Today is a disrupted day due to errands and visits. But also I have to watch the Nick Cage movie of the H.P. Lovecraft story “The Color Out of Space.” Tyler Cook of the Portly Politico and I have agreed to each watch this stinkeroo and then review it to the best of our abilities. He has watched it and assures me it’s awful. So today I will bite the bullet and watch it before Camera Girl gets back from weekly shopping. I am dreading the experience already. The things I do for my art.
Tag: Reviews
Dersu Uzala (1975) – A Movie Review
Akira Kurosawa is probably best known in the West for his films that are set in Japan’s Sengoku period like “Seven Samurai” (1954), Kagemusha (1980) and Ran (1985). But one picture of his that I recently watched is set in turn of the century (19th to 20th century) tsarist Russia and is based on the memoir of a Russian explorer, Vladimir Arsenyev, concerning his travels in the Ussuri basin in the Russian Far East. Dersu Uzala was a Nanai hunter. The Nanai are a tribal people who live in the area. Dersu guided Arsenyev’s surveying crew from 1902 to 1907. His knowledge of the climatic and topographic dangers of this wild area several times saved Arsenyev and his men from death.
The story very simply and directly demonstrates the friendship and respect that Arsenyev and Dersu develop and when the elderly Dersu is no longer able to survive as a hunter Arsenyev takes the old Nanai home with him to Khabarovsk. But although Arsenyev’s wife and son adopt the strange tribesman as family, we see the stifling restrictions of the town wither the old man’s spirit and he declares that he must go back to the forest. His death and the cause of it completes this story about simplicity and modernity colliding and the humanity that exists on both sides of that intersection.
One of the interesting things about Dersu’s world view is his animism. He sees “people” in almost everything; the sun, the moon, water, fire, the wind, the forest. And he feels that the forest spirit watches him and punishes actions that are forbidden such as his killing of a Siberian tiger that threatened the expedition at one point. And we see his empathy for his fellow man in the practices that he follows. For instance, Dersu leaves salt, matches and firewood at the shelters that he leaves in the woods for the next stranger who will come along.
The movie was filmed in the Russian Far East. The Arctic ice flows and limitless taiga forest is an impressive if forbidding back drop for the story. Mainly it is a story of men on an adventure in the wild. Although the film is in Russian with subtitles, it’s a pretty good story. I recommend it.
The Dirty Dozen (1967) – A Movie Review
The Dirty Dozen is a fictional story about a clandestine American military mission during WW II. Disgraced Army Major John Reisman, played by Lee Marvin, is ordered by Gen. Sam Worden (Ernest Borgnine) to select twelve court martialed Americans whose sentences vary from 20 years at hard labor up to hanging and train them up for a mission behind enemy lines in Nazi occupied France. If they survive and complete the mission honorably their sentences may be commuted. If not, they will be returned to serve their sentences.
The beginning of the movie is our introduction to the prisoners. Each man has an aversion to authority, several are hardened killers and one man (Archer Maggott played by Telly Savalas) is a delusional psychotic. The most sympathetic characters are played by Charles Bronson, Jim Brown and Clint Walker. Each has been convicted of murder but in each case, extenuating circumstances have been ignored by the military court that decided the case. Probably the least sympathetic convict (other than Maggott) is V. R. Franko played by John Cassavetes. He is a Chicago gangster who murdered a British civilian for less than ten dollars-worth of money. But he is also the everyman of the outfit whose defiance of authority becomes the rallying point for the prisoners to gel into a functional team.
The movie progresses from the team being trained by Reisman, then to a confrontation with a hostile base commander, Col. Everett Dasher Breed, played by Robert Ryan, then to a test of their competence in a War Game against Breed’s elite troop and finally to their mission.
This mission is a night time parachute drop into occupied France where the team will infiltrate a château where the German High Command are assembled and kill as many of the high-ranking officers as possible in the hope that it will disrupt the command and control of the Nazi military response to D-Day which is scheduled the morning after the raid.
The action goes according to their very detailed plan until Maggott finds himself in a room with a young German woman and proceeds to sadistically murder her before running amok with his machine gun thus prematurely alerting the Germans to their peril. The climax of the attack is James Brown tossing a series of grenades into the gasoline soaked and explosives filled ventilation lines for the bomb shelter where the Germans have taken cover. The whole château goes up in pyrotechnic splendor and only Lee Marvin, Charles Bronson and one supporting cast member live to return home from the mission.
The full list of the actors who played the twelve prisoners is John Cassavetes, Tom Busby, Jim Brown, Donald Sutherland, Ben Carruthers, Clint Walker, Charles Bronson, Colin Maitland, Stuart Cooper, Al Mancini, Trini Lopez and Telly Savalas.
As absurd as this whole mission sounds, and it is absurd, the movie, especially the mission in France, is exciting, interesting and very well done. Telly Savalas is a little over the top in his psycho characterization but he sells it well and it isn’t hard to see it coming.
Bronson and Marvin impersonating German officers in the château is fun to watch and the amount of gun play and other diverting activities is sure to keep a male audience’s attention. I highly recommend this movie for its entertainment value. It isn’t an actual war movie. It’s more of a caper movie but a very exciting one.
Above and Beyond (1952) – A Movie Review
“Above and Beyond” is a dramatic portrayal of the Air Force’s project to deliver the first atomic bomb to be dropped on Japan (Hiroshima). Col. Paul Tibbets, played by Robert Taylor, is selected for the mission because of his combat record and also for his knowledge of the capabilities of the B-29 bomber. The movie has two aspects. It documents the difficulty of the mission to combine the scientific, military and logistical requirements while maintaining absolute secrecy. The second aspect is the toll that this secrecy takes on the marriage and family life of Colonel Tibbets, his wife Lucey and their two young boys. I watched this movie along with Camera Girl and I made sure I emphasized how truly annoying wives are when husbands are trying to get something really important done. Like when I have a really important horror movie that I need to watch and she bothers me with unimportant stuff right in the middle of a very important scene. Very annoying. But I digress.
Since mission security is one of the crucial aspects of the story they gave the part of security chief, Major Uanna, to James Whitmore whose other credential for atomic energy related movies was his turn as a police officer in “Them,” the story of giant ants created by the original Manhattan Project blast in New Mexico. And the Air Force general overseeing the project was Major General Curtis E. LeMay who is played by Jim Backus, better known to television audiences as Gilligan’s Island’s very own millionaire, Thurston Howell III.
The melodrama of Col Tibbet’s disrupted family life is reasonably well done. But the payoff is the bombing mission. And it is compelling. The men in the plane other than Tibbets didn’t know about the atomic bomb. Tibbets reveals this during the flight to Japan. And he reveals to them that for all anyone knows their plane will be destroyed by the radiation or the subsequent shock wave. Actual footage of the Hiroshima blast is run during this sequence of the film and the devastating nature of the detonation is conveyed in Tibbets’ reaction to the blast. Even all these years later and in context of our familiarity with the much more powerful hydrogen bombs that were to follow, the sight of the Hiroshima explosion is still a sobering sight.
I recommend this movie based on its temporal proximity to the events. It gives us a chance to see the transition from the almost naïve mindset of the WW II Americans to the almost overwhelmed perspective of inhabitants of the new atomic age. And it gave me new-found admiration for the courage and determination of my parents’ and grandparents’ generations who combined intelligence and hard work to produce the horrible miracle that became the basis for our modern world. If we still had their clarity, I wonder whether we’d be in the mess we’re in now.
Gilda (1946) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
This is considered a film noir. I’d call it a happy ending in search of a plot.
The movie begins with Glenn Ford as Johnny Farrell, a down on his luck American in Argentina that is rescued from an armed robbery by a mysterious man with a sword cane. This man, Ballin Mundson, ends up hiring him to run his illegal casino and soon enough he is Mundson’s right hand man and has all the secrets of Mundson’s fabulous wealth and power. Apparently Mundson was in cahoots with Nazis who gave him fabulous secrets for cornering the market on fabulous tungsten. Really, tungsten. We’re told that a monopoly on tungsten will give Mundson control of the world! So, since this is 1946 there are disgruntled ex-Nazis running around. Apparently, they gave him the secrets of tungsten. Plus, Mundson marries Gilda (played by the very beautiful Rita Hayworth) who was heavily involved with Farrell back in the United States. But although Mundson suspects that they have history neither will admit to it.
For whatever reason that you care to come up with yourself we’re supposed to believe that Johnny and Gilda hate and love each other and all the tricks Gilda plays to make Johnny either jealous, or worried about Mundson becoming jealous, or both, make sense. But they don’t. It’s silly and annoying.
But all good things must come to an end. Both the Argentine police and the Nazis are closing in on Mundson. Probably a spike in the price of tungsten. In rapid succession, Mundson kills one of the Nazis, orders a plane to be ready for him at an airfield, sees Gilda and Johnny kissing in her bedroom then flees to the airfield with Johnny and the police in hot pursuit. They arrive in time to watch Mundson’s plane take off and then explode over the Atlantic Ocean. But Mundson parachutes out and is picked up by a waiting boat.
If that’s not goofy enough, Johnny then marries Gilda, the heiress to the tungsten cartel and takes the reins of tungsten power. He then tells Gilda that she will be treated as a prisoner with no conjugal privileges until she admits to all the love affairs she’s had since Johnny left her in their old life. Huhh? She runs away to Uruguay (!) but the Tungsten King has his henchmen bring her back. Gilda and Johnny are very unhappy.
Meanwhile the police want to bust up the tungsten cartel and they close the casino to force Johnny to give them the information. When he does, the police inspector tells Johnny that Gilda and Johnny are both in love with each other and they should go back to America and be happy. So, Johnny walks into the casino to ask Gilda to forgive him and return to America with him.
Just then Mundson returns and intends to shoot Johnny and Gilda. But the bathroom attendant stabs Mundson in the back with his own sword cane. And the police inspector tells Johnny and the bathroom guy that since Mundson committed suicide months ago he can’t be murdered. Huhh?
I forgot to tell you about the bathroom attendant. He’s comic relief that advises both Johnny and Gilda on life. Plus, he’s a bathroom attendant.
So, Gilda and Johnny live happily ever after unless they screw up again.
Okay, that’s unbelievable isn’t it? But the guy who plays Mundson is fun to listen to with his German accent and his love of canes and capes and stuff. Rita Hayworth is fun to look at and she dances sometimes and lip synchs to someone singing “Put the Blame on Mame.” And even though all this stuff sounds absurd the movie moves right along and, well, before you know it there’s that plane crash and then that happy ending.
This is a silly movie but I think it’s worth watching because Rita Hayworth is very pretty and looks swell dancing. And there are Nazis and there is that bathroom attendant who is sort of a home-grown philosopher and pretty handy with a sword cane.
So, I recommend this film but if what I wrote doesn’t convince you then give it a pass.
Last Man Standing – Thoughts on the Last Episode of the Series – A Television Review
Back in January 2021 I wrote a review of the last season of “Last Man Standing” that was beginning at that time and I said the show was unwatchable. And it was, but being the stubborn fool that I am, I decided to watch the final season as a lesson to myself. And as predicted it was unbearable. Sure, every once in a while, Tim Allen would inject a funny moment. But the overall unfunny, bland, bad writing, the trivial plot elements and emasculated male characters was beyond awful.
But I stuck it out until the bitter end and I’m glad I did. Because in the last half of the final “double episode” Tim Allen injected a plot element that was an open metaphor for the hijacking of his series by the network. The story element was that Mike’s classic pick-up truck that he restored from the ground up was stolen. Now just in case the metaphor escaped anyone he even slips and says “show” instead of “truck” in one place. He stresses several times that he’s had the “truck” for ten years and of course “Last Man Standing” premiered in 2011.
At one point the characters are talking about the fact that they can’t find the truck because the tracking GPS is off the “network.” One of them asks if it could be found on another network and someone else says he’s heard of something like that and then Tim Allen says he doesn’t think it will work. So, he’s hitting out at both ABC and Fox with this statement. Later on, he asks “Who steals somebody else’s work like that?” And there is a mock wake where the various actors talk about their feelings for the “truck.” And finally in the Mike character’s final VLOG episode Tim Allen says just like Ronald Reagan after his 1976 defeat in the Republican primary that he is bloodied but he’ll get back up again.
So maybe Tim Allen thinks he has another show in him. But what network will play it without neutering all the normal masculinity that Allen is known for? I don’t see it happening. But at least it was something that he at least acknowledged that his brain child had been butchered by the powers that be. For that at least I salute him.
If he ever does start a new series, I’ll give it a look. Who knows? Miracles can happen.
Robinson Crusoe (1954) – A Movie Review
This is a Mexican production (in English) directed by Luis Buñuel. And surprisingly contains none of the sensationalistic or bizarre affectations that he usually included in his films. In fact, it is a very faithful and normal portrayal of Daniel Defoe’s classic tale. For anyone who is unfamiliar with the plot. Crusoe is an Englishman of upper-class background who decides to leave his family and make his fortune in the wide world of the late 1600’s. He gets a ship and is headed to Africa to bring a cargo of slaves to the New World.
But the ship founders in a terrible storm and Crusoe swims off and eventually reaches the shore of a remote island somewhere in the tropical Atlantic Ocean off Africa. The ship that he abandoned ends up as a wreck stuck on some rocks close to the island Crusoe is on. He builds a raft and uses it to transport supplies from the wreck. He takes food, guns, powder, tools, clothes and even a dog and cat that were his pets on the ship. Shortly afterward the wreck sinks.
Crusoe builds a stockaded cave dwelling and improves his life with the tools he has saved from the ship. He grows wheat from seed and bakes his own bread. He builds a potter’s wheel and a kiln. He builds a calendar out of a log and tracks his imprisonment. But when his dog finally dies of old age then Crusoe finds his loneliness unbearable. And he comes close to losing his sanity. But one day he finds a human footprint on the beach. He discovers that African cannibals visit the island occasionally to feast on their captives. One day a captive breaks loose from the cannibals and Crusoe kills his pursuers and takes the escapee to live with him as his servant. He names him Friday after the day he found the man. Slowly Crusoe learns to trust Friday and they become true friends.
Years later a ship arrives and the crew comes to the island to collect water and also to maroon the captain and boatswain that they’ve mutinied against. With the help of Crusoe and Friday, the captain is able to capture the leaders of the mutineers. In gratitude the captain agrees to sail Crusoe and Friday back to England. The mutineers are allowed to be marooned on the island rather than hanged for mutiny and Crusoe leaves them his settlement and instructions on how to live comfortably on the island as castaways.
None of the actors will be familiar to an American audience but the direct visual nature of the movie, and the sparse dialog or even narration works perfectly well to tell the story. There’s nothing complicated here, just an adventure story. But the concept of complete isolation is a sort of profound human condition.
Not to belabor the point I enjoyed the film and on its own terms it is well done. And since you know exactly what to expect you can make up your own mind ahead of time whether this kind of story appeals to you or not.
The Big Heat (1953) – A Movie Review
This is film noir has Glenn Ford as homicide detective, Dave Bannion in a city where mob boss Mike Lagana controls the police department all the way up to police commissioner Higgins. When one of the crooked cops, Tom Duncan, has a change of heart and kills himself, leaving a file with all the details of the police corruption, his not so grieving widow Bertha hides the file and tells Lagana that she wants to keep getting money or she’ll have the file released to the newspapers.
Dave Bannion is assigned the Duncan suicide but when he starts sniffing around Duncan’s life, he finds that the supposedly honest cop is involved with a lot of shady people. Dave’s boss Lieutenant Ted Wilks, gets pressure from the Commissioner’s office to stop digging into the case but Dave refuses. Bannion finds that Duncan had a barfly girlfriend named Lucy Chapman who tells him that Duncan was unhappy in his marriage and felt guilty about being a crooked cop. Unfortunately, Lucy is overheard talking to Bannion by one of Lagana’s men and she ends up tortured and killed by his henchmen.
Now Bannion is sure that Lagana is responsible for Duncan’s and Chapman’s deaths and he confronts Lagana at his palatial home. After roughing up Lagana’s bodyguard and threatening the mob boss he leaves and the next day is dressed down by Wilks who has been ordered to stop Bannion from continuing with the crusade.
The next night when Dave gets home his wife is killed by a bomb that was planted in his car and was meant for him. After moving his young daughter to his sister-in-law’s home under police protection Bannion returns to work where Wilks and Higgins try to persuade him to let the department solve the murder of his wife. Bannion as much as accuses Higgins of being Lagana’s stooge and Higgins demands his badge and gun. Bannion gives him his badge but says the gun is his own and when Higgins warns him not to use it, he replies, “I won’t use it until I find my wife’s murderers.”
Lagana has a hood named Vince Stone, played with mad dog panache by Lee Marvin. Vince and another hood Larry Gordon are handling the Duncan problem for Lagana. Living with Vince is his girlfriend Debby Marsh played by the alluring Gloria Grahame. She is the comic relief while Vince and Larry are berated by Lagana over the bungling way they committed the murders of Lucy Chapman and Bannion’s wife.
The rest of the plot revolves around Bannion digging into the murder of his wife and the fallout from this search. Because an election is going on Lagana warns Vince and Larry to be discrete in public so when Bannion confronts them at a bar Vince and Larry leave the bar in full flight and Debby Marsh gets left behind. She becomes fascinated by this cop who is able to send Vince scurrying away and follows Bannion back to his hotel. But Debby doesn’t provide any information for Bannion and he insults her romantic advances so she leaves.
But that is the fuse that drives the story to its conclusion. One of Vince’s boys followed Debby back to Bannion’s hotel and when she lies to Vince about where she was, he flies into a jealous rage and throws boiling coffee at her, hideously scarring one side of her face.
Realizing that her life is in danger Debby runs away from the hospital where she had received treatment for her burns and calls on Bannion at his hotel room. He agrees to hide her and she provides information on who was responsible for his wife’s murder, Larry. Bannion goes after Larry and beats the truth out of him about the murders and the Duncan case. Bannion then tells Larry that he better run because Bannion will tell Lagana where he got his information. And sure enough, when Larry does run Vince catches up to him and kills him.
Now Bannion knows about Bertha Duncan’s arrangement with Lagana and he pays a visit to her and threatens to kill her because he knows that her death will automatically trigger the release of Duncan’s file to the newspapers. But he is interrupted by a police detail that Lagana sent to her house as protection against Bannion.
Meanwhile the protective police patrol at Bannion’s sister-in-law’s house is called off by Lagana and Bannion hurries there to find that his brother-in-law has called in the help of his old army buddies to protect the house and in fact Lieutenant Wilks and one of the other detectives have volunteered to guard the building on their own.
Meanwhile, Debby Marsh decides to go over to Bertha Duncan’s house and being a crook’s girlfriend, she decides that it is her place to kill Bertha Duncan and, in that way, put an end to Lagana and his mob. After shooting Duncan she heads to Vince’s penthouse apartment and hiding in the dark she throws scalding hot coffee in her boyfriend’s face and gloats about it. He shoots her a few times and right then Bannion shows up and backs Vince onto the terrace with his own gunfire. He calls the police and ambulance and then goes out and shoots it out with Vince. But when Vince runs out of bullets Bannion beats him down and hands him over to the police and comforts Debby as she succumbs to the gunshot wounds.
The movie ends with Dave Bannion back at the homicide squad doing his job.
I would describe this movie as a melodrama. The emotional strings are being pulled pretty hard. A likeable police officer with a pretty young wife and little daughter see’s his wife killed in front of his eyes by a bomb meant for him. You couldn’t come up with a scenario more fraught with pathos.
But it works. In fact, this was Glenn Ford’s sweet spot. This kind of average good guy in an impossible situation was what he did best. So, this works. I’m not saying there aren’t a couple of spots where you yell at the screen, “Oh come on!” But the movie is enjoyable and the audience gets the payoff it expects. Ford is heroically vengeful. Marvin is delightfully vicious and Grahame is comic and tragic at the same time.
This isn’t a perfect movie but it’s good of its type. I recommend it for fans of film noir and fans of Glenn Ford.
Robert Louis Stevenson – A Book Review – Part 1 – Treasure Island
Even aside from his skills as a story-teller Robert Louis Stevenson is an interesting personality .and lived in interesting times. But I think I’ll save the biographical comments for one of the later chapters of this series. I’ll just say that if he had never written another line, Treasure Island would still be enough to ensure his place in the literary pantheon. I’ll say right at the beginning that I consider it the finest boy’s adventure story ever written. I guess I’ve given away my conclusion but that’s too bad.
The story is simple enough. Jim Hawkins is an English boy living in the 1700’s whose parents’ small seaside inn is visited by a mysterious old sailor whose bad character and eccentricities disturb the serenity of the place. And when his associates arrive to threaten him Jim and his mother are in fear of their lives. After a desperate struggle Jim is stunned to find that he has stumbled on a treasure map from the dread pirate Flint and with the help and backing of the local squire, John Trelawney and his friend Dr. Livesey Jim finds himself on a treasure hunt on the good ship Hispaniola.
But Trelawney unwisely picks his own crew and unknowingly allows a one-legged former pirate named Long John Silver to man the Hispaniola with himself and the rest of Captain Flint’s old crew. And the story chronicles the struggle between Jim, his friends and the intrepid Captain Smollett against this gang of cutthroats. But surprisingly, John Silver is by far the most interesting character and Stevenson somehow manages to make him an attractive villain. Without a doubt he is just as evil and murderous as the rest of the buccaneers but at the same time he is intelligent and even affable in his villainy.
Throughout the story Jim becomes the means by which the good characters manage to survive the long odds stacked against them. And it is these lucky breaks and courageous decisions that provide the pivot points to move the story along. Stevenson has managed to keep the plot taut and the story moves along nice and briskly. And all the characters, even the pirates are filled in very skillfully and moments of humor and pathos are well written. This book has been made into motion pictures several times and the 1934 version with Wallace Beery as Silver is extremely faithful to the book and quite enjoyable but I would recommend letting boys read or have read to them this book. It’s a fantastic story and will fire the imagination of any boy who hears it.
Very highly recommended matey! Certain it is!
Night Must Fall (1937) – An OCF Classic Movie Review
This is a very strange movie. Robert Montgomery plays Danny, a young man working at a hotel when a murder takes place. The police suspect him but a rich cantankerous old woman, Mrs. Bramson, hires him to be her personal assistant and live in her home on an isolated forested estate. Supposedly Danny is going to marry Bramson’s maid Dora. But he seems more interested in Bramson’s niece Olivia played by Rosalind Russell. To round out the household is the acid-tongued cook Emily.
So that’s the setup. Mrs. Bramson is a bitter unpleasant woman who even despises her own niece but Danny pretends affection for the old lady and a sensitivity to her problems and becomes her closest companion. Olivia can see that he is acting but for whatever reason she doesn’t expose him for a phony when she has the chance.
But much more seriously, she begins to suspect that Danny is the murderer and that he has the murdered woman’s head in a locked hatbox that he keeps in his room. When the police inspector questions Danny about the murder and searches his room, he finds the hatbox and demands that Danny open it but Olivia intervenes and claims the box is hers and the Inspector relents. Now this seems inexplicable. She claims that she dislikes and distrusts Danny but for some reason she saves him. Later on, Danny tells her that she is actually attracted to him because of the excitement he has brought into her life.
And indeed, Olivia is desperate for something to relieve the boredom of her hum-drum existence living with her aunt in this isolated rural environment. She longs for excitement and for that reason has rejected the marriage proposal of Justin Laurie who is her aunt’s lawyer and an affectionate, dependable if unexciting suitor.
But everything comes to a head and Olivia cracks under the strain of living in the house with the manic Danny and she flees to Justin’s home leaving her aunt alone with Danny. Danny murders her and empties her safe of a large amount of cash. He prepares to burn down the house when Olivia returns and confronts him over the murder. He happily admits it and informs her that she too will be murdered and burned in the fire. But just then Justin arrives with the police and Danny has a final scene to declare his madness to himself in a hallway mirror before being carted away for justice.
This is a very strange movie. My read is this is a woman’s movie. Other than the murderer the main characters are all women. The lonely house in the woods reinforces this strange dynamic of women isolated with a sociopathic man who preys on women. But only Olivia has figured it all out. Mrs. Bramson is completely taken in. Dora and Emily can’t make up their minds if he is real or not. But even Olivia is mesmerized by his tour de force. She knows he’s a liar and she suspects that he’s a murderer but she retains a sympathy for him that’s hard to believe.
I asked Camera Girl about this because she’s a woman. I said, “You’re a woman, is this possible?” She said it could be somewhat believable that a woman who was so desperately bored might welcome the distraction of experiencing the weirdness of such a colorful character. So, we agreed that although the idea of Olivia helping Danny escape detection is sort of hard to believe, the movie was fairly interesting.
Montgomery’s portrayal of Danny and Russell’s Olivia are fairly compelling characters. And the rest of the cast is very good too. As much as this movie is odd and the motif of Olivia allowing Danny to escape detection is far-fetched, nevertheless, I will still recommend this movie for people who like psychological dramas.