Reviews
Apparitions (2008)
Where is Rod Serling when you really need him?
When I saw that the six episodes of "Apparitions" were available for streaming on Netflix, I browsed the user reviews on two sites, and found them to be overwhelmingly glowing. And so, even before I had an opportunity to view the episodes myself, I drew them to the attention of a friend who is a fan, as am I, of Martin Shaw's work. I was surprised to learn from him, a few days later, that he had abandoned "Apparitions" after viewing the first episode. I understood why when I finally got around to viewing the series: I, too, wanted to quit after the first episode, but I stuck with it through three, after which I cut my losses and gave up.
Afterwards, I looked again at the glowing user reviews and tried to reconcile them to what I had seen. I could not. Especially puzzling is the opinion that the stories are "thought-provoking." Really? Consider the following exchange, taken verbatim (my comments in brackets), from Episode 3.
Father Jacob (Martin Shaw), exorcist extraordinary, is called to a prison to interview a convicted rapist named Cory who appears to be possessed by a woman. During the interview, Cory begins to sweat blood, a sure sign that demonic, or divine, powers are at work. (There's a fair amount of sweating and crying blood in the series–both by humans and by statues. But, hey, who among us hasn't encountered it?) Later, Cory is assaulted in the shower by a group of inmates. Afterwards, Father Jacob, the warden, and the prison priest discuss the possibly that Cory is possessed by a saint, and they speculate by which saint. WARDEN: "What about suspects? How many saints are there?" FATHER JACOB: "Ten thousand plus." WARDEN: "Possession then. Any of them got form {a police record} on that?" FATHER JACOB: "We're on our own there. There are no documented cases of saintly possession." WARDEN: "What about saints and rapists?" FATHER JACOB: "Maria Goretti is the patron saint of rape victims. She was murdered resisting a rape just over a hundred years ago." WARDEN: "Was she a virgin?" FATHER JACOB: {Nods} "She was eleven." WARDEN: "Should we dig up some background on her and Cory, and see if there are any other connections?" FATHER JACOB: "Cory was 20 when he was put behind bars. Maria Goretti's assailant, Alessandro Serenelli was also 20. Both gave their victims the same choice: lose your virginity or die. But Serenelli repented in prison. He attended Holy Communion with the victim's mother, and he went to her canonization. But Cory has never even admitted his guilt." WARDEN: "Right. Well, that's what I'm saying. She takes over a guy who raped virgins; gets him raped {in prison} till he owns up." PRISON PRIEST: "Does that sound like God? That is Satan making a mockery of everything we stand for!" FATHER JACOB: "But if it is Maria Goretti, perhaps she's trying to get him to reconcile with his victims."
This scene cries out for Rod Serling, to step from the shadows, look into the camera, and address the audience. "Three seemingly intelligent adults discuss the possibility that an 11- year-old rape victim, 100 years dead, has taken possession of a convicted rapist, to provoke his rape in prison, forcing him to reconcile with his victims. These three men do not yet realize that they're no longer in Kansas, or anywhere else on Planet Earth. They're in
The Twilight Zone."
On the positive side, production values are high; the settings are appropriately atmospheric; and the cast performs heroically in the face of some really bad dialog. But none of this succeeds in elevating "Apparitions" above silliness.
There is a point when Cardinal Bukovak, who is trying to rein in Father Jacob, says of him: "I'm not denying his charisma. Exorcists are full of it." With his last point, the Cardinal has taken the words out of my mouth.
Place of Execution (2008)
It's the journey, not the destination
The story is that of a teenage girl from a rural village who went missing while walking her dog on the moors. Her body was never found but evidence that she had been kidnapped and murdered was, as was evidence that her stepfather was responsible. Based on that evidence, and despite the absence of the girl's body, her stepfather was convicted and hanged. Fast- forward forty years to the present, when filmmaker Catherine Heathcote is reexamining the crime in a documentary for TV. As the deadline for wrapping up her film nears, a key figure in the documentary, George Bennett, the then-young lead detective in the original investigation, whose career was launched by the case, reverses his decision to discuss the case on camera. Bennett is clearly troubled by the case, and he tells Heathcote vaguely "mistakes were made." Heathcote's request of her boss for more time, so she can pin down the truth, is rewarded by his pulling her from the film and replacing her with an ambitious assistant whose orders are to meet the deadline. Something was clearly amiss with the original investigation, but what? Heathcote presses ahead on her own to find out.
While I had a sense of what was troubling George Bennett, and the direction the story was heading, the film was effective in keeping me guessing at the details until nearly the end. It did so, however, in large part because of the improbability of its resolution. Now, I don't wish to exaggerate this point: I have encountered stories and resolutions that I found equally, if not more, improbable in any number of episodes of highly-regarded British mystery series. (Pushing the improbability envelope seems to be the norm in mystery/police-procedural dramas these days.)
In summary, the quality of the production is high, and the story will hold your interest. The acting is first-rate: Juliet Stevenson is always good, and the actors who play Bennett and his partner as young men are well matched physically to the two who play them as old men (I found this to be more effective than aging the young actors with makeup). The journey to the story's resolution is satisfying even if the resolution itself is not completely so.
Beck (1997)
An outstanding series
After having exhausted, it seemed, the supply of British mystery/police-procedural series, I turned my attention to foreign (non-English-language) productions. If you are not averse to subtitles, you will find among foreign productions some outstanding series in this genre, and "Beck" is one of them.
"Beck" – after "Wallander" and "Van Veeteren" – is the third Swedish-language police- procedural series I have watched, and it may be the best, which is high praise. I should qualify that by saying I have watched only the first 18 episodes of "Beck" (produced from 1997 to 2005), available in the USA as sets 1 through 6. Eight subsequent episodes have been produced and released on DVD, but not yet, as far as I can tell, with Region 1 encoding.
"Beck," which aired as a Swedish TV series from 1997 to 2009, is based on the books of Mai Sjöwall and Per Wahlöö in which Inspector Martin Beck, the lead detective of a special homicide team of the Swedish police, was the central character. I gather that the team (in this series) is based in Stockholm, but the crimes they investigate are not limited to that city. Each episode is approximately 90 minutes in length and represents a complete case. I found the stories to be uniformly engrossing, and in several there were twists at the end that I did not see coming.
Tying the episodes together is a cadre of well-cast, well-acted characters that appear in all, or nearly all, episodes, and other characters whose tenure spans fewer episodes. Three characters, who appear in all episodes, merit special mention: Beck: level-headed, insightful, possessed of more of an everyman quality than most leading characters (he reminded me of my junior high biology teacher); Gunvald, Beck's right-hand man: brash, swaggering, politically incorrect, tough – the iron fist in Beck's velvet glove; Grannen: Beck's wonderfully eccentric neighbor - he rarely failed to make me laugh.
Note: As a result of having read a user review (on another site) that lauded the series but was critical of the quality of the video transfer, especially in light of the fact the reviewer considered the DVD sets to be pricey, I purchased just one set and was attentive to image quality when I watched the first episode. What I found was that the video transfer is not state of the art but neither is it bad. More importantly, it quickly ceased to be an issue as I was pulled into the series. And after I finished the first set, I purchased the remaining five.
The Guilty (1992)
Preposterous plot twists overshadow strong performances
The main reason, in my opinion, for watching this British mini-series is the performance of the reliably-excellent Michael Kitchen (Foyle of "Foyle's War"), here playing against type as Steven Vey, a successful barrister and a man as arrogant as he is amoral. Though married, Vey has eyes for a young secretary in his office. She is sufficiently flattered by his flirting that the two end up one evening after work at her apartment. Sensing that she has allowed things to go too far, she tries to end their evening together, but Vey is not about to be rebuffed, and he proceeds to force himself on the young woman. Not long after this incident, Vey receives a coveted appointment to the bench. The young woman, wanting some sense of justice but believing that she would have little chance of getting it in court, contacts Vey with an offer: if he resigns his judgeship, she will remain quiet about what he did to her; if he does not, she will go public.
The stage is set for a promising drama, which makes what follows all the more disappointing. First, the story shifts from London to Birmingham and to a young, petty thief, Eddy Doyle. Doyle learns from his mother that the man he thought was his father is actually his adoptive father, that his biological father is a man by the name of... Steven Vey! Learning this, Doyle is off to London to try to locate Vey. In what follows, the story goes off the rails, at least it did for me, because of the coincidences the writers invoke to intersect the paths of Doyle and Vey and of Doyle and the young lady who was Vey's victim. If you are tolerant of these preposterous twists, then you may be impressed with this mini-series. I wasn't.
Donovan: Donovan (2004)
Underwhelming
This series was initially released as "Donovan," for the protagonist, Joseph Donovan, played by Tom Conti, and later as "DNA." Donovan is a retired expert in forensics and successful author whose personal life is complicated by his wife's serial infidelity. As the series opens, Donovan is asked to help the police with a murder investigation in which the name "Donovan" was scrawled in blood on the wall of the room in which the victim was found. It is not long before there is a second murder featuring Donovan's name writ large in blood at the scene. The direction the story is taking becomes clearer with the discovery of forensic evidence implicating Donovan, and he becomes suspect #1. Complicating matters for Donovan is his experiencing dissociative fugue - states during which he does things of which he has no memory - and Donovan's son having witnessed suspicious acts on the part of his father, acts his father denies. This opens the door to the possibility that Donovan committed the murders but has no memory of them. The police buy into this much quicker than will the astute viewer, who will realize that the series, then in its early episodes, has nowhere to go if Donovan is the murderer. Still, what unfolds might have been interesting had it been remotely plausible. Donovan's son, for example, who theretofore has not appeared overly enamored of his parents, falsely admits to having committed the murders so mum and dad can stay together. That is merely implausible. The following plot element from episode 2 is nothing short of bizarre.
Donovan, realizing he is being framed and knowing by whom, conducts a clandestine, and illegal, search of the suspect's home at night. He leaves on foot, via a footpath along a river, unaware that the suspect, having returned and witnessed his exit, is following him, iron pry bar in hand. The suspect stealthily overtakes Donovan, strikes a crushing blow to the back of his head, and rolls his body into the river. We see Donovan's body floating face down, carried away by the current, over a spillway and into the distance. Now this, coming about halfway through the second of five episodes, left me wondering how the writers were going to resurrect their main character. Well, resurrect him they did, because soon we see Donovan, looking as healthy as ever (with not so much as a bandage on his head!), plotting to expose his attacker. How did he survive having his skull bashed with a pry bar and his body committed to the river? No explanation is offered. In fact, there is no subsequent reference to the incident at all! It is as though it never happened.
For me, the series never recovered after that. Indeed, none of the following three episodes was potentially as interesting as the first two. The forensic aspects of the stories were not particularly interesting, and, as is often the case, the investigative team and the way in which it functioned were not realistic. Conti is good in the role of Donovan; indeed, he is the reason to watch the series. All in all, this is not a terrible series, but neither is it a particularly good one, either.
Wallander (2005)
Top notch
The following refers to the 13 episodes of Season 2.
It sometimes seems as though the world is divided into two groups: those for whom subtitles pose no problem, and those for whom they do. If you fall in the former group, and you enjoy police-procedural dramas, then this series is for you. If you fall in the latter group, or if your comfort level plummets when you venture beyond BBC productions, then try the series with Kenneth Branagh and a supporting cast of English-speaking actors pretending to be Swedes - it's not as good, but it is in English.
I am a big fan of British police-procedural/detective series, and it was only because I was having trouble finding ones I had not seen that I turned to the Swedish-language "Wallander" series with Krister Henriksson in the lead role. I was impressed: it holds its own against the better British series.
Which actor you consider the definitive Kurt Wallander may depend on which version of the series you see first (assuming you see more than one). As much as I like Branagh and admire his work, he runs second to Henriksson in the Wallander Stakes. Indeed, the character of Wallander is not the same in the two series. The focus is much more on Wallander in the British series - a choice perhaps necessary to attract Branagh to the role - and he is portrayed as something of a loner, while in the Swedish version the members of Wallander's squad get significant screen time, and Wallander is portrayed more as an intelligent man with good instincts who is effective as a detective, a leader and a mentor. Branagh's Wallander is a man grappling with emotional issues, while Henriksson's comes across as reflective and world- weary but a man largely at peace with himself. I have not read the books on which the series is based, so I do not know which portrayal is truer to Mankell's character, but I do know I'd rather spend time with Henriksson's Wallander than with Branagh's.
The supporting cast is excellent, and, as indicated above, we are allowed to get to know their characters. The plots of the episodes held my attention, production values are high, and the locations and Swedish-speaking cast added to the verisimilitude. I especially liked how the relationship between Wallander and the prosecutor (an attractive divorcée who is also his neighbor) was handled. They are two adults of middle-age who develop feelings of mutual respect and affection (though they occasionally butt heads on the job), but their attraction is tempered by the baggage each carries from previous relationships. Their mating dance is cautious and restrained - very Scandinavian, one could say - and strikes just the right notes.
Den röda vargen (2012)
Better than its title
This series is far better than its title (reminiscent of juvenile fiction) would lead one to believe. The series, adaptations of the books of Liza Marklund, comprises six 90-minute episodes, each representing a story that the main character, Annika Bengtzon, a crime reporter for a Stockholm newspaper, is pursuing. Each story is complete in itself, the thread that runs through them being the newspaper's staff, Bengtzon, and her personal life. Filmed in Sweden with a Swedish cast (and thus with English subtitles), the series features excellent cinematography and high production values. The stories are interesting; the time devoted to Bengtzon's pursuit of the story and the effect of her career on her personal life is well balanced; and the cast, especially Malin Crépin as Bengtzon, are effective. All six episodes can be streamed on Netflix.
Ørnen: En krimi-odyssé (2004)
A mixed bag
I have no problem with subtitles; indeed, I number among my favorite series "Wallander," "Beck," and "Van Veeteren," all three Swedish productions, and the French series "Spiral." What those three series – what any good series – offer are complex, realistic characters and plots. "The Eagle" is a mixed bag in both respects.
The title refers to the nickname of the main character, Hallgrim Ørn Hallgrimsson, whose middle name is Icelandic for eagle. The Eagle heads the operational side of a Danish government organization specializing in fighting international crime involving Denmark. The organization includes the usual cast of characters: a computer whiz, a forensics expert or two, a jack-of-all-trades tough guy, a blond love interest for The Eagle. The characters all have back stories (the most extensive, and oddest, being that of the main character), but the back stories lacked the depth necessary for me to feel emotionally invested in any of the characters.
The series spans 24 episodes, all of which can be viewed by streaming from Netflix. Each episode is about one hour in length, and the individual stories span two to three episodes. The series relies heavily on super villains: criminals who seemingly are able to go anywhere, kill anyone, elude the police at will, and who have an army of henchmen at their beck and call. The first of these, Sergei, serves to illustrate some of the series' shortcomings. After killing four people at an airport – including two policemen and a security guard – while masterminding the ruse of an airliner hijacking, Sergei is taken into custody. Despite these crimes, he is transferred from one facility to another in a passenger car, his only escort being the police officers in the car with him. If you can't see where this is heading, you will enjoy this series. After his escape, Sergei kills several more people, traveling between Denmark and Norway seemingly at will, before again being captured. This time when he is transported, to a ministry for questioning, the police have their act together – sort of. He is transported in a van with a heavily-armed SWAT team and motorcycle escort. Just about everybody involved is wearing body armor, except, of course, Sergei. And, just as unbelievably, the police fail to take the obvious precaution of securing the perimeter at their destination. Again, you know where this is headed. Plot contrivances that keep villains in play are effective when they are plausible and they take the viewer by surprise, but often that is not the case in this series. (As an aside, the actor who plays Sergei, Thomas Gabrielsson, plays one of the lead characters in "The Protectors," a series about the Danish Personal Protection Unit, an organization similar to the US Secret Service, a series that, in my opinion, is superior to "The Eagle.")
Don't get me wrong: this is not a bad series, especially when compared to most of what the American TV industry produces: production values are high; the cinematography is good; the European settings are a nice change from those of American and British productions; the cast is competent; the stories are OK. My disappointment is that it could easily have been better.
Zui hao de shi guang (2005)
A critic's movie
This film is a darling of the critics. Roger Ebert gave it four stars; A. O. Scott of the NY Times describes it, on the DVD's box, as "a masterpiece," adding, "this is why cinema exists." That being the case, if you are, or aspire to be, a devotee of cinema, then this film may be required viewing. But if your sensibilities run toward (mere) movies, beware.
The film, set in Taiwan and China, depicts three love stories -- set in three historical periods: 1911, 1966, and 2005 -- using the same actor and actress. The problem, simply put, is that "Three Times" moves at a glacial pace and little happens. As one of the few critics not to wax euphoric put it, "if this movie moved any slower it could qualify as a photograph." When each segment ended, and when the final credits rolled, the question plaintively asked by Peggy Lee came to mind: Is that all there is?
24 (2001)
Mystery Science Theater 3000 fodder
I purchased Season One, never having seen a single episode, on the strength of a friend's recommendation, and watched it in its entirety over the span of about ten evenings. I stuck with it only because my wife enjoyed it and I didn't want to be a spoilsport, which required that I suppress my urge to laugh out loud at the outlandish plot twists, which were many, and the cardboard characters.
There is not a moment of Season One that I found believable. Start with the production values, which are strictly made-for-TV. Little of the series is filmed on location, and the obvious sound stage and back lot settings set a tone of artificiality that, given the plotting, is probably appropriate. Note how Bauer's wife and daughter can seemingly run miles eluding their kidnappers and never break a sweat. And because so many of the scenes are filmed on a sound stage, the lighting is often intrusively unrealistic. (In one scene, one of Victor Drazen's son's is talking face to face with Bauer's daughter, and as the camera switches from one to the other, it is always the right side of their faces that is illuminated.)
The plot reminds me of a Robert Ludlum novel in which the hero is confronted by a sinister, shadowy organization whose reach is unlimited and whose minions are everywhere. Gosh, to whom can a hero turn to in such circumstances? Why, to the writers! One can usually bank on a kidnapping and an escape, but here there seems to be an endless series of each. Why is a far-fetched escape from a 747 - which is then blown up killing all passengers - required to secure the credentials of a photographer, who is later replaced by a double, when Drazen's all-powerful organization should have been able to eliminate the photographer and make the swap after his arrival in LA? Why would the government build an elaborate, secret detention facility, and instead of locating it at a secure site, put it under yes, under a tract of farmland to which anyone, apparently, has access? (A facility so secret it takes CTU staff all of about a minute to access a detailed map of the facility.) The absurdities peak when Bauer's wife and daughter are in a car escaping (again) from their kidnappers, and his wife pulls off on a side road and exits the car, telling her daughter "I'll see if they're still following us." As she begins to trot down the road to check things out (what exactly would she do if they were still being followed?), the car, with daughter inside, rolls over an embankment (oooops!) and down into a ravine, where it bursts into flame. Seeing this, Ma Bauer collapses, and when she revives ta-da! she's suffering from traumatic amnesia! If you can watch this plot twist without laughing out loud, you're a better man than I. It goes without saying that daughter Bauer miraculously survives all this
only to face, that's right, another kidnapping.
Just when it appears that the script couldn't get more hokey (my apologies to any Virginia Tech alumni reading this), the writers turned to casting for their pièce de résistance: Dennis Hopper as the Serbian war criminal Victor Drazen, whose desire for revenge set all this malarkey in motion. I'll wager that every community theater group from Portland to Poughkeepsie has at least one member who could have played the part of Victor Drazen, as written, credibly, and whose anonymity would have worked to the role's favor (as it did for the character Gaines). Instead, we get Dennis Hopper, who, in this role, is never for a second anyone but Dennis Hopper. (There is a point early in his time on screen when I thought Hopper was struggling to keep a straight face, when I thought he might laugh out loud and say, "sorry, guys, this is the best Serbian accent I can do." But, trooper that he is, Hopper sucked it up and soldiered on.) Finally, the fact the action unfolds in real time added nothing I found it to be an empty gimmick.
Compared to the drivel the networks ABC, CBS, NBC turn out, "24" may be considered cutting edge, but when judged next to "The Wire," or even "The Shield," it's laughable.
Two Mikes Don't Make a Wright (1993)
A must-see for Jim Broadbent's tour-de-force performance
In "A Sense of History," the segment directed by Mike Leigh, we follow a British aristocrat, the 23d Earl of Leete (played by an unrecognizable Jim Broadbent, who wrote the script) as he strolls his estate while describing, as though to a documentary film crew, the history of his family and his role in it. What begins as a mildly interesting discourse becomes riveting as the Earl's casual monologue reveals his shocking, twisted past. It's all played straight, in the style of a documentary. Broadbent's performance is brilliant. I would love to have a copy of this, but, as far as I can tell, it is available on neither video nor DVD.