Alan Rapp

Doctor Who – The Well

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Doctor Who – The Well
  • wiki: link

An unexpected callback to a David Tennant episode, “The Well” deposits The Doctor (Ncuti Gatwa) takes Belinda Chandra (Varada Sethu) on a foreign world in the far future where a group of soldiers is investigating what went wrong with all the workers who appear to have gone mad leaving only one hearing-impaired miner (Rose Ayling-Ellis) left alive. Easily the creepiest episode of Who‘s run on Disney+, “The Well” plays on several classic tropes involving gun-totting soliders jumping to the wrong conclusion while The Doctor slowly works through  what is hiding behind Aliss (Ayling-Ellis) and how it ties back to his first visit to the world in “Midnight.”

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Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Scarecrow and Mrs. King – Always Look a Gift Horse in the Mouth
  • IMDb: link

Wayback Wednesday takes us to 80s Washington, D.C. and the unusual partnership between a housewife and a spy. When the American wife (Jane Kaczmarek) of a Middle Eastern Prince (Andres Aybar) returns to the United States on a tour with her husband, and needs someone local to show her around, the Agency taps Amanda (Kate Jackson) while Lee (Bruce Boxleitner), in head of security for the couple, works on uncovering who is behind the recent assassination attempts. The truth that oil baron, and longtime friend of the prince’s father, Bo Johnson (Morgan Woodward), who dislikes the modern thinking Penelope is filling her husband’s mind with, is the target of the attacks comes out at his ranch that weekend.

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Basic Instinct

/ / Home Video
  • Title: Basic Instinct
  • IMDb: link

It’s hard to describe how big director Paul Verhoeven‘s stylish neo-noir was when it hit theaters in 1992. Splitting audience and critics, the controversial erotic thriller cashed in big at the box office (providing a boom for the genre that was never quite duplicated, despite many imitators) while stirring up controversy for from both the left, for its depiction of a bisexual woman as a nymphomaniac serial killer, and right with the kind of explicit sexuality usually reserved for softcore porn shown late at night on Cinemax. The film made Sharon Stone a star moving her on to bigger and better projects including being the rare woman to headline a western in The Quick and the Dead and a supporting role in Casino both just three years later.

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Daredevil – Straight to Hell

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Daredevil: Born Again – Straight to Hell
  • wiki: link

“Straight to Hell” ends rather than concludes the first season revival of Daredevil. Using both Bullseye (Wilson Bethel) being at large and Matt Murdock‘s (Charlie Cox) heroically saving his life as an excuse, Wilson Fisk (Vincent D’Onofrio) cracks down on the city giving him a chance to silent his detractors and impose his order on the city. Murdock escapes the hospital before the assassin (Arty Froushan) comes for him, and joins a (suddenly motivated) Frank Castle (Jon Bernthal) on the streets. We also get the return of Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) which, like the Punisher’s involvement, feels more like a setup to Season Two than a big moment in and of itself (although the pair’s snooping does lead to a revelation concerning the motive for Foggy‘s death).

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