Archive for category: Reviews

Long on style, short on sense, these three made-for-TV crime dramas had a Twin Peaks flavor to them, with suspenseful music and an overriding sensation of never knowing exactly what was going on. Partly this was due to the Yorkshire accent, which begged for subtitling, but mostly it was due to the misdirection, which withheld key items of information and threw in red herrings instead. Who killed whom in the Karachi Club after Eddie Dunford took his revenge? Why? What happened to the shopping mall? What happened to the corrupt cops? To Helen Marshall? Why did she have a relationship with Rev. Laws? Why did Peter Hunter’s wife keep calling him? So many of the characters and situations seemed familiar from Prime Suspect and other shows of that ilk, most of which I preferred. It does seem that the scriptwriters in London have a pretty low opinion of what goes on out in the English boondocks. Red Riding (what does that mean?) did offer one novel twist: the three episodes had a common bad guy but a different hero, each of whom was suitably engaging.

No criticisms, but the movie seemed rather ho-hum and superficial in comparison with the book. It kept me engaged, but mostly to see how the next plot development would be handled – what would be skipped, what elided.

Extremely Hitchcockian music, by Alexandre Desplat, and the bleakly austere setting of “Martha’s Vineyard,” made one sense danger at every turn. Pierce Brosnan, Ewan MacGregor and especially Olivia Williams acted beautifully, and the pieces fit together like a Swiss watch. In short, this was a wonderfully made film. The only problem was the plot, which required one to accept that the CIA, without a recent success to its name, could engineer Britain’s entry into the Iraq War; and that the generally impotent (v. major powers) International Court of Justice could provoke a worldwide hue-and-cry over a Prime Minister’s “rendition” of four alleged terrorists, when the U.S. was doing worse on a weekly basis. Undoubtedly, this story would play better in Europe, where director Roman Polanski, for familiar reasons, is in exile.

A hilarious riff by the Coen Bros on growing up Jewish in St. Louis Park, 1967. A latter-day Job (though I should re-read the book), beset by calamity after another, with allusions as well to Sodom and Gomorrah, while Larry seeks to find out how Hashem talks to mortals, and what he is saying. The rabbis are better at questions than answers, the voice of the day is Jefferson Airplane, and when we do hear God’s voice, is it a tornado?

Michael Haneke’s meditation on cruelty, or evil?, as embedded in German culture, or humanity?, in 1914. The father figures alternated between humiliating their women and beating their children, a lesson the children had learned all too well and practiced on the weakest among them. The world at large was not much better, as we were reminded by the commencement of the First World War. The black-and-white cinematography was stark and stunning, and the untroubled but profoundly troubling face of Karla, the blond young ringleader, remains to haunt well after the closing credits. The opening credits, small, white-on-black and soundless, grabbed your attention, and the unsolved mysteries of the story meant you were never comfortable, just as Haneke wanted.