The Movie Journal

  Stumptown: Season 1, Episode 4 "Family Ties" October 16, 2019  Hold on to your popcorn because there is a lot that happens in “Family Ties.” It is a direct continuation of the previous episode where Dex enlists the help of Artie Banks to get her PI license. We also learn more about Grey’s past and how he fits in with his former boss, Wallace Kane. The forty minutes of the episode flew by thanks to the great performances and assured directing from Marc Buckland. My biggest takeaway is that Artie Banks may have a conscience after all. There is some important backstory and we learn that Banks is a former cop who stole money from the department for a life-saving medical surgery for his child, but the procedure failed resulting in the child’s death. Banks turned to the dark side in order to hide his grief, but past feelings erupted when a child was kidnapped in this episode. Talk about a dark past, geez. Stumptown uses its secondary characters well here. Tookie, played by Adrian

  Stumptown: Season 1, Episode 3 "Rip City Dicks"  October 09, 2019  “Rip City Dicks” is a reliably engaging episode of Stumptown . It does come across as a filler episode, but I mean that in a positive way. Characters are introduced and existing characters are developed in a way that will mean something further down the line. I found Dex’s storyline fascinating. She actually lost her case because of her vulnerability. She cares too much about the people of the cases that she gets involved with. That is what the experienced yet double-crossing PI Artie Banks told her towards the end of the episode. I liked this character (who comes across as a bit smug) who is played by Donal Logue. It is almost like this character was plucked from a noir setting.   Using her skills of persuasion, Dex convinces a veteran PI named Artie Banks to take her on as his apprentice. Banks seems to sympathize with and has some modicum of respect for Dex. Their first case together involves a messy

  Ace in the Hole (1951) In a world where the trades are able to get away with publishing nasty stories about celebrity breakups or political trades smear their opponents with loony nonsense, Billy Wilder’s cynical, dark 1951 picture Ace in the Hole could not be more relevant in the modern world. Wilder spares no one in his biting, satirical portrayal of the American media institution, which may be a reason why the film received unfair negative reviews upon release. The good guys are the victims while the media and the public are the bad guys. Of course, the trades are the one who writes such sensational journalism. But who eats these stories up? The public! The public absolutely love the celebrity gossip or the next big tragedy. Much hasn’t changed since 1951. In fact, with the advent of social media, sensation in the news has gotten way worse. Wilder’s film is a tightly edited narrative with a strong screenplay and an excellent, fierce performance from Kirk Douglas.   Coming off th

  Barton Fink (1991) Upon initial viewing, I had no idea what to think about Barton Fink , yet another interesting film created by the dynamic duo known as the Coen Brothers. I thought it was weird, unsettling, and driven by its core performances from John Turturro and John Goodman. Yet the more I thought about the film, the more I began to understand the type of film it is. Like most films from the filmmaking brothers, this is not an “easy” watch. I would even dare call it inaccessible. The film is going to make you think. Even though the Coens openly admitted that they did not go into the film with allegorical thoughts in mind, it can be easy to suggest that they had some thoughts about fascism, or the bad side of Hollywood, or writing scripts for entertainment in general. The script is excellent. The characters are three-dimensional, and the actors breathe life into the words that were written for this film. I also really enjoyed the ending because that is what got me thinking more

  Regarding Henry (1991) I really wanted to like Harrison Ford’s drama Regarding Henry . It seemed like the perfect project for the action star. Coming off well-known action films such as Indiana Jones and Star Wars , time seemed ripe for Ford to tackle a meaty role from a big-name director with classics such as The Graduate to his name. Mike Nichols and Harrison Ford. Sounds like a film worth watching, right? Sadly, the answer is no. By all means the drama is not bad, but it is not the hard-hitting movie I expected. Imagine my surprise that the script was written by a very young J.J Abrams, the brains behind modern Star Wars and Star Trek . He, of course, would get better at writing films. This particular film felt like a sitcom with how the plot played out. Speaking of the plot, the well-intentioned plot is highly predictable, and I smelled the ending within the first few minutes. The most exciting part of the film happened in the first few minutes where Ford’s character gets shot i