Spoilers In eight episodes we follow the adventures of a woman who may or may not be crazy. Who may or may not have been held captive for seven years. May or may not have died countless times. It has something to do with a bit of really bad Air Bending or maybe some Tai Chi performed by people who never really saw it performed properly. The show opens up with a woman jumping off a bridge. When asked why, she says she was trying to get back to her friends. We never find out how she survived this jump…
Category: tv review
Gilmore Girls A Year In The Life
Gilmore Girls was always a wonderful show filled with gags about current events, heart felt moments between lovers, and a cast of oddball characters worthy of a great Britcom. Everyone still alive seems to have come back to revive their roles for A Year In The Life. It’s been ten years since the show went off the air and everyone looks pretty amazing. Of course, I have seen the bulk of the cast in other roles over those ten years. I loved seeing them all again. I loved all the gags. The reference to Inside Llewyn Davis was a hoot.…
Crisis in Six Scenes
A classic Woody Allen story. If, like me, your all time favor Woody Allen film is Anne Hall, then your in luck. Crsis in Six Scenes is basically an 80 year old Alvin Singer shuffling around, bitiching and moaning about everything, and baffled as to why no one cares what he has to say. Of course, if your coming to Crisis in Six Scenes with the expectation this is going to be groundbreaking new work from the man who hasn’t changed his looks, jokes, or formulas since the late 1950s, well, what the hell are you thinking? This is Woody…
HBO’s Westworld
The original Westworld was a pretty simple bit of business. We follow a couple of men as they go on vacation at the best theme park in the world and something goes wrong. There was very little depth, the last half of the film was one long chase scene. And a slow chase at that. HBO and J.J. Abrams have taken Michael Crichton’s basic idea of an interactive Disneyland and expanded it to include subtle motivations for the characters, both human and machine. In a nice twist, we find a few characters in reverse roles. Instead of an evil robot,…
The Night Of
The story of a man who may or may not have killed a woman after he had sex with her. We see a good deal of the story from the young man’s point of view. The Night Of is a great looking show. It has really good production values and a great cast. We follow around several characters. Mainly the young Pakistani man who is the prime suspect and an older man with bad feet who is his lawyer. We also look through the eyes of the DA and the lead Detective once in a while. It’s a classic locked…
Fleabag
Fleabag reminded me a bit of GIRLS, in that it calls itself a comedy, but it isn’t exactly funny. Fleabag is the story of a woman on the downswing. She has her own business, but that business has seen better days. She loves her father, but he has moved on to a new woman after the death of her mother. She has a troubled relationship with her sister, there are hints that things used to be better. She has a boyfriend that she keeps kicking out and taking back. And she is still a bit broken up about her best…
Stranger Things
For those of you who lost your VHS tapes of ET, House, Poltergeist, Videodrome, and pretty much every horror movie made in the 1980s, this TV Show is for you. The Duffer Brothers-a name that makes me think of Homer Simpson’s favorite beer-have ripped off, I mean, paid homage to, all those great old movies from thirty years ago. I seem to be alone in thinking this collection of clichés and CGIs is not that great. If I want to see an old 80s horror movie, why not watch an old 80s horror movie? Because someone is going to bang out…
The Night Manager
John le Carré’s most famous book has to be The Spy Who Came in from the Cold. In this adaptation of The Night Manager, the Spy spends a bit of time where it’s nice and hot. The Middle East. Our hero, played by Tom Hiddleston, is a lowly night manager at a hotel when he finds himself involved with a female guest and her crime boss boyfriend. She gives him a file filled with the details of an arms deal. He falls madly in love with her and they have a brief but life-altering relationship. The next thing he knows,…
The Path
What if a cult was a gated community you might actually want to join? Hulu’s The Path tells the story of a group of people living out the Vision of their founder. They don’t like being called a cult, they prefer the term movement. We open up with what looks like a post-apocalyptic wasteland. People are scattered amid the ruins and then a few cars roll into view. The rescuers are members of the Meiyerism movement. But this isn’t some distant future, it’s just the site of a tornado. It seems the Meiyerists get new members by rescuing people. The Path is…
Horace and Pete
Horace and Pete is an American web series created by, written by and directed by Louis C.K. Less a TV Show and more a filmed stage play. Or something like a stage play. The sets are large open areas and the stages make loud noises as the actors walk across them. There are also a lot of long, lingering, painful shots. The kind of takes you would expect in a play where everyone is on stage the whole time. Horace and Pete has an amazing cast. Steve Buscemi, Edie Falco, Steven Wright, Alan Alda, Jessica Lange, and several other greats who have…