Shaft (1971)

Shaft (1971)

starring Richard Roundtree

directed by Gordon Parks

100 minutes

Private Investigator John Shaft (Richard Roundtree) searches for the daughter of Harlem kingpin Bumpy Jonas after she goes missing. 

Thoughts

This was my first time watching Shaft, although I have seen the 2000 film of the same name. 

The movie is part spectacle and part action thriller.

Batman: Caped Crusader 1.07

Moving Target

Someone orders a hit a on Commissioner Gordon. The first hit man who comes after the commissioner is stopped by Corrigan, but more hit men follow. Commissioner Gordon doesn't want to change his routine even though his daughter Barbara and Renee Montoya try to talk him into laying low for a while. They finally get him to concede when they point out that he's putting his neighbors in danger by staying put.

Batman investigates the case and finds out that a prisoner named Muller at Blackgate Prison is the one who ordered the hit. Batman passes along what he knows to Barbara Gordon.

Schitt's Creek 3.12

Friends and Family

Moira recovers a very large portrait of the family. It isn't long before she regrets bringing it back into their lives.

Alexis and Ted share a spontaneous kiss after she learns that she passed her high school exams. They try to rationalize it after the fact.

David opens Rose Apothecary. He wants it to be a soft opening but word spreads and it turns into a big opening day.

Thoughts

This was a pretty good episode. I really enjoyed all three storylines.

Arabesque (1966)

Arabesque (1966)

starring Gregory Peck, Sophia Loren

directed by Stanley Donen

105 minutes

Professor David Pollock (Gregory Peck) meets Yasmin Azir (Sophia Loren) while he is in the process of doing a favor for the prime minister of an unnamed Middle Eastern country. Both find themselves targeted for death by at least two different factions as they attempt to decrypt a coded message written in hieroglyphics.

Thoughts

The dialogue sounded very much like it was dubbed in. I think that this wasn't uncommon in this era but it was jarring to my ears.

This movie was more style than substance. I didn't care for most of the stylistic choices. It was very hard to make sense of it all or even the majority of it. This was very much a hard pass for me. I don't feel as if I got much of anything worthwhile by watching this movie.

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.03

The Ark in Space - Part Three

Noah reaches out to Vira from the control room. He instructs her to accelerate the revivification process. He struggles to maintain control as the alien part of his body starts to assert control. Vira is ready to follow the orders but the Doctor says, no. They won't have enough time to wake everybody up.

Harry takes over where Vira left off and wakes up the two remaining Med Techs, Rogin and Lycett. The Doctor and Harry dissect part of the dead alien that lurched out of the closet at Harry. The Doctor gets a piece of its brain and hooks it up to a video monitor. Nothing happens when they turn on the power.

The Doctor hooks himself up to the video monitor and the piece to alien brain. This time it shows them part of what happened to the dead alien, a Wirrn. A live Wirrn pupa starts to break in to the room where everyone, other than Noah, is located. Lycett is killed by the Wirrin that is still in pupa stage.

Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.13

Angel Infiltration

Nerv is in the process of running some tests when an angel infiltrates Nerv HQ. It comes in through the computer system like a virus. It spreads and spreads. Everything they attempt seems to have no effect on it but in the end they figure out what needs to be done.

Thoughts

I found this episode to be hard to follow. It felt very technical. I understood the basic idea of what was happening but there were lots of descriptions and terms that went right over my head. Accordingly, I wasn't crazy about this episode. I fail to see how it expands the world in which this story takes place.

This might be a good place to pause my viewing of this series. I haven't decided yet.

The Tick (2016) 2.10

Choose Love!

Agent Doctor Hobbes is appointed Acting Director of AEGIS. He orders Arthur and the Tick to find Dot. They agree to but Arthur tells the Tick, after leaving Hobbes' office. that he has reason to believe that Hobbes is hiding something from them. 

Arthur and the Tick get some help from Sage who takes them back to Danger Boat. Overkill calls Danger Boat and talks to Athur, Dot, and the Tick. He tells them that he's going to kill himself so that Hobbes can't force him to do anything else. He asks them not to come looking for him, but they do.

Lobstercules is forced by Hobbes to attack the Tick. Overkill, also still controlled by Hobbes, attempts to kill Dot and Arthur from a distance with his sniper rifle. Dot distracts him. Arthur destroys the remote control, thus freeing Lobstercules and Overkill from Hobbes control.

The Phil Silvers Show 3.33

Bilko's Vacation

Bilko wants to go on vacation but doesn't have enough money. He tricks Colonel Hall into giving his entire platoon two weeks of leave. He next tricks his entire platoon to go to the same vacation spot after making a deal with the manager of the vacation spot.

Thoughts

This was a bit messy and surprisingly ended with Colonel Hall fooling Bilko.

Yolanda and the Thief (1945)

Yolanda and the Thief (1945)

starring Fred Astaire, Lucile Bremer, Frank Morgan

directed by Vincente Minnelli

108 minutes

Yolanda Acquaviva (Lucille Bremer) returns from the convent where she has lived and attended school for several years. She is now old enough to take control of the assets she inherited from her parents. She fears the responsibility and winds up signing over control of all her money to con man Johnny Riggs (Fred Astaire). He has fooled her into thinking that he is her guardian angel. Johnny starts to have second thoughts after it looks like he and Victor Trout (Frank Morgan), his partner in crime, are going to successfully get away with Yolanda's family fortune.

Havoc (2005)

Havoc (2005)

starring Anne Hathaway

directed by Barbara Kopple

85 minutes

High school student Allison Lang (Anne Hathaway) gets interested in Hector after he embarrasses her poser boyfriend. She seeks out Hector who deals drugs and comes from a poorer section of Los Angeles than she and her boyfriend do. Everything seems fairly low key until Allison and her friend Emily decide that they want to join Hector's gang. 

Allison and Emily agree to go along with the initiation ritual which involves having sex with (potentially) multiple members of the gang. It gets to be a bit too intense for both of them and the two teens leave before it gets any worse.

Emily reports the incident to the police and accuses Hector of raping her. Allison doesn’t back up her friend’s account of the incident when she is questioned by the police. This creates a rift between the two friends although it is only a temporary one.

Justice League Action 1.14

Speed Demon

Batman angers Brother Night who retaliates by turning the Batmobile into a demonic car. It takes the combined efforts of Batman, Zatanna, and the Demon to set things right again.

Thoughts

This is another episode that is lacking in subtlety. Its all action with little to nothing in the way of character moments. The Demon's rhyming was the biggest plus in my book.

On the Beach (1959)

On the Beach (1959)

starring Gregory Peck, Ava Gardner, Fred Astaire

directed and produced by Stanley Kramer

Commander Dwight Towers (Gregory Peck) and the crew of the of the USS Sawfish, a submarine, survive a nuclear war (Wordle War III) and pull into port in Melbourne, Australia. It doesn't look good for what's left of humanity in the southern hemisphere.

Towers gets involved romantically with Moira Davidson (Ava Gardner). He was married and had two children. They were killed in the nuclear war but he has trouble coming to terms with that fact or opening up to Moira.

Towers and the Sawfish crew travel to Alaska and California in the hopes of finding some survivors but come up empty handed. Radiation from the nuclear war eventually reaches Australia and spreads across the country until overwhelms even Melbourne, the southeastern most major city in the country.

Towers would be content to stay there with Moira but he puts it to a vote and the crew of the Sawfish elect to return to the United States despite knowing what awaits them there.

Orange Is the New Black 7.09

The Hidey Hole

Piper comes clean with her coworkers. She starts to feel much better. She has a talk with her father, who isn't happy (about her telling her coworkers about her past) but accepts it.

Monica, Cindy's daughter, gets the letter that Tastyee sent. She confronts Cindy and her grandmother, who she thought was her mother, about it. They don't know how to respond. Cindy had just talked her way into a job at an old folks home. Cindy can't take it. She packs her things and leaves.

Morello goes around the bend. Her web page for the baby pictures (that were not of Sterling, her baby who died of pneumonia) gets deleted. She later finds out that it was Vinnie who did it. Morello also gets the backstory spotlight. She had problems back then, too. 

Batman: Caped Crusader 1.06

Night Ride

A ghostly figure on horseback robs poor people and charities. Batman is at a loss. He gets some help from a kindly librarian who helps him identify the family from which the ghost came, the Craddocks. The ghost is Jim Craddock who was executed for treason in the late 18th century.

Batman turns to an expert on ghosts, Linton Midnite, who gives Batman the information he needs to defeat Gentleman Jim Craddock. Alfred helps Batman with the ritual that needs to be conducted. They are successful in dealing with Craddock but he doesn't make it easy for them.

Schitt's Creek 3.11

Stop Saying Lice!

Alexis gets lice. Moira gets angry at Johnny for having a garden dedicated to her. David talks Stevie into letting him sleep over because he wants to distance himself from Alexis and the lice.

Thoughts

This was decent. I loved the ending.

Doctor Who (1963) 12.02.02

The Ark in Space - Part Two

The creature that lurches forth from the closet is dead. The Doctor and Harry turn back to trying to revive Sarah. Vira, one the of sleepers, wakes up. She demands to know what the Doctor and his companions are doing on the space station.

The Doctor and Harry try to explain. They ask about reviving Sarah. The power starts to fail. The Doctor rushes to the power room to see what can be done. There he finds a larva like creature inside the solar stack. He rushes back to find the others.

Noah, the leader of the station's crew is the next sleeper to wake up. He is very suspicious of the Doctor and his companions. He goes to check on a couple things. He finds the Doctor in the station's control room and shoots him with a stun blast from his pistol.

Vira helps the Doctor and Harry to revive Sarah. Noah goes to check out the solar stack. The creature that the Doctor saw breaks out of the solar stack and infects Noah by touching him.

Vira wakes up Libri, another of the sleepers. He freaks out when he looks at Noah. It isn't clear why at the moment but later Noah shoots Libri. The episode ends with Noah pulling his hand out of his pocket. It has turned green and no longer looks like a human appendage.

Neon Genesis Evangelion 1.12

A Miracle's Worth

The episode opens up with a flashback to Katsuragi's youth, fifteen years earlier, when her father sacrificed himself and made sure that she survived a very large (possibly nuclear) explosion.

In the present, Captain Katsuragi was recently promoted to the rank of major. Shinji and Asuka throw a small party for her. They invite Rei but she doesn't come.

Katsuragi is left in charge of Nerv HQ when Shinji's father leaves for a trip to Antarctica. An angel attacks Tokyo-3. Katsuragi takes the initiative and uses Special Declaration D-17 to order the evacuation of Tokyo-3.

The Angel drops from the sky like a bomb. The three pilots in their EVA units have to catch it and use their force fields to keep it from causing too much damage.

They are successful and for the first time Shinji's father congratulates him. Katsuragi takes the pilots out for ramen to celebrate the successful mission.

Kiss of Death (1947)

Kiss of Death (1947)

starring Victor Mature, Brian Donlevy, Coleen Gray

directed by Henry Hathaway

99 minutes

Nick Bianco (Victor Mature) gets nabbed by the police while trying to escape after robbing a jewelry store. He had partners in the job but the cops only catch Nick. Louis DeAngelo (Brian Donlevy), the assistant district attorney, tries to talk Nick into squealing on his accomplices but Nick would rather go to prison.

Three years into his prison term in Sing Sing, Nick changes his mind about giving the assistant DA what he wants after he finds out that his wife has committed suicide and that his two young daughters are in an orphanage. The ADA does what he can for Nick after he provides testimony.

Nick marries again, this time to Nettie (Coleen Gray), who used to babysit for him and his wife. Things are looking up until DeAngelo insists that Nick helps put away a hired gun, Tommy Udo. Nick provides testimony in court but Udo is not found guilty of the murder.

Udo knows that Nick testified against him which leaves Nick in a very precarious situation. DeAngelo tries to insist that they deal with Udo in his way but Nick can't go for that and comes up with his own plan.

George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin (1994)

George Stevens: D-Day to Berlin (1994)

written, directed, produced and narrated by George Stevens, Jr.

46 minutes

This documentary follows film director George Stevens and the men who served with him as they served in the US Army and traveled from the beaches of Normandy, France in early June 1944 to Berlin, Germany in May 1945.

The footage for this documentary is mostly in color and all silent. It was shot by Stevens and the men who served with him. There are audio clips from interviews with a few of the men who served with Steven including Dick Kent, Ken Marthey, Ivan Moffat, Mullinghouse Morse, Jack Muth, and Irwin Shaw. The only footage from the time that the documentary was assembled was of George Stevens, Jr. first introducing and then closing out the film.

The Tick (2016) 2.09

In the Woods

Arthur and the Tick receive a call informing them that they have been selected to be part of the new Flag Five. Bronze Star, Sage, and Joan of Arc fill out the rest of the roster. Arthur and the Tick meet with Flexon, after their first Flag Five team meeting, and help him to convince Lobsterucles that they need to introduce her children to the judge in order to get her released.

Joan of Arc meets with Frank and explains what has changed now that she is part of the Flag Five. He decides that He's had enough and leaves. Arthur and the Rick return to Danger Boat where they find Dot and Walter waiting for them. Walter explains that his real name isn't Walter and convinces Arthur that he needs to contact Tyrannorsaurus Rathbone and arrange a special meeting so that they can explain what they have found, away from AEGIS HQ.

Arthur, the Tick, Dot and Walter meet with Rathbone. Walter finds Joan after the meeting and explains what he's been hiding from her. Rathbone returns to his office where he has a meeting with Agent Doctor Hobbes. Overkill observes the meeting from a distance, through the scope of his sniper rifle before pulling the trigger and killing Rathbone.

All the King's Men (1949)

All the King's Men (1949)

starring Broderick Crawford, John Ireland

written and directed by Robert Rossen

110 minutes

Reporter Jack Burden (John Ireland) takes an interest in Willie Stark (Broderick Crawford), a wanna be small town lawyer, after writing a few stories about Stark who is running for county treasurer. Stark loses that election, and the next one when he aims higher and runs for governor.

Jack quits his job after the newspaper bends to pressure and stops backing Stark. Jack takes a job working for Stark and is part of the team when Stark wins the governorship four years later.