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Rating 2½
Directed by Craig Pryce
Written by Rod Spence
Starring Catherine Bell (Cassandra Nightingale), Chris Potter (Sheriff Jake Russell), Catherine Disher (Martha Tinsdale), Peter MacNeill (George O’Hanrahan), Matthew Knight (Brandon Russell), Hannah Endicott-Douglas (Lori Russell), Noah Cappe (Deputy Derek Sanders), Allan Royal (Bill Cobb), Paul Miller (Mayor Tom Tinsdale), Paula Boudreau (Nancy Perkins), Murray Oliver (Bill Perkins) and Jesse Bostick (Kyle)
Cassandra Nightingale causes much talk in the small town of Middleton when she moves into the Gray House, an old abandoned house that is said to be haunted. She makes an immediate impression on the townsfolk who encounter her, especially the local Sheriff and his two young children, but she is soon accused of being a witch
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‘The Good Witch’ was made for the Hallmark Channel and on its first broadcast in January 2008 was the second highest audience rated original movie ever shown on the channel up to that point. The plot is tissue-thin and it does borrow heavily from earlier films. The local store Cassandra opens, for example, is called Bell, Book and Candle, the name of the store owned by Kim Novak’s character in the 1958 film of the same name.
Small town America is invariably presented in films, particularly made-for-television films, as an ideal and that is the case here. Each and every obstacle encountered is resolved in the most superficial of ways. Brandon Russell, the young son of the Sheriff, deals with a bully on the advice of Cassandra by befriending him and then introducing him to his father, who is able with a minimum of effort to solve the problem of the boy’s troublesome home life and violent single parent. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental, but it’s also sweet-natured, easy to watch and rather heart warming if approached with an absence of cynicism.
Life is not like this, even if the prejudice of Martha Tinsdale, who instigates the witch-hunt against Cassandra, does have a genuine touch of nastiness about it. In the end, though, I rather enjoyed it.
A successful sequel, ‘The Good Witch’s Garden’, followed in February 2009 and apparently a third film, ‘The Good Witch’s Wedding’, is coming.
Review posted 14 February 2010
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The Capture of the Green River Killer 2½ StarsLifetime Television film shown in two parts that tells the story of the investigation that led to the capture and conviction of the so-called ‘Green River Killer’.
Chopping Mall 2 StarsCheap and cheerful 1980s horror. Hot Fuzz 2¼ StarsClever by slightly disappointing follow-up to the much-loved zombie homage ‘Shaun of the Dead’, this time dealing with a zealous police office who is sent to a sleepy crime-free village. Night Of The Comet 2½ StarsCult 1984 low budget homage to low budget genre films.Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 2½ StarsThe second film in the blockbuster franchise. It grossed a whopping $1,066,179,725 at the box office.
Last review posted 3 February 2010All reviews posted in the last thirty days:The Capture of the Green River Killer 2 February 2010Chopping Mall 21 January 2010The Day of the Triffids (2009) 4 January 2010Hot Fuzz 3 February 2010Night Of The Comet 19 January 2010Pirates of the Caribbean: Dead Man’s Chest 8 January 2010The Turn of the Screw 9 January 2010...
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Rating 2¼
Directed Edgar Wright
Written by Simon Pegg and Edgar Wright
Starring Simon Pegg (Sgt Nicholas Angel), Nick Frost (PC Danny Butterman), Jim Broadbent (Inspector Frank Butterman), Timothy Dalton (Simon Skinner), Edward Woodward (Tom Weaver), Bill Bailey (Sgt Turner), Paddy Considine (DS Andy Wainwright), Rafe Spall (DC Andy Cartwright), Kevin Eldon (Sgt Tony Fisher), Karl Johnson (PC Bob Walker), Olivia Colman (PC Doris Thatcher), Billie Whitelaw (Joyce Cooper), Eric Mason (Bernard Cooper), Stuart Wilson (Dr Robin Hatcher), Paul Freeman (Rev Philip Shooter), Anne Reid (Leslie Tiller), Alice Lowe (Tina), Bill Nighy (Chief Inspector), Martin Freeman (Sergeant) and uncredited appearances by Steve Coogan and Cate Blanchett
PC Nicholas Angel is the textbook police officer, so much so that he puts his colleagues in the Metropolitan Police Service to shame, so they rid themselves of him with a promotion to Sergeant and a transfer to Sandford, a crime-free village in Gloucestershire. Angel is greeted with suspicion by his new colleagues and with derision when he suggests that a series of seemingly accidental deaths were, in fact, murders, but he finds a friend and ally in the PC Danny Butterman, the son of the local police inspector.
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‘Hot Fuzz’ was the follow-up to the much-loved zombie homage ‘Shaun of the Dead’, and like that film was directed by Edgar Wright from a screenplay co-written with Simon Pegg, and starring Pegg alongside Nick Frost and a wealth of British acting talent. Wright, Pegg and Frost had previously worked together on the BBC television series ‘Spaced’ (which was co-written by Pegg and the actress Jessica Hynes, nee Stevenson) and are now working on a sci-fi film called ‘The World’s End’.
For the first hour of ‘Hot Fuzz’, which apparently has its roots in ‘Dead Right’, an amateur film made by Edgar Wright in 1993, it plays like a kind of mixture of ‘Midsomer Murders’, ‘The League of Gentlemen’ and ‘The Wicker Man’. The second hour is an over-cooked homage / parody of action films like ‘Bad Boys II’ and ‘Point Break’, both of which are name-checked extensively.
‘Hot Fuzz’ is very typical of Simon Pegg’s style of comedy and homage to a variety of niche genres. It contains many clever touches and some genuine laugh-out-loud moments, but somehow it just isn’t quite as funny as it should be and I did start to get very bored during the interminable action sequences in the second half. More noticeable yet, it isn’t as warm-hearted as the wonderful ‘Shaun of the Dead’, which admittedly was a very hard act to follow.
I have to say that I found the under-appreciated mid-1990s Rowan Atkinson television sitcom ‘The Thin Blue Line’ funnier, but that is not to say that ‘Hot Fuzz’ is not worth watching.
The film had a production budget of £8 million (a little under $16 million) and grossed over $80.5 million at the box office worldwide. It has a very impressive 90% fresh rating at Rotten Tomatoes from 189 reviews.
Review posted 3 February 2010
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WARNING: This review contains spoilers if you have not watched ‘The Capture of the Green River Killer’.
Rating 2½
Directed by Norma Bailey
Written by John Pielmeier
Adapted by John Pielmeier from the book ‘Chasing the Devil: My Twenty-Year Quest to Capture the Green River Killer’ by Dave Reichert
Starring Thomas Cavanagh (Dave Reichert), Amy Davidson (Helen ‘Hel’ Remus), Jessica Harmon (Natalie ‘Nat’ Webley), John Pielmeier (Gary Ridgway), James Russo (Jeb Dallas), John Fasano (Joe Jakes), Sharon Lawrence (Fiona Remus), Ingrid Rogers (Faye Brooks), Currie Graham (Captain Norwell), Zak Santiago (Seth Imperia), Christina Lindley (Lynn Mosey) and James Marsters (Ted Bundy)
Detective Dave Reichert is put in charge of a Task Force assigned to track down a serial killer who is targeting young women, mainly prostitutes, in King County, Washington, and who dumps most of the bodies in or near to the Green River. The case becomes an obsession for Reichert over the next nineteen years, as the killings continue and his investigations leads him up a succession of dead ends.
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‘The Capture of the Green River Killer’ is based on the serial killer Gary Ridgway, who carried out his first killing in 1982 but was not captured until 2001, by which time he had killed at least 48 women, many of them just teenagers as young as 16 years old. He claims to have killed 71 women and some people think the total is even higher than that. Dave Reichert was a leading member of the Task Force formed to track down the “Green River Killer”. In 1997 he was appointed Sheriff of King County and subsequently has become a member of the United States Congress.
The film, which was made for the Lifetime Movie Network, has a running time close to three hours and was shown in two parts. It is based on a book written by Dave Reichert about the case. How closely the film adheres to the book and how closely the book adheres to the events of the long investigation I do not know. The film does not, for example, directly refer to Robert D Keppel, who as well as working on the investigation into the Green River killings, was also involved in the investigation that led to the arrest of another notorious serial killer, Ted Bundy. It was Keppel who interviewed Bundy in prison as part of the Green River investigation. In the film Bundy is interviewed by Reichert and an FBI profiler known as ‘Seth Imperia’, whose inaccurate profile of the killer is given as one of the reasons why it took so long to finally apprehend Ridgway, who was actually first interviewed in connection with the case as far back as 1983. Keppel has stated in interviews that the FBI profiles were not, in his opinion, damaging to the case.
Ted Bundy, played uneventfully by James Marsters, makes a cameo appearance in the film, which is largely concerned with Reichert’s investigation and his obsession with the case, and with two fictional characters, Helen ‘Hel’ Remus and Natalie ‘Nat’ Webley. This is where the film starts to unravel a little bit. These characters are used to give the film an extra emotional layer and to show how women as young as sixteen could have ended up working as prostitutes and become victims of Gary Ridgway. This is fine, but Helen Remus, who acts as a narrator throughout the film, is portrayed as a probable victim of the killer and comes back as a ghost presence to haunt the investigation. That doesn’t work particularly well for me.
The progress of the investigation is generally done very well, because it is portrayed as being very mundane. Mistakes are made, the investigation constantly ends up hitting a brick wall, and there are no heroics. The film does become seriously overwrought in the last half-an-hour or so as Reichert utilises advances in DNA forensics to finally establish evidence linking Ridgeway to the crimes, but the film does seem to have a genuine desire to make it clear that none of the victims deserved to die, something it makes a point of emphasising at various junctures during the three hours.
Although it certainly has its flaws, I am glad I watched this film.
I recognised Thomas Cavanagh from ‘Scrubs’, but I guess American audiences would perhaps associate him more closely with the television comedy-drama ‘Ed’. Amy Davidson was previously one of the lead cast of the sitcom ‘8 Simple Rules’. Gary Ridgway is played by John Pielmeier, who also adapted Dave Reichert’s book and wrote the screenplay.
The film (or miniseries, as it seems to be referred to) was watched by two million viewers when it was shown on Lifetime television in March 2008, a new audience record for the network
Review posted 2 February 2010
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Cassandra Nightingale causes much talk in the small town of Middleton when she moves into the Gray House, an old abandoned house that is said to be haunted. She makes an immediate impression on the townsfolk who encounter her, especially the local Sheriff and his two young children, but she is soon accused of being a witch
Small town America is invariably presented in films, particularly made-for-television films, as an ideal and that is the case here. Each and every obstacle encountered is resolved in the most superficial of ways. Brandon Russell, the young son of the Sheriff, deals with a bully on the advice of Cassandra by befriending him and then introducing him to his father, who is able with a minimum of effort to solve the problem of the boy’s troublesome home life and violent single parent. It’s saccharine and overly sentimental, but it’s also sweet-natured, easy to watch and rather heart warming if approached with an absence of cynicism.
