However, now, with season 5, there is a bit of hackiness coming into the writing and the story line.  For example, Lester and Jimmy Mcnulty come up with a far fetched scheme to get the feds to pay attention again to their wire tap of the new gangster extraordinaire, Marlo Stanfield, who has a lot of bodies on him and who also seems like the biggest sociopath since Tony Soprano in any series, only he doesn’t even seem to like animals.

Some of the actual dialogue is also a bit weak in season five, which really disappointed me.  I keep thinking, well, maybe the next episode will be back to normal, but we’ve watched six episodes so far and each episode has been good, yes, but still below par for the previous 4 seasons high precedent. 

In season five of the Wire, we see Jimmy McNulty screwing up his life again after meeting a wonderful woman who in season 4 he seemed to be enjoying a domestically blissful life with by going out and getting drunk and womanizing again.  We follow his self destruction again as we say to ourselves, ooh, Jimmy no, and that part is also a little hard to watch, although true to his character, so kudos to the writers on not writing a fair tale into this season I guess.

I miss the characters that really made us love them in previous seasons, like Bunny, Randy, Prezbo the teacher/cop, and others that we either haven’t glimpsed in this season or see very little of.  My boyfriend also mentioned that the story line of Omar, the renegade Robin Hood of drug dealers and thugs, isn’t really fulfilling and I have to agree so far.  Could season five get a lot better still?  Sure, but I’m not going to count my chickens til they hatch, and if there’s any indication so far, it looks like it will definitely be the weakest season of the Wire so far.  I’ll keep you Wire fans posted!

The Beginning isn’t gruesome, at least not in any realistic way since much of it looks fake, but it’s offensively stupid, with it’s backstory as to how Leatherface gets his mask, and how his adoptive masochistic “dad” got to be the sheriff of the podunk town.  With the first Chainsaw movie, I had a heavy feeling afterwards because I really felt as though those people died horrible deaths and that the story was somehow very real (it was supposedly based on a true story, by the way). 

With this one, I had a sick, heavy feeling after watching 2/3 of it (I skipped out and made my boyfriend watch the rest by himself, and I went in the other room and watched the first X Files movie, a much better choice), but that was because the characters were unredeeming, and really just made you want to go take a shower. 

My opinion on this movie is that it deserves an F minus if I were to grade it.  It was unoriginal, hurried, and lacked any sort of taste or style.  It was obvious and never clever, and wasn’t even scary, it just made you feel disgusted that you were wasting your time watching it. 

Each season of the wire has focused around different stories and different groups of people from different walks of life.  The 4th season centers around an inner city Baltimore school that has gone completely out of control, and of course there are also subplots galore, even with one of the Wire favorites, Omar, who loves to mess with the drug dealer’s stashes, and makes a good living from it.  However, he finds himself on the defensive when there is a price on his head and he’s thrown into jail on false murder charges.

The only character that is not really likeable or compelling in the fourth season is actually the object of the latest Wire, named Marlo, a new kid in town who’s taken over most of Avon Barksdale’s corners, and seems to have a penchant for making people mad and not following the rules - he’s a cocky guy, and it’s hard to take him, and he definitely isn’t likeable, but I think that’s what the writers wanted this season.  In other words, you cared if you saw Stringer Bell or Avon Barksdale or Omar get killed, but you would actually relish the idea of this Marlo guy getting killed because he has no charisma. 

With the cops now chasing after evidence against Marlo, and having a hard time finding the “bodies” to get him, you find yourself rooting for the kids at the inner city school and hoping that they don’t take the path that so many of their peers do, especially when being tempted all the time by Marlo’s henchman to play corners and sell drugs.  Marlo’s henchman are just as unlikeable and cold blooded, Snoop and Chris.

Each season of the Wire is unique and brings in new characters, but the really cool thing about it is how they hook you in and at first you think nothing is happening for the first episode or two, but the acting is so good and the emotions run high, and you soon find yourself caring for these characters like they were family. 

While I will say one of my complaints about the movie The Exorcism of Emily Rose is that sometimes the writing came off as hokey or cliche, I think the acting was very solid, and included a great cast of actors and actresses, including Emily played by the same woman who plays Dexter’s sister on the series about a serial killer called Dexter on Showtime, and Laura Linney, as always was good as the attorney who is reluctantly assigned the case to defend the catholic priest who is being tried for “negligent homicide” in the death of Emily Rose, because of a series of exorcisms.

Tom Wilkinson does a great job as the priest being tried, Father Moore, and Campbell Scott, whom I hadn’t seen in anything in years, was great as the attorney on the plaintiff side, the people.  What was interesting about this movie was that it was based on a true story, however I came to find out it was VERY loosely based on real events that occurred in Germany back in the seventies, where a woman by the name of Annelise Michel.

The real story was interesting and compelling, but the movie spun it as a supernatural occurrence while it sounds like the real life story was really an unfortunatel  series of mishaps for a seriously mentally ill young woman who was most likely schizophrenic.  The movie definitely took a lot of liberties and while the directors say they wanted to present both sides of the story and let the audience make up their mind, they definitely went for the supernatural, mystical angle. 

It worked - it was compelling and well directed, but the writing and scenarios could have used some work.  A good example of one hokey part (spoiler alert), was when one of the main witnesses is run over right in front of the defense attorney.  Oh, and they must have added scenes later, because there are two scenes where Laura Linney is clearly wearing a really bad wig, so there were some cases of bad editing that took away from the credibility of this otherwise solid movie. 

The Wire is about a group of detectives and cops that are assembled to help bring down a new drug ring - at least one that’s new to them, that’s becoming a little too violent.  The show is set in the slums of Baltimore, and the first season centers around an investigation and subsequent uncovering of a drug ring run by Avon Barksdale.  Barksdale remains an elusive character until one cop who pretty much keeps his mouth shut on works on his miniature pieces of furniture figures out who he is by putting a name to a face from a local boxing club.

We are introduced to so many character this first season that we can barely keep their names and faces straight, but we ultimately end up caring about what happens to each and every one of them, which is a hard thing to do for most television shows, especially where the line between good and bad becomes very thin and unrecognizable in most cases.

Now that we are on the second season of the series, we can barely wait to watch the next one, and it’s not because each episode ends with some huge cliffhanger, it kind of ends on a low key note, like the Sopranos usually did, we just genuinely can’t wait to see our characters in action and what’s going to happen in the next one and how the plot develops.  The plots are original. 

Those that expect a lot of violence like the Sopranos has may be disappointed though, it’s low on violence except few scenes that graphically depict murder scenes, but the disturbing graphic violence of the Sopranos caliber won’t be found here, and it’s actually refreshing and it works because the series still maintains that gritty, slightly reckless tone.  I’d definitely recommend this to anyone who can follow a script for a while without getting impatient and can get the names down before giving up on it - it’s well worth the wait. 

The movie is one about what seems like a victimless crime, thought of by Hoffman, the “bad” brother, and is carried out by his cry baby brother played by Hawke who turns in a good performance as well alongside the formidable Hoffman, which is much to say about acting abilities when you can hold your own beside a pro. 

The brothers hatch a plot to make some extra money, which they are both in desperate need of, for different reasons but both through faults of their own, to rob their mother and father’s jewlry store.  When things go horribly wrong, the events are told in a flash forward, flash back sequence, with a sort of weird format that I didn’t like, and you’ll know what I mean when you see the film. 

The problem I have with this movie is that I just didn’t care about these two brothers.  Instead of feeling sorry for Hawke, I didn’t care if he spent the rest of his miserable life in prison, since he seemed the type that would push you out in the middle of traffic if it were between you and him getting hit by a car.  As far as Hoffman goes, it seems the film maker teeters between trying to make you dislike him and feel sorry for him, both of which are unsuccessful, at least for me.

Tomei puts in a good performance, but we’re unsure of what her character’s point is, other than providing what seems like gratuitious sex scenes and topless eye candy.  If I were her, I’d wish the film I’d bared it all for several times grabbed the audience a bit more and stuck with you.  All in all, I can’t say I disliked the movie, but it wasn’t up to snuff for the actors that were in it, including Albert Finney, who did a great job as the father who seems to have some problems of his own.