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Reviews
Spencer (2021)
Excruciating
Not a good movie. Very one sided. Spencer comes across as so tortured, it is torture watching it. Not anyone appears happy in this movie. It's like watching a drunk. I agree with many of the criticisms other people have made regarding this film. And psychologically, if her mental state had deteriorated this badly while she was married to Prince Charles and if it was that fragile, I'm sure she would have shown some signs of distress earlier on in her life. Is there any record of that? A better movie would have done more than present such a one dimensional characterization of a complex human being. This is a portrait of a woman incapable of finding joy in anything, and in presenting us with such an image, it makes it difficult for us to find joy in this movie. Like others, I can't stand the music, either. Everything is overblown melodrama. If Diana was this big of a mess, she never would have been able to have captured the public's admiration the way she did. We deserve a better movie about this person.
Badehotellet (2013)
Much more interesting than I was expecting
When I first saw this show getting broadcast at midnight on my local PBS station, I wasn't really watching it all that closely. It was just on while I was doing something else like skimming through my newspaper. Eventually, though, I began paying more attention. I've studied some German, plus I've had exposure to a number of other languages, so one of the areas I got interested in was listening to the speech, seeing what I can figure out, and noticing how much is very close to our English or to German, with both languages seeming to have a strong connection to Danish. For example, the Danish word for "Thanks" is almost the same as in English. I've learned the Danish words for "marriage" and "money." I think after I finish watching this entire series, I could go to Denmark and be able to say and understand a few phrases without too much trouble.
But it is not only my fascination with the language that got me interested in this program; it is the actors and the characters they play as well. I grew to care about them and their fate. It seems that the women tend to be more humanely presented than most of the men, but even the men such as Herr Madsen show moments of kindness such as when he was willing to try to help save the hotel from getting sold. Amanda's future husband comes on as a bit too strong when he is first introduced since he is so very much presented as being ridiculously girl crazy. Fortunately, he has calmed down since then, but I just started Season 5 and don't know if he will mess up later on. Ditmar's German relative Mitzi is portrayed as rather childish, and too much indoctrinated in Nazi ideology for my taste: too much of a cliché characterization. I've been wondering what happened to Amanda's sister who was around for parts of the first two seasons but haven't seen or heard of her since. The same is true for when the Frighs were starting to have marital troubles. While Herr Frigh was off chasing another woman, his wife was at the hotel by herself. When the nanny shows up with Alice's daughter, where is her son and who was taking care of him? We find out nothing about that situation, but the son reappears during the first episode of the 5th season. Perhaps Amanda's younger sister will show back up later with an explanation as to why she disappeared. In the meantime, we are left to wonder about these people's circumstances. Perhaps there were explanations that I somehow missed.
Otherwise, I care about this group of people and want to know what happens to them. Are the greedy plots of Herr Madsen going to do him in or will he ever learn to be a better merchant and a more decent human being? Will Morten and Fie get married or will there be some new twist? Will they be able to thrive in Danish society as it gets more influenced by Fascist Germany? Will Edward Weyse ever stop his philandering? While commenting on the social influences taking place in late 1920s and 1930s Denmark, so much of what was happening then relates to the exact same things happening in our own American society now. Let it be a forewarning to us.
United States of Al (2021)
A Show Needing More Substance, Better Writing, and Better Acting
I tried watching this show when it first began broadcasting, and it stuck me as shallow and unrealistic. Watching the opener tonight for the second season, I'm heartened that the show is finally attempting to deal with the serious issues surrounding Afghanistan and now it's fall to the Taliban. Having spent time in the Middle East and having also been evacuated from a country there during a revolution, the circumstances under those kinds of conditions are much more traumatic and emotional than what still comes across in this sitcom. The show doesn't display adequately and realistically enough the kind of emotional roller coaster that people actually experience during these kinds of events where one worries if one will live or die. I don't know if the problem lies with the writing, the acting, the directing, or all three, but this show need serious revamping that gets us, the audience, involved in the emotional anxiety of these characters. It is more comforting to not feel like we are living the problems others are having, and so we tend to distant ourselves as people sometimes do traveling with a tour group in some foreign country where they watch everything from the windows of their bus or train with always a barrier between the society we have come to explore and the sanitized environment provided by the tour. We need to be drawn in, and doing this now, is so very, very important because so many of us living in our isolated worlds have trouble even having empathy for our neighbors, let alone for people who have had everything torn away from them. This first show of this second season is an improvement over what came before, but we audience members must be taken to the places where the real people trying to get out of Afghanistan are or to those left there to live under Taliban rule live. Unfortunately, we are still keeping the TV screen between us and them.