Category: Ones

Cat Play Viewer paradigms are evolving quickly in the film world. I think the COVID lull has stopped that temporarily as we wash out the projects like this that were on automatic pilot during that era. By evolving, I mean that we as viewers build more and more devices for self-awareness in the film narrative.… Continue reading Paws of Fury The Legend of Hank (2022)

Scrambled Egg Dialog You likely will have already been warned off this amazingly bad production. So many beginner mistakes and production drags will kill your experience. But I have to say that there are two script ideas that are promising. The first is simply that our noir detective is not simply manipulated by the writer… Continue reading Art Deco Detective (1994)

Benny Hill’s Slippers This would have been one of the shorts on a program designed to fill out a date night. It is just filler, basically slapstick on skis. The joke is that the performer is an extraordinary expert to be able to appear so clumsy. It is not just a waste of time for… Continue reading Schlitz On Mount Washington (1935)

Indians This is a famously popular film in India. The composition is simple: a story that gives the film an existence, and a series of Bollywood musical numbers. I cannot recall ever experiencing such dissonance, because I am coming at the from a background in Christie. That tradition — at least the elements I like… Continue reading Gumnaam (1965)

Bible Verses I pride myself on being able to say something both useful and positive about a film, a discipline a wise man taught as a practice for the more useful challenge with souls we meet. The dynamics overlap in narratives that each carry. I found it a bit difficult this time around, because my… Continue reading The White Cockatoo (1935)

Ancient Chase DNA What I find curious is how franchises become more ordinary over time. This is far from an original observation in terms of world construction and story. It makes sense to reuse these, because that defines the franchise. So we get the same basic world, same bad guys and situations (here amplified a… Continue reading Jurassic World Dominion (2022)

Dry This is a very promising idea. Take a 69 year old actress who was a star from the golden age of porn, someone who has maintained over the years a position of dignity in self-governed sexual expression. Posit the situation that this woman is for some reason alone, without sex for some time, and… Continue reading Une dernière fois (2020)

Europe in Disguise This is a Russian TV production, closely following the Conan Doyle stories. Comments that I have seen accept it as a good version, mostly on the basis of the characterisations. But I find it dreadful, and credit two influences. The first is my understanding of the role the Holmes stories played and… Continue reading The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes and Doctor Watson: King of Blackmailers (1980)

Western Appropriation What a mess. Looks like the Wick movies are dragging a huge part of the industry behind tough guys and modern gunfight choreography. Here and in ‘Nobody’ the formula is three big set pieces strung together by trusted tropes. This one is more offensive — at least to me — because I am… Continue reading Kate (2021)