Reviewing Movies

Guy Ritchie's the Covenant

A flavour of the week type movie starring Jake Gyllenhaal who has grown up to be an action movie mogul. There's plenty of conflict with Taliban Guerrillas and a picaresque odyssey across forbidding Afghani terrain but the message here highlights America's abandonment of the local interpreters it promised to repatriate to America in return for their service to the "tender" mercies of the Taliban when they pulled up stakes.

Beware Yanks bringing gifts.

Guy Ritchie's The Covenant

Starring Jake Gyllenhaal it's a flavour of the week type movie highlighting America's abandonment of Afghan Interpreters to their fate with the Taliban when the US pulled out. It is spiced with loads of action sequences vs Taliban Guerrillas and a picaresque odyssey across forbidding Afghan terrain.

The Valour and the Horror (1992)

Brian and Terrence McKenna

Savage Christmas: Hong Kong 1941

Death by Moonlight: Bomber Command

In Desperate Battle: Normandy 1944

A mini series each 1hr 44 min

An account of the Canadian experience of WW#2. Reviled by the Royal Canadian Legion. Given written accounts I've read recently I find this version rather temperate in its portrayal. For much of the filming the background music is taken from Faure's Requiem with a snatch of Beethoven's Moonlight Sonata.

In typical fashion generals and air marshals treat the man on the ground or in the plane in similar fashion as the chess player treats the pawns on his checker board; they are expendable. Indeed British generals had disdain for colonial troops.

And the incompetence of those in command of troops in the battle for Normandy gets highlighted here. Child soldiers on the German side pitted against a Black Watch Regiment committed to never retreating.

The Rangers

A WW#2 movie set in a German POW camp but shot in Italy.

What the archival footage of fighters attacking Lancasters and Kamikaze planes dive bombing battleships has to do with the plot I'm uncertain. The acting is plodding, amateurish. The costumes of the officers look fresh from the dry cleaners, never worn. The scene around the table with the generals looks like a rehearsal read through. Call it an OK time-waster.

The explosion, when it comes is rather unspectacular.

Man Down

Shia LaBeouf

A movie from Amazon. The more companies behind a movie the longer the opening credits and the more logos you have to sit through.

This is a flavour of the week kind of movie and not a feel good flick. America pays an awful price for sending its young men to war. One is only young and imbued with immortality once in life and tours of duty in places life Afghanistan disabuse one of that feeling rather quickly.

Gabriel's best friend is killed in an ambush and in dealing with his effects learns that while on injury leave his friend had an adulterous relationship with his wife.

Placed on leave Gabe deals with that betrayal, the loss of his friend in more senses than one, and PTSD. There are no happy endings here.

Masters of the Air

Unlike the senior citizens who appeared in many WW#2 era movies and the creaky old men who would never have survived in Submarines the actors in this series are in their late 20ies to early 30ies. Still older than most of the boys they portray but youthful enough to look the part.

As with Band of Brothers and The Pacific this is a Tom Hanks production and can expected to be high class. It is being streamed on Apple TV.

To illustrate the quality of this production it commissioned the building of 3 Lancs to be used as authentic models for filming.

Just how realistic the show is we see flight crews getting air sick and hear the quip: these powdered eggs were hatched before your balls dropped.

Up to you whether or not you want to spend another $12.99 a month to subscribe to Apple TV.

The Wall

Snipers are loners lying in wait for hours for the perfect shot; looked
at with suspicion even by their own troops. This movie is a
psychological thriller being a contest between an Arab sniper, JUBA and
an American sniper and his spotter. Expect no HEA here.



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The Healer

This is what is termed a high concept movie. A ne'er do well possesses
the uncanny ability to heal. The movie even comes with an HEA. Of
special interest is the fact that it was shot in Lunenburg and I may
even have been camped there while I was being shot.



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Last night I binge-watched the final episodes of  the TV Series Riverdale.

Hollywood has long looked to comic books for inspiration witness the iterations of Batman and Superman over the years. Riverdale is a darker adaptation of the comic Archie from the funny papers. When the first photos of Keneti James (K.J.) Apa and Cole Spruce appeared online my immediate reaction was that I'd never conceived on Archie Andrews as a Hunk. With his Samoan/Kiwi Ancestry this carrot-topped Archie looks like a Sumo Wrestler in training. He makes Luke Perry, of 90210 fame, who plays his father Fred, look tiny by comparison. Indeed in opening scenes of episode one Kevin, Sheriff  Keller's gay son lies on Betty's bed looking at the boy next door across the way observing that he has a six-pack. Yes, Riverdale has a gay charcter and Greg Araki directs an episode in season two. The only comic book character I'm missing is Flute Snoot, a characterization seemingly too politically incorrect for modern audiences. Principal Weatherbee may be bald but he lacks the rolly-polly look and is black. The other teachers on staff appear as cut-outs in classroom scenes.

Cole Spruce gets top billing as Jughead the narrator and moral conscience of the series. The son of a biker-The Serpents-father FP Jones from the wrong side of town. I had to look it up to discover that Jughead's birth name is Forsythe Pendleton Jones III, Scottish for "man of peace".

There may not have been a casting couch but the guys definitely posed topless for their casting reels. Archie may be ruggedly hunky but the rest of the football line-up look like cover models for a fitness mag and are given ample opportunity to show off their ripped abs. Kevin may be gay but no one is going to mess with him, least of all because of his father. Even Jughead knows how to throw a punch.

Whereas Archie was written for laughs Riverdale has an underlying feeling of menace and intrigue. It begins with the discovery of the body of red-headed albino-looking Jason Blossom who it turns out was murdered, his frozen body showing up in Sweetwater Creek with a bullet hole in its forehead. Veronica Lodge shows up looking like a member of the Adams Family with her mother and their butler Smithers running from the ignominy of father Hiram being jailed for swindling his clients.

The love triangle between Betty, Veronica and Archie is retained though complicated by Archie's affair with his nerdy Femme Fatale looking music teacher Miss Grundy. Most of the characters here have long since lost their innocence and their virginity. Riverdale has their own version of the Montagues and the Capulets or the Hatfields and the McCoys. Betty's older sister Polly Cooper violated that code by getting pregnant with Jason Blossom's baby.

Adults do not come off well here. Dysfunctional single-parent families appear to be the norm. Is Vermont the home of Riverdale? Maple syrup would appear to be the homegrown source of wealth and snowy Vancouver is filming location.

Teen love affairs are fleeting and keeping track of who's with whom is a full time job. Watching Fred take Miss Grundy and Archie out to dinner stretches credulity to the max. Since the restrictions on using children on movie sets put severe restraints on shooting schedules all the teens in this show are adults, indeed KJ, only 20, fell asleep at the wheel on the way home from one overlong shoot. He obviously isn't famous enough to date to rate his own chauffeur.

Whereas Archie and the crew by convention have remained eternally teens for 3/4 of a century their TV counterparts will graduate and move off to university breaking up their old gang and thus giving teenage high school dramas a limited shelf life. Even were this not so the adults who play these characters can only pretend to be teens for so long.

It's a good thing the American Navy is the largest such service in the world. Now in its 14th year the original NCIS alone has killed off a ship load of 300 and arrested an equal number. Unlike the show JAG we rarely get to see these cases come to trial. Mark Harmon who helms the crew is no longer a matinee idol but he has finally shed the mousy hairdo. In his late eighties David McCallum as Duckie refuses to retire though he has acquired a side-kick in the person of Brian Dietzen dubbed the basement gnome by Tony who is probablly jealous after the one episode Jimmy took his shirt off. I've never liked DiNozzo who comes off as a condescending strutting peacock. He departed next season. As the Jewish Daughter of the head of Massod Ziva David was an interesting diversion. In her basement lab Abby provides comic relief as a caffeine main-lining mad scientist who performs forensic and electronic computer miracles that enable the brass to overlook her many eccentricities.

Other members of the team come and go as well as Directors and Secnavs--their political boss. Acronyms are popular here, POTUS anyone, for The Prez himself, Obama when these episodes were shot. Although the Navy obviously exists within the political arena the leanings of our cast do not come up. Shows that run to 300 episodes over multiple years in the cut-throat world of movie studios, TV Networks, and Online Streaming owe a great deal to their production team: the writers, location scouts, costume and make-up. The line-up of guest stars is tribute to the vibe on set that makes regulars want to stay and drop-ins want to visit. Ralph Waite, the former John Walton Sr as Jethro Gibbs' father was a welcome diversion, both the actor and pops have died.

A cross promotion with the less popular NCIS: New Orleans demonstrates Southern Drawls so thick they seem almost laughable. Also we get to meet Abby's brother, a chef so niave he borders on being an idiot savant.

The season ends with a rather dramatic twist but without the typical cliffhanger though in supplements we learn it got a two-year renewal.

The Boys are back in town, well Nebraska actually as the season starts. Same good ole boys, same muscle car, sinister evils, cheesy music, arsenal of weapons, working class wardrobe, tacky taste in food, brotherly banter, villains and good guys, essentially business as usual. Dean catches Sammy wetting his wick and congratulates him on finally losing his cherry. The rock 'em sock 'em slug fests make it hard to believe nothing gets broken or no one suffers severe concussions. I still wonder how they avoid speeding tickets.

The script writers managed to work the legend of Lizzie Borden into the storyline.

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Is prayer a supernatural shopping list and do we expect God to use divine drones to deliver? Just how actively involved is god in the day to day operation of his universe or did he set the principles in motion and then sit back to let nature take its course. Is God removed from his creation or does he inhabit every part of it. Did he in fact have a hand in the big bang?

Is man god's greatest creation of his worst mistake? If Putin and Trump push their respective buttons releasing global Armageddon would God intervene? Given a crucifixion how effective has God's interference in human affairs been in the past?

Some might call it blasphemy but the TV Series Supernatural assumes that god abandoned Heaven and chaos ensued. Of course the show has angels, demons, the king of hell, and Lucifer in a cage. God is above concepts of good and evil, right and wrong. He does not have a soul. He puts in an appearance as Chuck who inhabits a night club while he writes his autobiography. His scribe criticizes his writing style but offends God when he calls him a coward. How an omnipotent being could experience cowardice begs the question.

The show does not have a monopoly on anthropomorphizing God, George Burns anyone? Man has long created god in his own imaged. Nor is evil personified a new concept. I may not believe in angels, ghosts, haunted houses, demon possession, but it fun to suspend disbelief and sit back and watch how the show confronts its issues. That the two main characters dress like hicks, guzzle beer, eat junk food, listen to crappy music while tooling around in a muscle car loaded with an arsenal is all part of the fun. How they avoid speeding tickets, get away with the arsenal, dig up graves, engage in brawls that rival ultimate battle royals, impersonate the FBI....

In the end the show is grounded by the love that exists between these two brothers. Amusing that Dean's little baby brother towers over him, and that Sammy is the nerd who specializes in high tech but we've seen hi with his shirt off though the show doesn't specialize in beefcake. And after 11 seasons Dean got to tease Sam about losing his virginity.

Spoiler Alert

In the end love conquers all though the idea that God could die.... The season ends with a cliff-hanger involving the brothers though I feel confident that the producers are not going to kill off either of their leads. But it does set us up for the plotlines for next season