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mjcritelli
Reviews
Law & Order: Chain of Command (2022)
Lacks Subtlety of Earlier Law and Order Series
Having watched every episode of the new series, these are my thoughts:
- There is too much loud pulsating music to cue the audience, instead of letting the story pull them along. It is noticeably more intrusive and annoying.
- It seems that every time the police approach to interview them, the person flees and a chase scene, followed by handcuffing, ensues. Even innocent targets of questioning flee.
- Too much emphasis on surveillance camera videos to derive clues.
- We don't experience the police dialogue advancing their insights.
- The story development seems too rushed, These 42-minute episodes would benefit from another 5-7 minutes of footage.
Law & Order: Black and Blue (2022)
Better, But Too Rushed
As someone who has watched every Law and Order episode multiple times, this episode helped me understand why the revival of this franchise is falling short. In this episode, I thought that the plot line was thoughtful, the acting was very good, the writing was good and the ending was well done. But I could not figure out why the revival is falling short.
This episode helped me understand why the producers have to figure out how to squeeze 3-5 more minutes into an episode. Two critical pieces of evidence, both videos, one on the street, and one of a two-year-old video exchange between the slain police officer and his girl friend, showed up to advance the story line. How either of them was created or found was simply not addressed; one showed up in the cross-examination of a witness, without any understanding of how the defense attorney could have gotten hold of it.
I suspect that staying in the 42-minute run time the producers have targeted is causing the explanatory part of the story line or even some character development to suffer. Whatever the case, the revival episodes, including this one, just do not have the richness in dialogue or character or plot development that the extra minutes for each episode.gave the original series.
First Man (2018)
A Subtle, Well Done Film
Having seen this film twice and liked it a lot, I also can understand why it has received so many harshly negative reviews. This is a character study of a famous man. However, it also strips away much of the glamour and nostalgia with which older Americans remember the space program. It has many scenes filmed in darker colors and deliberately has a claustrophobic feel to it. The handheld camera shots annoyed many viewers, but I felt that they symbolized the haphazard way in which the space program moved forward. As a country, we spent a lot of effort to lock up a few men, send them off into space, with the goal of having a photo-op on the moon before the Soviet Union got there. It is difficult for anyone who did not grow up before the 1980's to understand how frightened we were about the Soviet's lead in space exploration and how we made everything a battle between good and evil, with the Soviets being portrayed as evil. Given the logic of the Cold War, the notion of beating the Soviets to the moon made sense. We see a little of this emerging today with the fear of China, but it is hard for someone who did not live through the 1960's to appreciate how well this film captured what likely was going on under the hood.
For someone who wanted to see a real-life version of Star Wars, and wanted nonstop action, this is absolutely the wrong film to see. For someone who wanted a well-crafted study of a person who was really a pawn in the Cold War, this is a masterpiece. This is a film that bears additional viewings, becaus there were many scenes in which what was not discussed, but was in the background, whether it was the music, the staging, or the throwaway dialogue, was more important.
I did not give it a "!0" rating because I felt that it could have been 10-15 minutes shorter, retained the message and feel of the film, and been even more powerful as a result.
Roma (2018)
Beautiful, But Unnecessarily Long
I watched this film on my laptop. The sets, the photography, and the music were beautiful and I was drawn to the story line, despite the fact that it depicted a relatively ordinary slice of life of a relatively ordinary family.
My reason for not giving it a higher rating is that too many shots were far longer than they needed to be in serving their purpose. I recognize that many shots are designed to establish a mood, but, even by these standards, the director lingered far too long on them. The film could have been just as powerful if it were 30 minutes shorter.
Seve: The Movie (2014)
An Incredibly Moving Film
I loved this film for so many reasons. I particularly liked the clarity with which the filmmaker understood and presented the essence of Seve Ballesteros' behavior and psyche, his passion for practicing the most difficult shots in the most difficult locations and developing supreme self-confidence in the process.
The fact that he was forced into this approach because he did not have the equipment, the connections, or money to play on conventional golf courses when he was young does not undermine the power of the story. He took what was available to him and he turned it to his advantage. He referred to the fact that anyone could create and play on a golf course in his or her imagination.
He had a charismatic personality and the ability to joke about his tendency to hit difficult shots well.
This is a story and film with lessons far beyond golf and sports. It is a metaphor for life.
Up in the Air (2009)
A Great and Original Film
After watching this film multiple times, I decided to write a review. It is a film that works on so many levels. George Clooney plays Ryan Bingham, who has the unusual service assignment of terminating people employed by other companies. (For a long time, I thought this was a service that did not exist in the real world until I was an African safari and met two gentleman who delivered this kind of service in South Africa.)
The title has a double meaning: Bingham is in the air virtually the entire year and has no significant connection to his residence. He has accumulated all his travel miles on American Airlines and he stays only in Hilton Hotels, so he has all sorts of privileges that only an elite handful of travelers ever achieve with these travel service providers. So, he is literally "up in the air" in the course of doing his job.
However, he is "up in the air" metaphorically. He has no roots to any community. He has an affair with a fellow frequent traveler, extremely well played by Vera Farmiga. He has no long-term, serious relationship, even with his own sisters. In fact, one of the great pieces of acting comes when Clooney/Bingham has to figure out how to coax his sister's fiancé to go through with the wedding. Clooney/Bingham finds this exceptionally difficult to do because he has never been close to having a relationship that would lead to marriage.
The most interesting part of the film is the juxtaposition of Clooney/Bingham's status as a receiver of very generous "loyalty" rewards with the role he plays in denying employees of many companies the reward for the loyalty they have shown to their organizations. He gets extra-special treatment, especially from American Airlines, but the employees who have given the best 30 years of their lives to their companies are brutally ushered out the door.
To me, this is the most thought-provoking and unique part of the film. This is not a remake of a 1940's or 1950's film, or even a 1980's film, because the sophisticated rewards programs from which the Clooney/Bingham character benefits did not exist. In fact, they were just being introduced into the marketplace in the early 1980's.
There are other great performances and subplots, including the mentoring relationship Clooney/Bingham has with a young professional very well played by Anna Kendrick. Jason Bateman seems quite authentic as Bingham's ultimate boss.
However, the center of gravity of the film is the character George Clooney plays, as only he can play it, and the many ways in which he presents a complex, multi-dimensional portrayal of someone who is "up in the air."
Spotlight (2015)
Superbly Executed Film: A New Gold Standard for Films About Investigative Journalists
Spotlight is the best film of its kind I have ever seen. All the President's Men was the gold standard for this kind of film about investigative journalism, along with Absence of Malice, but this film was better in several respects:
First, it did a superior job talking about the multiple levels at which the story could be presented by the journalists: about the victims, the priest/pedophiles, Cardinal Law, or the Catholic Church cover-up;
Second, it laid out the conflict among the journalists about when to run with the story and why better than any film of its kind.
Third, it presented the notion that the story could have a very different effect if it ran in one part of the paper than another. The idea that a story could be "buried," even though it was published, because it was presented in the Metropolitan section, instead of the front page was well presented.
Fourth, the conflict among the journalists seemed real, not staged, as far as how to proceed with the story.
Fifth, the reasons people chose not to cooperate were well presented. People who had genuinely positive feelings about the Catholic Church were well-rounded characters, and the tension about threatening a Catholic high school with allegations about one of its faculty members was great. Stories like this have unintended consequences, and this film did a superb job laying them out.
Finally, the visuals were superb. The juxtaposition of the horrific events being presented and the ordinary working and middle class neighborhoods in which they were happening was presented without being overemphasized.
All in all, a wonderful movie, which, I predict, will be a classic like All the President's Men for people who want to watch intelligent films.
Bad Turn Worse (2013)
Great execution
I have seen many coming-of-age films over the years, including the great 1971 film The Last Picture Show, which was set in a dead-end Texas town, but Bad Turn Worse took a familiar formula and not only executed it extremely well, but found a way to give it enough humor and relish that it was not predictable or formulaic.
As a filmmaker myself, I very much appreciate the meticulously of the directing, editing, and integration of the music into the story, and the kinds of performances crafted for and by all the actors. I particularly enjoyed the energy and sadism of Mark Pellegrino as Giff, and the scene between Bobby and the Sheriff, who is trying to explain the reality of law enforcement in his town without ever being explicit. Zee and Simon Hawkins' as director and editor respectively are a great team, and I look forward enthusiastically to their future film projects.