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Reviews
The Closer: To Protect & to Serve (2006)
What Mikethewhistle said.
This was the episode that raised the series from a good police procedural with a strong believable female lead, solid ensemble cast, and gifted writers to an exceptional audience experience. Dubbed by hardcore fans "The Skybox episode," it revealed a team of writers who dared to release their inner comic without degrading the concerned characters to do it. Hard to pick a favorite scene from among so many contenders start to finish, but I will anyway: when Brenda asks Sanchez & Daniels why Robbery Homicide is using Priority Homicide's interrogation room. Sanchez mentions "technical problems" and Daniels produces a wad of PC cables, flashing a grin, " Bless me, Reverend Mother, for I have sinned." Brenda grins back saying "Oooh, we're all going to Hell." I still can't get enough of that scene! All done with easy sophistication and conisitency. In some ways it foreshadows the 2-part 2nd season ender, one the best series episodes ever written.
Marple: Nemesis (2007)
What a ghastly cock up of one of Marple's best vehicles!
I wouldn't have given it 1 star if I could have avoided it. Actors gotta act and writers gotta write, but this was a crime against both professions. All of those involved will be held to account when they appear before their professional maker for judgment on their careers and how they acquitted themselves.
Northern Exposure: Get Real (1991)
Willing Suspension of Disbelief
This episode expressed Northern Exposure's approach to mixing fantasy with reality in a most delightfully convincing way. A wandering band of entertainers led by a disillusioned quantum physicist who prefers controlled magic to unpredictable quantum elements is immanently believable in Cicely. This is the archetypal episode to represent Northern Exposure's endearing quirkiness. It is my favourite episode among many that embody the show's uniqueness.
The Piano (1993)
Nyland score wasted on pretentious nonesense
Okay Keitel got to be a sex symbol instead of a vicious urban thug. But did that justify this excrement? If a woman hadn't produced & directed, it would have ended up in the trash. Surely women can do better than the self-indulgent juvenalia! There were only about 10 women in the theater. When the lights went up, as one we all mocked the effort as an insult to our intelligence.
Paul Newman can rest now: someone has made a worse movie than The Silver Chalice!
Cowboy (1958)
Great Pairing, Typical Ford, Outstanding Atypical Lemmon
Everything about the plot has been said, so I won't repeat it.
My comments are reserved for Lemmon. I never liked Lemmon much. Except for his horrified plant manager in China Syndrome and his grief-stricken but fiercely determined father in Missing, the doofuses, wimps, fools, weakings, and patsies that were his specialty annoyed the bejeebers out of me. They were not admirable, heroic, or manly figures. Heck, they weren't even funny except for in Avanti. I thought he'd never portrayed any other kind of role. Then several years ago I happened on The Cowboy! What a revelation! Lemmon transforms in the course of the movie from a young inexperienced product of civilization to a tough, rugged, steely-eyed cattleman and an admirable leader of men.
This is one of the best westerns you will ever see. It's full of memorable characterizations we were used to seeing in westerns before Eastwood & Leone & Peckinpah spoiled them with cheap gimmicks.
Twin Peaks (1990)
Dumbest show I ever sat thru.
Dumbest show I ever saw, and that inludes such dogs as My Mother the Car, Mr. Ed., Rosemary's Baby, The Collector, Last Tango in Paris, and Who's Afraid of Virginia Wolff.