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TNT's Major Crimes last night committed a major crime, giving us faithful viewers a slapsticky comedy version of a wedding gone bad. Its TV forebear The Closer sometimes got caught with its comedic pants down but never as broad or as insulting as this episode of MC, called "Turn Down." Buzz, the unit's faithful computer guy, finally gets to go on a drive-along with Flynn and Provenza. They get a complaint of an argument in a hotel suite, go there, find a husband and wife in a heated battle, something about a wedding planned for their daughter and the cost of all the hotel suites and rooms for the wedding guests. Buzz finds a man floating in his tub, an apparent suicide, but figures there's something fishy about the circumstances. Flynn and Provenza pooh-pooh the idea because they have tickets for an important Dodger game the next day and don't want to get involved in a murder investigation. Dumb plot details follow, especially when the bride-to-be disappears and is then found with severe low blood- sugar. The cops buy her a really stupid assortment of snacks and line them up on a table in a headquarters office, and we see her on a TV monitor scarfing down a sandwich the size of a football (and not a deflated one). I won't take this any further, other than to say I'm surprised that the cast actually read this script and went along with it. Whoever wrote it should have his head examined. I'm so mad at it that I want to write an angry letter to someone at TNT to let him know how offended I was by this episode. But networks seem to be too well insulated against complaints.

How could Clooney have signed on for his role in Disney's Tomorrowland? What was he thinking? When he sees himself in this stinker, what does he see, how does he react? I can't believe he'd do anything but hold his nose. Where is the guy I loved in Up in the Air and Gravity? Instead, I see a grizzled old man who looks like he'd rather be in Yesterdayland than in this land of tomorrow. I checked the response to this movie on Rotten Tomatoes and was amazed—no, dumbfounded—to see that 49% of critics and 59% of viewers were positive. What are they seeing that I and the rest of my audience members didn't see? Here's what one reviewer, Ken Hanke, had to say: "Tomorrowland—vaguely based on the Disney theme park attraction—is a mess. Structurally, it's a nightmare. Dramatically, it only occasionally comes to life. Technically, it's sometimes impressive and sometimes a thing of 1930s-level matte paintings and CGI that's so cartoonish it's hard to remember it isn't an animated film. Thematically, it's such a bizarre farrago of mismatched "philosophies" and ideas that it's hard to tell what it's supposed to be. I'd like to call it a "noble failure," but I'm not at all sure that it's noble. I am sure, on the other hand, that so far as I'm concerned, it's certainly a failure." I spoke with a number of my senior neighbors who saw it. A few walked out, a few thought about walking out, most suffered through to the end. I was one of the "thought about" walkers. I stayed to the end even though I dozed off in a few places. There were quite a few youngsters from five to ten there, not making a sound—not a chuckle of amusement, not a gasp of excitement. Just dead silence. I remember children's responses to The Wizard of Oz, my own in particular when I first saw it in 1939. It was a wonderful story with wonderful characters set in an imaginary wonderful place called Oz. When Casey (Brittany Robertson) first touches the token that zips her away from reality to this land of the future, she ends up in a yellow wheat field with a view of the futuristic spires of Tomorrowland in the distance, almost laughably similar to Dorothy's first view of the Emerald City. And now these children are seeing a confusing story with plenty of confusing flashbacks and location switches with far too many shootings and killings and blowups and ridiculous ninja fighting. Hugh Lawrie as David Nix made an able villain in a wicked-witch-of-the-north way. He was exactly the curmudgeon we got used to in House. Apparently the film's message was that we'd better do something about the state of the world now or we'll never realize the wonders of Tomorrowland. Casey asks the riddle: There are two wolves who are always fighting. One is darkness and despair. The other is light and hope. The question is: which wolf wins? The answer: The one you feed. There, children in the audience, what do you make of that? A confusing message for all ages. I'm an adult, an old adult, and I'm not sure what was intended. Sorry, Walt. Sorry, Brad Bird and your sorry directing and writing. Tomorrowland just doesn't cut it. And shame on you, George Clooney, for lowering yourself to this stinkbomb's level.

I don't think Naomi Watts, for her role in "The Impossible," will win the Oscar for best actress. I don't even think she deserved the nomination for what she did in "The Impossible." This movie has gotten a bunch of praise from any number of critics, but other than the awesome opening when the tsunami came rushing in and killed over a quarter of a million people and caused all the destruction and devastation, there wasn't much plot. Okay, so it was based on a true story about this family that somehow survived and somehow found each other again, but still, the search wasn't enough story to hold me. Just nothing much happened. I had the feeling all through it that I was watching people acting like people in tragic circumstances, especially Lucas, the oldest son played by Tom Holland. He kept screwing his face into what he must have considered anguish, but to me it looked like he was really on the verge of cracking a smile. And Naomi Watts just didn't have much acting to do. She did a lot of groaning and sobbing but had almost no dialog. So where is the great acting? I don't know. Maybe I'm just too out of sync with modern film trends. I don't much care for vampires or werewolves or zombies or gnomes, and until they get rid of the glasses, I can skip all the 3-D gimmicks. I just found it impossible to get very excited about "The Impossible."

I find myself pulled in two directions after seeing Matt Damon in "Promised Land"—east toward villainy and antagonism and west toward heroism and protagonism. Both his character, Steve Butler, and the hydraulic fracturing process for getting natural gas out of the ground are dual in nature. Damon works as a front man for the eight-billion dollar corporation called Global Crosspower Solutions. He and Sue (Frances McDormand), his mentor, show up in the small Pennsylvania farming community to buy drilling rights from all the landowners. And both of them (Who doesn't love Matt Damon and Frances McDormand?) initially appear as nice people doing evil deeds for an evil company. They discuss their plans to bilk the residents as they buy clothes to help them masquerade as "down home" farm folk. The dichotomy continues. At an open meeting in the high school, Frank Yates (Hal Holbrook), an aging science teacher with major scientific pedigree, challenges Damon about the dangers of fracking. Later, Dustin Noble (John Krasinski), an environmentalist from a group called Athena, shows up to present the other side, to try to subvert the evil gas company's plans. Even the townspeople are split about evenly as to whether they should or should not sell the drilling rights. Are Steve and Sue bad people posing as good people or are they good people trying to help this dying community? Is fracking an environmental disaster or is it a safe process to help us become energy self-sufficient? Neither question is answered. The scenery of farmland Pennsylvania is beautiful, the acting is good if not excellent, the film is worth seeing, despite the viewers' ambivalence as they exit the theater.

Robert Duval, what could you have been thinking when you signed on to this project? Couldn't you see all the holes in the plot? About as many holes as several assault weapons could put into the several cars Reacher drove. But you signed up for it anyway. All right. So, what can any true fan of the Lee Child series say about this first (probably not the last) cinematic episode in the life and times of Jack Reacher? Well, anyone who had never read any of the Reachers might think this was a good action film. And it was. Lots of shooting. One lengthy example of the requisite car chase (Reacher after the bad guys, cops after Reacher), lots of screeching tires and smashed bumpers. And several hand-to-hands with Reacher just demolishing up to five bad guys at a time. All in all, then, it was worth going to see, especially if you hadn't already read the seventeen novels in the series. But I have read them, and I just couldn't force myself to see in Tom Cruise the Jack Reacher I know and love. Just not tall enough or big enough. Maybe I'll get over that after I've seen more of the inevitable sequels. But next time, whoever writes the screenplays, please don't leave unexplained the motives of the bad guys; please don't insert any needless comic bits like the Three Stooges bathroom scene wherein two bad guys try to beat on Reacher with a baseball bat and a crowbar, succeeding only in whacking each other; please don't feel that your audience needs to see a female lawyer's boobs hanging out; please don't include any conveniently located large chunks of concrete behind which Reacher can take refuge from the bad guys' bullets; and don't, please don't, invite Robert Duval to play the comic sidekick to Tom Cruise, or, I guess I mean, Jack Reacher.

The end of another year and lots of movies we've seen or still want to see. Our latest choice was to see what Jamie Foxx would do with his role as the slave Django in Django Unchained. Quentin Tarantino apparently set out to out-Western every Western ever made, and out-bloody every bloody shootout ever filmed, Western or cops-and-robbers or whatever. It was a humorous satire with an underlying morale theme. The humor was seen in the outlandish outfits Django chose to wear, especially the Blue Boy suit he picked out when Dr. King Schulz (Christoph Walz), Django's savior, lets him choose anything he wants as his new wardrobe. More humor in the choice of background music as stereotyped by all the Clint Eastwood spaghetti Westerns of yesteryear, the incompetent band of KKKers who decide to forgo their head bags because they can't see what they were doing, the overblown scenic views too perfect to be real (the mountains, the rocky campsites, the bar with beer taps and glass mugs, the unlikely number of plantations underlings who respond to the shooting in the plantation mansion at Candyland, the amount of horrific blood-shedding in that final shootout, the high-stepping routine Django goes into with his horse as he shows off for his wife Broomhilda at movie's end. But always, beneath the humor and satire, is the indictment of an institution like slavery, an institution that too many antebellum whites could condone, could unthinkingly, inhumanely, believe that a human being could be owned, a piece of property to whom the owner could do anything with impunity. The acting was excellent—Walz as the ex-dentist bounty hunter, DiCaprio as the effeminate Calvin Candie, Foxx as the "fastest gun in the South," and Samuel L. Jackson as the truly evil reverse "Steppin Fetchit" house slave. But Christoph Walz is the best and will probably receive a nomination is the Oscar race.

I saw "End of Watch" today and counted 583 f-bombs in the first hour. After that I lost count, but I'm assuming it must have gone over a thousand by film's end. But—you know what?—it sounded entirely reasonable in light of the setting in really tough "gangsta" L.A. Officer Brian Taylor (Jake Gyllenhaal) and Officer Mike Zavala (Michael Pena) cruise South Central L.A., looking for crimes and bad guys and finding both in unlikely abundance—child abuse, house fire, a coyote house filled with thirty or forty illegals imprisoned in filth, drug cartel and gang-banger shootouts. And nearly the entire film is shown by hand-held camera or tiny lapel cameras (Taylor is making a film of their daily activities for a filmmaking class he's taking), by dashboard cams, or by other hand-held cameras or cell phones of onlookers to various crimes. It creates a frenetic movement that approximates the high-speed violence of the cops and bangers. The film is all about the dangers the boys in blue face on a daily basis. But more important, it's about the blue brotherhood of the entire force, especially the bond between Taylor and Zavala. They're brothers, even more than brothers. If they were gay they'd be lovers. But they're both married, Taylor to Janet (Anna Kendrick), Mike to his childhood sweetheart Gabby (Natalie Martinez), and married forever it seems. At Brian and Janet's wedding reception, the two do a really clever dance expressing their feelings for each other. Mike tells Brian that when he asked his grandmother if he should marry Gabby, she told him: "If you can live without her, then man-up and cut her off. Don't string her along." That's what the relationship between the two officers is all about, nearly an inability to live without the other. Great movie. Great acting. Go see it.

After seeing The Master, I'm now trying, unsuccessfully, to master what I saw. What an odd movie. Powerful, yes. Disquieting, yes. Oscar worthy, yes, especially for Phillip Seymour Hoffman as Lancaster Dodd, the compelling leader of "The Cause," and for Joaquin Phoenix as Freddie Quell, Hoffman's manic, neurotic disciple. I was unable to separate the Phoenix from the Quell. How much of Quell's portrayal was simply Phoenix's own strangeness and how much was extraordinary acting? How much of the physical mannerisms were the character's and how much were Joaquin Phoenix's—the narrowed shoulder thrust, the arms extended to the sides with hands behind the hips, the close-ups of a face that went rapidly from menacing frown to manic grin (with unsmiling eyes)? There's a scene in a narrow jail cell when Quell, hands handcuffed behind him, goes berserk, kicking to pieces the urinal, banging his head and shoulders into the top bunk. This couldn't have been faked. I got the feeling this was an unscripted display of violence that Joaquin Phoenix did on his own. He simply had to injure himself with the violence. How much was acting and how much the inner demons of Phoenix? Aside from the publicized parallels to Scientology, this was a film about the nature of the relationship between two men—father and son, master and disciple, potential lovers. Dodd sings (very badly) to Freddie, "I'd Like to Get You on a Slow Boat to China." Who is really the master who is the disciple? By film's end it seemed like they had reversed roles. I may have to see this film again to try to answer some of my own questions.

The eighth Jesse Stone movie, Benefit of the Doubt, was on the tube last night. I loved the first seven in the series but was disappointed in this one. Tom Selleck and Michael Brandman co-wrote it, with Brandman probably supplying the plot and Selleck the character. Just as Robert Urich became Spenser, Selleck has become Jesse Stone, the laconic, dark drinker of black coffee and Johnny Walker Red. This time, though, I got the feeling they were stretching for the Parker style and not quite reaching it. For example, after the new chief and one of his deputies are killed in an auto explosion, everyone keeps saying, "You didn't like him, did you, Jesse?" to which Jesse replies, "I don't believe I ever said that." Four times he's asked and four times he replies with the same words. Parker might have gone for two times, but never four. In fact, almost all the dialog is short and repetitive, but not quite up to Parker's standards. What can I say about the plot? Well, there wasn't much plot and much of what there was didn't make any sense. After the double killing, Jesse is temporarily made chief again. He goes to the police station but has to break in because they've changed the locks and the security code. He discovers a day-calendar sheet for April 24 with a cryptic series of letters and numbers. Why did he assume it was a clue into the death of the chief? Neither the viewer nor anyone else in Paradise knows. Rose and Suit have resigned from the force and both make only brief appearances. And Jesse seems to be the only one on the force. Paradise is a large enough city that there would be at least fifteen officers serving, but not a single one is ever seen after Jesse takes over as chief. Someone has been following Jesse for several days, following in a car almost riding Jesse's bumper. Jesse pulls him over and tells him not to follow him anymore. In the final scene, it's revealed that the man was a hit man with a contract on Jesse. Hasty Hathaway, the obnoxious auto dealer who had originally hired Jesse, is really the boss of Gino Fish, one of the biggest fish in the Boston racketeering pool. When Jesse seems to be getting close to the truth, Hasty takes his ill-gotten gains, what looks like nearly a million, and flees by speedboat. Jesse kills the hit man and is about to take Hasty, but Hasty gets away. End of movie. It felt too much like a series cliff-hanger looking forward to the next episode. I don't think there'll be another episode, and if there is, it had better be better than this one. The good news about Benefit of the Doubt is that ex-wife Jen is nowhere around and that Reggie, the sad-eyed retriever, is still trying to win Jesse's love.