Naomi – Enigma

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Naomi – Enigma
  • wiki: link

After discovering that her parents knew she arrived from another world, Naomi McDuffie (Kaci Walfall) sets out to learn as much about her murky origins as possible. The flashbacks to “Enigma” are underwhelming to say the least, especially compared to how the reveal works in the original comics. I’m not sure if Naomi’s parents are still hiding more details from her (like say one of her parents also not being from this world) or if the episode’s writing is simply substandard and will continue to recon story and plot at random as the series has done repeatedly since the first episode to offer underwhelming reveals.

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Death on the Nile

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Death on the Nile (2022)
  • IMDb: link

Writer/director/star Kenneth Branagh returns to reprise his role as Hercule Poirot in this follow-up to 2017’s adaptation of Murder on the Orient Express. The adaptation of Agatha Christie’s Death on the Nile isn’t as successful, in part due to source material not being as strong this time around and in part for some questionable creative decisions.

It takes far too long to get to the setting for our murder mystery, let alone the murder itself. By the time the body has dropped more than half the film seems to have already passed. In a somewhat defiant attempt to justify the character’s look in the previous film, Branagh opens with a flashback explaining the reasoning behind Poirot’s ridiculous mustache. After jumping forward, we are given multiple scenes setting up various characters, both in London and in Egypt, before finally get them all together on a ship sailing down the Nile River.

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Parallel Mothers

/ / Movie Reviews
  • Title: Parallel Mothers
  • IMDb: link

For a film that centers around a plot point that would be right at home in any soap opera, Parallel Mothers provides a surprisingly strong drama. Penélope Cruz and Milena Smit are strangers who meet in the hospital, both giving birth to their first child. Each will take home a boy, but what they won’t realize for quite some time is that each mother was given the other’s son.

It’s Janis (Cruz) who begins to suspect the truth when the father (Israel Elejalde), a flirtatious archeologist with a wife and no real interest in a more permanent relationship with the photographer, sees no resemblance in the child to anyone in his family. A chance meeting with Ana (Smit) brings the characters back into each others orbit as Janis’ suspicions are realized and a gnawing guilt over the truth begins to color all that will follow.

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Spenser: For Hire – Angel of Desolation

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: Spenser: For Hire – Angel of Desolation
  • IMDb: link

Throwback Thursday takes us back to the mean streets of Boston and the travails of a smart ass private detective. “Angel of Desolation” follows a formula found in Robert B. Parker’s original novels with Spenser (Robert Urich) being fired from a job before it is complete but deciding to continue to work under the mystery is solved. His client in “Angel of Desolation” is a popular model (Shelly Burch) married into old Boston money. Although she’s obviously frightened of something (even more than the drive by attack Spenser prevents), our intrepid investigator is let go by the family.

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The Book of Boba Fett – The Gathering Storm

/ / Television Reviews
  • Title: The Book of Boba Fett – Chapter 4: The Gathering Storm
  • wiki: link

Another episode that primarily focuses on an extended flashback, “Chapter 4” offers us Boba Fett‘s (Temuera Morrison) discovery of the wounded Fennec Shand (Ming-Na Wen), his decision to save her life, and the beginnings of the pair’s working relationship involving reclaiming Slave I from Jabba’s Palace and taking some revenge on both the Kintan Striders and the Sarlaac. Sneaking into, and escaping from, Jabba’s Palace is given the most time in the episode getting us closer and closer to who Boba was at the time of his first appearance in The Mandalorian.

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