mjanelle-24974

Different kind of a Holocaust movie. It's sweet and sad, centering around a 94 year old woman who has just lost her best friend and moves from her Florida retirement community to Manhattan to live with her daughter and grandson. Soon after she meets a group of holocaust survivors and feels compelled to tell a story. The story/lie kind of takes on a life of its own and eventually gets out of hand with potentially tragic effect.

It's a small movie, a little bittersweet in its execution and end, but in the end somewhat slow and drab. The acting is generally very good. June Squibb is charming as she always is. A little more depth of character might have garnered her some Oscar consideration, but this performance would be a stretch.

If you have nothing else to do, it's not a waste of time.

I saw this at a "blind" sneak peek last night. Was debating whether to go, but it was "revealed" early that it was Relay, so based on the previews I'd seen decided to give it a try. I'm glad I did.

This was well and cleverly written. Some might be bored by some of the repetitiveness of some of the scenes, the main character's methodological preparations for everything he did to protect his client (and to keep order in his own life - you'll understand why when you see the movie). And the repetitiveness all makes sense as the movie comes together.

The acting is excellent. Have always loved the two main players, Riz Ahmed and Lily James. While not an "action" movie in the traditional sense of the word, I would still consider this to be in the "thriller" category. The tension is often palpable, the cat and mouse quite clever. And the twistiness towards the end is both surprising and fun.

Despite it's thriller-ish attitude, it is also a fairly small, quiet movie. There is little dialog other than conversation through the Tri-State Relay System, which gives much of that dialog an almost robotic feeling. But it works, and actually adds to the tension.

I won't give anything away. To do so would spoil the fun. This one is worthwhile.

This is what I imagine a softcore porn version of Desperate Housewives (but set in Texas) would be. None of the characters has any depth (i.e. - they are all stock characters from "romance" and soap operas). The baddies are really bad. The good people are really good (and get stepped on unceremoniously) by the bad people. There's lots of sex, too much nudity, and not enough plot to go around (it feels like the mini-scenes and tensions are just ways to get to more sex - much of it fairly explicit for TV). There are some good actors here, who apparently did it for the money. They are all archetypes. There's the apparent naif (a bright blue liberal from Cambridge - she quite pointedly says that city's name when someone says she's from Boston) who enters (pushed is more like it) into the lioness's den. Spurred on by her ambitious architect husband wanting to get in get in good with the powerful and monied side of town. There's the cheap bad girl who married well (and you can kind of guess that most of the society women in this town are of that ilk) to the most powerful man in town who is now running for governor (not a spoiler, they say this in the first five minutes of the show) and the poor good girl from the wrong side of the tracks who is now the girlfriend of the son of the paster of the local megachurch. (again non-spoiler alert - she gets murdered in the woods, which is the basis for the "mystery" side of the show - who did it?).

I don't need to go into the plot, since there really isn't much of one. Some people get killed. Some people have sex with people they shouldn't and don't have sex with people they should. There's a lot of gun and Texas and conservative right culture talk. You get the picture.

If you understand all of the above you've basically seen the show. Desperate Housewives without the good writing and with all the sex that was behind the scenes on the previous show.