with his friend) or to go to school. I just couldn't find any particular reason to care what the kid does or where he ends up; I found him more whiny and annoying than likeable and sympathetic.
I'll end this with a random observation: There is a scene where Giulia brings Luca and Alberto to give them a place to say. As her father prepares dinner, he decapitates what seems to be an awful lot of fishes. But when dinner is ready he serves...pasta? I guess this was meant to show something about the man's ruthlessness towards fish... or something? I'm just guessing. Of course, the two boys don't seem to care that much about fish either (despite Luca being a fishherd), as Alberto points out the best fishing spots.
Chitty Chitty Bang Bang (1968)
Charming but overlong
This film has a nigh epic length of 2 hours and 24 minutes but as you watch the film you'll notice that most of this running time is taken up by music numbers which seem to occur every few minutes. These musical interludes, though rather catchy and clever, go on too long and don't do much to advance the story.
One such number goes on and on about a candy called "Toot Sweets" only for the magical whistling candies are shown to be problematic because they attract dogs (I thought high-pitched whistles repel dogs). Another one features the villain, the dictatorial Bomburst, singing stupid pet names with his screechy wife. This does nothing for the story and since it's about the unsympathetic villain, it can hardly be considered endearing, so I can only assume this is meant to be funny, though the humor factor is rather iffy.
The title song, "Chitty Chitty Bang Bang", is another catchy tune, but, again, it doesn't do much to advance the story and gets repetitive after a while (Okay, we get it, the car is great).
Other than that, this film has dark overtones, in which people are threatened with decapitation. Also, children are captured and enslaved and there is a creepy character called the Child Catcher, who is likely nightmare fuel for many a young tot. The story could easily be imagined as a horror story.
On the plus side, the special effects and production values are very good.
12 Angry Men (1957)
Guilty or not guilty? Not guilty, except...
The film never says for sure whether the accused actually did it or not. But the whole plot of the film is for Juror #8 (Henry Fonda) to convince the other 11 jurors to give a verdict of not guilty, even though he himself is admittedly not 100% sure. Yes, there is a good chance the accused might actually be guilty.
Apparently, #8 has doubts but not necessarily reasonable doubt. He just wants to look for reasons why there might be reasonable doubt, even though there doesn't seem to be any reason for such at the start of the film. He just wants to talk about it and discuss things that should have been brought up by the defense.
#8 then gets a discussion going on why there might be reasonable doubt and go over the points of the case, points which you'd think would have been gone over by both sides of the case. One of the other jurors even says, "Why didn't his lawyer bring that up?" I forget what that point is but why indeed did he not, whatever it was? The juror is an architect, not a lawyer, so how can he be thinking of these things and not the accused's lawyer? Doesn't really make a lot of sense. "Maybe he {the lawyer} didn't think of it" is not a believable enough reason. The Fonda juror tries to raise reasonable doubt but that's the lawyer's job. Did the lawyer do that or not? If he did they should be going over tha, deliberating whether the defense created reasonable doubt, not looking for reasons of their own. If not, the Fonda juror really has no business holding court in the jurors' room or act the detective.
One of the points brought up by the Fonda juror is rather sketchy to me. He thinks the accused being slapped twice by his father is not enough of a motive to want to kill him. Except earlier he has brought up the point that the accused has been abused all his life, beaten with fists since he was five. These points are rather at odds with each other. Another juror even says, "It may have been two slaps too many. Everyone has his breaking point." Yet this salient point is kind of brushed aside, while the Fonda juror iterates his point about the victim being abused. For the record, if the kid was guilty, I'd say it was justifiable homicide, but that is beside the point. Why harp on about how the accused was physically abused as if it's a defense? I'd say it would logically work to the opposite effect, and argue for temporary insanity or a lesser murder charge.
Another point raised is the angle and height of the stab wound. One of the pro-guilty jurors demonstrates that it could be done only to be contradicted by another juror that the switchblade is not typically used in a downward motion but underhandedly. But if the fatal wound was high up on victim's chest how else could it have been inflicted but in a downward motion? Even a tall person would have to stab downwards if they wanted to stab their target high on the torso. If the switchblade were used as it typically is the wound would likely be lower in the body, possibly the abdomen, no matter the height of the assailant. Also, wouldn't the witness be questioned on the circumstances of the stabbing?
On that note, another point is raised about the witness needing to wear glasses. After some mental gymnastics about how the woman was trying to make herself look younger (and stereotypical remarks about women in general) it is determined that since the woman wore glasses it's possible she couldn't have made a positive ID. They don't know what kind of glasses they were, of course, they just determine that she would have needed to wear them to make a positive ID on the accused, even though the record shows she made a positive ID in her testimony. Are jurors allowed to disregard a witness's positive ID? I'm asking. Also, going back to the previous point, even if the witness's sight was not trustworthy, she might still have been able to determine the assailant's height and how he stabbed the victim.
Anyway, don't want to go on an on so I'll conclude. I originally gave this movie seven stars. I had the same reservations before as now, but also appreciated the performances by the solid cast. But the reservations seem to stand out even more now and I just can't bring myself to rate it any higher than a five, no matter how solid the cast or fine the performances.
To Catch a Thief (1955)
Disappointing
I recently watched three Hitchcock films: 'Dial M for Murder' (1954) followed by 'Spellbound' (1945) and 'Notorious' (1946). 'Murder' was excellent but I found the other two underwhelming at best. I thought perhaps Hitchcock hadn't yet hit his stride in the 30s and 40s and it wasn't till the 50s that he started to really come into his own with such classics as 'Rear Window', 'Vertigo' and the aforementioned 'Dial M for Murder'. I thought I couldn't go wrong with 'To Catch a Thief'.
But I was wrong. I was again disappointed. The story is not that interesting to begin with and it takes too long to tell it. The movie is 1 hour and 46 minutes long but it feels longer. At one point I kept looking at the progress bar and felt like it was just crawling along.
There is the main plot about how an ex-thief has to catch a current thief to clear his name. This could have been set up from the start but to increase tension (I guess) the ex-thief must be shown to be at odds with the police. So when the police show up to ask the ex-thief for his advice, he drives away making himself look guilty. The ensuing chase scene does little more than showcase the beautiful French countryside and pad the runtime.
The ex-thief teams up with a insurance agent, who gives him a list of people who might be the next victims of jewel theft (the insurer is the only actual victim of the crimes). One of the potential victims is a rich widow and her daughter. There is a resulting romance story between the ex-thief and the daughter. Eventually the thief is caught.
None of it is very interesting. There is a backstory about the ex-thief escaping from jail and joining the resistance but this does little to increase interest. As far as the romance story, it's not very believable or compelling. For one thing, Cary Grant, who plays the ex-thief, was 51, nearly twice the age of 26-year-old Grace Kelly, who plays the widow's daughter. This is not itself unusual but the film doesn't really sell the romance. Simply having the two press their lips together every so often and engage in romantic batter does not make me believe that they're in love.
Finally, when the thief is caught, it is not really much of a surprise since the film does not show us any other viable suspects. It just comes off as rather tepid.
The Simpsons in Plusaversary (2021)
Sheer, stomach-turning garbage
Some years back (I'd guess this was in 2018) when Fox put up its entertainment division for sale, Comcast bid against Disney and ultimately lost, obviously. At the time I desperately hoped for Disney to win because I really wanted them to acquire the Fantastic Four so they could be introduced to the MCU. It never occurred to me then that Disney would also be acquiring 'The Simpsons'. I had long stopped watching the show so perhaps I just didn't care. Or my fandom of the MCU put blinders on me. Marvel Studios (a subsidiary of Disney) was putting out good stuff.
But that was coming to a close and pretty much ended after 2019. Marvel Studios has put out nothing worthwhile since (unless you count 'Spider-Man: No Way Home', which is more a Sony film than a Disney one). And the FF are still a ways away from entering the MCU so the characters won't have any interaction with most of the classic MCU characters. When the FF DO finally make their MCU debut Disney is sure to screw it up as they've done with practically every other property they've gotten their diseased mitts on.
That includes, of course, 'The Simpsons'. As I said, I hadn't watched the show for a dog's age so I was indifferent at best about Disney acquiring it. Now that I see sheer crap like 'Plusaversary' and 'The Good, the Bart and the Loki', boy do I regret ever hoping for Disney to acquire Fox Entertainment. As the saying goes, "Be careful what you wish for" and, holy crackpipe, is that ever applicable here. I shudder to think what the show is like nowadays.
Disney was the worst thing to happen to Star Wars, have managed to ruin the MCU, and now they are the worst thing to happen to 'The Simpsons'.
Unicorn: Warriors Eternal (2023)
Interesting premise but poorly paced
Watched (most of) the first two episodes of this show. My interest is piqued but I have to say the pacing is not very good. Parts of both episodes were very obviously padding to fill out run time. I can only hope the pacing improves as the series progresses.
There is also the cliche of a character denying their newfound power, not wanting the power, being in denial of everything that is happening to her. It's just become all to familiar by now. Let's move on from this time-worn trope, please.
I like the animation overall, though some of the designs are a bit weird. What seems to be the main character looks a bit like Betty Boop. Whether this is intentional or just incidental is not clear. Anyway, it's a minor point.
Encanto (2021)
Not very enchanting
There is a magic house for some reason, that gives magical 'gifts' (read: superpowers) to the descendants of a woman named Alma for whom the house was created (by her deceased husband, somehow), starting with her three triplets and their children, except to one particular granddaughter, named Maribel. This makes her something of a pariah, sort of.
However, there is another Madrigal, the woman's son Brno, who is completely a pariah because his power is to predict the future and he only seems to predict bad things that have all come true, so the Madrigals don't want him around or even talk about him, so he self-exiles himself to live in the walls of the house, scavenging food with the help of his pet rats.
One of his predictions seems to say that the magical house will fall apart because of Mirabel, but she digs deeper and finds that the vision wasn't finished and that she must make up with her estranged older sister in order to heal the magic, or something. But when this is accomplished the angry grandmother bursts in and messes it all up, blaming Mirabel for the house falling apart. Mirabel tells her off, then leaves the premises. After the grandmother apologizes, Mirabel realizes that they can rebuilt the house without magic, and the grandmother realizes that Mirabel herself is a gift, because under her supervision and with the help of the townsfolk, the house is rebuilt and everything is good as new.
Throughout this very thin plot are placed some very protracted and annoying musical numbers to pad the runtime. Meanwhile, questions abound, such as why is the house magical? What is the source of the magic?
Why does it bestow superpowers when most of them don't seem to come to any use? There is one super-strong granddaughter, Mirabel's sister Luisa (who is kept constantly busy) and their mother can heal with her cooking. Other than that I don't see how any of the 'gifts' are particularly useful. One woman has super-hearing, which seems good for gossip (but apparently not able to detect her uncle living in the walls) and not much else. Another grandchild can mimic any form, which is only played for mild laughs. The youngest to receive powers gets the power to talk to animals, which also doesn't seem to have any practical use except maybe to help rebuild the house (I don't remember). Meanwhile, the spouses of Alma's children just seem to hang about, either dancing or getting stung by bees.
So, anyway, the point is, who cares? The story is not interesting enough to be invested in. If the house never regains its magic and the Madrigal children never regained their gifts who'd cry about it? The house would still be rebuilt and they'd still be alive. The stakes are not very high in this film and there is hardly any sense of danger. So, again, why should I care?
Turning Red (2022)
Okay, but, overall, pretty annoying.
An annoying story about an annoying 13-year-old Toronto girl (named Meilin), her annoying friends and her annoying helicopter mom. Oh, also she has annoying aunts, an annoying grandma and an annoying love for a boy band called 4*Town (by the way, if you hate boy bands, don't watch this movie).
Anyway, I guess this is supposed to be a coming-of-age metaphor, or something? The rather clumsy metaphor is the oversized red panda that the girl turns into when she can't control her emotions. This is a trait that has been passed down through many generations since the days of ancient China, from mother to daughter and it's presented as something to be abhorred and contained within a talisman via a ritual. But the girl quickly learns to control it and even enjoy it so much that she ultimately decides not to contain it, since she can turn it on and off with a thought and has fun with it.
So, as alluded to earlier the mother has this trait too. When she learns her daughter has been doing things she disapproves of behind her back, including going to a 4*Town concert, she goes crazy and breaks the charm that contains her panda and turns into an absolutely GIGANTIC panda and goes on a rampage, confronting her daughter at the concert. But the grandmother and all the aunts have pandas too and they break their charms in order to contain Meilin's mother's panda. This succeeds partly due to the help of the aforementioned boy band, who lend their vocals to the ritual.
So then, the mom is all weepy and sobby about her own mommy issues and repentant about how she treated her own daughter and blah blah blah feelings and blah blah blah acceptance, blah blah blah, etc. Meilin ends up keeping her panda half, to the surprise of nobody watching the film. Every other panda person puts their pandas into those electric pets that were the rage a few decades ago (this story takes place in 2002). The end.
So, anyway, if the metaphor is that the panda represents womanhood or whatever, why are the other women containing theirs? Are they repressing their womanhood? Why can only Meilin control it? Can she not divulge the secret of how she does it to her female relatives? Why is Meilin's mom's panda so ginormous? This is not really explained and seems to happen for the sake of the story. Why is the populace at large largely indifferent to the presence of large and gigantic red pandas in their city? Why is the panda costume made of cardboard rather than faux fur?
Oh, whatever. I can't honestly say I even really care, even if I felt compelled to comment on the film. I just don't think this is a very interesting idea for a movie (which seems par for the course for Pixar of late). It might work for a TV series on Nickelodeon or the Disney Channel (which is not out of the realm of possibility), not that I'd watch. Anyway, the movie wasn't as bad as I'd been anticipating, but it's not something I'd ever really want to watch again.
Guillermo del Toro's Pinocchio (2022)
Bizarre and annoying.
I initially gave this film by Guillermo del Toro five stars. I thought the story was okay but nothing special while the art direction and animation I thought stunning. I watched the beginning of this again and have had to reduce the number of stars. The art style is still great but everything else is just annoying. This is evident from the very beginning. I'm not going to go into this too much (for fear of a very long post) so I will focus on the film's premise.
A very old man, who cannot be younger than 70, has a son who cannot be much older than 10. The son is killed in an airstrike in a church after retrieving a pine cone and then choosing to stare up at the wooden Christ above the altar for some reason.
The old man plants the pine cone (which has somehow survived the fiery explosion utterly intact; for that matter, so has the old man who was not that far from the bomb) and it grows into a tree. I'm fairly sure trees take a good while to grow but it seems no time for a tree to sprout from the ground to a goodly height very quickly, and roomy enough to house a very annoying and useless cricket. Otherwise I guess we're to believe the old man has stopped aging at 70+ years.
Anyway, the old man is apparently a drunk and sits drinking and mourning his dead son. He decides to cut down the tree and make a wooden puppet, but he is so drunk that he decides he'll finish the puppet later.
I could go on, but this to me is already fairly awful. We have this pathetic old drunk who cannot deal with grief who makes a creepy wooden puppet that starts breaking stuff as soon as he is brought to life by a freaky winged blue creature. By the way, I have heard this version hews closer to the original story by Carlo Collodi but Pinocchio's destructiveness when he comes to life is one of the few elements from that story (which is bizarre in its own right) that are present here.
Anyway, it gets weirder from there, including the fact of Pinocchio's bizarre appearance being quickly excepted by the townsfolk. Also, Pinocchio can be killed but magically comes to life thanks to the blue winged creature's sister, a sphinx-like being. In "hell" or wherever Pinocchio goes when he dies, there are some skeletal rabbits who play card games and carry the dead to their destinations. Or something. Again, I could go on an on but I don't feel like I can spare the effort. I'm guessing anyone reading this will get a sense of how strange this is.
This version also bears resemblance to Disney's recent remake of their own classic 1940 adaptation. In Disney's 2022 remake version Gepetto has also lost a son and wishes him back, though he doesn't drink himself stupid and carve the puppet out of a magical tree. Another resemblance between this film and the Disney remake is that there is a situation where lying is actually presented as a good and useful thing. It's a coincidence I'm sure, but the point is neither element works in either story.
Both versions complicate the 1940's simple premise of a lonely woodcarver who wishes his wooden marionette to come to life and become a real boy, and it doesn't work in either case. The 2022 Disney remake is utterly pointless, while del Toro's version feels pointless in its own way; rather bloated, a waste of resources and a fairly terrible story.
Bonanza: A Deck of Aces (1971)
Sorry, but this is really stupid.
I didn't see the whole episode but got the general gist. I'm just going to focus on the ending, which is, of course, ridiculous. So many things wrong with it, so I'll just itemize:
1. As another reviewer says, there's no reason for Ben to go into the cell to talk to his doppelganger. He can speak to him from outside the cell.
2. Neither Ben nor the sheriff ever once suspect that Ben's double, a con man, wants to speak to his double in private.
3. Ben could also have called for the sheriff when the meeting was over, but declines.
4. The double then pulls his ruse, shouting that the con man has punched him and is escaping. The sheriff then takes him at his word and demands the real Ben get into the cell at gunpoint. No attempt to or try to verify either's identity, such as asking them a question only the real Ben would know the answer to.
5. The sheriff fails to suspect the fake Ben even when he almost leaves without Ben's gunbelt and hat. The sheriff eagerly laps up some flattery the fake Ben heaps on him (another red flag he misses) and lets him depart and fake-Ben rides off with his girlfriend.
And that's it. That's how the episode ends. No resolution and by the next episode the reset button will have been pressed (as was the case with shows of yesteryear, unless they were multi-part episodes), but this is just egregiously ridiculous, and not funny in the slightest. I can't imagine how anyone could possibly enjoy this episode or think this was a good idea.
Big Trouble in Little China (1986)
You either get it or you don't... I guess?
I'd never seen this movie before outside of brief clips caught on cable shortly after the film came out. Decades later, I decided to finally watch it, having heard a lot of good things about it.
But the movie is not very good. If there's a joke, as I'm fairly certain there is, I didn't get it. I didn't find the intended humor to be very funny and the dialogue was kind of clunky and just plain weird. The acting was a bit off as well, especially Kurt Russell's performance, which surprised me because he usually plays his parts with conviction. I didn't notice that here. Kim Catrall tries her best but her performance is just not funny.
I did appreciate that the film kind of throws the "white savior" trope on its ear as Russell's Jack Burton is mostly along for the ride, looking incompetent and even buffoonish most of the time, while his Chinese friend does most of the heavy lifting. But he's not totally useless and does contribute to the quest (which I won't describe here).
One of the exceptions happens in one of the most ridiculous scenes in the movie. Jack throws a knife at the bad guy but it misses and clanks against a gong and Jack throws up his hands in frustration. The bad guy picks up the knife and says, "It's a good knife. Goodbye, Mr Burton". He then throws the knife but Jack ably catches it and throws it again. This time it hits its target, piercing the bad guy's skull and he dies. It's one of the strangest, most anticlimactic moments I've ever seen in film.
This kind of epitomizes the whole movie. Just weird moments that don't amount to anything, uneven performances and lines intended to be humorous that just fall flat.