I guess due to the Fourth of July celebrations, there aren’t a whole lot of discs coming out this week. My favorite is a new UHD transfer of this great film noir from Criterion, but I also talk about Death of a Unicorn, Alexander, and Warfare. You can read it all over at Cinema Sentries.
I forgot to post last week’s Five Cool Things. This one includes the terrific first season of the very Columbo-esque Poker Face starring Natasha Lyonne, the terrific first season of Andor (still haven’t watched Season Two), the brilliant French film Army of Shadows, the final chapter in the Twin Peaks Saga, an episode of Moonlighting where they do Shakespeare and a new trailer for a very interesting movie. You can read all about it here.
This is yet another international murder mystery series that I watched (and reviewed) back when I thought that might become my beat. Once again, I remember very little about this Germany series, but according to my review, I liked it quite a bit. I should probably go back to that beat as I really enjoyed it..
My wife and I have recently been enjoying a British series called Crime Scene Cleaner. It stars and is written by Greg Davies (who we also enjoy in Taskmaster). It is based on this German show of the same name. Honestly, I barely remember the German show other than I liked it a lot, but reading my review, I see that the first season of the British show took a lot of the plot points directly from the original.
I definitely recommend both shows if you can find them.
Are you like me? When you watch a TV show or a movie and there is an actor that catches your fancy, do you immediately look up what else they’ve been in? Do you get excited when you see them in something else? I do. I find myself rooting for certain actors that I like, especially when they aren’t already big stars.
So it was with Don Hany. I first caught him in an Australian series called East West 101. He was quite good in that, so I was excited to see him in this series for HBO Asia (and now I’m excited to see that Joan Chen – whom I just enjoyed in Twin Peaks – also starred in this series). To be honest, I’ve not seen Hany in anything else, and had kind of forgotten about him until now. But I just looked him up and was happy to see he’s still steadily working.
You can read my full review of this series here.
One of the reasons I’m a physical media collector is that I always have access to the DVDs/Blu-rays that I own. I’m not subject to the whims of streaming services deciding which movies/TV series I can watch.
Lilies is a good example of this. It ran for but a single season (just eight episodes) on the BBC. As far as I can tell, it is not available to stream anywhere. Yet I can watch it anytime I want because I own it on DVD.
Not that I want to very often, but I could if I wanted to right now. Anyway, you can read my review of the series here.
After reading my rather raving review of this Rob Marshall-directed adaptation of the Steven Sondheim musical, I was surprised to look at Letterboxd and see that so many of the people I follow hate this film.
The problem seems to stem from the fact that the film severely changes a big chunk of the second act, making it much more Disney-friendly than the stage version. I’ve never seen it live, so I guess I wasn’t bothered by any changes.
While I did seem to have enjoyed it, it is worth noting I’ve never bothered to watch it again. Take that for what you will.
There was a period of time, back around 2015, when I was reviewing a lot of International Mysteries. These were mostly put on DVD by a company called MHZ. They weren’t all good, but it was fun seeing how other countries handled their murder mysteries. Then I got busy, and the well ran dry.
I’ve recently subscribed to a streaming station run by MHZ and am once again enjoying my international mysteries.
I don’t really remember this French series, but you can read my review here.
One of the things I love about going through my old reviews is that I find films that I had forgotten I’d ever even watched. I don’t remember this film at all. I certainly don’t remember writing a review of it. Yet here we are and here it is.
The funniest thing about this review of this B-movie thriller is that I apparently didn’t know who George Sanders was ten years ago. He’s become one of my favorite actors, yet apparently I didn’t recognize him. How crazy that is to me now.
I’m back on my bullshit again – pondering why I write anything at all. While I do that, I figure I’ll keep posting old reviews from Cinema Sentries. Even if I never write a new thing specifically for this blog, I’d still like to make this a full depository of everything I’ve ever written.
This French film cuts itself in half, showing the same scenes from two wildly different perspectives. It stars the always wonderful Audrey Tautou, and according to my review, I mostly liked it.
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