**** The Wire, Season 2
*** Shadow of a Doubt
*** Baby Mama
*** The Lady Vanishes

The Wire continues to be good. I never got as much into season 2’s union story as I did season 1’s drug dealers, and the half attention given to the drug dealers in season 2 isn’t as captivating. Still, the show continues to be great and we can’t stop watching it. On to season 3!

I wanted Shadow of a Doubt to be better. Joseph Cotten as the uncle/maybe-creepy-murderer sounds exciting but the actuality is a bit more goofy than sinister. Too many of the plot developments just seem silly, and the relationship between Cotten and his niece is a little too overdone to feel very real. People do some goofy things in this movie that just jerked me right out of my suspension of disbelief. I suppose this is partly the style of the times, but I would have liked a bit more restraint and realism.

Baby Mama was really better than it had any right to be. It’s a fluffy, cliche-and-stereotype-ridden piece of trash, but it was well done. Amy Poehler is a great physical comedian — some of the funniest bits were completely physical. And yes, I teared up at one point, which probably wouldn’t have happened before NLP came on the scene.

The Lady Vanishes is good classic Hitchcock stuff. Except for a somewhat absurd shootout, it maintains the tension expertly throughout.