Scarecrow's Blog From the Darkside

I have been absolutely fascinated with Letterboxd's reaction to this film. Talk about polarizing! I still look through the comments/reviews on this film. It is beyond hated. The story about an 18 year old student in a Tennessee high school (that seems to have such a small student body for some reason; it looks like it was shot during the pandemic or something), with a very flirty lesbian friend who admittedly has fun teasing a football coach. Ortega's Cairo Sweet has absent parents off on another trip, leaving her behind to wallow in melancholy and narrate her woe to us about how to jazz up her profile for a school out of state. A lot of the dialogue uses literary words and the characters talk as if they speak in a language completely of some world we are not part of...or most of us. I assume, there are pockets of intellectuals impressing each other with how smart they are. This feels like that. Beatrice, an English teacher's wife who is a current author, is really busy and

 I decided to move my Letterboxd comments and review here: Top 5 scenes: 1) Rollergirl makes sure that guy from school remembered her, after Jack got some licks in 2) Little Bill is confronted by cameraman, Longjohn, about equipment needed; this after Bill just once again found his wife screwing some random guy in the middle of the yard near Jack's pool party. Little Bill kind of had more important matters on his mind than how the shoot would be photographed 3) Poor Buck just wants to be a cowboy, sits morose dressed as Rick James, and removes the wig, while actress, Melora, sees him alone and strikes up a talk about sunsets 4) Rollergirl wants Amber to be mommy...the two sort of bonding over snorts of nose candy 5) Rollergirl is just called on to be dramatic chapter breaks for PTA and I loved that director choice; she's the constant, rolling through every timeline. I think in terms of that chapter break I enjoy is when PTA has Rollergirl with her trusty camera taking a snap of

 Just one last gripe since the marathon has returned to the first season out of the fifth season, the show at the end did both Gina and Trudy really dirty. While the 3rd and 4th seasons started to give these characters more to do, the fifth season just kicked them to the curb. That sucks. By the end, they were visiting Crockett and Castillo in the hospital at their beds while recovering from gunshot wounds or reacting to story action that rarely involves them. They got the shaft as Larry Zito (Diehl) did, until he was just killed off. The fifth season had episodes that just continued to emphasize Crockett and Tubbs could never have a relationship and got sick of their jobs. It was dreary, dark, and dour. The fun died out. The colors were muted. It was a drag.

 I will say that while I am just not as much a fan of the last two seasons of Miami Vice, going through the marathon currently showcasing the series on Universal Action on Roku Channel, I did appreciate seeing wisened Crockett and Tubbs discussing losing those they love and you just feel their wearying emotional states as the job has cost them so much, including love and life.

 Following the close of the fourth season and beginning fifth season, Miami Vice committed to a story arc involving Sonny Crockett suffering amnesia and "becoming" a drug lord lieutenant and "ideas mind" willing to kill for the latest kingpin until he could seize and empire for himself, shooting his way through a lot of crime family people before his memory as a narcotics cop returned, mostly thanks to Tubbs. I hated this arc because I found no plausible reason he could ever be a police officer again, and, if anything, would go to prison. He kills a lot of people in cold blood, even shooting Tubbs! Crime families fall, Crockett, in the personality of Burnett even shoots a cop with a gun on him. I just refuse to believe Crockett, even if not in his right mind, could just snap back to his old self and return eventually to vice duty.