Shameless Self Expression

This review might be a bit messy and prone to tangents. I rarely revise a review, tending to trust my immediate instincts. Whether it’s out of being lazy or arrogant (possibly both), it seems to work out more often than not. Given my childhood fondness for the subject matter here, I don’t really care if this is the most intellectually well thought out of my reviews, because “Sesame Street” , whilst partly an educational show, has an emotional pull and nostalgia to it for those of us adults who watched it as kids. I think it might be more appropriate to not intellectualise the faeces out of this film. How a film and its subject make you feel and the baggage you arrive at the film with can also be interesting and valid, I believe. If you were born from the 70s onwards, there’s a good chance that a large part of your childhood died when Caroll Spinney died in early December 2019. Spinney was the puppeteer inside the suit of the beloved “Sesame Street” character Big Bird (He also perf...

Called in to help North Carolina authorities catch a serial killer, forensic psychologist and detective Dr. Alex Cross (Morgan Freeman) has a personal stake in the case when his niece is abducted. Ashley Judd plays a kidnapped woman who managed to escape Casanova’s clutches and now wants to help the manhunt. Bill Nunn plays Cross’ cop brother, Cary Elwes plays a local detective, Brian Cox turns up briefly as the local police chief, Richard T. Jones is the ex-boyfriend of Cross’ niece, Jay O. Sanders is with the FBI, and Jeremy Piven plays Nunn’s partner on the force. Whodunits/twisty thrillers tend to live or die on the strength of their central mystery/twist endings, at least for me. If I can pick the culprit/s before the film is over (or from watching the trailer before I see the film in the case of the dreadful “Twisted” ), the film fails on first viewing. If the whodunit does not work in some other way, ditto. That’s why I’ll always champion 1992’s “Knight Moves” with Ch...