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Mrs. Columbo (1979)
Excellent light entertainment
Kate Mulgrew is wonderful as the energetic journalist-amateur sleuth striding through a slew of adventures. Forget the ridiculous butthurt of the cultists of "Columbo" who have crashed its rating and enjoy this cheerful , unassuming series for what it offers--witty dialogue, cameos by bygone stars, time capsule of a slower, more hopeful time. While of modest ambition, some episodes rise to achieve real pathos (e.g. The puppet story), real scares and mystery (the spiritualists, the episode with overheard conversations...) But the main, and wholly sufficient reason to watch this, is Mulgrew--as intelligent as she is beautiful, with enough charm to fuel Hogwarts through a season.
The Menu (2022)
Good idea; flawed execution
This satire of the filthy rich and their obscene consumerism and greed that is burning up our planet clearly wasn't signposted enough or we wouldn't be hearing so much about how it's a send-up of "the service industry", or what a disappointment it turned out to be to those expecting cannibalistic horror. Wake up, people, we ARE in a horror, 24/7!
To the cynics (or maybe just those of us who follow the news) the story is all too transparent. The end is nigh for the decadent civilization that has allowed total destruction of nature and the social contract based on equality and cooperation. In the film, the man who rebels (or rather merely assumes the role of the executioner) is the chef, whose artistry has served merely to tickle the vanity of the rich, those who would eat the last dodo "for the experience" but can't even recall any of the sublime dishes served to them ("cod", says the rich old guy prompted by the wife; "HALIBUT!", shrieks the chef, and adds bitterly that that which wasn't important to the rich glutton, was "important to the halibut". In the same way we have caused and are causing millions of species to die off, without even knowing a fraction of what we--and Life in total--are losing).
The lying wheeling-dealing stealing tech/finance bros deserved to be pulverized, not gently smacked. How much grief this class of assholes has caused the world... it's (ha!) incalculable. Idiots truly believe St. Elon will rapture them to Mars and further, that the pillaging can go beyond, or achieve more than what it does for their inadequate little egos.
In comparison to them, the inane food critics are almost likeable. Yeah, they are pretentious. I'll take pretentious over world-murdering any day, thank you. In the big picture I can't see they are worse than the chef, himself a servant to the rich. The has-been actor, the "name-dropping whore" as he confesses of himself, is also a comparatively minor offender. This is the biggest flaw of the screenplay--that it waffles and obscures its target, letting off the hook the powerful by targeting just as noisily their jesters. Are the latter guilty for colluding in "amusing ourselves to death", as Neil Postman wrote; yes, they are. But they are not the core problem. They didn't create the system of enrichment of the few at the expense of the many, nor do they command police and military armies that safeguard that system.
The one exception to this list of criminals is Margot, the working girl, the one with a "modest" appetite (as if cheeseburgers weren't as big part of the problem as is harvesting songbirds for their hearts). Still, although a "simple" meat-eater, Margot is young enough (it's not a coincidence that she reminds the rich old couple of their "daughter") to claim some innocence--born yesterday, she didn't have the time to contribute to the crime others have been committing all their lives.
This is another point where satire fails--it's our whole planet that is burning, and there is no escape from that for any human.
You may hope to be Margot, but you won't be. Best thing any of us can do is quit eating damn cheeseburgers--to say nothing of spotted halibut and nightingale hearts.