Film and TV reviews

Incredibly fun French film about an intrepid female journalist at the turn of 20th century.  She gets into all sorts of adventures not to get or impress a man, instead she does it all to heal her sister who she injured in a tennis game.  It's wildly fun and super entertaining.

The first three series of this Irish import about criminals in Dublin is terrific.  The machinations behind all the drug running, the thefts, and cold blooded murders are incredibly interesting if you like this sort of thing, which I very much do.  This show features stand out performances by Tom Vaughn-Lawlor as the sociopath gangster Nidge, Charlie Murphy as the girlfriend of a gangster who suffers catastrophic collateral personal damage, and Susan Loughnane as the top gangster's girlfriend who becomes a junkie hooker.  This one is available through Netflix and HuluPLUS.

Very well done adaption of Douglas Adams creation.  The producers opted to use Adams novels as a template rather than to slavishly follow his original stories and it all works.  It's wildly funny and Stephen Mangan and Darren Boyd are perfect foils.  This show is airing on Acorn TV.

Hilariously twisted 'retelling' of the controversy surrounding the Monty Python film 'The Life of Brian.'  This movie skewers everyone involved, the hysterical Christians who were so easily offended even though the film didn't mock their religion, the BBC, and most importantly of all the guys in Monty Python.  Once again Darren Boyd, as John Cleese, stands out.  This one is airing on Acorn TV.

Good but wildly over acted adaption of the Shakespeare play by the same name.  Feinnes makes the same mistake most British actor/directors make when adapting these type of films for modern audiences and that mistake is going so far over the top in his portrayal of his character that it detracts from the story.  He's all bluster and spit, which would have been fine if this had been a stage adaption, but on film, a much more intimate medium, he needed to tone down his performance.  All in all, this film isn't bad, it's just not that good, although, a usual Vanessa Redgrave is magnificent.