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Cold Call (2019)
I'm Going to Disneyland
A middle-aged single mother who's a caregiver gets caught up in a cold call scam that turns her world upside down. The premise was good, although the numbers seemed wrong from the start. It's supposedly set in current (2019) times, but the idea that by selling her house, which she owned outright, for 83,000 pounds (approximately $114,000) and that she could give half to her daughter ($41,500 pounds or $57,000) and use her own half to live comfortably with her mother by renting without having to worry about money seemed like a fairy tale. But the plot was actually worse than that. When she goes to a support group for others who have been scammed, she meets a guy from when she was young, who tells her he can help her to get her money back. He clearly still carries a torch for her, and she's willing to accept his help, but she treats him like dirt. If he'd helped her find who stole her money and then they'd gone to the police and caught the thieves, this might have worked, but that's not the plot of this grim mini-series.
And SPOILER ALERT, the idea that when she finally gets back her 83,000 pounds = $114K, or even if you go with the idea that she has 100,000 pounds = $137,000, which is the limit on the credit card, she's in her late 40s (although she looks mid-50s) with no apparent pension or nest egg, and when the series ends, when she's on her phone booking a first class ticket to the tropics, to be met by a limo, all I could think was that this ditz was going to blow through that "found money" in a year and be in a worse position than she was at the beginning. Don't waste your time on this loser series.
Sorjonen (2016)
Annoying Scandinavian Noir
The premise is that Sorjonen is this genius detective with Asperger's Syndrome, although that diagnosis is never actually given. I watched all 3 seasons, and I enjoyed the first season, but by the time I'd watched 2 or 3 episodes of the second season, I was thoroughly sick of Ville Virtanen attempting to play the genius detective, and by the time I'd finished Season 3 I was so sick of his bratty, out of control daughter, Janina, that I was ready for the series to be over. As Sorjonen, Ville Virtanen does a lot of geeky, awkward moves with his hands when he's "thinking" (e.g., waves his hands above his head, from the back to the front, without actually touching his head 'to shut out negative thoughts'). Watching him make these moves, I remembered when I got my first computer and thought it would be cool to attach different sounds to different actions, only to realize within a few minutes that what had seemed like a good idea in theory was just incredibly annoying in practice. My guess is a writer or director thought these moves would enhance the character's weirdness, but they just become super annoying mannerisms in very short order. But the annoying mannerisms are just the tip of the iceberg. In one of the early episodes in the second season, Sorjonen is interviewing a female witness and they're seated on opposite sides of a table in an interview room (of course) and mid interview, he puts one of his feet on the table and proceeds to not only remove his boot and sock, but then begins cutting his toenails, with bits of nail flying everywhere, and everyone pretends that's normal and perfectly OK because he's supposed to be such an effing genius. All I could think was, what's next? Will he take a dump on the table while interviewing a witness? The character is a narcissistic pig who expects everyone to put up with his crap, but I didn't find him attractive enough to pull off being so obnoxious. I liked Olivia Ainali as Janina in Seasons 1 and 2, but in Season 3, she turns into a narcissitic sociopath who goes from bludgeoning an injured dog to death to bullying the boy, Jarkko (Johannes Brotherus) who expresses an interest in her to the point that I wondered if the storyline would have him suicidal. That didn't happen, but if any viewer thinks for a minute that what Janina does in Season 3 to Jarkko is OK, imagine if she was a male doing the same thing to a female, and you'll see how not OK her actions are. Also, I don't know if this is poor direction or poor acting or a combination of both, but whenever anyone talks to her, she juts out her lower jaw and sits there with her mouth hanging open and a "Duh" expression on her big moon face, and that just doesn't work. Janina regresses as a character, in contrast to Katia Jaakkola, portrayed by Lenita Susi, whose character really grows. By the end of Season 3, I was so tired of the Sorjonens that I was happy for the season to end.
The Tender Trap (1955)
The Smarmy Trap
This is yet another smarmy Hollywood movie where a young woman falls for an older guy and everything is supposed to be oh so cute simply because that's the premise. In real life, Sinatra was 17 years older than Reynolds. They don't seem to have much in common in this movie, but Hollywood has always loved this combination of young women with older men (both on screen and off). At least with Bogart and Bacall, there was some chemistry. I understand why this improbable pairing appeals to some men, but it certainly doesn't appeal to all women. Why doesn't Hollywood make movies about guys falling in love with older women? Sunset Boulevard is not what I had in mind. If you like mindless fluff with improbable plots, then this is a movie for you, but if you like movies with substance, don't bother with this.
Bruce & Me (2004)
excellent documentary by Oren Siedler about her relationship with her father
This is one of the best documentaries I've seen in the past year. It was filmed by a 37 year old woman, Oren Siedler, the only child of the union between her father, a very, very bright but detached guy who is, among other things, a scam artist, and her mother, an artist with no scams whatsoever, who was living in Australia and teaching art to Aborigines at the time this film was made. Ms. Siedler alternates narrating the film with spontaneous interviews with her father, her 97-year-old paternal grandmother, and her mother, among others, to try to discover what has made Bruce the man that he is, and also in an attempt to understand him. Her mother says that he's anti-social, and the implication of antisocial personality disorder hangs heavily in the air, but it's not quite so simple as that. Bruce, who is approximately 62 years old, IS very detached from most people around him, and yet he's a study in contrasts. His mother and daughter recall a time when he stole a number of VW Beetles from used car lots, only to give them away to people who needed a car. Also, at 62, he spends a fair amount of time caring for his 97 year old mother, and there's a touching scene that shows him tenderly and carefully clipping her toenails. Bruce might today be diagnosed with Asperger's, as well as some anti-social tendencies, but part of what makes this a great documentary is that there are no simple answers, and you can feel Ms. Siedler's love for her father (and his for her), throughout this film.
I highly recommend it.
Side Effects (2005)
4 star indie movie: Side Effects
Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau's indie film, Side Effects, is a funny but accurate and intelligent portrayal of what it's like to work as a pharmaceutical sales rep. It was shot in Madison, Wisconsin, in 18 days on a budget of $190,000, and it's better than most of the Hollywood blockbusters I've seen so far this year. Writer/director Kathleen Slattery-Moschkau was a pharmaceutical sales rep for 10 years for two of the biggest companies (Bristol-Myers Squibb and Johnson & Johnson) before becoming thoroughly disillusioned and leaving the industry to write this fictional script based on her experiences as a rep.
The movie stars Katherine Heigl (of the TV series, Grey's Anatomy) as Karly Hert, a young woman struggling to reconcile her values with the slick requirements and lack of ethics in her job as a pharmaceutical rep. Lucien McAfee plays Karly's boyfriend, Zach Danner. The rest of the cast and crew consists of local Wisconsinites, including the film's Hollywood producer, Holly Mosher, a Milwaukee native.
This is heavy subject matter, but it's successfully presented as a comedy/romance. Side Effects is informative and thoroughly entertaining.
The Thing About My Folks (2005)
Terrible movie
I have two good things to say about this film: the scenery is beautiful and Peter Falk gives a good performance (considering what he had to work with in terms of dialog and direction). However, that said, I found this film extremely tiresome. Watching paint dry would have been more entertaining. It seemed much longer than 97 minutes. Beginning with opening sequence, where everyone is talking over each other and Paul Reiser is repeating everything that's said to him on the phone, the movie is annoying. The film is filled with clichés and shtick, not to mention endless incidents of audible flatulence by Falk. Also, the director seems to have had difficulty deciding whether to aim for laughs or tears. There are some sequences that are touching, but they're all played for laughs. If schmaltzy, sentimental, and "cute" appeal to you, you'll love it. But if you were hoping for something with more substance, see a different movie.