Review – Johnny Frank Garrett’s Last Word

I hated watching this movie come up short when the people who made it obviously worked so hard on it. Even when elements such as the quirky editing fail, at least they tried doing something creative. Setting the well-intentioned effort aside, this suffers from two fatal flaws. First, it’s the umpty-thousandth rehash of the executed-criminal-seeks-revenge-from-beyond-the-grave story. And worse, it applies this hackneyed plot to a real crime rather than keeping things strictly in the realm of fiction. Nice try, but nope. See if desperate

Review – The Battle of Chosin

I don’t suppose there’s ever been a happy battle where the weather was nice and everyone had a good time. But Chosin Reservoir most definitely wasn’t. Between the freezing cold and relentless attacks, all the marines and soldiers caught up in the fight should have gotten the Medal of Honor just for being there. This documentary would have benefitted a bit from interviews with North Korean and Chinese veterans, though perhaps that was outside the scope of an American Experience episode. Otherwise this is a reasonably comprehensive account of some miserably bad times. Mildly amusing

Review – Monarch

The final episode of The Tudors does roughly the same thing only in much more entertaining (not to mention shorter) fashion. Near the end of his opportunity to misuse the planet’s air supply, Henry VIII grumbles through plots against him and has imaginary conversations with his dead wives (all of whom are played by Jean Marsh). Though the IMDb notes are sparse on this one, I’d be greatly surprised to learn that it didn’t begin life as a stage production or at the very least find itself greatly influenced by theatrical conventions. See if desperate

Review – Side Effects

As medical thrillers go, this one wasn’t too bad. A psychiatrist (Jude Law) “consulting” for a pharmaceutical company prescribes a new antidepressant for a suicidal patient (Rooney Mara) with disastrous results. As the plot slowly thickens into a “wrong man” mystery, it picks up the unfortunate side effect of “you could have backed out of this at any time.” Despite some fairly obvious holes in the plot, the script is reasonably good and the execution well-crafted. Mildly amusing

Review – Jonestown: Paradise Lost

Reenactments combine with survivor interviews to play out the last five days in the existence of the People’s Temple. If you know nothing about what happened, you may find this fascinating. But as a viewer who already knows the morbid details of the mass murder and suicide, I’m far more interested in how the situation got to this point. In retrospect it’s so easy to see Jim Jones as a con artist and a psychopath. When interviewing the victims who managed to elude his homicidal fury, it would be far more fascinating to learn about how they fell under his influence to begin with rather than how they managed to scramble away when it all fell apart. Mildly amusing

Review – Solace

I wonder how many times Anthony Hopkins’s agent has heard “Oh goody, another role in a serial killer movie” from his client. This time around he’s an aging psychic working for the FBI to stop a younger psychic (Colin Farrell) from murdering people to spare them the agonies of terminal illness. Hard to tell if this is a message piece about the value of human life, a sermon about the evils of assisted suicide, or merely a scenery chewing competition between hero and villain. Mildly amusing

Review – Luther: The Fallen Sun

The story line here feels more like a season (or at least a multi-episode arc) rather than a stand-alone movie. If nothing else, the hero goes from hero cop to inmate in a blink-and-you-miss-it, poorly-assembled montage of news clips. Obviously at this point Idris Elba has the title character down pat, and Andy Serkis does a workmanlike job as the despicable villain. But once again the bad guy is just a little too despicable. Nothing that could possibly happen to him would be a balanced comeuppance after such a parade of atrocities. It doesn’t help that the whole thing depends on the hackneyed legend of live pay-per-view snuff sites. Mildly amusing