tonya-jarrett

Catch You Later or in the U. S., The Game, isn't brilliant TV. It's a rather derivative cat and mouse thriller that doesn't have much new to say. There are performances though that really elevate this tired material: Robson Green, a longtime favorite actor of mine, is appropriately reptilian and charming when he needs to be. It is bonkers though, that the neighborhood group don't clue in sooner, the one exception being Sunetra Sarker as Huw Miller's wife.

By turns, she is angry, frustrated, tired, ultimately loyal and very strong in defense of Huw, seasoned enough to intuit a predator in their midst. It's a performance that works on several levels of believability and ultimately satisfying.

Which brings me to the incredible performance of Jason Watkins, who I bet I've seen in many a British movie/TV show but just don't remember. He gives a full bodied, fleshed out performance of a man obsessed with the one that got away, his white whale. And all his selfishness, determination, frustrations, anger and near hysteria at times, filtered through such human ticks, to get this killer off the streets burns through you. I thought he was just magnificent.

The show isn't required viewing, but if you're an actor, you can learn a lot by just sitting back and watching Jason Watkins work.

I find Flower of Evil to be second only to The Glory, truly one of the best of the Korean series out there. It is incredibly detailed in the arcs of the story, the misdirection, the red herrings and keeps you guessing. Maybe it didn't need to be so long in scope but perhaps the creator and writers thought it the best way to tell the story about real family, duplicitous family and just being human.

I take a point off for the very annoying music. It is almost like watching a Douglas Sirk film and it is absolutely not needed. Why not just depend on your extremely capable cast and the writing, set pieces, which are great. I do not understand this soapy, awful romantic music swelling up, threatening to swallow intimate and emotional moments.

It was a solid first act. It, at least, was interesting and intriguing, well acted, as you try to work out what is going on. How could Acts Two and Three be so awful. How did this get released? I'm still pissed at how I was taken in by daft reviewers out there framing the film as the best thing since sliced bread in the horror world. It isn't. Yeah, there is room in the horror genre for everything, even this dog, I guess. But that doesn't excuse the write-ups and reviews calling it inventive, scary, dark, brilliant (??) because it isn't. Watch The People Under the Stairs, Watch Hemlock Grove to see a truly perverse, frightening TV series with Bill Skarsgård. But don't piss down my back (The Outlaw Josey Wales) and tell ME it's raining. Three stars for Act One.