“Hostages: Season 1”
Masked men hold a family hostage in their home. Cut to: “12 Hours Earlier.” The Israeli TV series “Hostages” will look familiar to American viewers. Although the setting is Jerusalem and the dialogue is in Hebrew, the production’s lingua franca is Hollywood, complete with tense synthesized music, terse “Law and Order” pacing and the backstory of family tension. “Hostages” is absorbing with many nicely choreographed moments as the pieces explaining this home invasion snap into place.
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Altered Perception
The fear that most drug tests are flawed provides the plot for Altered Perception. Written by Travis Romero (USA Network’s “White Collar”), Altered Perception flashes back from a government investigation into a pharmaceutical test gone deadly through video shot during the test. The drug was intended to help people overcome anxiety but instead inflames suspicions among its three couples serving as guinea pigs. Altered Perception is a close-up study of the insecurity that flourishes amidst intimacy.
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Odds Against Tomorrow
Slater (Robert Ryan) is an angry ex-con; Dave (Ed Begley) is a corrupt ex-cop; Johnny (Harry Belafonte) is a singer in debt to the Mob. They are mismatched losers rolling the dice on one last job. Opening in a New York of bright sun and deep shadows, the 1959 production by Robert Wise is an apogee of film noir featuring music by the Modern Jazz Quartet and cameos by Shelley Winters and Gloria Graham.
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King of Hearts
The antiwar farce King of Hearts (1966) opens in the waning weeks of World War I. The retreating Germans have wired a town to explode, the civilians have fled—except for the patients at an insane asylum who take over with the aid of an eccentric Scottish soldier (Alan Bates) sent to scout the situation. The metaphor of military madness is drawn with gentleness and the production is imbued with a 1960s merry prankster sensibility.
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