A sad unnecessary death
Crime Scene: The Vanishing At The Cecil Hotel
Netflix
*ing: Viveca Chow, Judy Ho, Artemis Snow
Rated: 5/10
This is based on true happenings at a downtown LA hotel — the infamous Hotel Cecil. Behind its doors is a story of over 80 deaths since its inception back in 1924. Drugs, violence, abuse, rape and murders kept this hotel in the news as late as 2013 when a 21-year-old Canadian student vanished!
The series gives you a background about this hotel, the people living around the 56 blocks— Skid Row— home to over 4000 homeless people. People were made to live in these conditions so that the crime was limited to an area. And here is hotel in the midst of this all. Infamous because it attracted the wrong kind of people to its fold, infamous because of the deaths here, infamous because its permanent residents were people who didn’t want to found and live under the shadows, infamous because of Night Stalker’s connections to Hotel Cecil.
And then in 2013 throws more spanners that had web sleuths question how the police missed vital clues. How the hotel owners were behind her disappearance and all because of a video of the girl in the elevator — the last place where she was seen alive.
The four-part series unfolds in a manner that is supposed to spook and create fear psychosis in the minds of people due to the shady happenings. Unfortunately all it manages to do is evoke a sense of helplessness and sadness of a young death that could have been avoided with timely intervention.
The story tells you that just because there are way too many coincidences, the truth was so far removed from what was suspected — and that at the end of the day policing should be left to those who know how to do their job because unknowingly one ruined a life from where there was no coming back.
The emotion is missing
Squared Love
Netflix
*ing: Miroslaw Baka, Mateusz Banasiuk, Adrianna Chlebicka, Krzysztof Czeczot, Wojciech Kalarus, Tomasz Karolak, Jacek Knap, Anna Smolowik, Sebastian Stankiewicz
Rated: 5/10
It appears we will have yet another Valentine’s Day where love is missing when movies are concerned even on the OTT platform. Extremely sad and unfortunate given that Hollywood has some of the best love stories that makes one’s heart do somersaults. You have got Mail, Pretty Woman, Casablanca are some of the few movies from a list of hundreds that are ingrained in our minds and will remain there forever.
However not all is lost with Squared Love . It has all the ingredients of a love story; a Casanova man, a pretty woman, the two meet and that’s it. There is no spark, no chemistry between the lead. The story is cliched. The acting is nothing to rave about.
The only thing here that will keep one’s interest are the fancy cars and great locales, it is a Polish rom-com. Another plus is that it is in English. The good part is that the cars and locales will manage to hold interest of both girls and boys. Not a bad movie to watch on Valentine’s Day.