Tower Heist (2011)

Tower Heist is a good, but not a stellar, effort. Ben Stiller has shown more personality as the star of many other movies, while the rest of the cast performs passably, but could easily have been better. The movie flows well enough, but feels formulaic and paint-by-the-numbers, rather than ingenious or exciting. (The only edge-of-the-seat moments for me involved the highly improbable cable dangling and car wrangling at the top of the tower, and then finagling the elevators, particularly after we find out that the car weighs far more than one ton. It is also highly improbable that a delivery truck could speed, for some distance, straight through the Thanksgiving Day parade in New York City, before the driver is arrested without prejudice, chuckles, and passes off the stunt with a lame excuse.) Alan Alda is the unctuous and well-connected Ponzi scam man brought that Stiller and key employees want to bring down. I am glad to have seen the movie, but once is enough. For comparison, I give The Maiden Heist 4.5 stars, but Tower Heist 3.5 stars. (3-11-2017)

Fairly Legal: Seasons 1-2 (2011)

Fairly Legal is more than fairly fun (and nonfattening). It's a bit like Ally McBeal meets The Good Wife, but not too loopy (or serious). Sarah Shahi is superb as Kate Reed, the perky, mostly confident, and always capable attorney turned legal mediator. (Kate got burned out on her profession, esp. after her father passed away and his blonde trophy wife took over the law firm instead, so she chose to make a difference brokering win-win out-of-court settlements.) She is very good at what she does -- partly thanks to the scriptwriting, but mostly Shahi's acting. She carries the show and will simply win you over. The producers try to make her more human than whirling dervish by having her get flustered or clumsy now and then; she even makes that bit work. She plays well opposite her femme fatale boss/stepmother (until the final moments of Season 1, but that only lasts until the start of Season 2). My grade moved from 4 stars up by the end of Season 1 to 4.5 stars. Enjoy! (3-9-2017)

Wonderfalls: Season 1 (2004)

I heard good things about this show but now I can say that it won me over from the first minute of the first episode. Think of a quirky and beloved series such as Dead Like Me, but with a greater, Wes Andersonesque, cinematic eye as well as tourist-trap kitsch and a Gen-Y too-cool-to-care perspective. Inanimate animals (like the wall-mounted fish in her favorite bar) give Jaye cryptic commands, and they make life difficult if she does not comply; is she going nuts, or ultimately helping others through mysterious and circuitous paths? This series was cancelled before airing the impressive episode 4, where a runaway nun thinks she has lost her faith. Her poetic and theological reflection on the biochemistry of cheese and the cosmos is proof positive that the writing in this series is excellent. The entire ensemble cast also works extremely well together. I could binge-watch this series back-to-back indefinitely. Enjoy! 5 stars. (3-9-2017)