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davep06
Reviews
Professor T. (2015)
over-directed mess
This review was written at end of Season 1. Nothing irritates me more than a director's hand too heavily felt. One feels as though they are trying to achieve an award more than trying to entertain or engage in an artistic endeavor. It's a pity because the acting is generally superb. In addition to trying to impress us too much artistically with Professor T's hallucinations, and failing, some of the tragic circumstances devolve into pure schmaltz. Some episodesalso try to hard to wrap everything up in a neat package with a pretty bow. Some episodes show a lack of understanding of police procedure. Can't explain more without spoilers. To finish with a positive, the various episodes do have suspense and intriguing plot lines at times.
NCIS: Naval Criminal Investigative Service: The First Day (2021)
exercise for the tear ducts
Glad to have NCIS whose members seem like family in a way, address something that has been such a huge nightmare in all our lives this past year. Emotional. Not only JImmy losing his wife to COVID, which was handled really expertly, with grace and sensitivity, but also the hints of Sloan leaving. I swear when Sloan told Gibbs she was thinking of leaving, it seemed as though Harmon had a tough time holding it together. On a more upbeat note, Nick and Emily seem to be most of the way towards hooking up. They were arm in arm at the show's ending scene with Jimmy reading his love letter to Breena. This COVID thing has been a long slog, with still more to go. Lost a favorite aunt to it on New Year's Day, it doesn't feel good. Shows like this help.
Remember (2015)
collective frustration makes for bad movies
And bad judgment about movies. The best part of the movie is how it moves along as the main character Zev searches for a Nazi fugitive. Plummer does a wonderful job in this role, and the director does a fine job of maintaining suspense. I ding this movie mainly for the ending. The ending took me by surprise, in a positive way, but then at second thought, I reacted, as everyone ought to, "Wait a minute, we've just been scammed." I am guessing that a deep-seated desire for justice compelled director, actors, viewers and reviewers to suspend their ability to think clearly about this plot. Ugh. Too bad. There were a number of endings that would not have been absurd and that would have made this film a candidate for Oscar-dom.
Schindler's List (1993)
lovely film but
This is a wonderful film, except for the bit at the end where the film shifts to present day and Holocaust survivors make an appearance.
This is the kind of overly sentimental material that one comes to expect in American movies. I suppose in todays day and age that it is easy for the home viewer to edit this material out. Still I don't like it. And I'm not liking it still. While I try to meet the 10 line minimum, I am still not liking it. At all.
Okay, I think I'm there.
It could have been part of "The Making of Schindler's List" but not part of an otherwise great movie.