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"Uncut Gems": Grand illusions

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An actress not long ago said it did not matter if she liked or disliked characters she played; it was only important to understand them. Pretty much the same thing might be said about moviegoers: they won't mind if a screen character is terrible as long as they can see why. The biggest problem, then, with "Uncut Gems" is that the explanation for the central character is only that he is not nearly as smart as he thinks he is; beyond that, we see that he is an ass to everyone around him, but never why he is such an ass. This, I admit, is contrarian. The movie has gotten raves from reviewers -- 92 percent on Rotten Tomatoes at this writing -- with Oscar talk attached to Adam Sandler for adding this bold, bracing performance to his short list of departures from often stupid comedies. The comedies, of course, are his bread and butter; "Murder Mystery" was reportedly the most-watched original on Netflix in 2019, and many of my Film Appreciation students last ter...
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"Good Fight" returning

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The official word:   Paramount+, the streaming service from ViacomCBS, today announced that season five of its critically acclaimed, original series, THE GOOD FIGHT, will premiere on  Thursday, June 24 . Following the premiere, new episodes of the 10-episode fifth season will be available to stream weekly on Thursdays, exclusively for Paramount+ subscribers. A  new teaser  for the upcoming season was also released today.   In the fifth season, Diane (Christine Baranski) is forced to question whether it’s appropriate for her to help run an African American law firm with Liz (Audra McDonald) when the firm loses two top lawyers. Meanwhile, Marissa (Sarah Steele) and the firm become entangled with Hal Wackner (Mandy Patinkin), a regular Chicagoan who decides to open his own courtroom in the back of a copy shop.
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TV watching, so much TV watching

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I still cruise the television offerings, though sometimes not for long. "Blood and Treasure," the CBS summer series, wasn't even worth finishing the first episode, a clumsily forced attempt at clever action. I managed to make it through one episode of Spectrum's "L.A.'s Finest," a gender-reversed visit to the "Bad Boys" formula, but one was enough; again, everything seemed to have been borrowed elsewhere, and not very well. I've seen a little more of the new Netflix-backed season of "Designated Survivor" ; it seems to be trying to be less of a thriller and more of a political tale (including via real-people documentary footage) but it's not very good at it -- at times a blatant reworking of things "The West Wing" did better. And I can say that from current memory, since I've been binge-watching "West Wing," with six seasons done and the seventh to go. The original flaws are still there -- the unk...
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