A Review of Unforgotten

The British television series Unforgotten stars Nicola Walker and Sanjeev Bhaskar as DCI Cassie Stuart and DI Sunil “Sunny” Khan, two London police detectives working on complicated unsolved “cold” disappearance and murder cases.  The detectives find many suspects and must determine which of the suspects really killed the victims and what motivated the crimes.  The realistic depiction in Unforgotten goes beyond most murder mysteries and police procedurals to emphasize the devastating or healing effect that unearthing long-buried secrets can have on the families of the suspects, the victims, and the detectives.  Some of the suspects have completely shifted the focus of their lives since the crimes were committed.  For example, Lizzie Wilton (Ruth Sheen), who was part of a racist organization when she was young, is now a community worker who helps underprivileged youngsters of all races and is happily married to a man of Jamaican descent.  Cassie is a longtime widow, and her two adult children have left home.  Sunny is a single parent raising two teenaged daughters following his divorce from his wife. …

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A Review of Charlie Chaplin’s Film Modern Times

Modern Times (1936) is a funny comedy; however, this silent film presents a very serious socialist critique of twentieth-century society.  Chaplin portrays a factory worker on an assembly line that his tight-fisted employer keeps accelerating beyond the laborer’s capacity to keep up.  The control-freak owner values only efficiency, so he spies on his workers via a television screen.  He scolds them when they smoke during their five-minute breaks.  The employer resembles Big Brother in George Orwell’s novel 1984 (published in 1949).  Also, the boss has Chaplin’s character test a new efficiency machine that enables a worker to eat while still doing his job.  Obviously, the capitalist does not want to give workers any time for relaxation.  But the machine malfunctions, mauling Chaplin, and the boss decides not to use it after all. Machines with many large cogs dominate this movie as a symbol of the modern world.  Chaplin includes many scenes in which the workers get caught in these cogs, representing their being ensnared in the capitalist enterprise that has no concern for workers’ safety,…

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