Tag: crime

Dub’s Take: Once Upon a Time in America (1984)

or, “Deborah’s Theme:
400 Words on Elizabeth McGovern”:
A spoiler-ish mini
movie conversation.

The following post discusses taboo
themes, and contains language that
could be triggering.

I’m late to the “Downton Abbey” party, so I wasn’t aware (or spoiled) that one of season 4’s serials stems from the sexual assault of a major character.

This event – stupefying though off-screen – is earned narratively, by virtue of my invested connection with the players. Original properties usually have to really convince me that their using rape, implied or otherwise, isn’t either for shock value, or out of creative laxity.

Having said that, if an intrepid & shameless (mostly shameless) Reddit user hasn’t already asked what ‘The Most Disturbing Rape Scenes of All-Time’ are, I have now walked into that trap myself.

I have my own personal picks that needn’t be discussed here, but the potency of said scenes would be dissonant were it not for the mettle of the actors involved: particularly those who may not already have a propensity towards violence.

[cont’d]

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400 Words on: The Alto Knights (2025)

or, “Running Around the Woods with Shrimp Cocktails”:
A spoiler-free mini movie review.

2.5 out of 5

There are few things more comforting to a cinephile than Robert De Niro calling someone an expletive & unloading an entire pistol clip into them.

It’s unwholesome, but this has been his playground for decades. The Alto Knights is an impassioned throwback to the Scorsese/De Niro collaborations of old, but lacks the oomph of those masterpieces.

GQ’s 2006 interview with Bob is required reading for anyone wanting an encapsulation of the stubborn actor. I’m not here to rag on De Niro: he’s had many legendary performances over his long career. But like any artist (*cough* senior), he’s set in his ways, rejects change, and becomes crotchety when he feels disrespected.

Now an octogenarian, Bob can’t just go back & retroactively change his De Niro-isms, no matter how much digital technology de-ages him (like in Scorsese’s The Irishman). Now forced into ‘grandpa’ roles that he may or may-not feel are beneath him (being a new dad at 81 certainly increases that obligation), audiences know exactly what to expect.

[cont’d]

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Dead Show Eulogy: CSI Vegas (2021)

A spoiler-free mini television review.

SEASON 1 RATING:
4 out of 5

SEASONS 2 & 3 RATING:
1 out of 5

After an underwhelming ‘series finale’ in 2015 (with creepy-guy Doug Hutchinson as the villain), that “CSI” we like came back in style with a standalone, limited-series revival in 2021. It was pretty good, too: cozy returning work from William Pedersen, Jorja Fox, and Paul Guilefoyle; a straightforward serial; and the successful casting of Paula Newsome (“Chicago Med”) as the department’s new supervisor.

I didn’t connect with the other new actors, but those secondaries weren’t the focus: there’s only so many episodic stories you can tell before details overlap, and CSI’s adroitness – from the 15 seasons of the original series to its various spin-offs – was the slow dishing of its characters’ personal info, only ever noting those beats as they pertained to the caseload.

Flash-forward, and – like all good things – executives misread the positive ratings as audiences wanting more. Pedersen, Fox, and Guilefoyle all left, with Marg Helgenberger & Eric Szmanda chosen to represent the old guard’s new bequest. Weeks would go by without fresh episodes, suggesting that focus-group proposals (including dumping an older, tired Szmanda after only three chapters) were being implemented in real-time: always a bad sign.

And both sequel seasons of “CSI Vegas” were pretty bad: staff writers just couldn’t get their priorities straight. Too much time was dedicated to Newsome’s recovery after an assault, and not enough to Lex Medlin’s Beau’s rehabilitation after getting spooked in the field. Helgenberger, like Szmanda, looked tired, and was only in half the episodes. Scribes instead pivoted to Matt Lauria’s Folsom and his poor decision-making (a three-way office romance; avenging his mother’s murder then having to regain the team’s trust), but Lauria played him without irony: his line readings were surface-level gruff, opposed to finding the Warrick-style pathos.

Season 3’s back-end was spent investigating a cyborg factory, which devolved into Newsome having one-way conversations with the suspected robot antagonist in her office. Catherine being a mentor to Sarah Gilman’s Penny was forgotten. And I would be remiss to not mention episode 2-06 (“Here’s the Rub”) as one of the worst-edited forty minutes of television I’ve ever watched – odd, since established director Mario Van Peebles’ filmography suggests a comfort with the TV format.

Relentlessly disappointing from-a-point and contemptuous toward longtime fans, CSI Vegas is now six-feet underground in the grave it dug itself.

RIP 2024

Poster sourced from thetvdb.com c/o Zeferovic. What do you think? Do you agree that Vegas peaked with its first season, or were you a fan of all three? Was it disrespectful of the original series’ legacy – particularly its treatment of Catherine and disregard for her history with Sam Braun – or have you never been a supporter of the CSI franchise? Let us know in the comments below!

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Selected Scenes: Bad Lieutenant

A spoiler-free single-scene film review & analysis.

Do you ever have a bad day on the road? Sometimes, I get a kick out of pretending that asshole who just cut me off has a life far worse than mine (even though they drive a shiny Escalade with a bumper-sticker that says “My Other Whale Is My Boat”).

Par-example: today at 3 PM, near a school, my wife and I are trying to get out of our Chinese-reflexology foot massage clinic’s underground parking (or CRFMCUP). My wife was driving, and – men, let’s commiserate here – she’s not the best driver. Truth-be-told we’ve never been in an accident, but I sometimes fear for my life just the same. Now picture a four-way traffic stop, and we’re trying to turn left. Everyone driving straight is coming from the Middle School, and left is bumper-to-bumper because of construction two blocks down. My wife pulls into the middle of the intersection – not letting anyone turn right – only to be denied access to the last spot before the light at the end of the gridlock from some person & their kid in a pick-up. We pull in behind him & stick-out ass-end just as the light changes and we start moving again. It doesn’t sound so bad describing it – considering it took all-of five-whole-seconds out of my day – but I assure you that I was on Death’s door.

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Selected Scenes: The Long Good Friday

A spoiler-heavy multi-scene film analysis & review.

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Allow me to be a peg self-righteous for one moment, much like the aggrandizing protagonist of this week’s Selected Scenes, Harold Shand (played by the inimitable Bob Hoskins). Really, I should be writing a review for every movie I watch, at this point. There really is no excuse, especially if it’s something that I’ve been looking forward to watching. If it’s your garden-variety Netflix this-or-that then I get it: I’m maybe only looking at a couple of paragraphs (which wouldn’t sum-up to much more than the usual “I hate it, I hate their model, I hate everything” sort-of diatribe you’ve all read before), and then I need to find a way to get screenshots or (God-forbid) draw something, because this is the Internet and you need a flash screen to get people’s attention, as much as a wall-of-text is criminally-fascinating.

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