Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on August 17th, 2015
Everyone on TV has nicer clothes and a bigger home than you do. And I’m not just talking about fictional doctors or lawyers. Even small-screen characters with relatively modest incomes manage to live in palatial apartments. Need proof? The 2 Broke Girls in CBS’s hit sitcom have an apartment that is literally big enough to fit a horse. (Hi, Chestnut.) Season 4 even manages to squeeze in a gaggle of Victoria's Secret models (Ep. 6/“And the Model Apartment”), and the girls' building gets a new tenant when lewd line cook Oleg (Jonathan Kite) moves in with larger-than-life upstairs neighbor Sophie (Jennifer Coolidge), leading to the one-liner “the booty call is coming from inside the house.”
“You two are a combination of sugar and spice...and things not so nice.”
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 14th, 2015
“You will remain my prisoners until you've told me what really happened in Masada.”
Those words are spoken by Flavius Josephus, the real-life historian for the Romans who chronicled the Siege of Masada. In The Dovekeepers, Josephus is talking to two iron-willed female prisoners who also happen to be among the few people who survived the attack. Their story is told in flashback, and this two-part miniseries brushes up against some interesting points about who gets to write humanity's history. But in telling the story from a female perspective — an admirable, out-of-the-box idea — this miniseries reduces a complex, fascinating historical event into a stiff, protracted soap opera.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 11th, 2015
"Milk will be spilled."
That's for sure, and you can expect more than a little crying over it all. The saddest news, however, is the coming fifth season will be the show's final year. You really should not even think about joining the series from this point. I suspect it will still be quite entertaining, but for the full experience you do have to start from the beginning. The evolution of the Cullen character from Civil War veteran out for vengeance to the man who we see in the fourth season is a rather nice journey to witness. So saddle up for the first three. You can find the reviews for other seasons here.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on August 11th, 2015
“Everybody in the world knows who Big Bird is.”
This documentary exists because many fewer people know Caroll Spinney, the man who has inhabited the iconic Sesame Street character for 46 years and counting. (Spinney is also the man behind my personal favorite Sesame Street character, Oscar the Grouch, but working that into the movie’s title would’ve made it truly unwieldy.) The film takes us behind the feathers and works best as a loving tribute to a man who has entertained millions of children across the globe.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 11th, 2015
I realized Hot Pursuit was in big trouble during the sequence when intensely by-the-book Officer Cooper (Reese Witherspoon) accidentally ingests cocaine. The joke is supposed to be that the drug sends Cooper into a comically manic, frenzied state; the problem is the way Witherspoon behaves during this sequence isn't all that different from the way she's played Cooper up to that point. And that's the problem with Hot Pursuit: it's the movie equivalent of someone who types in ALL CAPS all the time. Even worse, it's an unholy (and unfunny) mash-up of Midnight Run and Thelma & Louise that shines a blazing spotlight on its leading ladies' worst qualities.
As I mentioned before, Witherspoon stars as Cooper, who idolized her legendary cop father and always dreamed of following in his footsteps. When we meet Cooper, however, she's comically disgraced her father's good name — we're meant to believe no one ever told her what “calling shotgun” meant — and is stuck working as a glorified secretary in the evidence room of her Texas police department. She gets a stab at redemption when her captain (John Carroll Lynch) assigns her to accompany a U.S. Marshal (Richard T. Jones) to escort and protect a drug cartel informant and his wife Daniella (Sofia Vergara).
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on August 10th, 2015
“What's this? The Comeback comeback?”
The most unlikely program to air on HBO over the last year didn't feature dragons or detectives...it was the story of a diva. Obviously, The Comeback — the rare HBO show that wasn't granted a second season — isn't as lavish as Game of Thrones or as ambitious as True Detective. But even for a network with a sterling reputation for taking chances and thinking outside the box, the return of The Comeback as an 8-episode “limited series” was somewhat of a shock.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by J C on August 10th, 2015
“Sometimes the truth isn't believable. That doesn't mean that it's not true.”
Talk about truth being stranger than fiction! That proverb absolutely applies to the real-life story of Mike Finkel and Christian Longo, two men from seemingly disparate backgrounds who were thrust together by extraordinary circumstances. Their relationship is the basis for True Story, a drama about duality and deception. But while the truth is often stranger than fiction, that doesn't necessarily mean it's more entertaining.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 7th, 2015
"There can be no murder in paradise."
That was the stand of the Soviet Union's ruling party during the Cold War. They believed that murder was a capitalist crime. So what happens when a serial killer is killing young boys up and down the railway? That's the premise of Lionsgate's Child 44. It's based on the Tom Rob Smith novel which is part of a trilogy based on the character Leo Demidov. The story itself was based on an actual Soviet Union serial killer named Andrei Chikatilo, who is suspected of killing over 50 children in the 1970's. To set the story apart from other "true crime" entries, the facts were fictionalized and moved deeper into the Cold War era of the 1950's and a post-war Soviet Union at the peak of its power and world influence. It was their own "great experiment", and it was considered fatal to admit to the world that such base crimes and instincts existed in such a utopia.
Posted in: Disc Reviews by Gino Sassani on August 5th, 2015
"This ain't no place for a hero."
Strike Back follows the exploits of an elite and secret British military team called Section 20. On paper they do not exist, but they've got all the best new high-tech toys, and they're going to need every one of them. They're going after the top terrorist threats. They combine the intelligence-gathering network of a CIA-type organization with the precision strike force impact of a top Navy Seals team.
Posted in: No Huddle Reviews by J C on August 5th, 2015
The notion that there are two sides to every story is at the center of The Affair. Almost every episode depicts the same events related to the titular adulterous relationship from two different perspectives. It’s an ingenious and inclusive storytelling tool because TV viewers are encouraged to spot the differences in each character’s account of events. (Along with inconsistencies in hairstyles, wardrobe, wallpaper, etc.) That’s why I was somewhat disheartened by the latter portion of the season veering away from what made the show great.
- “Marriage means different things to different people.”
