Posts

Showing posts with the label Mystery

Stalag 17 (1953)

Image
Stalag 17 is considered a classic. Along with It's a Wonderful Life and A Christmas Story , it's on the IMDB's top 250 movies of all time (as a society, we really need to get A Christmas Story off that list). Between the IMDB and its 97% Fresh rating on Rotten Tomatoes, it was pretty much a given this was going to be good. Well, this late in the season, we're ready for some good movies. This is, indeed, worth seeing, providing you're a fan of the era. The movie is well written and directed with a genuine sense of mystery and suspense broken up by occasional comic relief. The entire movie takes place inside a German POW camp during World War II. It's a few weeks before Christmas, and the Americans held there are continuously undermined in their attempts to escape or conceal information from their captors. The consequences aren't sugar coated, either: the movie opens with two of their number being gunned down in an escape attempt. It becomes apparent...

The Thin Man (1934)

Image
As a fan of Dashiell Hammett I was excited to see The Thin Man on a list of movies set at Christmas. It’s always been one of those eventually-I’ll-get-to-it kind of movies. The movie is lighter in tone than the book, which in turn is already one of Hammett's lighter works. So this is less noir than it is comedy-mystery. The Thin Man focuses on Nick and Nora Charles. He’s a former detective, she’s an heiress, they’re in New York for the holidays to look up old friends and throw lavish parties. One of Nick’s former clients goes missing, then the bodies start piling up, and before you know it everyone from the daughter to the cops are asking for his help looking into the case. Nora thinks it’s terribly exciting, and happily says so. To put it shortly: I loved this. I loved the banter between the main characters. I loved the dialogue, the lighting, the film's style and the setting. I loved the holiday party with gangsters rubbing elbows with cops and reporters and everyone...

Kiss Kiss Bang Bang (2005)

Image
"Chapter Two: The Lady in the Lake." "Chapter Three: The Little Sister."  If you're already intrigued, then you'll probably like this movie the way I do. If you're here, you probably realize that Erin and I are rather fond of Christmas, or at least Christmassy things. You've probably picked up that we both enjoy fantasy and science fiction. You may not know that I'm also a huge fan of noir. So a noir-themed dark comedy set at Christmas? Yes, please! Kiss Kiss Bang Bang has a fairly amusing pedigree. It's known as the movie that restarted Robert Downey Jr's career. It's one of Shane Black's films, so like several others, it takes place at Christmas. The title comes from European slang description for James Bond movies. And as alluded to above, all the chapter titles within the movie come from Raymond Chandler. It’s either a noir-style mystery-thriller that is also really funny, or the kind of loving parody that fully embrac...

Castle: Secret Santa (2012)

Image
I haven’t been keeping up with Castle this season, so I don’t know whether this is normal now, but this was heavier on the melodrama than I really like. Now, there was also plenty of charm in this episode, particularly at the beginning. Castle and Beckett investigate a dead man in a Santa suit who, predictably, fell mysteriously out of the sky. The case is interesting, and the banter is fun, but all the little sad subplots about the various characters got a bit tedious. Not every named character needs angst! Plus, I am really tired of Beckett having only the one character trait for every occasion. (Best line of the night: after Beckett explained how the long-ago death of her mother keeps her from enjoying Christmas, Erin leaned over to me and whispered “So she became...a BAT.”) All of that said, I did still enjoy watching this. I don’t know how much fun it is in total for someone who isn’t familiar with the show, but Erin seemed to really enjoy the first half or so, although by...

What's New, Scooby-Doo?: A Scooby-Doo! Christmas (2002)

Image
This is one of those specials that comes a hair's breath from being "so bad it's good," but can't quite overcome the aspects that are just bad.  The series it's from is about a decade old, which puts it well past the era when Scooby-Doo seemed ahead of its time. The plot centers around a mystical living snowman which can remove its head and is obsessed with destroying chimneys. It's about twelve feet tall and has supernatural powers, meaning the "guy-in-suit" won't work this time. Well, unless it's a guy in a robot suit using stupidly unrealistic science to pull off the effect. Spoiler alert: it's a guy in a robot suit using stupidly unrealistic science to pull off the effect. Here. Have more back story. There's a local legend about a headless snowman who's animated by the ghost of a robber who died a century ago after hiding some gold in the town. There are a couple of townsfolk acting as red-herrings: a sheriff...

The X-Files: Christmas Carol/Emily (1997)

Image
I actually considered skipping the write-up for this two-parter or combining it with the following year's Christmas episode, How the Ghosts Stole Christmas , but decided it really needed to be considered in its own right. The first half focuses entirely on Scully, who's gone home to spend Christmas with the members of her family who weren't killed in earlier episodes. Scully is shocked to receive a phone call from her dead sister, who simply says that someone needs her help. Apparently calling rates from the great beyond are low enough to allow ghosts to place calls but just a little too high for them to have time to offer any useful details. Scully immediately has the call traced and finds it was placed from a house where a woman has just apparently killed herself and not been murdered at all. Later investigation will reveal - I hope you're sitting down for this - that she actually was murdered, and that the murder was made to look like a suicide. As I recall, th...

Dragnet Holiday Episodes (1952, 1953, 1954)

Image
Oh man, I like this show. I haven’t actually seen too many of these original black-and-white episodes, but I really enjoyed these. I like the writing, the little flashes of wit, and the straightforward style with a minimum of fuss or drama. Once you are used to the deadpan style, I think it makes the subtle moments of action or drama really resonate. Dragnet’s not to everyone’s taste, but they’re solid, well-produced, cleverly scripted stories. Dragnet: The Big Little Jesus (1953) The first one we watched was also the most religious. And yet, except for maybe a split second here or there, it didn’t bother me. Sergeant Friday and his partner Smith investigate the theft of a Baby Jesus statue from a church. This is a sweet episode, clearly playing on the holiday themes. Everything turns out fine in the end, while it has enough of Friday’s dry-as-can-be wit to keep me interested and amused. Dragnet: The Big .22 Rifle for Christmas (1952) This is a well known episode, because they...

Sherlock Holmes in the 22nd Century: The Adventure of the Blue Carbuncle (1999)

Image
I knew that this show existed, although I don't recall ever seeing an episode before. It's odd, but kind of charming. From what I gathered of the premise, Holmes has been awoken/resurrected in the far future, Captain America style, except with even more super-science. Watson is rebuilt as some kind of robot, and the new Lestrade is a lady cop. I liked her, she seemed to be the muscle. Overall I enjoyed this. It had some awkward made-for-children 'humor' and some cut corners in production here and there, but as a rather unique version of Holmes, I'm actually really on board with this. The tone of the setting was really interesting, and the whole pastiche seemed to be right on the best line between taking the source material seriously while being delightfully tongue in cheek when appropriate. I was wholly amused with the adaptation of the Blue Carbuncle story, in this case a popular animatronic toy with a program hidden inside, rather than a goose with a gemst...

Archie's Weird Mysteries: The Christmas Phantom (2000)

Image
Lindsay came across a collection of Christmas cartoons called (oddly enough) "Christmas Cartoon Collection" in Toys R Us for five bucks. Each of the ten animated episodes comes from a different series. I've heard of exactly 30% of these shows. One of the series I've never heard of is "Archie's Weird Mysteries." Apparently, it lasted for two seasons from 1999 and 2000 and is about Archie and the Riverdale gang solving Scooby-Doo style mysteries (although apparently supernatural causes were the norm). Based on the era, I'm assuming this was an attempt to cash in on the popularity of the X-Files. This episode is from 2000. Actually, according to IMDB, it originally aired in February of that year, presumably because whoever scheduled it was as dumb as whoever produced it. Before we continue, allow me to state the obvious: this was really, really bad. But I also had a hell of a lot of fun watching it. I honestly can't fathom why this exists, b...

The Adventures of Sherlock Holmes: The Blue Carbuncle (1984)

Image
Yeah, I sort of suckered Erin into doing this one. But it is a Christmas episode! So it COUNTS. Despite an early misstep with an unintentionally silly montage running under the opening episode credits, this is a fantastic episode. A solid adaptation of the story, like most episodes of this series, it stays true to most of the original, while breaking up monologues into more entertaining dialogue and expanding the roles of the minor characters. A highlight here is that John Horner, the man accused of stealing the jewel, is given a wife and kids and a little emotional plot of his own, to give the episode a bit more holiday poignancy. The Blue Carbuncle (about a stolen jewel found in a Christmas goose, and how Holmes traces it back to the culprit) is not one of my very favorite Holmes stories, but it is a solidly entertaining one. I loved re-watching this episode; it really showcases why Jeremy Brett was, in my opinion, the ultimate Holmes. All his charm, his wit, his hypnotic pres...

Warehouse 13: Secret Santa (2010)

Image
Let me start by saying I didn't know anything about this show going into this episode, other than that it's sort of The Last Scene of Raiders of the Lost Ark: The Series. What I knew by the end is that it's really just that: a series of wacky adventures based loosely on a bunch of made-up magical artifacts based even more loosely on historical figures and events. (I have since watched another, more recent episode, which sucked much less than this one.) This Christmas episode features a cynical banker-type being tormented by a spectral Santa, who threatens to make him “disappear” unless he changes his ways. There's a sub plot about reuniting another character with his father. It's not boring, but all of the plot turns are horribly cliché and I just want to smack all of these characters for overacting and being morons. The dialogue is fairly clunky, although the cheesy B-grade CG special effects amuse me. There's some decent use of silly creepy Christmas mus...