ChuckM612 Reviews

A Crime to Remember (2013–2018)

Basically Just A Cigarette Commercial

[1/10 · 13 March 2023]

I only saw the first episode. I think it covers a crime from 1965 or 66. I won't be watching anymore.

Evidently the producers believed that EVERYONE smoked cigarettes AT ALL TIMES back then. The re-enactments were devoide of acting or drama, but were just assorted scenes of people smoking. I need something more substantial and considerably less unpleasant than that to hold my attention.

It's a shame, really, as the series sounded interesting and I thought that it had potential. I was even willing to accept its tabloid approach for the sake of an interesting story. The endless cloud of cigarette smoke interfered with any story or emotion the show could have offered.

Magpie Murders (2022– )

Not a Masterpiece

[1/10 · 13 December 2022]

Loved "Foyle's War", hated this. It might have been better as a one-time film instead of a long and slow mini-series.

There's lots of smoking--the tell-tale sign of bad writing and acting, very little depth for the characters and absolutely no one to care about. As many of the unlikable characters did double duty as dopplegangers in the "real world" and in "the book", it was especially boring.

It didn't matter to me how the characters ended up or who the killer was--which everyone should have guessed at by the fourth installment. Annoying and unlikable people can't carry a series.

Horowitz, Manville and McMullen have previously displayed their talent. It just wasn't showcased here.

Marple: Endless Night (2013) Season 6, Episode 3

A horribly bad, amateurish and sad ending to an otherwise great series.

[1/10 · 26 December 2020]

This was a horrible episode-a sad ending to the Miss Marple legacy left by Joan Hickson, Geraldine McEwan and Julia McKenzie. It's not really about Marple, but about the machinations of a ne'er do well named Mike Rogers, with other crappy people doing crappy things to make for a thoroughly crappy ninety minutes. With apologies to their profession, this is an hour and a half that would be more pleasurably spent in a dentist's chair.

The production is juvenile and amateurish. It hinges on a number of implausible relationships and even more implausible behavior. As the episode plays out, Miss Marple appears in the town to comfort Marjorie Phillpot who recently lost her husband. A particularly annoying character, rather than feeling sorry for the widow Phillpot one wonders how Marple came to be her friend in the first place. (Listening to the character prattle on, one can think of yet another use of duct tape!) As the episode plays out, extraordinary coincidences are used to bring in short and awkward appearances of Marple. But for these sparse and implausible events, the episode would have nothing to do with Marple.

Not Miss Marple, the actual main character of the episode is Mike Rogers, played by Tom Hughes. In this program, Rogers could also have been played by a tree and the story not suffer further. With such a one-dimensional and stilted character, Hughes is unable to show whether or not he can act. He does show that he smoke, however. A lot. The relationship that develops with the doomed Ellie then becomes yet another implausible aspect of the production. Played by the able Joanna Vanderham, the innocent Ellie would have better served to fall for one of the trees surrounding the allegedly cursed house at Gypsy Acre.

Yet another implausible relationship is the one between Ellie and her best friend and companion Greta Alexander. Played by Birgitte Hjort Sorensen, Greta is like a snake compared to Ellie's mouse. Like both the character of the widow that brought Marple to town and that of Mike Rogers, Greta is a one-dimensional character more appropriate to a 1940's B-Movie than to this series. Though admired by some of the lecherous men in the story, Greta is less of a sexpot and more of a overbearing annoyance.

There are a lot of bodies in this episode. One of the deaths turns out to an unintended accident. Their number does not enhance the story, however. Neither does all of the smoking. Some British shows seem to feature a lot of smoking-this one so much that the cigarette almost becomes one of the characters. This further hides anyone's ability to portray his or her character through skill because they're so busy smoking that anything else is hidden. The episode even comes with two close-up of a cigarette burning. Gee, like that hasn't been done before! What exactly this is supposed to accomplish is not something I can fathom. Perhaps it's merely a devise to make up for poor writing. Remember that I referred to the episode as "amateurish"?

Then we get to the end, which makes no sense at all. The snake and a mouse comparison is appropriate again here. This time, a mouse deliberately goes unprotected into the lair of the snake. Yep-implausible! The snake is revealed to be a snake, who happens to have just admitted to developing a taste for murdering someone, but then a dramatic event takes place and the encounter between the snake and the mouse is dropped. In its place and without explanation as to how he got there, Mike Rogers then again appears in the same room where he was at the start of the episode. He again mumbles something about how his beginning was his ending or that his ending was his beginning. By that time I couldn't have cared less.

Julie McKenzie was wasted in this episode, as was Joanna Vanderham. To bring this otherwise excellent series to a close, Hickson, McEwan and McKenzie-as well as Miss Marple herself-deserved a better effort. It's a shame they didn't get it.

Rebecca (I) (2020)

Oh, Netflix!

[1/10 · 6 December 2020]

Having read the book and seen the 1940 version probably three times over the course of my life I was familiar with the story. For most of the 2020 version I thought that it was passable. Some of the scenery was quite pretty, but Manderly failed to convey the menace inherent in the Laurence Olivier/Joan Fontaine version. That left the film lacking, and also undercut the significance of the famous opening line. But then we get to the end and while others may disagree the last 30-40 seconds blew it for me. It was a trademark move for a Netflix film--sticking in something that permeates much of their programing. But I sat there thinking that I'd watched a 2-hour movie to end up with that? Truth be told, I should have known better.

Mindhunter (2017–2019)

Too Many Cigarettes Interrupt The Story

[5/10 · 15 September 2019]

I just finished re-watching series 1 and am now about 3 episodes into season 2. The proliferation of cigarette smoking just jumps out. While I can't think of a single friend or acquaintance who smokes today, I had several back in the 70's and 80's. Consequently, I can recall that no one smoked 100% of the time.

I've always wondered at the reason so many films are profuse with smoking. Is it because tobacco companies subsidize the production costs? Do "artsy" people just have a sort of fetish for cigarette smoking? (That would explain why there are so many close-ups of a cigarette. Not in the least clever or innovative, they're about as common as the "interrupted kiss" scene on the Hallmark Channel.

In the case of this series, the smoking gets in the way of the story. When a character interrupts his comment to take a puff, it slows the movement down. I want the story to continue, so the pauses are irritating. Imagine if one were reading a book, a news article or even a film review, and at the end of every other sentence there was an intruding phrase, like Nile river, black plague or popcorn salt. It would get pretty irritating, right?

If the reason smoking so interferes with the story is simply bad writing, and not subsidies from the tobacco industry or some fetish, there is a better way to do it. Check out the series "Rectify". The writers there cleverly establish one of the main characters as being a heavy smoker without having to intrude on the story itself. There's a good cast here in "Mindhunter", and an intriguing story to be told. I just wish the writers and production team--and the rest of the industry--could move past all of the smoking.

Close (I) (2019)

Another Netflix Film

[1/10 · 2 February 2019]

I have low expectations when Netflix pushes one of its movies. That way I'm seldom disappointed. Every once in awhile I'm even surprised. That wasn't the case here.

Have you ever notice how profuse cigarette smoking is in one of Netflix's own movies? There were scenes in this one where it appeared as though the entire purpose was to squeeze in another clip of someone smoking. I continue to wonder of their producers just have a thing for cigarettes, if some tobacco company is footing a significant portion of the production costs hoping the scenes will cause other to light up at home, or if the producers have determined that most of their viewers can be entertained merely by watching people smoke in a movie.

Something else I noticed about this movie. All of the men were jerks. I see that, it seems, with increasing frequency. I wonder if this onslaught on the character of men will end up taking some unpleasant toll on humanity.

I'm not sure if these next comments count as spoilers or not, but I decided to error on side of caution. There were a couple of scenes that were just nonsensical and they occur pretty close to one another. In the first, the bad guys (all men, of course) blow away a guy standing in a doorway and then rush in to where the two female characters are. Though they're apparently planning on killing them too, they don't shoot them right away. Well, that was odd, I thought. If that was their goal, and since they'd just shot one guy moments before, why not just shoot the two women as well?

Then, a short while later, one of the women--with hands cuffed behind her back--manages to take down one of the thugs, a pretty big guy who clearly engaged in nasty things. Yeah, like that could happen.

I don't like implausible scenes. When the kid comes down to the unfamiliar kitchen yet doesn't turn on the light just so that the hidden killer can strike, that's annoying. These two scenes were annoying as well.

About three quarters of the way through the movie I used the fast-forward feature and skipped to end. Saw what happened and then deleted it from my watch list.

Foyle's War: Sunflower (2013) Season 7, Episode 3

Cigarette, anyone?

[1/10 · 30 January 2019]

Watching this episode, I wondered if it were possible to develop lung cancer from watching a TV show. It was possible to imagine some guy running around during the filming to make sure that a sufficient number of people in any given scene were busily puffing away on a cigarette. Such a significant change from other shows in the series--such as the excellent entry "The Cage" which immediately preceded this one--causes one to wonder if some tobacco company hadn't offered to pick up a significant portion of the production costs, if one of the episode's producers had "a thing" for cigarettes, or if the producers came to believe that their viewers taste had deteriorated to the point where they'd be entertained simply by watching a large number of people smoking. All kidding aside, such a profusion of smoking--sometimes where it even looks forced--amounts to a serious distraction from the story. That became annoying. Since this episode was one of those slated to be "the last" in the series, it's a shame that the producers would have been willing to go out like this.

A Place to Call Home (2013–2018)

High on Emotion, Short on Logic

[5/10 · 17 November 2018]

To start with, I read somewhere that this series is comparable to "Downton Abbey". It is not. As a period piece, some of the scenery and props are outstanding, though there is a bit of revisionist history when it comes to some attitudes. Some of the characters were well-developed and deserving of empathy while others were quite wooden, in spite of their elaborate backstories. As with any similar series, there were people worth rooting for and others deserving to become victims in a meteor shower. As for the various plot lines, a lot of events were predictable so viewers who enjoy being able to say they "saw that coming" will get lots of opportunities to boast. In spite of the high emotional content in the episodes, I often thought "that was stupid" at some character's behavior. Something odd I noticed about Season 3--which is as far as I got--was the emergence of cigarette smoking. Virtually nonexistent in Seasons 1 and 2, all of a sudden someone is smoking in every other scene. It some cases it looked forced and out of place while other scenes looked like they were just written to be able to show someone smoking. Between all of those scenes, and the close-ups of overflowing ash trays, I wondered if one could develop lung cancer vicariously. OK, I really didn't, but with the change so substantial I did wonder what brought it about. Did some tobacco company buy an interest in the series, or did the writers somehow conclude that TV viewers are entertained with scenes of people smoking? Personally, I need just a little more substance.

Under the Gun (2016)

A Disturbing Indictment of American Society

[10/10 · 15 September 2016]

I suppose those who love their guns to the detriment of all other concerns will have quickly given this movie a one-star rating while those who who view our fascination with guns as a sickness to our collective soul will give it ten.

I don't know if this counts as a spoiler or not, but the movie is at its best when it portrays the deep grief of those who have lost someone they loved to gun violence in contrast to the rabble-rousing from the NRA as it stokes the furnace of fear it uses to keep its power. In the end, that's where we arrive--at a nation in emotional turmoil between those of us who grieve and those of us who fear. It doesn't speak well of us that its fear that appears to be winning.

It's been almost seventeen hours since I saw the film Still disturbing is the surveillance footage from the cameras in the lobby at the theater in Aurora, Colorado. Though out of sight, one hears the popping of gunfire from one of the auditoriums. To understand the result of the noise is to grieve for both the immediate victims there and all of those that will follow as we remain a nation ensnared in the grip of madness.

It would be nice to know what future generations will think when they see this movie. Let's hope they've achieved an intelligence and enlightenment that allows them to view us with the scorn we deserve. What a terrible legacy we leave them.

At the start of this review I wrote that it's assumed that those who love their guns would give the movie a one-star rating while those who saw it as a film revealing a sickness in our collective soul would give it ten stars. I belong with the latter.