MrOllie

I have been a huge fan of Midsomer Murders and have the DVDs of almost all of the John Nettles episodes. The latest episode of Midsomer BREAKING THE CHAIN was (in my opinion) one of the worst episodes of this wonderful series I have watched. Even worse than the alien episode shown a couple of weeks ago. Last nights episode about cycle racing seemed to be all talk and quite frankly I lost interest. I didn't guess the murderer but that was probably because I wasn't paying the attention I should have. Gone are the quirky characters and the catchy soundtrack. There seems to be long scenes of talk with a complete absence of any soundtrack. What has happened to the theremin? The wonderful sound this instrument made added tension and anticipation to many scenes when a murder was about to happen. Sadly now gone.

John Barnaby and his wife do not have the same chemistry as Tom and Joyce Barnaby. The new DS Nelson is OK but I am not too impressed with the new young lady pathologist who appears to be a bit too full of herself. I thought the previous lady was better. Sorry Midsomer but perhaps your days are numbered.

I just happened to notice that this film was about to start on "Movies4Men" TV Channel, so I decided to give it a try. I am glad that I did. I really enjoyed this movie about a young German who arrives in London in 1962 as a Russian spy. The film shows in various flashbacks how this young man had ended up in the situation he is now in. The battle scenes of Russian soldiers fighting in the rubble of Berlin against the remnants of German resistance is well handled and the brutality by some of these soldiers against one young girl in particular, is realistic. As an espionage fan I also liked the spy element as well, with some good background 1960's Shadows music. It is well worth seeing should you get the chance to do so.

This film was described as being a violent thriller. There was some violence but sadly very,very.few thrills. It started off OK with a tense card game robbery, but then it just drifted away. There was a lot of rabbit (UK cockney slang for talk)in this movie, and it became very dull and boring. In fact at one point, I didn't really know what they where talking about. Brad Pitt was OK, but I am not sure what the point of the character played by James Gandolfini was, because all he did was talk and talk and talk. (And drink!) The cast of the film where all male, apart from Linara Washington who was on the screen for a couple of minutes playing a prostitute. A boring movie!