KWIF: The Brutalist (+2)

KWIF = Kent's Week in Film. I've got the week off, so I've been doing more of what I like to do... consume! I am but a product of our capitalistic society.

This Week:
The Brutalist - 2024, d. Brady Corbet - in theatre
My Old Ass - 2024, d. Megan Park - amazonprime
Longlegs  - 2024, d. Osgood Perkins - amazonprime

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The Brutalist had, without a doubt, the most striking trailer of 2024. It's striking imagery, bold score and alluring typeface had a visceral impact on me as an audience member. Oh it was absolutely unclear to me, at all, what this movie was about, I just new it was something I must see. Leaving nothing about Gladiator II made even close to the impression that The Brutalist trailer did before it. 

Learning of its 3 hour and 35 minute runtime did not deter me (much...but any reservations I had abated once I noticed at the theatre earlier in the week that there was a sign posting about an intermission...bless the intermission!), and having no other agenda I set aside the better part of an afternoon to the film. 

There's something exciting about this process of discovery. Information is so readily at hand, our age of social media, podcasts, and other online discourse, it can be so simple to find out everything about an experience without ever having the experience, just as it can also be hard to avoid information at time. I knew The Brutalist was making top 10 lists (but not universally), but I still managed to avoid descriptions and even knowing what the film was about. I didn't even watch the trailer again, because I just wanted to experience it...thinking it would be an experience. At 215 minutes, one expects to be taken on a journey.

So, even knowing nothing about the film's story, I had expectations of what the film would be, and I have to say, dear reader, those expectations were not met. The Brutalist is an accomplished film, of which there's no doubt, and those key elements from the trailer (Daniel Blumberg's incredible score, the utterly unique credits, the myriad of gorgeous tracking shots) were indeed present in the film, and kept me present in the film.  Alongside stylistic details such as old film reel inserts (whether it's inforeels on Pennsylvania where the film is primarily set, or even the curiosity of vintage celluloid pornography) Lol Crawley's cinematography contributes to the exceptional style of the film that engaged me at times when the story seemed to lull.

I don't mean to say that the story is, in any way, badly executed or performed. I don't recall the last time I've seen Adrien Brody (Golden Globe winner for this role, for whatever that's worth) so invested in a role. He plays László Tóth, a Jewish Hungarian architect displaced by World War II, separated from his wife as they were filtered to different concentration camps, whom he's not even sure is alive when we first meet him upon his arrival in New York in 1947. It is a Jewish immigrant story, and broad strokes of assimilating in the polite hostility and microagressions of American culture, and the overwhelm of a society already in the thrall of capitalism are definitely felt. But László's story seems highly individualistic, that of someone who is already accomplished in his field given the opportunity to return to his chosen profession by an appreciative benefactor and struggling to complete his vision without compromise.

The first hundred minutes are very effective in establishing László's character, who he is as a person. He feels deep love and connection to his family, coming to America to work with his cousin at his Philadelphia-base furniture shop, but he doesn't feel the same need or desire to assimilate that his cousin does. László's experiences have only solidified his identity in a world cruelly intolerant towards it. He had an incident where his face was bashed in and to deal with the pain, he was given heroin on the transport overseas. He's now addicted. And he is recognized as a womanizer, at least by his cousin, and the way Corbet frames every meaningful female character on screen from László's point of view (from his cousin's American wife to his benefactor's 20-year-old daughter), center screen, gives the impression of attraction and danger. 

The film makes plain these weaknesses, alongside his pride and ego, and decades of similar stories have them feeling like a ticking time bomb just waiting to go off. We're so familiar with the dramatic conflict between womanizing artist and their spouses, we've seen the story of the creator who loses everything to drugs, we've seen the story of the visionary whose ego inhibits their success. Every moment one of László's weaknesses presents itself, I would groan, just a little. I was predicting how it would contribute to László's inevitable failure.  As someone who is constantly getting in his own way, I have little patience for stories of people whose character flaws impede their success. Ironic, I know.

So it is much to Corbet's credit that his story never does explode these bombs that are set. I'm much more impressed with it in hindsight than I was in the moment.  I can't say, without a rewatch, whether these act as effective character colour, or if it's just Corbet subverting tropes (I go back to his framing of women in the first act as objects of desire, to the impression that it's definitely the latter).  But the setup of the pride/drugs/womanizing take up such space when Erzsébet (Felicity Jones, Rogue One) and his niece join him in the second half of the film (following the intermission) and she is forgiving of his past infidelity, and turns the moment of her forgiveness into a surprisingly sensual and intimate scene.

Erzsébet is a charming, cultured character who surprises everyone, including the audience. She is a gentle force to be reckoned with, to be sure. She's a devoted wife who adores her husband (as he adores her) but she's also got her own life, ambitions, and issues outside of László's concerns. She is rich enough to support her own story.

The thrust of the film, what most of it is centered around, is the build that László is leading for the Van Burens. His benefactor, Harrison Van Buren (Guy Pierce, Lockout) takes a deep liking to László despite their first contentious encounter, and the community center he wants László to build is in part a memorial to his mother but also a means of (quite literally) cementing his presence in this rural Pennsylvanian community.  It constantly seems a folly. László is at odds with seemingly everyone except Harrison about the build. The barrage of microagressions he receives from the foreman Harrison hires, Harrison's son who is managing the project's finances, the local townsfolk wary of this non-Christian foreigner all threaten his work. It is clear, from both László and Erzsébet's perspective of the project that there will be no compromise of his vision, even if it means he doesn't get paid.

For me, the film's most impactful moment was Harrison and László's trip to the marble quarry in Carrara, Italy. László had a pre-war relationship with one of the miners whom they meet up with and he takes them up the mountainside to show them the marbles. I have never seen a marble quarry before, and, looking at it from a macro scale, I was at once one is taken aback by the marrying of the terrain, but what is exposed underneath and the erratic design of the carving is visually fascinating.  Up in the mines themselves, there are corridors of marble, that László's friend explains, they miners used to resist (and literally crush) Mussolini's forces. There's the blood of resistance and freedom on those stones (it marries with László's artistic vision for his project nicely). 

An incident between Harrison and László on that trip to Italy wrecks László, and the sequences following the trip are the most difficult to process, as they end the story of our main characters with unexpected uncertainty, and the epilogue then jumps two decades into the future. The epilogue is a complete shift in tone stylistically that doesn't fit at all with what came before. It feels much like the end of a long-running TV show that jumps to the future to give you a sense of where things end up, only here, it doesn't feel like we've gotten a resolution to the story at hand. The epilogue serves up the specific intent and meaning of the build, which László never specifically mentions at any time to any one during the build process. In hindsight it does make events of the earlier film more resonant, but it's a really, truly weird mechanism to convey it.

It's this epilogue that I think left me so cold to the film. It doesn't fit.  And as much as I loved the design of the closing credits (although it is to read the stylized font as it scrolls horizontally upwards across the screen in multiple columns), Blumberg's accompanying electro-pop closing track, "Epilogue (Venice)" is just so anachronistic (despite otherwise being right up my alley) that it doesn't close out the film on a note that feels representative of the film.  The whole epilogue is just bizarre.

Going back to the trailer, it features such experimental boldness, but feels so assured, I was expecting a similar film that would stimulate, maybe even overstimulate with style. But it's not that. The Brutalist is much more subdued, maintaining a consistent mood throughout that makes it easy enough to lean back into, but didn't give me the capital e "Experience" I was thinking it would be.  It's good, not great.

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I've been meaning to catch up on Aubrey Plaza's filmography. There are a half-dozen or so well regarded smaller-budget films (eg. Emily the Criminal, Ingrid Goes West) that Plaza stars in that live on Netflix and Amazon that I keep popping up but I never actually watch. My Old Ass is just the latest of these.

The conceit of My Old Ass is that a young woman, Elliott (Maisy Stella), living on a cranberry farm in the Muskokas of Ontario is getting ready to leave for university, when she encounters her future self during a shroom trip. Even following the encounter, they, through magical realism, continue to maintain long distance contact, as Elliott spends her last summer at home.

The "time travel" conceit threatens to overwhelms story of this film, which is a lightly dramatic but breezy and comforting coming-of-age story of this turning point in Elliott's life, but it can only overwhelm conceptually. It is not the focus of the film.

Future Elliott warns herself to stay away from anyone named Chad (not sure if this was meant as a meta joke, or not, given the place "Chad" takes alongside "Karen" in our current lexicon), but when she inevitably meets Chad, he is sweet, funny, and they seem to click with disarming ease. She knows she should stay away from him, but she cannot help but be drawn to him.  This flies in the face of her identity as she's known it, a proud and out lesbian. This reexamining of her sense of self, and sexual fluidity seems like such modern, and necessary, exploration in cinema.

On top of romantic encounters, future Elliott provokes her with the initiative to connect more with her family during the summer, to get to know her younger brothers in a way she's failed to do so as she's explored her independence in her teenage years. She is changing, just as everything is changing around her.

It's an exceptionally sweet, charming, and lightly emotional film. It's wonderfully scripted by Park, and Stella, who cut her teeth on the TV series Nashville, carries this film ably and sublimely, like a Canadian Florence Pugh. She's a talent to watch. Plaza is only featured physically in the early and late stages of the film, but her very specific and well-known on-screen persona acts as a useful shorthand for us to understand Elliott (both now and in the future). She is a welcome presence and despite literally phoning in her role for much of the movie, invests a tremendous amount into the character that we only really see in the emotional closing minutes of the film.

I adored this movie.

[As I was writing this, I learned that Plaza's husband had died by suicide this week. Jeff Baena was a director, three of his films I had seen -- Joshy, The Little Hours and Horse Girl -- and he was still and emerging talent with a large support network, at least creatively. I am saddened by this loss. To my Toronto friends, if you or anyone you know is in need of mental health support, call 211.  Other Canadian resources can be found here. ]

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There is definitely a divide in the reaction to Longlegs, at least from what I've seen. Critics have been praising it and planning it, audiences have been reacting much the same, with a plethora of 5* reviews, but even more 1* reviews. One thing for sure is the division has been profitable for the film's distributor, Neon, to the tune of over $125 million at the box office.

I avoided Longlegs when it was in theatres because it was already a zeitgeisty thing, and I tend to recoil when things get too popular. If it's already become a meme, I'm less willing to engage with it. Plus, I knew Longlegs came from The Blackcoat's Daughter director Osgood Perkins, and I hated that film. A friend petitioned me to watch Longlegs as he was curious my reaction to it, and a recent podcast episode of Comedy Bang Bang where Taran Killam played "Longlegs" in a sort of Emo Phillips-esque affectation spurred on my curiosity.

I hated this film.

As I watched it, I wondered if how I was reacting was just my preconceived dislike for Perkins, because visually, this is a striking movie. Perkins' stylizing of flashbacks as, like, super8 film, or his title cards, or throughout his framing in sequences are all so striking, I should be drawn to it. But his stylizing doesn't make up for the faults in his storytelling.

Like The Blackcoat's Daughter, Perkins' story works its way backwards and forwards to a semi-twist ending, but so much of his storytelling is the obvious and frustrating omission of information as to leave the twist to the finale.  These both are stories told where it's not so much the protagonist - in this case FBI rookie Lee Harker (Maika Monroe, in a performance which I'm not thrilled with, but is clearly what the director was asking for) - unfurling a mystery, but the story being a mystery to be unfurled for the audience through the storytelling of cinema(!). Oh, there are discoveries for Harker to make in the process, but we as the audience are intentionally having key things withheld from us that Harker already knows (as opposed to the common tension-raising device where we as the audience learn things ahead of the story's protagonist). It doesn't work for me, at all.

On top of that, the film presents Harker has having some low level telepathic or extrasensory ability, and just drops that nugget following a visually appealing but contextually confounding testing sequence, and then doesn't follow up on nor explore it. We're just supposed to accept it. Perkins wants this to be a reality where the paranormal exists, but also wants it to be real-world grounded, and he doesn't marry the two effectively. This feels like it is trying to be Silence of the Lambs married with some early Hollywood Cronenberg psychodrama vibes, but it doesn't come close. It doesn't help that its astoundingly clear Perkins has zero concept of how the FBI (or any investigative agency, for that matter) actually function. The investigation is a bigger fantasy than any of the metaphysical aspects of the film. 

Nic Cage plays Longlegs, the serial killer of the film, and does so in heavy falseface makeup that makes him look like Teddy Perkins in that great Atlanta episode. Cage is allowed to do his Cage thing and it is what it is. A lot of the divisiveness in audiences seems to stem from whether this performance is good or terrible. It's neither, it is just Cage and it didn't excite me one way or the other.

The film's ultimate reveal, for me, was simply unsatisfying. I had two or three other scenarios playing in my head as the film was withholding so much, all of which I would have found superior to what resulted, and yet would not have changed my opinion of the film.  I just didn't buy into anything this film was selling at any point. 

To Oz Perkins: you're an incredible stylist, please let someone else write for you. Until then, you're on my shit list.

But Is It Horror? Maybe to some, but I found it more frustrating than scary. I don't think Perkins ever really settled on whether it was suspense or horror, and that indecision is tangible.

[Toastypost - we disagree, vehemently]

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Brooklyn

2015, John Crowley (The Goldfinch) -- download

There is a series of scifi novels that I read, the Wayfarers by Becky Chambers, that are not typical for the space opera genre. They are more optimistic than almost anything I have read, that along with the lovely world building being done, are just as much about people (aliens and humans) just being good to each other. They are quiet books, not lacking in conflicts, but the negative situations are dealt with by good people doing the right thing. I am not sure I am describing it in the best way, but they are just quieter books. 

Huh? Space Opera? In relation to a immigrant period piece movie? Well, compared to everything else I watched, this was just a quieter movie, not without the tense situations that a third movie act requires, but less directed by those situations, and more about These Good People. I loved that. It deserved its critical acclaim.

Eilis (pronounced, as in Billie; Saoirse Ronan, Hanna) lives in smalltown Ireland in the 1950s. She lives with her mother and her sister. She works a few hours on Sunday at a local general store run by a cranky old curmudgeon, but beyond that, doesn't have many prospects. A priest she knows, in NYC, arranges for her to emigrate to Brooklyn, NY, where she can find a life for herself. Its hard to leave all you know behind, to make it on your own, but it can be worth it. And that is what this movie is all about.

One would think the movie could be filled with conflict galore. Racial prejudice could abound, a small, country girl in The Big City could supply danger galore, familial connections could be strained to the breaking point. But nope, let's have none of that. The movie just quietly explores Eilis's arrival, after a lightly harrowing Atlantic crossing, in Brooklyn, setup in a boarding house and a department store job by the priest the family knew. There is a wee bit of homesickness but once she finds her footing, life begins to open up.

She meets Tony (Emory Cohen, The OA), a nice Italian boy, who is open to her wit, intelligence and independence. When he brings her home to meet his family, his little brother may be a bit of a twit, but that is solved by some quick ear twisting, and after that they are the most delightful, welcoming Italian family I have seen depicted in quite some time. Eilis begins to establish a life in America.

The third act does provide requisite conflict, and some tragedy, as her sister passes unexpectedly, and Eilis has to return home for the funeral, only to find a life there that was not available when she left. There is work to be had, now that she has learned some bookkeeping, and a young man showing his affections (Domhnall Gleeson, About Time) for her. Most movies would bank on this tension, serving infidelity and shouting outbursts in the conflict between staying in Ireland or returning to the US. But no, the movie shows her light conflict in once again leaving her mother, but inevitably choosing Tony and her new life, over what she could have had. She made the right decision and lives by it.

Its a pretty movie, a clean movie, with muted colours and tones, colourful but never brash. Even the characters she has conflict with are tempered by ... understanding. There are no bad guys, no foils. It is a light, but still weighty in its suggested experience, movie. In the end I was just satisfied with what I was presented.

3 Short Paragraphs: The Marksman

 2021, Robert Lorenz (Trouble with the Curve) -- download

Pretty much all my recent posts about Liam Neeson movies bring up that he is being relegated to the aging action star mould. Or I should be clearer, all the Liam Neeson movies that I watch. But this is the first one where it is obvious that his age has caught up with him. There is no denying Neeson's Jim is past his prime. He's a widowed rancher, ex-marine in Texas, right on the border, losing his ranch to the bank and dealing constantly with Mexican illegals crossing his land. In the land of Right vs Left, Jim is likely a Republican, but not the amoral image the internet creates of them. When he is presented with a situation where an illegal and her son need his assistance, he provides it.

This is an odd movie. It positions itself from the common American trope, in that Good Men stand up and do what is right. The same trope usually involves violence. The movie is called The Marksman but that has so little to bear on the movie. Sure, Jim is skilled with a rifle, but that's it. Possibly there is a statement that only an armed American can make a difference, but I doubt it. But the strangeness comes in the underlying current of the movie, wherein we see the coming-to-America viewpoint from Mexicans who don't really want to be going there. The boy and his mother cross the border because their life is in danger. The cartel thugs follow them. They are the illegals we are presented with, but neither actually want to be in America. Hard choices forced them across the border.

The boy and his mother cross the border because her brother ran afoul of a cartel. She is killed at the border and begs Jim to take the boy to his family in Chicago. Jim tries to do what the law expects of him, but runs into walls of corruption and indifference. The cartel follows them, as Jim abandons the ranch he was trying to save from the bank and guides the boy to his family. Jim's at the end of his life, the boy is just beginning. Its a morose movie where we don't get a beautiful picture of American through the eyes of an illegal, but tainted views from all sides. I saw the boy not seeing much difference between where he had been raised and the rural views of America, meanwhile the cartel men pondered the decadence of the strip malls and free-flowing money they would likely never have access to, without resorting to the violence that brought them to America. Odd movie, that while the underlying current was as above, most of it was just standard, boring chase fare.

Netflix's Teen Rom Com Bomb (no actual bombs, all good stuff really)

To All The Boys I've Loved Before (2018, d. Susan Johnson - Netflix)

To All The Boys I've Loved Before... PS I Still Love You (2020, d. Michael Fimognari - Netflix)

Never Have I Ever (2020, 10 Episodes - Netflix)

If Netflix is consistently nailing one genre, it's not the documentary (those have been anywhere from amazing to problematic) but rather the rom com.  What's more is Netflix's rom com slate is all about allowing people of all different religions, ethnicities, shapes and sizes take the romantic lead spotlight.  It's like the journey of feeling awkward or an outsider is somehow universally relatable.  Of course, most of these rom coms are in the shape of the American experience, and I bet if I branched out a bit I surely would find more from other regions, but I guess it's the (North) American experience that I most relate to and want to explore different sides of.

To All The Boys... explores the nightmare scenario of one's innermost thoughts being shared publicly when the private, unsent letters teenager Lara Jean (Lana Condor) wrote to each of her massive crushes are accidentally sent by her younger sister.  Popular, sporty Peter (Netflix fave and Mark Ruffalo clone Noah Centineo) was the recipient of a letter written a few years earlier, and asks Lara Jean if she will fake date him in order to make his ex-girlfriend jealous.  She thought she'd moved past her crush, but finds herself more than charmed.   But things are complicated since her neighbour and best friend Josh was the recipients of the most recently written letter and she can't face him, since she doesn't really know what (or who) she wants. 

The film is a very charming, classically John Hughes inspired fable of teenaged wooing, based on the novel series by Jennie Han.  That it happens to center around an Asian American lead doesn't change its emotional universality, but Lara Jean's ethnicity doesn't much come into play other than a food reference here or there, so it's not providing much of a distinct perspective on the genre.   While John Corbett (Northern Exposure, Sex and the City) plays her single father, it's not clear if Lara Jean is his biological daughter or stepdaughter...and it doesn't really matter to the overall story (or even really seem to matter to the identity of the character).

The centerpiece is the love square with Lara Jean emotionally involved with both Josh and Peter, and Peter falling for Lara Jean while trying to win back his ex (and Josh's circling back).  That the leads both have decisions to make about who they want to be with doubly invests the audience, and the fact that Peter isn't the typical vainglorious meathead jock, and as much a nice guy as Josh, makes it an even harder choice for who to root for.  There really is the possibility of it going either way (even though the Lara Jean/Peter pairing is the main focus,it's never a certainty).  The cast is universally good to great, with Condor proving an exceptionally endearing romantic lead, and Centineo emerging into romantic leading man status with this picture. 

The first To All The Boys... ends with a pseudo-cliffhanger.  The film to that point had dealt with four of the five boys Lara Jean had sent letters to: Josh, Peter, her gay friend Lucas, and one bounced letter.  In the post credits, the recipient of the fifth letter, John Ambrose, shows up on Lara Jean's doorstep unannounced.  It's almost like it was just a cute joke, and that the filmmakers weren't at all certain about setting up a sequel, as they immediately recast John Ambrose for the second film.

The construct of ...P.S. I Still Love You is one of my hated tropes, that people can't be in a happy relationship and that all it takes is one little thing to create intense friction between a couple.  Lara Jean and Peter are in a happy relationship, but is it getting stale? Is Peter too different from her for they to have a meaningful relationship?  Does the re-emergence of John Ambrose mean she doesn't love Peter as much as she though she did? 

You know, teenagers overthink this shit.  I know I did as a teenager as my volumes of chicken-scratched journals can attest, but at the same time, it's a trope that happens in almost all romantic vehicles, that one lie, or withheld truth, or omission, or deception, or deviant feeling is an immediate grenade between a couple.  It's horribly cliche but even worse it trains (let's face it) mostly young women who what this stuff that relationships are so fragile.

With ...P.S. though, part of the whole story is not just Lara Jean's doubts, but actually being in the presence of John Ambrose who is, on paper, far more her speed, far more her ideal match, because they're so much more alike.  And that leads to attraction, and frustration when Peter is acting like he's *gasp* still his own person while in a relationship. (Also, what exactly happened to her best friend, Josh, who completely disappeared in this one, like he never existed at all).

This second film is still an enjoyable feature, but if the first film was like primo-80's styled, this is like the middling sequels any 80's film produced.  Where the first felt like a legit movie, the sequel felt like the TV spinoff.  With a third movie coming this year, one wonders why they didn't try to draw it out into a season or two of television which seems much more Netflix's speed these days.

For example, we have Never Have I Ever, the Mindy Kaling co-created (with Lang Fisher) and produced (with some episodes scripted by) which feels like To All The Boys... but cranked up to 11 and just blowing the teen romcom out of the water for a sustained 10 episodes. 

Show = much, much better than poster

Where To All The Boys... didn't really have time to get into Lara Jean's familial story all that much, it's a centerpiece here.  Devi is the daughter of immigrant Indian parents.  Within the past year her father passed away, following which she lost the use of her legs for unknown (probably psychological, not medical) reasons.  Devi is strong-willed, confident, overbearing and suffering from debilitating grief which she's barely processing.

For the start of their junior year (that's "American" for Grade 11, or third year of high school), Devi coaxes her two closest friends Fabiola and Eleanor to pursue boys as hard as their academics (not aware that Fabiola is gay)... to the point that Devi approaches the hottest boy in school, swim stud Paxton Hall-Yoshida, and propositions him for guilt free sex. He accepts but she chickens out... somehow along the way with their awkward encounters he starts accepting her as, at the very least, an acquaintance.

Devi's journey through season 1 of Never Have I Ever takes us inside Indian American culture in a way that hasn't been this richly explored before, highlighting the community and social pressures that are in some ways absurd and in others a source of pride, and still others which just are.  It's one of the most marvelous aspects of the show how it does not making fun Indian culture but manages to be respectful, critical and funny about it.

Devi is a hot mess of a character.  She is our lead into her world, our focus, and we like her...mostly, but she's constantly getting in her own way, she has a keen sense of how to make a bad situation worse, and she's selfish.  For fans of The Mindy Project this is no doubt some of Kaling's heightened sense of her own personality coming out in force... the parts she admires about herself, as well as the things she's not so proud of.  Framing around a young woman dealing with intense grief is the genius of the show, as it really hits home how hard it is to resolve that grief over the sudden loss of someone you're so close to (especially as the later episodes point out how Devi's father was the one who got her, and her mother has always been more challenged by her).

But it that's the brilliance, the masterstroke here is tennis legend, and legendary a-hole John McEnroe as the narrator, the defacto inner monologue for Devi.  It seems absurd, but by the end of the first episode makes perfect sense, and reveals layers of meaning/parallels as the series goes on.  It's honestly a gift that keeps on giving, as McEnroe's insights into the life of a teenage, Indian-America young woman (four things which he is not) are continuously hilarious, as well as the small egocentric asides to his own career he puts in.  McEnroe has never been great as a cameo actor elsewhere but he's perfect for narration.

I haven't even really talked about the rom com part of this.  The Mindy Project  also started as a long-form romcom but eventually just graduated into a delightfully absurd workplace comedy as the actors' personas took over the show, but those first couple seasons made it clear that it's a specific genre Kaling loves to explore.  Here again the teen romance angle takes I would say conservatively 40% of the very rich screen time, as Devi contemplates what exactly is happening between her and Paxton while also making a mess of her other relationships with family and friends.  Also early on we're introduced to her lifelong nemesis, Ben.  They have a delightfully contentious relationship, which you know immediately, given their age, means hormones are going to cause everything to get confused.  Like Lara Jean in ...P.S. I Still Love You, you know it's going to come to a decision between the sweet but jocky handsome kid and the nerdy but charming and otherwise sympathetic challenger, but the show wisely weaves away from the romantic entaglements to focus back in on Devi's trauma (while also not ingoring anything else going on).

It's a tremedously charming, hilarious and fun show and not only does the teen rom com genre proud but creates a whole new benchmark in how to make long-form rom com and teen material.  As a Kaling fan, this may just be the best thing she's done yet.

I Saw This!!: A few words on works of television

More like "I Sat on This!!"  I started writing this in December of 2015 and plum forgot that I hadn't finished it.

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The Jinx (6 episodes) - HBO

Silicon Valley (season 1) - HBO

Wayward Pines (5 episodes) - Fox

Transparent (season 1) - Amazon/Shomi

Fresh Off The Boat (season 1) - ABC/Shomi

7 Days in Hell (special) - HBO
Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell (7 episodes) - BBC
The Wrong Mans (season 1) - BBC/Shomi
Fargo (Season 2)

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If I don't write many movie reviews anymore, it's because I'm not watching that many movies.  I'm too busy watching TV.  While TV has always been loveable, a perfectly adequate and enjoyable way to pass time, it rarely had the stigma of fine art and impeccable storytelling, not like film.  Because of the nature and demands of American television networks in the past, shows used to have to skew as broadly as possible such as not to upset anyone, and to have a generic enough premise with generic enough characters so as to sustain 5 to 10 seasons worth of storytelling.

Of course, with the influx of specialty channels, pay cable, streaming services, and more the demand and desire for original programming is at an all-time peak, and TV show creators (and the people that fund them) want nothing more than to stand out from the crowd.  How best to do that?  Be worth watching, tell an engaging, uniform story, with great characters and in a visual style that is cinema-quality.  Special effects can't measure up to a 200 million dollar blockbuster, that's for sure, but they can do enough to get the point across (and tell the viewer that the focus is more character than spectacle).

Television is so good today, and so plentifully good that it's legitimately frustrating.  Programming one's evening to optimize viewing time is almost a regular affair, and it's hard enough to just keep up with the shows that are currently running, never mind going back and watching ones that have ended or, Cthulhu forbid, watching a beloved show again.

Here I present some thoughts on a bunch of notable new-ish television I've been watching.

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We've been watching Game of Thrones through whatever means necessary in prior years (but always backing up our viewing with a purchase of the Blu-Ray set upon release), but this year we went legit, subscribing to HBO for its 10-week cycle.  This gave us access to a wealth of HBO-On-Demand programming which finally let me check out a number of shows people had been talking about but I otherwise would not have seen.

The Jinx naturally made a huge splash early this year with the surprise (and spoiler-filled) news of Robert Durst's arrest.  This six-part documentary examines Durst's life, his criminal history (both official and alleged), and the various crimes he's seemingly gotten away with, including the murders of his wife, his best friend, and a neighbour.  This is all framed with the usual talking heads-style commentary from people related to the story, but made fascinating even further by an in-depth, on-camera interview with a fully cooperative (if not really truthful) Robert Durst.

As far as examinations into true crime go, this is easily a high watermark.  Director Andrew Jarecki, who made another benchmark true crime documentary with Capturing the Friedmans, legitimately tries to maintain objectivity in the face of overwhelming (if largely circumstantial) evidence that points to Dursts involvement in his wife's disappearance and his best friend's murder.  Meanwhile he has to answer for the murder and dismemberment to which he fully admitted to doing but was acquitted of any wrongdoing.  Durst is a fascinating figure.  Even with a record of cold blooded, calculated murder, he still is completely unassuming on camera.  Not charming in the least, but genuinely intriguing.  He speaks in a curious croak with beady, darting eyes that project a constructed frailty, he plays the genial patsy but is a legit criminal mastermind.  Amateur psychologists will have a field day watching this.

The show ends with a stick of verbal dynamite, and the story behind it is as fascinating as what happens itself.  Even if you know what it is, it's still a massive "Holy shit!" moment that will have you rubbing your eyes in disbelief... and if you don't know how it ends, spare yourself the curiosity until you actually watch the show.  It's insane.  If I had to quibble, Jarecki and company do mess with the timeline of events late in the show (as reported on the internet) for storytelling purposes, which is an unfortunate side effect of being "entertainment programming" rather than straight up journalism.  It's not terribly crucial but understanding there's any deceit in the storytelling leads one to question much else of what we've seen.

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Another HBO show comedy fans won't shut up about, Silicon Valley is the latest show from King of the Hill/Beavis & Butthead/Office Space creator Mike Judge.  I was expecting a transcendent comedy experience and instead found another outstanding, thoughtful, insightful, and rewarding Judge creation that was less about manufacturing laughs than about telling a meaningful character story that happens to be humorous as well.

The show zeroes in on Thomas Middleditch, an unassuming, awkward programmer working and living in the same house with a small group of other programmers (Kumail Nanjiani, Martin Starr) and their benefactor (TJ Miller), creating intellectual property which hopefully will break big.  Middleditch stumbles upon a compression algorithm that winds up in a bidding war between Hooli, a Google analog, and an Elon Musk-style genius/venture capitalist.  Turning up a 10 million dollar offer, he takes the small development handout and the majority percentage ownership and he and his small team get to work on building a company out of a suburban home.  Much of the show focuses on how uncomfortable and ill-suited Middleditch's character is with leading the charge for what could be a massively successful and revolutionary product.  Not helping is the additional pressure of Hooli's attempts to go to market first and reverse engineer his code, or equally Miller's loudmouth pothead character who should at this point be a silent 10% investor and is instead anything but.

 The show has a strong cast of characters and performers which allows it to take comedic diversions without distracting from the more naturalistic elements of the show. It dwells heavily in the world of tech culture and the socially awkward personalities that dominate it, doing so in a manner that doesn't feel exploitative, but equally doesn't accept it as (it seems to be of the opinion people can change).


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Oh Wayward Pines.  You tried so hard.  Too hard.  You wanted to be what you couldn't, because we already have Twin Peaks.  Based on a series of novels (which own up to their Lynch-ian influence), Wayward Pines was shepherded into existence for the summer TV schedule (home to many a middling genre programming) by M. Night Shyamalan, whose predilection for story twists has audiences anticipating and mocking him, sometimes simultaneously.  Pines is filled with twists, each episode doling out one, two or sometimes much more of them, but rarely doing so with any real craft or effectiveness.  The plot has Matt Dillon's FBI agent on the search for two other agents who have disappeared.  He gets Doc Hollywooded into Wayward Pines where he finds one of them long dead, and the other many years older and quite settled into the sleepy environment that's oxymoronically draconian and utopic.  Public executions take place in the streets for disobeying the town's rules (which feel about as simplistic as those accompanying a Mogwi in Gremlins) and everything appears to be on camera or audio recorded.

It's all so sinister, so anyone who seems happy with the status quo seems in on it, and if they're not then it's all the more creepy.  The show aims for a Lost-like formula whereby it introduces new mysteries each time they expose one, only Lost had the benefit of engaging and mysterious characters as well as an engaging and mysterious setting and overall narrative.  Pines just has the town, and its mysterious quite quickly become maddeningly ridiculous (or perhaps even guiltily enjoyable).  It all culminates in the fifth episode whereby Hope Davis teaches the students of the local Academy all about the town's history while Matt Dillon silently scales the city's wall, discovering for himself its awful secret.  As clunky as the first four episodes were, the fifth is a masterpiece of exposition, one that somehow makes an undeniably ridiculous scenario seem totally logical.  I was beyond impressed.  And yet, I stopped watching with that episode.  I had no burning desire to continue the series and I still feel completely uninvested in it or its events.  I don't think a bad story really, but the show certainly wasn't executed well overall.

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We started watching Transparent shortly after we finished watching Sense8, coincidentally more than by design.  Though there's little similarity between the shows, I mention it because, as per its title, it too features a lead trans character as well as bisexual and gay characters in its main cast.

Jeffrey Tambor is the trans parent of the title who, in their advancing retirement years, finally decides to embrace who they feel most comfortable being, becoming Maura and moving into a trans-friendly community as part of the transition.  The show doesn't just follow Maura's transition, but her whole family, who as the children of a neurotic mother and distant, psychology professor father, are all a bit askew in the world.  Eldest daughter Sarah rekindles a romance with her college lover, terminating two marriages in the process, while youngest daughter Ali still struggles with adulthood and responsibility well into her thirties.  Middle child Josh suffers form anger and trust issues, having had an unstable romantic relationship with his childhood babysitter for years, and (not coincidentally) using his position as a music promoter to curry the favor of young female musicians.

The show can be wickedly funny and squeamishly uncomfortable in equal measure.  The Pfefferman clan hits just that precise level of self-involved assholishness that it makes them uneasy to watch or even care for.  If it weren't for Maura's sympathetic journey, it would be intolerable, but Maura's transition is dealt with in such a positive and favourable light that it gives a bright center for these dark spirals of characters to orbit around.

The best handled aspects of the show are the flashbacks, which largely show Mort as he tries to come to terms with who he is 15 to 20 years in the past.  For a lot of his journey, he's accompanied by Bradley Whitford who portrays a transvestite, and they retreat away to hotels on weekends to dress up.  This culminates in a brilliant full-flashback episode where the two go to a camp for transvestites and Maura encounters the prejudice they have towards transexuals there.

Most episodes have particular moments that stick in your brain, either by subject matter or by visual craft.  Perhaps the best episode deals with Ali's relationship with Dale, a transsexual she met through her father's sessions, which seems to be portrayed as something a little unhealthy as she's denigrated and the submissive, only to be revealed to Ali's own surprise as something far more awkward and confused.  This spin on fantasy versus reality doesn't actually have any logic in how its presented, but it allows for so much pondering on themes of identity, desire, and fantasy as well as delving into Ali's psyche in an indirect fashion.

It's a brilliant and challenging show.  I never look forward to watching it, but once I start, I binge on two or three episodes before I have to stop.  I feel overwhelmed, and yet I also feel rewarded.

(Supplementary Note: Even though Season 2 has completed and we have access to it, I'm finding it hard to bring myself to watch it. )

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Family comedies haven't really been my thing since the late 1980s, and yet here I am regularly watching Fresh Off The Boat.  Based (loosely, and somewhat contentiously) off Eddie Huang's memoir, the series first season finds young Eddie moving to Miami with his family as his father starts a new restaurant.  Early on the series dealt with some of the more difficult elements of the transition, mainly being Chinese in a predominantly white city, as well as the hardships of establishing a new business, always with little peculiar touches that differentiated itself from other shows, but establishing itself on the same playing field as Malcolm In The Middle and Everybody Hates Chris before it.  As the show got deeper into its half-season order, it started to eschew the moments of drama and the darker elements of their life to focus more on the absurdist comedy (where things like the "success perm" and Jessica's gaydar blindness seed themselves as running gags).  Like The Wonder Years or Everybody Hates Chris, the adult Eddie acted as narrator, and as such the show largely revolved around him.  Eddie identifying with 90's hip-hop, having a crush on his older neighbor, and feuding with kids at school were key parts of his story entering the 7th grade at a new school.  His younger brothers Emory and Evan seemed to have an easier time adjusting, the former a schoolyard Lothario, the latter an extremely bright student and social butterfly among the adult neighbors.  Where Eddie is a disappointment to the standards of a Chinese child, having little interest in educational pursuits and defying his parents regularly, Emory and Evan both are dutiful children who enjoy their disciplinary tiger-mom.

The real Huang became publicly disgruntled with the show's direction, which put him at odds with the producers and network as the show became the first successful Asian American-led network sitcom.   Just as the writer decided to distance himself from the show, so too did the program decide to distance itself from Huang's source material, for season 2 it dropped its narration and expanded the focus on all of the family members for its full-season order.  It's first season was solid, but this second season has been far more entertaining, fleshing out both its major and minor characters in more interesting (and often sillier) ways.  It playfully toys with both Chinese and Chinese-American culture, fielding an even mix of the real and surreal, showing elements of American culture that the Huangs (as individuals and as a family) have glommed onto, and also highlighting some other aspects of Americana that still elude them.

The show uses its 90's setting to great effect, putting a spotlight on some of the cultural touchstones from the time, whether it be Shaquille O'Neil's ill-fated Shaq-Fu video game or a Janet Jackson concert, there's equal time for reverence, nostalgia, and mockery.

Where the show triumphs is in its dense supporting cast, including the team at Louis' Cattleman's Ranch restaurant, Jessica's family from D.C., or Eddie's misfit group of friends at school.  But the main cast is resoundingly great.  Randall Park has deserved a spotlight show for years, and has finally found it.  Constance Wu makes Jessica one of the liveliest characters on television, while the trio of Hudson Yang, Forrest Wheeler and Ian Chen as Eddie, Emory and Evan respectively are three immensely delightful young actors who manage to eschew precociousness or excessive cuteness that so many family comedies rely upon.  Especially in season 2, Emory and Evan are given room to grow as characters, rather than the more one-note jokes they were in the first season.  As a whole it's a genuine delight.

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I'm not certain what spurred HBO on to make 7 Days In Hell. At 50-ish minutes, it's not a movie-length production, and it feels more like it would fit on ESPN despite it's satirical nature (I think ESPN should have more original scripted programming that's very sports-centric).  The special is a talking heads mocumentary ala Zelig or the Rutles about an epic 7-day match between the top tennis players of the early 2000's at Wimbledon.  The players are Aaron Williams, the adopted brother of Venus and Serena Williams, played by Andy Samberg (so immediately you see the humor in that family dynamic), and Charles Poole, a dimwitted prodigy played by Game of Thrones' Kit Harrington.  The special doesn't demand deep knowledge of Tennis, but does request some familiarity.  If you don't know the structure of the game, at least somewhat loosely, nor do you know the more famous commentators/ex-players like John McEnroe or Chris Evert it's going to lose you somewhat.

But the production is very entertaining, focusing on the manufactured rivalry between Williams (the bad boy superstar of the game) and Poole once idolized Williams, but is manipulated exceedingly by his mother (Mary Steenburgen) and manager (Fred Armisen).  There's a lot of sports and sports-biography stereotypes put through their paces, mostly hitting on the funny, but occasionally falling flat.  Top marks go to Michael Sheen as the aging, salacious British talk show host drooling over Poole through a chain of cigarettes and whiskey on air.  The tennis itself is a joke, both players rather than being so good having instead a crazy rash of illnesses, overdoses and other afflictions.  It all ends in a somewhat unsatisfying fashion, leaving no closure (as well as the absence of the two stars from the talking heads), and yet not really having anywhere else of go when it's all said and done.  It's a definite curiosity, the like you don't see too often, as it's not a film, nor a sketch.

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Magic isn't really my thing, man.  I mean magic as a superpower, or as a trope of fantasy. It's so nebulous and unspecific such that it can pretty much do anything, the consummate Deus Ex Machina.  The  rules of magic, the limitations of it, how one can wield it better than another...these are all things that rarely have good definition in a story.  It's magic, so there's often no logic for it, nor is there a how or a why.  I guess I just don't get it most of the time.  But I got Jonathan Strange and Mr. Norrell, I got it almost immediately.  The magic wielded in this mini-series, based off the novel by Susanna Clarke, all comes from textbooks, and are limited mostly to the incantations inscribed.  Sure it ventures somewhat outside of that, but it's knowledge, it's studies, and understanding.  It's more like science in this series than magic, even though it does fantastical stuff.

Harry Potter spent a good seven novels (and eight films) building a world around magic and magic learning, and while I found that series to be generally palatable, it was still full of mystical mumbo jumbo and an overwhelming number of magic peoples that it still put me off a little.  Meanwhile Strange & Norrell takes place in the very specific era of the 19th Century Napoleonic Wars, an establishes a very tangible English society that the characters live in.  At this time, Mr. Norrell (Eddie Marsan) is the main keeper of the mystic texts and the sole purveyor of magic.  It's otherwise a largely distant memory in the public consciousness.  Mr. Norrell offers up his services to English army to help protect and advance the homeland's interests, gaining some powerful political allies in the process.  When Jonathan Strange (Bertie Carvel) comes along, a gifted amateur who seeks tutelage under the only magician in the land, Mr. Norrell is both excited and wary.  It's his pleasure to finally have an associate, but the fact that Strange seems so much more adept and agile at spell casting troubles him, and his ego.

Ultimately, Strange realizes he's surpassed his master, though he still reveres him and his intelligence, Norrell seethes with jealousy and envy, and seeks to spite his pupil and stunt his growth any way possible, yet every turn seems to only build his legend more.  Norrell seeks power, gains and abuses it, while Strange left somewhat untrained messes with forces he's not quite equipped to control or contain.  While the world wages war around them, they wage war with one another and it's fairly intense, as the audience can see it fall apart from the beginning but are also keenly aware there's little these two men can do to stop it.  It's a fantastic production, utterly engrossing, and both Strange and Norrell are such deep characters, where they could have been made so thin.  Marsan and Carvel are fantastic in the lead roles conveying all manner of subtlety, foregoing scene chewing or overt theatrics.  Like their magic, their performances are ones of nuance.

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Another British import, but of a completely different sort, The Wrong Mans is a mistaken identity comedy that somehow manages to trump all mistaken identity comedies that came before it.  Over six episodes writers/stars James Corden and Mathew Baynton manage to exploit and exacerbate every trope of the subgenre while playing up most of the conventional action movie tropes at the same time.  The result winds up a genuinely compelling action-mystery that just so happens to be quite hilarious.  Rather remarkably on a modest budget the show manages to maintain the tension of an action vehicle without really containing that much action, but when it does it looks pretty good.  It constructs itself around a genuine mystery for the characters to solve.  Where most mistaken identity comedies have the audience in on the truth and watching the character bumble their way through it, this one unfolds in as engrossing a fashion as any of your binge-worthy peak-TV series.

What The Wrong Mans does both to differentiate itself and make it so entertaining is it keeps doubling down on the mistaken identity.  Each episode seems to thrust Baynton's hapless character into another alias or misunderstanding that pushes him deeper into the web of corruption and crime that the show takes place.  Baynton does hapless well, and seems out of his depth perpetually throughout, even at the successful resolution.  Cordon does a satisfying job filling the role of the desperate clinger-on, a very Nick Frost-type part at first but the show does an effective job at humanizing him and not just making him pathetic comic relief (or simply a situation exacerbater).

The show works both as a whole and as an episodic.  There are clearly defined breaks, but it all still seamlessly runs together like a 3 hour film.  This one came recommended and I wholeheartedly pay that recommendation forward.  There is a second, 4-episode season that I've still yet to get to, but I hear is quite complimentary and equally enjoyable.

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Fargo Season 1 was an utter surprise, managing to capture a Coen Brothers-esque flavour without aping or parroting.  It was a show that forged its own path, with a debt owed to its source that it repayed tenfold.  In this golden age of television, Fargo managed to be one of the shiniest spots.  Given that it was a complete story told over ten episodes, one had to wonder where a second season would go, and whether it was even necessary.  One also had to wonder whether the Fargo crew shouldn't quit while they were ahead, seeing as what they got away with in season 1 was a minor miracle.

Once again, defying expectations, Fargo Season 2 came in and blew the excellent first season out of the water.  Like the source and Season 1, Season 2 is a crime story taking place in the Northern Mid-west States in 1979, the tale of two mob factions gone to war, the troubled husband and wife caught in the middle of it, and the police who are trying to understand what is happening and how to quash it.

Season 1 had a dynamite cast, and Season 2 kept up the caliber, with Patrick Wilson, Jean Smart, Ted Danson, Kirsten Dunst, Bokeem Woodbine, Jeffrey Donovan, and more.  Every single player in the very deep cast is excellent, some new(ish) players doling out very take-notice performances.

Not just satisfied with simply telling an already engrossing story of these characters and their lives, creator/showrunner Noah Hawley also seeds through the show with a number of different themes as part of its backdrop, including Reagan's presidential run, feminism, and UFO sightings.  The density of Howley's storytelling, coupled with his astounding visual flourishes (frequent use of split screens and screen wipes, which were very much a staple of 1970's cinema) and a killer soundtrack (both the song selection and the score from Jeff Russo are dynamite) all contribute to one of the most immersive television experiences that demands revisiting.  With this second season the show crawls out of the shadow of the Coens, but once again begs the question "What's next?"  Again, I wonder if perhaps they shouldn't quite while they're ahead, but now I'm more curious than ever to see where (and when) they go and what they come up with.  Simply the best television has to offer.

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And this is what I watched as of mid-late 2015.  I've been subsequently watching this stuff...