Disc Reviews

“You will be severely punished for your disobedience.”

Yeah, there is plenty of that going on in this film. What a fragile construct the mind can be, or at least that is how it appears in Bedlam. As the movie progresses, it becomes harder to tell who is more mad, the patients or the people in charge. However, the film does teeter between the line of real insanity and comical insanity.

"When history looks back, I want people to know the Nazis weren’t able to kill millions of people and get away with it."

Those words were spoken by Simon Wiesenthal. Wiesenthal was an architect living in Poland in the 1930's. He was witness to the systematic persecution, isolation and eventual slaughter of the Jewish population of which he was a member when Germany's Nazi troops invaded Poland. He and his family ended up in a concentration camp and into forced labor. When Hitler instituted his "Final Solution" most of his family members were killed. He barely survived after an unsuccessful escape attempt; he would have surely been killed if not for a sudden turn in the Nazi forces

Well, it looks like Comedy Central is still searching for a viable replacement for the loss of The Chappelle Show almost a decade ago. The newest attempt to recapture the former fan base has to be Inside Amy Schumer. I must confess a blissful ignorance to Mrs. Schumer’s rise to fame; I had no knowledge of her existence in recent years, never glimpsing a cameo of her in a television series or movie (or least one that I was aware of), and then all of a sudden it was like she was everywhere.

If I were to tell you The Comedian is a dramatic character study, you would expect it to have some comedic elements, right? Unfortunately, that is the exact mindset I entered the film with. While the film does provide characters and concepts, it left me feeling disappointed. Written and directed by Tom Shkolnik, The Comedian tells the story of Ed (Edward Hogg), a middle-aged man who feels himself slipping away at his dead-end job. In order to cope with his unfulfilling lifestyle, he performs stand-up comedy at his local nightclub.

The Mentalist was once the highest rated drama on television. There was a lot to like here, as I'll discuss throughout this review. But I think most of us had gotten a little sick and tired of the Red John story. The show milked the single case for over five years, and the fan base had dissolved to the point that the once #1 show has been on the bubble for the last two seasons. Fans' patience had worn thin, but at long last the show's producers discovered what we've known since the second season.