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Reviews
The Valhalla Murders (2019)
Don't ignore the bad reviews
If you love horror films where the hapless soon-to-be victim goes, acompanied only by overbearing ominous music, to investigate the noise in the cellar then this might be your series. If you want a mystery and clever detectives look elsewhere.
The series could perhaps have been salvaged by having the killers break through the "fourth wall" to go and hunt down the writers of this dreck.
Une nouvelle amie (2014)
People are strange, and that's OK
To avoid spoilers I won't discuss the plot. I'll just say that the movie is about people, in all their strangeness, and you'll come to understand and care about even the oddest among them. It's an enjoyable movie. It contains some tasteful but very hot sex scenes that mean it's not for the kids.
The Thomas Crown Affair (1999)
Crime against art
This review CONTAINS SPOILERS, but to be fair it's pretty much impossible to spoil the experience of watching this turkey beyond what the movie itself achieves.
To illustrate how bad this movie is I'd like to call your attention to one small scene. The film begins with a classic intricate heist of priceless art from a high-security museum. That plan is quickly revealed to be an elaborate cover for the real theft of one painting by uber-cool billionaire Thomas Crown, played by the steely-eyed wooden-expressioned Pierce Brosnan. The actual theft is facilitated by Crown's placing his briefcase to prevent an absurdly hefty security gate from fully closing on the room housing the painting. The briefcase is later shown to contain a highly engineered titanium structure built to sustain many tons of pressure. Keep that fact in mind.
The female lead, Catherine Banning played by Rene Russo, quickly identifies Crown as the thief based on nothing in particular. Feminine intuition, perhaps? Anyway, she sets about trying to extract a confession from Crown by means of irresistible hotness which I'm sorry to say she's a bit too old and inept to carry off. The rest of the movie is basically a series of dream dates for Banning along the lines of Pretty Woman interspersed with scenes of her annoying the police and interfering with their investigation. The police official, Detective Mike McCann played by Dennis Leary, who for no apparent reason kowtows to the civilian Banning, is the most likable and believable major character in the film. Having seen Leary's real-life temperament, I found his portrayal of nice guy Detective McCann to be an impressive piece of acting.
Now about that briefcase. If you watch the scene where Crown places it to block the security gate, you'll see that his hands are bare. Given the obvious design of the case as a tool for burglary, even the most plodding dullard of a police detective would have simply taken fingerprints from the case and thus been 95% of the way toward nabbing Crown. That step was never taken. Instead the police humor Banning and provide occasional relationship counseling as she parades herself in and out of a series of ridiculously opulent and/or see- through garments while enjoying her dates with, or agonizing over, Crown. Everything in the movie, IMHO, is just as poorly thought out and ineptly executed as the briefcase debacle. That holds true right down to the music and the disruptingly obvious product placement shot for a can of Pepsi One. The real crimes against art in this movie are the ones committed by the director, writers, actors, composer and musicians, and the real theft is of any time you might spend watching this travesty.