edlaxton Reviews

The Terminal List (2022– )

Watch out for pot holes

[5/10 · 30 April 2023]

You might fall in.

• guy is nearly assassinated in a public place (hospital) then stays back at his home and takes no precautions, leaves doors open

• breaks into intelligence agent's home and copies laptop. Good job no password or encryption

Why do I bother? American boys and their Dads will love this and I'll keep watching for the action scenes and suffer through the "emotional scenes" and further plot holes. But oh for some original drama in this genre.... Since Homeland, what happened to thrillers, espionage, etc?

Oh, in case you were wondering, the murdered wife cliche appears very early in the series, to add to all the usual cliches.

Athena (2022)

All the fireworks in France

[4/10 · 8 April 2023]

Lots of fireworks, balletically launched at faceless cops (who are given no character whatsoever) by raging youth. Sadly, with little in the way of character development, it's left to the viewer to guess what motivates whom.

More like an extended music video than a serious drama, stick to La Haine or some of the episodes from Engrenage/ Spiral season 4.

As for the cops, who knows what they think and what their plan is. France is depicted on the brink of social collapse with the army standing by.

Most wasted of all is Abdel, who is painted in simplistic terms, from angry bereaved brother to moments away from murdering a cop.

Pepsi, Where's My Jet? (2022)

Nah

[5/10 · 13 January 2023]

Interesting story but lots of padding.... And endless flipping between the players talking to camera and recreations of events and media clips.

I wondered if the director was 'all there' or was playing computer games, doing email, cooking dinner and shooting pigeons simultaneously whilst making the documentary. Or it's made for people with attention deficit disorder. Initially it's just disorienting but soon it just becomes annoying and patronising, like the story isn't compelling enough unless it's shot like a TV advert. Which maybe is the heart of this. The characters weren't interesting enough to fill 4 episodes so it had to be shot with a shaky cam and a ton of inter-shots (hope that is a word)

Monster (2022– )

Strong performances but be ready for Social Justice lecture

[7/10 · 11 October 2022]

So, the early episodes are dramatically very strong, if you can manage the non-chronological storytelling. All the acting is top-notch and characters are well developed.

For the writers, I wonder if they think we are empty vessels, waiting to be filled with hit-over-head Social Justice narratives? The semi-fictional reimagining of the (nevertheless highly commendable) neighbour Glenda Cleveland, who did not live in the same building as Dahmer, is just the beginning. The real adjacent neighbours, the Bass's, are written out as I guess they did not fit the narrative. The two cops who failed to act on Ms Cleveland's phone call, were not given an award.

My sense now is that, at least for a generation, all US-produced drama will now be part entertainment and part activist lesson-telling. And therefore, more than ever, viewers will need to see such "based on true story" drama as just that - "based on" then embellished or fictionalised. Maybe it always was. Just that 20 years ago, the embellishments were for dramatic purposes, and now they are to educate us on Social Justice.

So watch the series, then read the fact-check articles and think for yourself. How much was Dahmer "allowed" to commit his crime by racists cops? Was his choice of victims racist? These are legitimate questions, but the show alone is not enough to form a rounded view.

What Is a Woman? (2022)

Good but could have done better

[8/10 · 3 June 2022]

On the plus side

• interviewed a lot of solemn, pious academics who could not give a non-circular answer to the question "what is a woman?"

Gaps

• not much investigative zeal; very partisan
• did not present the evidence from the UK, Swedish, Finnish and French medical regulators who are raising doubts about treating adolescents with puberty blockers and steroids. Lost opportunity to challenge American gender zealots.

Louis Theroux: Forbidden America (2022– )

Retreading old ground

[5/10 · 27 March 2022]

Finding extreme individuals in America is not so hard and Louis Theroux has done a good job of this in the last. But no effort is made to understand the backstories of these dreadful people, whether they had formative experiences that led to their views. Many seemed to be conflicted - were they White Supremicists or just motivated by narcissistic desire to get a reaction from the mainstream media? They seemed less sure of their ideology than the neo-nazis Theroux has profiled before. Yet none of this was explored. So we are left none the wiser. Maybe all Louis wanted was to say they are dreadful and social media is feeding them, but I thought there was a better story and investigation to be had.

La Mante (2017)

Mantis on your mind

[5/10 · 12 August 2021]

Over -acting and unbelievable plot twists mark this French serial killer nonsense. The main characters all seem to wear the same deadly serious expression as they chew their way through the stodgy script.

Plot holes abound like why is France's most deadly killer living it up in a chateau with one incompetent guard. Oh Hollywood, what a deadly spell you cast....

End of the Road: How Money Became Worthless (2012)

Goldbugs and Conspiracy Theorists

[3/10 · 3 August 2020]

In other words.... no dispassionate analysis of our broken global financial system. Find a better use of 54 minutes

The Panama Papers (2018)

Wandering in the weeds

[6/10 · 27 July 2020]

Would benefit from clearer direction - is this primarily about the journalistic journey or what was revealed.? At no point does the documentary explore what PP tells us about illegal tax evasion (who does it, why) and currently legal tax avoidance.

I'm not sure we need to spend much time asking why illegal tax evasion is a bad thing. But equipping viewers to not just get angry but understand how legal tax shelters work, seems pretty important.

Whilst watching, I thought about the documentary "Inside Job" about the global financial crisis and what a great example that was of getting the inside scoop on the causes of the crisis. And, educating the viewer on complex financial mechanisms, sufficient to empower the viewer to understand this was no accident but gross recklessness and criminal behaviour.

I'm glad Panama Papers was made but I'm not sure it equips viewers to challenge their governments' complacency on this

Les rivières pourpres (2018– )

Improbable

[6/10 · 1 July 2019]

Wholly improbable character behaviour - in the first episode one cop sleeps with another she's on the case with and after that her partner sleeps with a witness. Meanwhile the witness and potential next victim leaves her house unlocked despite a killer being on the loose. Not sure I'll manage another episode.

Den of Thieves (2018)

Heat (not)

[5/10 · 10 March 2019]

There is hardly a scene in this movie that isn't a B-grade take from Michael Mann's 'Heat'.

It's hard therefore to feel anything for it. The lack of originality clouds the film. Gerald Butler's talent can't lift the ho-hum script and his by-the-numbers character - tough cop, breaks the rules, marriage on the rocks, drinks a lot. Yep, you've seen this character a hundred times. Even the Pacino - De Niro scene is there except it's both gangs meeting in Benihana's.

Money Heist (2017–2021)

Flawed

[5/10 · 11 January 2018]

Strong points are the cast and the ingenious plotting. But after the first few episodes it starts to drag and but episode 10 you're into "sunk cost fallacy" - I've spent 10 hours of my life on this series so it make sense to see it through to the end.

But doing so and you have to endure the most absurd plot holes and character behaviour. The lead cop takes off for the evening and leaves her mobile phone off for 24 hours whilst the siege reaches a climax; snipers are ordered to shoot one of the gang on the roof but only fire one shot, allowing the gang member (hostage in a mask) to live; hostages blow a hole in the wall and escape but the police, apparently having no snipers to fell the villains, nor flash-bangs to subdue them, fail to enter the building, thereby prolonging the siege. "Alison Parker, daughter of the British Ambassador" does not appear to have been anywhere near Britain.

All very silly and just moderately entertaining.

Blue Eyes (2014–2015)

Plot holes galore

[5/10 · 9 May 2017]

By the end of episode 3

• a civil servant has apparently gone missing but her colleagues have chosen not to report this to the police, seemingly oblivious to the moral and legal consequences of not doing so

• a killer returns to the scene of his crime and covers a letterbox with his fingerprints

• the same killer walks into a hospital and finishes off his victim with a plastic bag. He doesn't bother to disguise his face as no Swedish hospitals have CCTV.

I think I'll give this one a miss.

The Confession (VI) (2016)

Too ambiguous to judge

[5/10 · 8 November 2016]

Existing sympathisers of Begg's will find much in this documentary to reinforce his claims of being harassed and detained without due process or just cause. For the rest of us, we're little the wiser – was he a member of terrorist organisations? Or a romantic Walter Mitty character, befriending jihadis and joining them in one war zone after another, but never actually crossing the line to active participation? Even if the latter, that may just be an act – I didn't feel I really knew him any better by the end of the film. Presenting a somewhat one-dimensional view of Begg (just Begg himself plus a few quotes from his father), it would have been interesting to hear more from his wife how she felt about his "war tourism" as he refers to his activities in his autobiography. What price have they paid for his choices and the reactions of the authorities?

Other major gaps are the questions never asked, that would have helped clarify his actions versus his words:

• Was he convicted (see his Wikipedia article) in Yemen for planning a terrorist bombing? What's his side of that story?

• What happened in the financial settlement he reached with the UK government?

• Did he know one of his bookshop co-employees had been convicted of terrorist offences in France and was in the UK illegally?

• Begg's Wikipedia article accuses him of associating with 11 known extremists. Is this accurate? If so, does he see them as "extremists"?

• The New York Times reported that an unnamed American intelligence official suspected Moazzam Begg of collaborating on a CD-ROM version of an "Encyclopedia of Jihad". True?

These failings in the documentary tend to lend credence to the accusation that Begg air-brushes his history where convenient to his victimhood narrative. I'd be more sympathetic to his allegations of systematic civil rights abuses, if this aspired to be a warts n'all documentary.

24: Live Another Day (2014)

Dreadful

[5/10 · 24 July 2014]

Clichéd script, unbelievable from the scratch and yes, you get to see Chloe looking miserable/vexed and Jack looking terse, so no change there then. The CIA runs riot across England unknown to UK authorities and apparently unobserved by members of the public. "MI5" does an armed raid. US President gets barracked by British MP's.... The list of nonsense goes on. Jack and Chloe haven't developed into three dimensional characters yet and show no signs of doing so. Oh and did I mention the usual hi-tech underpinning I.e. lots of laptop screens with nice big red and green bars to tell you something important is happening.