j_loome

Note perfect, well acted, well shot.

I'm not a particular fan of the Reacher books. The writing's good, I liked one, the other had a poor plot.

But it works better as a show, to me.

A lot of the negative reviews on this seem either delusional or absurd. One guy gave it 3/10 because Reacher doesn't sleep with the female cop. Another gave it 3 because it isn't like procedural police shows he likes, even though this is clearly an action thriller.

A person could be forgiven for thinking a certain diminutive actor's notorious friends are deliberately downvoting this in the tragically sad hope of lowering the score drastically. If so, doesn't appear to be working.

Bleak, dark, funny, humane. It's basically like the writers from Deadpool took on an Elmore Leonard story, from the zanier "Maximum Bob" days. Everyone has little to lose, the hardest done by have the most understanding -- and occasionally outrage -- at the worst in humanity, and the 'good guy', who has a seriously violent urge to right wrongs, is a 16-year-old dope with busted knuckles. Don't let it die, Amazon. In its own way, it's as worthy of saving as the Expanse or Cobra Kai, and the characters have so many more stories that can be told.

It's just friggin funny, eh? From the angst-ridden small-town goth wannabes to the obviously flaming pastor to the hockey hair goons and the stoic farm boys, everyone drinks too much, fights too much and does a whole lot of nothing in Letterkenny. It takes small-town stereotypes and skewers the hell out of them, but doesn't stick to making fun of rural Canada, as the city folk get their comeuppance too. Principle topics of plots: sledding, drinking, hockey, fighting, religion, political correctness, weed and unemployment. If Trailer Park Boys is a slice of Canada's white trash culture, Letterkenny is a clever homage, explaining why so many people in the second-largest nation on Earth can drive hundreds of miles and still go nowhere.

It's like "Tim and Eric", except funny.

In other words, most of the sketches are two-minute parodies of form; the icy hit-man who talks about his groceries; the bear who gives a press conference in which the media just goes negative.....even though he's a bear and can talk; the wise owl who lives with the average joe, and has to put up with his inane drivel.

It's insanely dry and times, but there's pretty much always a point.

You have to get the show. If you don't, it's meaningless drivel to you. But it's absurdly deep, working on levels the guys from South Park could only dream of, and unfortunately that makes it inaccessible to a lot of people.

The ongoing assumption that Lester Burnham is some kind of man apart denies the very point of American Beauty: that social convention frequently only exists for its own sake, and that the preconceptions we're brainwashed into believing about life and how we should lead it are often simply unnecessary, or even detrimental to achieving personal happiness. In other words, he's regained his sanity; it's the rest of society that's the man apart.

Lester Burnham's one of the healthiest characters in modern cinema; he comes to realize that simply following common social convention -- the white picket fence, the cubicle job, the kids' high school events -- just isn't the life some people should be leading. It doesn't insult those conventions; it merely points out that people are often driven by personal instincts and are happier if they don't let other people's perceptions get in the way of pursuing those instincts. And it realizes that the anxiety we harbor over those perceptions -- and their stifling effect -- can ruin lives.

In other words, we all worry way too much.

The movie, to a degree, mutes that message by being frankly honest and pointing out that personal fulfillment, while generally better than the dishonest alternatives, comes with certain pricetags , particularly a degree of selfishness toward people who can only understand a conventional life. "And you're boring. And you're totally ordinary. And you know it," as Ricky Fitts points out to Angela, the cheerleader who wants to be a model, and doesn't realize that wanting to stand out merely for her looks is the most ordinary thing of all.

The film also points out the danger in being more open-minded: that someone is likely to take violent offense to that which they don't understand. American Beauty is so emotionally honest with regard to the necessity of replacing social convention with raw decency, it should be in school curriculum.

There's nothing complicated about office space. It takes a well-tested theory ( that mass-produced, cubicle-covered office work sucks) and takes it to the Nth degree, in typical Mike Judge style. If you appreciate Judge's sardonic weekly look at the inept mediocrity of Americana that is "King of the Hill" you'll appreciate the same wry look at the working world. A truly funny movie, although a bit longer than it needs to be.

Outside of the obvious reflections on the immoral and absurdly hypocritical nature of early British colonialism, it's just a damn entertaining movie.

But you have to think that Rudyard Kipling, who grew up under British rule in India, was certainly trying to shake some sensibilities when he first wrote the story as part of an 1890 package called The Man Who Would Be King and Other Stories, nearly a century before it was made into a film and during an era when the British Empire was still very much a reality.

From the perceptive realization that even the staunchly important Masonic Lodge -- which had infilitrated every aspect of Britain's upper classes -- could be easily corrupted; to the arrogance as Sean Connery's character Daniel Dravot, who elevates what he sees as mere social superiority into a god-like status; to the inevitable humbling of both men at the hands of the 'savages' they profess to rule, the film is ultimately about the humility all men should exhude, particularly in the face of the unfamiliar.

Kipling's tale also preached tolerance, though you might not consider that to be the case based on the film's climax: consider that if Daniel and Peachy had shown an iota of respect for the religion that they instead decided to fleece, how differently the tale might have played out.

The film owes much of its success to the chemistry between Caine and Connery, who regardless of later plaudits, gave the finest performances of their careers. Connery is particularly nuanced, with Daniel Dravot starting the tale as a somewhat lackwitted second fiddle to the scheming Peachy but later seeing his limited vision help him surpass his friend in terms of villainy with an equally heavy price. Caine plays, to some degree or another, the same charming British sheyster/teddy boy he popularized in the Harry Palmer films. But without a backdrop of similarly disaffected cockney bad guys, it's stunningly effective.

John Huston's direction is among the best of his career, and in terms of his ability to use both sprawling vistas and tight, almost claustrophobic photography, owes a nod to his earlier work, including The African Queen, Night of the Iguana and the Treasure of the Sierra Madre. As examples, witness the zenith of Peachy and Daniel's hazardous trek through the mountains played out in full panoramic detail, only to be followed 90 minutes later by the tight shot of Kipling's face, the revulsion fairly etched into every crease as we reach the climax.

But perhaps the true hero of this film was Boaty Boatright, who also cast Connery's classic "The Wind and The Lion." He managed to take some of the most strident, forceful personalities in the film industries, threw them together and came up with a film about humility. Magic.

The fact that this version of The 39 Steps is considered one of the top #250 films of all time on this site pays sad tribute to the willingness of so-called film fans to support anything done by anyone they revere.

In fact, both this film and the 1934 version of The Man Who Knew Too Much merely demonstrate that Hitchcock had yet to find a creative voice. Bogged down by the camp over-acting that dogged film immediately following the silent era, both should be regarded as curious early attempts at film-making by a master and nothing else. Given the number of votes this film has received despite its relative scarcity, I have to say "for shame" to those who ranked this highly because it was made by Hitchcock without having seen it first.

Although some of the atrociousness of the first attempt at filming Buchan's excellent novel can be put down to the quality of productions during the day, it isn't the only reason this clunker failed miserably. In fact, how this terrible, terrible film can be ranked above the far more entertaining 1950s version starring Kenneth More is beyond me. Though attempting to remain faithful to the book, the first version is bogged down by stoic, wooden performances, absolutely laughable direction by Hitchcock and pacing that would put a coffee bean to sleep.

Donat was a light-weight far better suited to feel-good vehicles like Goodbye, Mr Chips and The Magic Box than the adventure films that made him famous: witness his laboured perfomances in the Dietrich-vehicle Knight without Armour and the first 'talkie' version of the Count of Monte Cristo. Madelein Carroll is truly waifish and weak in the kind of demeaning way all women of the era were portrayed, any moments of acid tongue quickly reverting to being pulled along by the wrist and 'saved' by Donat at every occasion. The laughable climax at the "Mr. Memory" show that works so well in the original novel comes across as camp and heavy handed here, and is a long way from the ease with which the same plot device is employed in the Ray Milland classic "The Manchurian Candidate".

Ultimately, there may be one redeemable feature to this early stinker is the first -- albeit uncredited -- appearance of classic British television actor Wilfred Bramble, who would go on to star alongside the Beatles in "A Hard Days Night" and as the lead in Steptoe and Son, the show that prompted the U.S. hit Sanford and Son.