socialbeany Reviews

The Black Dahlia (2006)

Poorly Written, Strangely Accented, Badly Soundtracked

[4/10 · 7 September 2024]

I knew the real Black Dahlia case was unsolved, but I thought that this film might present a theory based on the facts in a stylish way. Instead we get a love triangle variant on L. A. Confidential, where everyone seems to have been involved in a shady deal with everyone else.

The pacing is that of a B-movie, with minor characters being referenced far more than they actually appear on screen. Many of the characters have accents so bizarre you can't tell whether they're supposed to sound fake -- is Hilary Swank's character aiming for Katherine Hepburn? Is her father trying for Sean Connery? Is Fiona Shaw going for drunk, drugged, or just plain weird?

The camera work is strange, too, sometimes giving us a POV of Hartnett's character as he navigates a party. The smutty film stock he and others have to watch looks far too crisp for the 1940s.

And the soundtrack is also bizarre. It swings between noirish blues and melodramatic strings, but always at the wrong time. Did the composer have any input into what music was used where?

Finally, there are lots of good actors in this film, but they're given shoddy dialog to use. And then there's Josh Hartnett, who looks the part, but just doesn't have any menace to him.

Overall, a disappointing film with an overcomplicated, messy plot, and almost no information about the real Black Dahlia case.

Brigadoon (1954)

The accents! My God, the accents!

[3/10 · 4 October 2021]

Only just saw this golden age musical for the first time, after hearing about it vaguely for years. Oh how I wish I'd left it alone.

As an Irishman, I wince whenever I encounter stage-oirish characters or productions, and I can't stand The Quiet Man. But Brigadoon was so much worse, it's not funny. The thing that stuck out at me first was the accents. 90% of the Scottish characters seemed to think all they had to do was "something European" (one of them sounded Romanian to my ears) with a lot of rolled Rs on top.

On top of that were the countryside sets, which were inadequate to say the least. The costumes were weird -- why were all the womenfolk in corsets, and why was someone musing over different tartan cloths for part of the wedding outfit (the wedding was that evening!), when tartans are linked to your clan, so you can't pick any old style?

The plot was thin and underexplained. If I understand it, the town only vanished from normal time in 1754, which means that this (1954) is its second reappearance, and thus that to the townsfolk, the disappearance only happened two days ago? And the priest who made it happen but was left behind was only gone for two days as far as they're concerned? They all seem to have got used to it very quickly from their point of view. And how did the townsfolk not notice that their runaway had been shot? I know it would have been pellets rather than a bullet, but they would have left some mark, surely?

All of the above could be forgiven if the music was good, but sadly it's pretty forgettable. Several indistinct crowd songs, and one recognizable standard, "Almost like Being in Love". And too much of Gene Kelly's trademark ballet routines without anything memorable.

Van Johnson's character's cynicism & melancholy is underexplained as well; nevertheless, he's the most interesting and entertaining part of this film.

Columbo: A Stitch in Crime (1973) Season 2, Episode 6

Tighter & more action-packed than usual Columbo plot

[8/10 · 18 September 2021]

Having recently read a review of this episode that claims no chemistry between Falk and Nimoy, I was prepared to like the episode less than usual. But it's really not an issue; in fact, it's refreshing not to have the killer be a public figure for Columbo to fawn over as part of his schtick, and there's a bit more room for plot development as a result.

One thing that bothered me about the plot, though: we're told that permanent suture and dissolving suture are different colors (presumably to avoid exactly the kind of disastrous post-surgery failure Mayfield was trying for here). Columbo speculates that the dissolving suture could be dyed to *look* like the permanent kind, so presumably that's what happened here. But when? Mayfield only decided to dispose of his research partner when he finds out that he might nix their research publication - hours before the heart-valve operation. There was no time for him to dye the dissolving suture before it was needed. Unless he was planning the murder days in advance, which doesn't gel with what we're shown.

Columbo: Étude in Black (1972) Season 2, Episode 1

Mystery too easily solved

[7/10 · 6 September 2021]

Good classic Columbo episode, and the introduction of his adorable dog.

But I have some issues with the plot. Apart from the ridiculously obvious dropped carnation clue, I think the suicide note/typewriter problem was an unnecessary own goal. It wasn't a long note; why couldn't Benedict just type it from scratch at the machine that evening, rather than pre-type it, and have to deal with reinserting it and messing up the alignment? Perhaps he didn't think of this at the time, but it was unnecessary.

My other problem could probably be applied to many Columbo episodes, but it really stuck out here. How has he never been in trouble over outrageous invasion of private citizens' lives? He got into Benedict's classic car and started it under false pretenses. In the real world, wouldn't he be repeatedly suspended for stuff like this?

What If...?: What If... The World Lost Its Mightiest Heroes? (2021) Season 1, Episode 3

Murder mystery makes this the best What If ...? episode yet

[9/10 · 28 August 2021]

This was a cool idea, well-executed (as were the proto-Avengers themselves, alas). I guessed the main gist of the mystery, partly because I'd read DC's Identity Crisis, which featured a murder with a similar modus operandi. (Though I admit I first suspected Loki had somehow been involved in the assassinations.) I also hoped Natasha had survived, given that we never saw her death, but it seems that it's up to Captains Marvel and America to lead the resistance.

What was the real nexus event here? Hope van Dyne's death, or her recruitment to SHIELD to begin with? She wasn't a SHIELD agent in the main MCU timeline, right?

Loki: Lamentis (2021) Season 1, Episode 3

A bit too Doctor Who-ish

[6/10 · 24 June 2021]

Unlike several other commenters, I like Silvie/Lady Loki, and think that she and original Loki have good chemistry.

But I agree that Loki hasn't asked obvious questions of her and about her, and the whole variant situation. In what way is she a variant? What common history or ancestry do they share? Is she also of Ice Giant extraction? Does she know Asgard or the other Realms, or any of the people Loki knows?

And the setting for this episode -- a doomed planet (moon, whatever) full of downtrodden, doomed people -- does feel like a warmed-over Doctor Who episode (or the setup for Snowpiercer, I suppose). This is only strengthened by Sylvie's north-of-England accent.

The ABC Murders (2018)

OK as a politically aware murder mystery, but not as a Poirot story.

[4/10 · 16 May 2021]

Little to add to the many, many 1,2, and 3-star reviews I already see here, except perhaps to cut the producers a little slack.

Yes, it's dark and sordid, but that of itself doesn't make it a bad production. Viewed as a standalone mystery thriller, it's OK. It revels in blood and urine (ugh) a bit too much, but perhaps we shouldn't be too squeamish about these things when dealing with the actions of a depraved mind.

Fascism and xenophobia were a thing throughout Europe between the World Wars, and there were Nazi-like parties active in the UK too. Wodehouse had a fascist would-be dictator in a couple of his comic novels of roughly the same period, and the Mitford family fell on both sides of the fence, while the royal family wasn't immune either (see Edward VIII before and after his abdication).

But what makes this a poor production is its insistence on retaining Poirot as the central character, while undermining -- even flatly contradicting -- both his personality and his prior history. We *know* he was a policeman in Belgium from several references in the books including a reminiscence by Japp himself in The Mysterious Affair at Styles, so the traumatized priest flashbacks are just wrong. This could have been an alternate history of a Poirot who went the clerical route before the Great War came ... but not the Hercule Poirot Christie wrote.

Wolfwalkers (2020)

Lovely animation, so-so story

[6/10 · 25 April 2021]

While the animation was imaginative, the actual story didn't grab me at all, feeling a like a rehash of The Secret of Kells. The dialogue was repetitive and the characters were one-note. It seemed like Robyn and her father had exactly the same argument five or six times through the course of the film.

Not nearly as good as the same studio's Song of the Sea from a few years ago (or, indeed, The Secret of Kells).

Side comment: the villainous Lord Protector is presumably supposed to be Oliver Cromwell. But he didn't seem to be named as such, either by the characters or in the credits. I wonder whether this was to void offending UK viewers?

Evil Under the Sun (1982)

Feels low-budget, but elevated by Smith & Rigg.

[7/10 · 31 January 2021]

Fun adaptation of the Christie book, with the setting moved from an English seaside resort to somewhere a bit sunnier. The acting isn't particularly subtle, but that really isn't a problem for this kind of film -- the characters are somewhere between one- and two-dimensional anyway.

What does bother me is how this film seems like a drop in standards (and budget) from 1978's Death on the Nile, which I love. Cole Porter wrote great music, but a soundtrack that depends solely on these songs strung together (mostly instrumentally) is going to wear a bit thin. They could have spent a bit more time on the dialog, too -- everyone's lines seems a bit too near and uninspired during the Big Reveal. It had the feeling of a not-too-fancy TV movie.

Apart from the resolution of the mystery itself (which does seem to have a few holes itself, and depends too much on the unwitting cooperation of innocent parties), the best thing about this film is the verbal sniping between Diana Rigg and Maggie Smith. Sadly, they didn't get to carry this through the whole film, as Rigg's character was the victim.