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Reviews
Sherlock: The Abominable Bride (2016)
Great Addition to the Series!
I happened to be staying out of town last night in a hotel that shared a parking lot with a movie theater and to my great surprise they were playing a special showing of Sherlock: The Abominable Bride.
If you are just crawling out from under a stone and have never heard of the BBCs updated version of Sherlock then treat yourself to some Netflix and Chill this weekend and bing watch all 3 seasons that are currently available. Until you have the chance to do that, just know that Sherlock is a modern day version of the classic Sherlock Holmes stories crafted in an expert manner by the its creators Mark Gatiss and Steven Moffat.
**Warning Spoilers Ahead**
The Abominable Bride was advertised as a Christmas special one off for the fans that have been waiting 2 years for series 4 to come out. It is set in the classic Victorian time period that we are all used to seeing Sherlock do his deducing in. This upset a great many (myself included) who had fallen in love with the modern day version of the character, but after 2 years anything was MORE than welcome.
I should have know that the shows creators would have something more up their sleeves, but I was genuinely surprised to find out that we were inside of Sherlock "mind palace" the whole time attempting to solve a murder from 100 years ago. This was not a one off like I had mentally prepared myself for, but episode 1 of 1 in season 4.
Sherlock descended deep within his mind to solve the case of the bride that killed herself and then rose from the dead to kill her husband and many others. The case was never solved and held the key to finding out how Moriarty had returned from the dead after blowing his brains out less than 2 feet from Sherlock in Series 2.
We were rocked back in forth between reality and the mind of Sherlock and many times questioned which of the two worlds was truly real. It was a great change of pace and a more than welcome explanation to the shift to the Victorian time period.
As always the script and story were brilliantly re-told and the actors despite playing two different versions of their characters did so flawlessly. We were treated to even more of what we know and love about Shrelock and even shown what has been ignored or only teased up to this point about his drug addiction.
To this day if I were stuck on an island and could only have 3 shows to watch over and over again, Shrelock would without doubt be on that list. The Abominable Bride is a more than welcome addition to this amazing series.
The Big Short (2015)
The Big Short!
Wow! I can't remember the last time I watched a movie that entertained the way that The Big Short managed to. Somehow while sitting there I learned a 1,000 things I had no clue happened during the housing market collapse of 08, while laughing out load every 15 minutes and feeling like I was going to throw up during others. I love movies where the underdog wins or in this case is right. I love movies where the underdog gets rich even more. I don't know that I can say that any of those types of movies have ever taught me anything important about recent history. Erin Brockovich might be the last one that even came close and that story did not impact the world the way the housing market collapse did.
The acting was amazing! Ryan Gosling and Christian Bale hit it out of the park. Steve Carell who I have never been able to see as anyone other than Michael from the office gave the best performance of his life. Overall this was a stroke of genius in casting. The only criticism I can give would have to be with the shaky, unfocused single camera approach that they took with shooting this film. It is just not my cup of tea. It looks cheap and annoys me. Sure this was supposed to be a documentary style type of a thing where the characters break the fourth wall every chance they are given, but still. I hate it and I always will. You can thank Cloverfield for that.
Overall this was a great way to kick off 2016 at the movies. Great acting, and a great story telling when the story should have been complicated and boring. Let's call it 5 stars.
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