In September 2000, the first reality TV show was released about 25 people who were on an Island and competed to be the last person not voted off the show. This one show, that had its debut on CBS in 2000 changed the entire course of Television history and what followed were many mostly bad reality shows for many years. “Joe Millionaire” and “Average Joe” stand out as two of the worst. There were some good shows, like “American Idol”, “Dancing with the Stars” and “The Voice” stand out as a few of the higher quality reality shows that lasted. In almost all of these shows, the concept was always the same; voting someone off the show every week until the winner is finally chosen. After about 5 years of this, there were almost no good situation comedies or drama series on television anymore. One wondered how television actors were ever able to find a job during all these lean years where producers only cared about the bottom line and the production costs of all reality shows were far less than any situation comedy or 1-hour drama. Around 2009 and 2010, things started to change with great long term comedies including the Big Bang Theory and Modern Family and Parenthood, which was the first top notch family drama show to debut in many years. Now, in my opinion, after 17 long years, with the first season of “This Is Us” about to end next week, things have finally come full circle for television, because when a show this good and groundbreaking comes around, everybody else tries to copy it or parts of it and TV producers finally realize that great writing and quality is ultimately what will make money and not low production cost reality shows.

There are many great things about This Is Us, starting with the writing and the great story ideas and the fact that for the first time in probably any drama show the concept of having multiple timelines where we follow the lives of a family while in their childhoods, adolescence, adulthood and old age. This is an idea so great, it’s a wonder that nobody thought of it before. The writing and acting for this show are outstanding but the standout actor is Sterling K. Brown and he seems to be in his mid-40’s and seemed to come out of nowhere as one of the best actors I have seen in many years. He also starred in “The People vs OJ Simpson”, playing Chris Darden and has already won an Emmy for that role. While looking at Brown’s credits, that date back to 2002, it is very obvious that this man has paid his dues as an actor for many years before finally getting his lucky break. Having great ability in anything is one thing, getting the opportunity to prove that ability it is entirely something else. I admire Sterling K. Brown’s acting ability but his perseverance for many years to prove that he is a great actor is even more impressive.

One great scene from this week’s show was when Brown’s character decided to finally quit his job which had dominated his life with high stress and long hours for 8 years. His father had died, and the CEO of the company he worked for sent him a card and a box of pears. It turns out that Brown’s character almost died of a pear allergy that his boss knew about and this gift and the terse typed card he received was the last straw. This one subtle scene and Sterling’s acting when he quit his job was one of the best depictions of the outrage that so many of us try and survive when we work for other people. This scene was so good in fact, that it will probably give Sterling K Brown another Emmy award for best actor in a drama series.

Time will tell if This Is Us has permanently changed the face of television but in my opinion it has. If you have not seen this great new TV show you owe it to yourself to see the entire first season when it comes available on DVD.

The first thing I found most amazing about this mostly religious movie is how much the critics on Rotten Tomatoes disliked it, at only an 18% approval, even though the audience ranking was 88%. It is true there are things to dislike about this film but it is very far from a bad one, regardless of your religious beliefs. As anyone would know from the trailer of “The Shack” you know it is about the abduction of a very adorable young girl and the extraordinary pain her father goes through after she is abducted. Of all the things that can go wrong with raising a child, having them taken from you by some disgusting animal and then either never found or killed are at the very top of the list. One wonders how anyone could ever hold a job or even sleep again, after going through a horrible event like losing a child through an abduction by a known child kidnapper. Another movie or documentary related to this issue could be stories about people who have gone through a nightmare like this and somehow found a way to survive. Most of us would never recover from something like this, I know I wouldn’t. Under these extreme circumstances, any chance of a return to any kind of a normal life would be impossible.

The process of casting this movie must have been a difficult one because the producers found a young girl played by Amélie Eve to play the abducted child in this film, and she is far and away the cutest and most adorable child I have ever seen in any movie. Her childlike cuteness makes watching this movie that much more agonizing both before the abduction happens and afterward when her father, mother and older brother and sister try to go on with their lives without her. With a child as special as this one, any parent would be constantly keeping a watchful eye, but the horror with a life reality like this is that you cannot always be aware of where your child is 100% of the time and as is depicted in this movie, the father’s temporary distraction was more than justified.

The recent great movie “Manchester By the Sea” is another movie about the overwhelming grief over the loss of a child but the difference with this film is that it tries to rationalize the grief and anger at God by using 3 religious muses who visit with the father of the young girl, Mack Phillips, played by Sam Worthington at a remote shack in the woods where the young girl’s dress was found after she was taken. The 3 muses are played well by Octavia Spencer,
Avraham Aviv Alush and Sumire Matsubara, but the problem with their presence in this film and what they say to the grieving father in the shack is that their answers to his questions about God and evil and why things are they way they are in the world, come off more like riddles out of a fortune cookie than anything that makes any real sense. Perhaps the screenwriter wanted people to come up with own conclusions to questions that really have no real answer that could ever satisfy anyone who has gone through grief and loss to this degree. For me what I took from all their comments about God and real life is, “if God is in charge of all the good things in the world, what makes any of us believe that he would have any control over all the evil in the world”.

A huge flaw in this movie was at the beginning where Mack Phillips is born into a family with an alcoholic father and there is a huge event that happens after several scenes of extreme abuse of his father towards him and his mother. This major event is then never discussed or referenced ever again for the entire remainder of this film, that also includes all of the conversations with the 3 muses as Mack tries desperately to get past his anger towards God and his grief. This is very obviously a gigantic flaw in this movie and I am at a loss that this large of a glaring omission could have been left out of this film. Despite this flaw, I thought this movie was very well done and I do recommend it.

This movie had me wondering two things. How many people has the X-Men character played by Hugh Jackman stabbed in the new movie Logan? How many did he decapitate and how many people did he stab or decapitate in all the movies he has been in while playing the Wolverine? As far as people being stabbed and killed, this movie has to be the all-time record because in this latest and last installment of the Wolverine, he comes across a young girl played by young actress Dafne Keen who stabs, kills and decapitate’s almost as many people as the Wolverine does. If I had to guess, in this movie there are probably as many as 250 actual stabbings and about 75 people actually die. Somewhere this gets rather tiresome and in the case of this film, represents major overkill, pardon the pun.

For this latest installment, the story is mostly a good one, but too much of the time the story degrades down to a chase movie where the Wolverine is trying to transport Patrick Stewart, who reprises his role as the leader of the X-men Professor Charles Xavier and the young 10-year-old girl Wolverine named Laura to some place in North Dakota known as Eden. The ratings for this movie on IMDB (8.8) and Rotten Tomatoes (94%) are extremely high, but for me given the movie did not surprise me that much and the story was pretty average my rating for this film would be more in the low 7 range.

See this movie if you are a big fan of the Marvel Comics X-Men stories or are a big fan of Wolverine, but if you are not, you should not expect to see anything more than a pretty average film.

Overall, given the good points in this movie and the acting, I do recommend Logan.