In case you hit a paywall with the RS article…
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Natasha absolutely ransacks the closet, while rocking that amazing dress and dropping rapid fire deep filmic knowledge!
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I’ve seen that. Really interesting, and often very funny!
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This was great! Humane, empathetic, gripping, educational. I watched the 4 episodes in one sitting. Based on a true long- unsolved murder.
Time is a main character in The Breakthrough, the lean, eloquent Swedish crime drama that recently powered into Netflix’s Top 10. It is a fictionalised retelling of a true story, about the huge and painstaking police investigation into a horrific double murder that took place in 2004 in the city of Linköping. It begins with a father teaching his eight-year-old son how to use his watch and over four episodes holds time up to the light. In The Breakthrough, time drags. A case that should have been cracked quickly goes unsolved for 16 years. Then, as technology catches up to the evidence, time lurches forward, setting an awful, tense and thrilling deadline for all involved. This is clever and sensitive crime TV that demands you watch it carefully and treats its subject matter with the respect it deserves.
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That movie isn’t quite as good as its high concept elevator pitch.
Doesn’t matter.
Watch it anyway. It’s not just the humour but also the isolation and desperation and longing.
It’s very relatable and an oblique take on things that we all went through in different ways.
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This was surprisingly good for a modern movie. An anthology of 4 ‘underdog’ stories that all come together in a very fun ending. Starts out with kicking nazi’s asses, and well, I don’t want to spoil the ending.
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The Three Musketeers
Summary
Alexandre Dumas’ novel has been adapted for the screen at least fifty times, so it would be nearly impossible for any one person to authoritatively say which is the best adaptation, but Richard Lester’s pair of films from the ‘70s, shot as one production but edited into two, was for a long time the English speaking world’s critical favorite, although Martin Bourboulon’s 2023 French adaptations Les Trois Mousquetaires: D’Artagnan and Les Trois Mousquetaires: Milady may yet eclipse it.
The Three Musketeers provides us with a rich, imaginatively realized world, check out that cowhide submarine!, while undercutting the heroism by making the protagonists frequently fumble around like fools. And not just the Musketeers, as Raquel Welch does some of her best work as D’Artagnan’s klutzy mistress Constance. In addition to the lead swashbucklers, Michael York, Oliver Reed, Frank Finlay, and Richard Chamberlain, the films feature Jean-Pierre Cassel, Geraldine Chaplin, Charlton Heston, Faye Dunaway, Christopher Lee, Spike Milligan, Roy Kinnear, Michael Gothard, and Sybil Danning.
These films were eventually followed by the rather less well received The Return of the Musketeers (1989), in which director Lester, screenwriter George MacDonald Fraser, and a great many of the original actors returned. Unfortunately, an accident during production killed Kinnear, casting a pall over the film and convincing Lester to stop directing.
The Three Musketeers (Richard Lester 1973)
Young D’Artagnan (Michael York) arrives in Paris with the goal of becoming a Musketeer. Within moments, he has arranged duels with and then just as quickly befriended three Musketeers, Athos (Oliver Reed), Porthos (Frank Finlay), and Aramis (Richard Chamberlain). He and his new comrades soon find themselves embroiled in intrigues fomented by Cardinal Richelieu (Charlton Heston) and his accomplices Comte De Rochefort (Christopher Lee) and Milady De Winter (Faye Dunaway) against the Queen (Geraldine Chaplin). A lot of exuberant slapstick-ish fun.
The Four Musketeers (Richard Lester 1974)
D’Artagnan has become a Musketeer. As part of further efforts against the Queen, his lover Constance (Raquel Welch) is kidnapped by Rochefort. In Constance’s absence, D’Artagnan falls under the spell of De Winter until it is discovered that she is the enemy of all the Musketeers in general and Athos in particular. The Musketeers must frantically race to rescue Constance, defeat Rochefort, defang De Winter, and once again preserve the Queen’s honor. Still energetic, still fun, but with a melancholy undercurrent.
Both films can also be found here: The Three Musketeers : Free Download, Borrow, and Streaming : Internet Archive
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Yes sir! Right away sir!
Oh wait, I already did. I agree, it’s very much worth a watch.
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From Spike Milligan and Roy Kinnear especially. The background conversations of the peasants are entertaining too.
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Lester practically creates a second script for the film through his overdubs, usually doing his best to take the piss out of the establishment.
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Well, they seemed to have preserved the very shitty sound design on the dialogue for the reboot here…
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Once, here in Rio, a young man fell into a river with his car during a storm. He managed to rescue his wife and daughter but disappeared. His friends were desperate when the firefighters announced the end of the search a few days later. They continued to search the river and several underground galleries in search of the body of their dear friend.
This story of friendship made me think that the premise of this Chinese film is not so absurd.
A middle-aged man named Zhao loses his friend during a night of drinking. He is forced to honor a promise and take his body to his hometown for burial. Nothing on his journey goes right, and along the way he and the rest of us learn how the Chinese view friendship, duty, life, and death.
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Shit.
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Was it a good show? We don’t have prime, so never got around to watching it.
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This last season they were really hitting their stride.
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Have you read the books? I have not…
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The first few when they first came out. I stopped at the point they call the slog - when it just droned on.
It apparently got better again. But I was gone. Maybe I should revisit.
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Yeah, that can be a problem with involved fantasy series like that which are telling a coherent story (rather than being a sort of universe being explored, such as the different between Martin’s ASOIAF and Pratchett’s Discworld books).
I’ll have to check them out. It’s been a while since I read a good fantasy series (maybe the last ASOIAF book?).
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