Endeavour Season 2 - Nocturne - Episode Review

My review of last week's episode: Trove

This week’s episode of Endeavour takes a Scooby-Doo twist, complete with a haunted mansion, creepy little girls, and a historical mystery. Most series have one or two murder-in-the-past episodes, practically all the Sherlock Holmes short stories have some link to history, with Poirot it’s Five Little Pigs and Elephants Can Remember, with Father Brown The Sign of the Broken Sword, with Morse The Wench is Dead.

Endeavour goes back to a massacre in the 1800s. Morse becomes involved while investigating a murder in a museum. Questioning witnesses leads him to a girls’ school, where a small band of students are staying for the summer holidays. Soon enough he sense foul play and delves into the place’s history, discovering the legend of Bloody Charlotte, the only survivor of the Victorian massacre, and possibly the culprit.

Needless to say, this means the house is haunted, and quite a few heart-thumping sequences ensue. Honestly, Morse and Thursday (while showing their usually quality) take backseat to the small, earnest drama in the school, and the excellent performances from the young actresses. 

Endeavour Season 2 - Trove - Episode Review

My review of last season's finale: Home

Endeavour Morse has always been the Doctor Who of detectives—a dynamic main character who draws us through plots of varying degrees of ridiculousness. If you can’t laugh at the inherent absurdity, it simply will not work. This episode is particularly tangled, with three wildly different threads turning out to be connected. I think.

Shaun Evans and Roger Allam return for a second series of this popular (and excellent) prequel to Inspector Morse, starring respectively as D.C. Endeavour Morse and his mentor-cum-sidekick, the lovingly decent Inspector Thursday. Overall, the episode is a welcome return to the homicidal society of Oxford (I immediately smiled to hear the closing theme song), though, as I said, weak in plotting.

The ritual montage of suspects and clues punctuate the opening credits, intercut with scenes of Morse taking a medical exam. He’s back on the job after a four-month hiatus due to the injury he sustained during last year’s season finale (which, incidentally, explains John Thaw’s slight limp.) The transition is somewhat rocky, as Thursday and Morse find it difficult to slip back into the easy banter of earlier days (though they still have the same incipient chemistry). Thursday is worried by Morse’s increased reliance on drink and is trying his best to curb the young man’s habit.

Ordet (1955) - Review

Ordet – The Word

I’m not inclined towards hyperbole, but I seriously think this little-known Danish drama has had an effect on me that is completely unique in my entire history of film-going. It’s a mixture of the dark, bizarre, confusing, inspirational, and sublime. I’ve never seen anything like it.

So now we’re clear on that, I’ll describe the plot itself. Carl Theodor Dreyer adapted the screenplay from a (much wordier) play, and the influence can be felt in the few locations and small cast, but it is the stronger for the narrow scope.

Picture a bleak, windblown farm in 1920s Germany. Here live the Borgen family, ruled by a pious, disillusioned patriarch. Most of his disappointment stems from the fact that his second son, Johannes, whom he was grooming to be a spiritual revolutionary (presumably the next Martin Luther), went mad. Now Johannes wanders the moors, wailing ancient prophecies into the wind.

Noah - Movie Review

Should you see this film? Should you not see it? I think the only thing I can positively say is: Don’t see it with your grandmother.

Darren Aronofsky ruffled feathers by proclaiming his new movie Noah the “least Biblical Biblical film ever made.” This is true, if your definition of “Biblical” is “stars Charlton Heston and has an anti-Communist agenda,” as The Ten Commandments did (it’s notable they both have subplots which didn’t occur in the Bible). Noah breaks numerous Bible movie conventions, and though its iconoclastic bent can be over the top, it effectively utilizes this alienating tactic to shock the audience into seeing the story with new eyes.

First thing to go is the traditional flamboyant Middle-Eastern attire, replaced by dull tunics of animal skin right out of either the Paleolithic era or a modern dystopia. I incline towards the latter, because the film lacks a real dimension of age. The world doesn’t seem young (should it?)—but rather old and decrepit and empty. It’s a bad sign when the majority of the striking visual shots can be contained in a film’s trailer.

Princess Mononoke - Movie Review

Today, the middle ages are nearly synonymous with superstition and bigotry. Decrying witch trials and corrupt priesthoods, we hook our ideological thumbs through our progressive suspenders and sit back, having successfully shifted the focus from the death toll of the 20^th Century. But I tend to think medieval times get a hard rap. G.K. Chesterton said that modern man expects to find in the middle ages “a pessimism that is not there, a fatalism that is not there, a love of the barbaric that is not there, a contempt for reason that is not there.” What they do find is a respect for the spiritual completely absent in modern life.

And that’s my favorite part of Hayao Miyazaki’s 1997 film, Princess Mononoke. It combines simple visual beauty (on a level only mocked by flashy CGI) with incredibly creative fantasy. The first third of the film is spent, mostly, in world-building, establishing an alternate reality that gave the impression of spilling off the edges of the map. I would never have predicted it, but this anime world reminds me of nothing so much as Tolkien’s Middle Earth in its intriguing depth.

It’s important to note that while it's anime, it’s not Pokémon. Miyazaki is a serious filmmaker, and to all intents and purposes, it’s a thoughtful, adult movie touching on much deeper themes than your average Hollywood flick. Fantastic creatures and verdant landscapes rear upon our sight, yet still their loveliness possesses the ability to surprise (a quality lacking, for instance, in Peter Jackson’s latest, post-card perfect vistas—his first trilogy felt less faultless, and more real.)

The Incredibles - Review and Expectations

I recently rewatched Brad Bird's The Incredibles, and was left with one impression: that this film was amazing when I first watched it ten years ago...and it's still amazing, if not more so. While in the midst of this revelation, lo and behold if a sequel wasn't announced, to my deep worry.

The thing is, the first film was so close to perfect. It remains one of my favorite Pixar films, a tightly-scripted, beautifully "shot" action movie that has so many truly human relationships that it puts the majority of live-action films to shame. True, it's not a very original premise - family with supernatural abilities attempt to negotiate ordinary life - but never has it been accomplished so convincingly.

It begins like any other superhero story, with excitement and one-liners and spectacular urban destruction. But fifteen years after this comic book world of heroes and villains, Mr. and Mrs. Incredible - alias Bob and Helen Parr - are living in a cramped suburb with three boisterous kids. Bob works for a sleazy insurance company; Helen changes diapers and wearily makes trips to the principal's office. The irony is thick, and extremely effective.

Broadchurch - Season 1 Finale - Review

I know I've harped on the wonders of ITV's Broadchurch, but, to come clean, I wasn't quite as enamored at first. I loved the entire series up until the finale. [Spoilers ahead.]