Mr. Burke Reviews

Review #27: Longmire When I log into Netflix, there is usually a banner suggestion for some new movie or show for me to watch. one might assume the suggestion stems from my viewing habits. While I'm on the fence about software tracking my preferences and trying to pigeon-hole me, you have to appreciate if they're making the effort. The promo for Longmire just showed a guy in a long coat and cowboy hat carrying a rifle with a backdrop of wide-open countryside. I had no idea what the show was about, and wondered if the suggestion came from my watching Wynonna Earp . (Had I thought about it, I would've realized that it couldn't have -- I was using someone else's account when I binged Season 1.) The Longmire of the title is a sheriff of Absaroka County, Wyoming, and the show is based on the Walt Longmire Mysteries , which I've never heard of. However, there were six seasons of the show, which means it was popular enough to keep making them, and hopefully have

Review #26: The Good Place I'd heard of the good place but new nothing of the premise until I started watching the first episode on Netflix. A comedy with Ted Danson? That's worth a shot. Plus, it stars Kristen Bell, who I've apparently over seen act in a Netflix movie with Kelsey Grammar ( Like Father ). The titular Good Place is where good people go when they die, and not many people make the cut. For instance, of all the presidents, only Lincoln made it because of freeing the slaves. The Good Place is divided into distinct, well-planned neighborhoods, limited in size, where you live in a house that matches your personality along with your soul mate, who you'll spend eternity with. The problem is that Eleanor Shellstrop (Bell) was not really a good person -- definitely not "free the slaves" good. And she thinks that some mistake has been made, but at the same time, so doesn't want to go to the Bad Place. Meanwhile, there's problems with her sou

Review #25: iZombie I watch quite a few shows on the CW network, so many that it's likely my "most-watched" channel these days. This is, of course, do to all the shows currently in the "Arrowverse" -- shows based on DC comics. And since I watch so many of those, I hadn't watched many of the other shows advertised on that network. One of those shows was iZombie, which had a catchy title, and whose commercials showed a chick young zombie girl, making a living. I'd thought of tuning in, and I'm glad that I didn't do it then. Better to start from the beginning, which I eventually did, and continued on through the end of four seasons. It's not your typical zombie show. As it turned out, it was another show based on a comic, and they use comic tropes introducing scenes, along with some really atrocious puns that I only wish I could come up with. It also turns out that the Rob Thomas who produces it is the some guy from Matchbox 20 (and also th

Review #24: The Ape, The Bat, Doomed to Die, The Corpse Vanishes Toward the end of the era of video rental and the rise of online streaming, there was a time when discount and dollar stores would sell dollar DVDs of old movies, likely in public domain. I collected a few of these before coming to the realization that if I wouldn't pay a dollar to rent one of these, why am I paying money to own them? The answer is that some of these are classics that would never show up at regular video stores, and with the rise of chain stores pushing the "mom & pop" places out of business, the price to rent was considerably more than a buck anyway. Anyway, I recently had occasion to pull a few videos out of the basement on a mission to view them and then pass them along. Passing along likely means the donation pile, because I'm not sure who might be interested and also owns a DVD player. As it is, I watched these on my desktop PC. I do have a portable player, but the screen i

Review #23: Los Parecidos a.k.a. The Similars Some friends of mine have watched The Haunting of Hill House on Netflix. I am not among those who have viewed it. It's labelled as being very intense, and that's not something I'm going to binge. I don't need anything that's going to prevent me from sleeping well (more than the usual things that already prevent me from sleeping well). However, I am enough of a fan of the "classics" that one of the aforementioned friends invited a lot of us over to view the 1963 movie The Haunting (which was remade in the 90s). This movie is more of a thriller than a horror film, and it's always a bit off-kilter. Mini-review within a review: you should want this film. The problem was that when the movie ended, the evening was still young, and we needed something else to watch. Trying to figure out what to put on next is as difficult as trying to pick a place to eat. We looked through the horror listings, not wanting an

Review #22: Like Father If you're old enough to remember when there were only three networks which would fill out their weekly programming schedules with "Movies of the Week", then this Netflix film might be of interest to you. Like Father , starring Kelsey Grammar and Kristen Bell , is reminiscent of some of the better movies of the week of years gone by, only with a slightly better budget and bigger names to drive them. To be fair, Bell has top billing and is the central character, but Grammar is the actor I'm more familiar with and the reason I decided to give it a go. The only thing that I know I've seen Kristen Bell in might be a single episode of Veronica Mars . (Note to self: see if that's available to binge.) Life Father is the story of Rachel Hamilton, a workaholic who gets left at the altar because she can't leave her phone home even on the day of her wedding. (She was late walking down the aisle because she took a work call.) Her estranged