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Reviews
The Rockford Files: Heartaches of a Fool (1978)
A different Rockford episode
This episode is unique as it has the recognizable music of Willie Nelson heavy in the episode. In fact there's no other TRF episode that has this much soundtrack and long periods of soundtrack. This gives a rather mundane episode it's uniqueness. The story and dialogue itself seems a bit phoned in and the episode almost has the feel a story cooked up just to allow the music to get into the episode where sometimes the musical montages works and other times they does not. The whole sausage conspiracy is almost laughable in it's goofiness. I really love the closing sequence, which is another long musical section, where we get a long slow aerial view of the 101 that slowly leads up the canyon to the Hollywood Reservoir. Perfect ending.
The Acid King (2019)
and okay doc with VERY slim pickins'
The problem with The Acid King is that there's literally nothing except about 5 seconds of Kasso video and nothing else except questionable accounting from a series of local burnouts. So it's a 15 minute documentary spread out thin to a 2-hour doc. Nothing at all can really be corroborated here, so it's just legend mostly. There's a nice angle of the so-called national Satanic Panic which grew from the excellent Rolling Stone article about the murder, and that's really the limit of this little murder. A well written magazine-length article did it justice, a two-hour doc with locals reliving their glory years drags this down until you're hoping the ghost of Kasso will appear and put them all down and end the film quicker. It all feels like a 15 minute doc padded to two hours. If you're new the the murder, READ THE ROLLING STONE ARTICLE. If you must have more, watch the doc, but it's kind of weak.
Maine Cabin Masters (2017)
Could be better
Good idea: a "This Old House" for rural old cabins, but the execution insults the viewer with needless bogus "drama" (will this part of the project work, or will the entire building collapse?!), and needless phonied up scenes of congratulations and surprise. No the crew cannot act, but they're going to do it anyway. If you're into building things and learning how they're built, this isn't the show for you. If you're into lame acting scenes and badly scripted amateur comedy bits, you'll love this show.
I guess the This Old House style is too slow for today's couch potato so producers had to juice the show up with corny nonsense.
The Bad News Bears in Breaking Training (1977)
Starts ssllllooowwwwwwww
The same basic formula is applied in Breaking Training as was in the first BNB film, only the first roughly 30+ minutes of Breaking Training is basically just the team itself filling the screen with their shenanigans. There's a handful of decent scenes in the first 30 minutes, but the fim doesn't actually become watchable until William DeVane's character is introduced, so finally we can view a film with a talented lead and not a bunch of basically talentless child actors playing their narrow stereotypes and repeating their same joke every other scene. Maybe this was part of the director's plan to have an almost unwatchable chaos until a proper coach (actor) was paired with the team to return order and discipline as would be in reality. If this is the case, it was a risky choice, but at least it was successful as the movie finds it's groove with DeVane firmly at the till and the final act hits all the familiar Bad News Bears big game climaxes. All in all Breaking Training is watchable, but definitely not repeated viewings.
The Anarchists (2022)
New Title...
The doc should have been "Greed, Egotism and Sloth" because that's what the film exposed. Wealthy white people who are paranoid and suffer from a superiority complex pretend they know what they're talking about. Conspiracy theories abound with this group of whack jobs, All grasping at a piece of social media monies and noteriety by selling paranoia and conspiracy untruths.
Of course all roads of greed and conspiracy lead back to Ayn Rand. And, of course, these paranoid Randites expose the "sham" of not being able to do whatever you want whenever however no matter what. Of course that means they don't pay taxes. None whatsoever. AND that's where their philosophy ends. It's all about being rich and selling a long series of untruths and having zero responsibility to anyone or anything.
The doc skillfully exposes the shallowness of these "characters" as they spread their BS thick and creamy.
There's HUUUGE parallels between the Anarchists and Qanon and a bit of 1960s hippy simpleton.
Oh yeah, no one here shown actually works hard at anything. Greed, Egotism and Sloth.
When We Last Spoke (2019)
No soul
This film is absolutely FILLED with scenes that do not drive the narrative. As a matter of fact the film seems like a 30 minute family drama padded with 60 minutes of meaningless vignettes.
Top Gear: The Perfect Road Trip (2013)
Phoniest of Bologniest
Top Gear does some neat car reviews and opinions, but that's it... the rest is badly scripted "comedy" and absolutely phoney situations that are expected to be perceived as reality. NOTHING that happens in any challenge is real and off the cuff. This special, just like the series, is a tightly edited, contrived piece of fiction that is as far away from reality as one can get. Lazy.
The Great North (2021)
Animated series ALWAYS takes time to hit home
This is a good show with sharp writing and the usual beautiful Bento Box animation and great voices. Viewers have their own expectations about animation which are usually tainted. Talk to me after you seen the episodes more than once.
Comrade Detective (2017)
Good but not great
Comrade Detective has a lot of good things going for it, but IMO does not execute it properly to get maximum comedy and actual believability. The English voiced dubbed are perfect and fit well with the style, but it's too hard to believe that this is a Romanian production at the height of the Cold War because of the slickness of the show's production values. The entire production doesn't look like it was done on the cheap as would be a typical Communist Cold War television show, even if the show was intended to be an important tool for propaganda. It would have been smart for show runners to examine Garth Marenghi's Darkplace beforehand to get a feel for cheap production values and one-take scenes with much less than perfect acting, lighting, sound, editing...you name it. There's little entertainment shows to be found from the USSR during this era, but it was all done on the very cheap. This looks like a properly budgeted American show, and it hurts the effect they were going for.
The Sacrament (2013)
Lazy screenwriting
The screenwriter must have been saying "this thing just writes itself" as this is a virtual copy of Jonestown right down to the Prophet in sunglasses, the set pieces, the basketball players and the Kool Aid. The lazy script is gussied up with a "found footage" element. One who is interested in Jonestown, should just watch the movies and docs about the event. All elements of Jonestown are included here.