Intersting Insights

Summer has come with a vengeance and my brain is slowly melting out of my ears. So I haven't had the energy to come up with any kind of analysis or insights of my own. Thus, I have to rely on the insights of others.

In 1972 the Watergate scandal erupted and sent a lot of powerful people to prison and ultimately ended Nixon's presidency. If you aren't aware of what the Watergate scandal was, read up on it here: 

Watergate Scandal

 

I found some cool old 60 Minutes interviews with amongst others, John Ehrlichman, G. Gordon Liddy and others on the official 60 Minutes Youtube Channel and thought I'd share with you good people.

So enjoy and hopefully my brain will be slightly less molten next week! Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

 

 

 Full playlist:

https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLI1yx5Z0Lrv4B1LrQtjANg_Sv-udZJMkl

Red Sparrow

This week I watched:

Red Sparrow (2018).

Based on the novel of the same name by Jason Matthews who spent thirty-three years at the CIA. It stars Jennifer Lawrence, Joel Edgerton, Ciarán Hinds and Jeremy Irons amongst others. It is directed by Francis Lawrence (no relation to Jennifer) who directed the Hunger Games movies.

The story in a nutshell is this (Mild Spoilers):

Dominika (Lawrence) is a Prima Ballerina until her career is destroyed. Her mother is an invalid and both her doctors and their apartment are payed for by the ballet company, something they will no longer do now that Dominika can no longer dance. Her uncle Vanya, the deputy director of SVR, the Russian foreign intelligence service, wants to help her so he sends Dominika on a “simple mission”. After the mission ends dramatically Vanya talks her into joining a sparrow school in return for the apartment and the doctors being payed for.

The sparrow school is an institute that trains spies in the art of seduction, or rather it trains spies for that role. They learn to shoot, pick locks and other spy stuff as well of course, but the manipulation and sex is the main thing. Failure to graduate means a bullet to the head.

Parallel to this is a CIA agent, Nate Nash who has to flee Russia, but his highly placed mole refuses to deal with anyone else so he has to go to Budapest to introduce a new contact to the mole. Dominika, despite her trainers objections is sent to Budapest as well by uncle Vanya to find out the name of the mole from Nash. What follows is a back and forth as Nash tries to make her defect and we wonder whether she wants to or if she is playing him, everything ultimately culminating in a dramatic ending.

Red Sparrow is like a marble floor, very pretty but cold, hard and uncomfortable. It is beautifully shot and the actors are all great, but the movie lacks passion. Add to this the fact that it is two hours and twenty minutes long and it becomes a slog at times. It's not that the movie wastes time, it's just that there are so many scenes that are boring. I appreciate a slow moving spy drama like Tinker, Tailor, Soldier, Spy but Red Sparrow is too dull at times. There is unsurprisingly quite a lot of nudity and sex in the movie but do not expect titillation, it is all rather unfeeling and tawdry. The action that there is is good but pretty unremarkable and if it wasn't for the ending, I would have been disappointed.

So, do I recommend this movie? Yes, if you really like spy movies but otherwise not really. Perhaps it is me, but everything that was supposed to be shocking and dramatic, I have seen other movies do better so ultimately it left me with very little. There is nothing really wrong with Red Sparrow and it could be you would like it more, but in that case it has to be your decision to watch it rather than my recommendation.

 

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

The Bloodstained Shadow

I was struggling to find a movie I wanted to watch this week. Ultimately just browsing Youtube, I found:

The Bloodstained Shadow (1978).

The Bloodstained Shadow is a late stage Giallo, so yes, I jumped back in to Italian cinema. The story in a nutshell is this, taken from IMDB;

The body of a schoolgirl is found in a meadow. The murderer is never caught, and years later, a young man named Stefano returns to the island and is reunited with his brother, the local priest.

Now that wouldn't be a very interesting film in itself, so naturally there are several new murders and Stefano is determined to understand what is going on, especially since his brother, the priest Don Paolo receives death threats and his new girlfriend Sandra is also affected.

The movie is co-written and directed by Antonio Bido who does an excellent job with the atmosphere. This is helped along by the movie being set in Venice which is always a dramatic place for any film.

Stefano is played by Lino Capolicchio who passed in May this year and was a proper veteran of the industry. He starred in The House with Laughing Windows, which I covered a couple of years ago here. Ironically he played a Stefano there as well.

Sandra is played by Stefania Casini, who is still working but her perhaps most famous role was as Sara in Argento's Suspiria.

Others include Craig Hill as Don Paolo, Juliette Mayniel, Massimo Serato and many more.

The actors know what they are doing and all give good performances. The music and soundscape is a slightly different matter. It's not that it is bad, it's just that it varies from appropriate to goofy at times.

The mystery is the real star however. I managed to figure out one of the core elements of the plot, but I couldn't see the ending coming and I was very pleasantly surprised. I think it is fair to say that The Bloodstained Shadow is a bit of a slow burn but not so slow it becomes boring. There is a real sense of malice hanging in the air and Antonio Bido did an excellent job in showing enough without needing to overdo it. The murders range from slightly off camera to pretty gruesome but it is nowhere near as gory as some of the more famous Giallo out there. I do have to complain about the amount of jump scares though. They aren't that many but they come on hard together with a serious sound sting so be advised if you are sensitive. That is however the only real critique I have.

So do I recommend this movie? Yes. The Bloodstained Shadow is a great mystery, sitting somewhere on the fence between a classic Giallo and a more “normal” thriller. Fans of either genre should enjoy it. Gorehounds may be disappointed though.

That's that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!

Do They In Fact Own This City?

I was very excited when I heard that George Pelecanos and David Simon were creating a new show set in Baltimore. I'm a huge fan of The Wire and Pelecanos produced that show with Simon who was also one of its principal writers.

We Own This City is six episodes long and actually fairly tame for being an HBO show. Little nudity and the violence that there is, is toned down, so no need to worry if you're sensitive.

So, the show is all about a special task force in the Baltimore Police Department, the Gun Trace Task Force. They work plain clothes and are first and foremost occupied with getting guns off the street. Naturally they also haul in criminals and drugs by the bucket load. Or at least they are supposed to. The GTTF is sadly extremely corrupt. They steal, they falsify records, they arrest people they know are innocent all in order to get richer and boost their popularity with the Brass, and much more.

This is not a spoiler BTW. The show carries this on its sleeve. We Own This City isn't a normal police procedural or a whodunit. The question isn't “Are they guilty?” or “Will they be caught?”. The question is “How the hell did this happen?” and “How deep is the corruption and what can we do about it?”

There are two stories running simultaneously. One is an FBI/Internal Affairs investigation and the other is a Civil Rights investigation by the DOJ. They don't interact with each other, rather they tell different sides of the same story. Example: the FBI investigates a corrupt cop for his crimes while the DOJ investigates how his actions affects his victims and the community he is supposed to police and so on. This way you get a fuller story without confusing the narrative.

It's also worth pointing out that the show is non-linear in its timeline. It jumps back and forth a lot in order to show you the journey these cops took, particularly Wayne Jenkins (Jon Bernthal). He starts as a pretty idealistic young officer and slowly becomes more and more crooked. It is fascinating to see his downward slide, one deed at a time. It serves as a good morality tale how one thing that isn't so bad makes another worse act easier to do, until you are neck deep and can't get out. Another brilliant detail is that Wayne doesn't see himself as villain, only a man doing a hard job no one else can do. Sure he helps himself but in his eyes he has earned it.

If this show wasn't as well written as it is, it would have been an intolerable mess of morality preaching, but it isn't. A big backdrop of the setting is the death at the hands of the police, of one Freddie Grey who is basically a nod to the real life death of George Floyd. This has enormous ramifications from the angry community, to officers who refuse to do their jobs out of fear of being accused and indicted. Baltimore was a powder keg in The Wire and it is worse now.

Speaking of The Wire there are a lot of familiar faces returning to Baltimore but in very different roles. This isn't a sequel to The Wire, spiritually or otherwise, it is a new look at some of the same problems in the same place in a different time.

So do I recommend We Own This City? Absolutely! It is extremely well done, all the actors are great and I don't have a single complaint of the technical side. The story is great and I'm going to give it a re watch soon.

That is that and all that. Join me again next time and until then, have a great and safe week!