Not so elementary
We saw Mr. Holmes on Friday evening. It stars Sir Ian McKellan as a 93-year-old Sherlock Holmes, retired to the coast of England, keeping bees and battling the onset of dementia. Laura Linney is his housekeeper. She has a young son who is always trying to get Holmes to “do his thing,” where he tells someone where they’ve been based on observation.
Holmes is struggling to remember his final case, the one that caused him to walk away from his lifelong profession. He knows it must have gone terribly wrong, but Watson’s account of it is benign. He begins to write it down, with the young boy as an eager audience, and bit by bit it comes back to him. He’s also just back from a trip to Japan where he acquired some Hiroshima herbs that are supposed to improve his memory.
It’s a charming, slow-paced film that doles out its secrets reluctantly. There are few whiz-bang feats of observation, but Holmes hasn’t completely lost that faculty. However, he does learn a lesson about the perils of telling the truth and the benefits of the benign lie. It’s a thoroughly enjoyable film, and the little boy is a real charmer, going toe-to-toe and head-to-head with the great detective and the illustrious actor who plays him. The aging process is very well done (we see Holmes in flashback some 30 years earlier), and there’s always a glint in McKellan’s eye. Nicely done.
We also finally found time to watch the two-hour finale of Battlestar Galactica. It was mostly satisfactory, though there were a few things that were hard to swallow. I didn’t mind that Starbuck’s nature wasn’t explained. I decided for myself that post-Earth she was an angel, like Baltar and Caprica’s companions, one that was visible to everyone who needed to see her, which was apparently everyone. I thought the decision to eschew all technology at the new planet was a little glibly handled. A plot necessity that should have involved more angst and discussion instead of being simply accepted by everyone. Adama’s decision was mystifying. We both thought he was going to crash the raptor into a mountain or something, but instead he simply went into isolation. To what end? And I could have totally done without the 150,000 years in the future bit that locked the story into a specific timeframe that causes no end of logical issues. Still, it was a great show while it lasted, and we’re going to move on to Caprica next.
I put up a few book review recently. A mixed bag of the very good and the less-so:
- The Murderer’s Daughter by Jonathan Kellerman
- The Loney by Andrew Michael Hurley
- Numero Zero by Umberto Eco
- Last Words by Michael Koryta
- Wind/Pinball by Haruki Murakami
There’s been a lot of bashing of True Detective, Season 2, but I’m glad to be sticking with it. I think there are only two more episodes and it looks like the rubber is starting to hit the road. Also, a fascinating beginning to the “tooth fairy” (Red Dragon) storyline on Hannibal. It is interesting to come to this point after having experienced the entire history between Jack and Walt and Hannibal. I’ve also picked up Mr. Robot and Humans, both of which are off to good beginnings, though I like the former a bit more than the latter. One thing I’ve grown to appreciate about British television shows is their casual multi-ethnicity. Characters are black or Asian or whatever, and nothing is made of the fact. They simply are. The android who is brought into the family home in Humans is Asian, but the only controversy is that one was purchased at all, not its appearance. Wayward Pines lived up to its name, going wayward in its final episode. It was always one of those on-the-fence shows for me, but even if it is miraculously resurrected for another season, I’m done with it.
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