KWIF: The Bride! (+2)

KWIF=Kent's Week in Film. I feel like I've fallen off a cliff with my movie watching this month. I'm a little aimless. Blank Check is covering Peter Weir and I'm not all that psyched about following along. My delve into the "Tales for all" series feels like I've hit a wall a bit (although this week's feature may have somewhat re-invigorated my enthusiasm) and the theatres are in just a slight lull (but this week's back with two films I'm very excited about seeing). Maybe it's just the winter blahs and spring tease that's toying with me (the one hour time change also fucked me up for a week, we need to knock this daylight savings b.s. right off), or maybe it's the horror show going on outside cinema that's proving escape mighty hard. Anyway, I forced the issue and thus is the result....

This Week:
The Bride! (2026, d. Maggie Gyllenhaal - in theatre)
2:22 (2018, d. Paul Currie - Tubi)
Vincent and Me (aka "Vincent et moi" - "Tales for all #11" - 1990, d. Michael Rubbo - Crave)

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A little over three months ago we got a luscious and epic (and multiple Academy Award-winning) Frankenstein movie from Guillermo Del Toro, but this was film that was rooted in adaptation, reverence and Gothic tragedy. It's a film that took Mary Shelley's novel, Bernie Wrightson's illustrations, and a romanticized view of Gothic style and architecture and created a delicious salmon ball of a movie that might not be to everyone's tastes, but it's not meant to be...it's 100% catering to its director's sensibilities and anyone familiar with Del Toro's past work can tell it is most definitely the film he wanted to make, and he'd been thinking about making it for a long, long time.

Maggie Gyllenhaal's The Bride is not really an adaptation. The titular "bride" in The Bride of Frankenstein, James Whale's 1935 follow-up to his previous movie, is not much of a character to speak of in that film, appearing only in the climax of said film. Anyone using the Bride of the Monster in the 90 years since doubtlessly owes something to Whale's film, but any story where the Bride is a character must then be largely a construct of its writer.

Though perhaps not adapting anything particular, Gyllenhaal, writing and directing here, clearly shows her reverence for Whale's pictures, Shelley's novel, and the popular genres of the 1930's cinema... the gangster pieces and the song-and-dance films. If anything, The Bride! owes its biggest debt to Bonnie and Clyde, which I've never seen, and even I know it's the framework for everything here.

The film opens with a black screen, and a voice. In stark black and white we see the face of Mary Shelley, as played by Jessie Buckley who informs us that she's been trapped, in a void for some time, and she may have found her way out... a way out through story. Buckley speaks in a rapid fire, rambling nature as Shelley, delivering a monologue that's chaotic and somewhat nonsensical, but the gist comes through. We transition to a mid-30's Chicago restaurant where Ida (Buckley) is cavorting with a couple of mob goons, along with some other girls. She's clearly not in a good space, but then she eats an oyster and starts convulsing. Shelley starts taking control. There's a dual-brained nature to the performance, with Shelley's chaos and Ida's confusion, and it leads to her flapping her gums about the big boss-man Lupino's (Zlatko Burić) vile business. She gets pulled outside and it's...unclear if she is pushed down the stairs or if it's Shelley's influence that makes her fall.

We transition to Frank, the child of Frankenstein, a hundred year old monster in appearance only, but the manners of a gentleman and the enthusiasm of an Amish kid on Rumspringa. He loves song and dance romances, and is terribly lonely. He has made it to Chicago to meet Dr. Euphronius (Annette Benning), a mad scientist type who has picked up Frankenstein's legacy in investigating life after death. Frank fascinates her endlessly, but he wants only one thing from her, to build him a companion. And so they dig up the freshest body they can find - Ida, of course - and resurrect her (Frank resists initially..."too pretty" he says, but Dr. Euphronius is too keen to see if she can do it).

She emerges with no solid memories, but a sense of self, and, also the guiding voice of Shelley in her head (and sometimes outside of it as well). This new bride for Frank is everything he's not...gregarious and outgoing, unabashed and liberated (can't help but think that Poor Things had a bit of influence on this portrayal), but Shelley's voice and mind still wrests control from time to time, and her diatribes become even more chaotic and nonsensical.

It's a choice.

In Whale's The Bride of Frankenstein, he opens his film with a metatextual scene where Mary Shelley decides to regail her husband Percy and their friend and host Lord Byron with the "what happens next" after the end of Frankenstein (though it should be noted that Shelley here is recounting what happens after the end of the previous movie and not her novel, as The Bride of Frankenstein is predominantly built out of parts of the novel unused in the earlier movie). The actress playing Mary Shelly also plays the Bride of the Monster in the film, and it seems like the metatext of that movie as well as the dual role of Shelly and the Bride sparked Gyllenhaal's imagination and informed much of her approach to the character(s) Buckley plays here.

Gyllenhaal goes for broke stylistically here, with more than a couple of dance numbers that blur the line between what's actually happening and fantasy. There's violence, with Ida facing the groping hands of assailants no less than three times, and all the assailants get their comeuppance in very quick order. The violence begets lust and romance between her and Frank, as they flee the police (including Detectives Wiles and Malloy played by Peter Sarsgaard and Penélope Cruz respectively) across the Northeast. The unfortunate element of all this is that Frank gaslights her the entire way (starting with naming her "Penelope... Pretty Penny"). Yes, gentlemanly and a protector, but also a liar with his own incel agenda to have a woman love him and keep her loving him forever.

It turns out that Wiles has a history with Ida, and it comes back to an investigation on Lupino who is under suspicion of having murdered dozens of missing women, and who the crooked law has been paid to overlook. 

The Bride! has character-based threads, story-based threads, and style-based threads to it which all weave together, but only loosely. It's not able to hold much weight. The performances are all pretty incredible. Buckley shows why she's a worthy Oscar-winner (she's been a powerful force in everything I've seen her in), and Bale turns in a surprisingly likeable but also frustrating performance as the Monster. Benning is in peak supporting actor form, and together Sarsgaard and Cruz make an unlikely but winning pair. And Jake Gyllenhaal's scenes are largely separate from the rest of the cast as he plays an early talkies singing-and-dancing big screen idol and you could almost swear it's straight from the era.

The stylistic choices Maggie Gyllenhall makes are bold. I mean, the mid-30's setting lends itself to a particular style, and the deviations from that style in set design, makeup and wardrobe are largely phenomenal. But it's more the choices, where music is anachronistic more often than not, and Gyllenhall doesn't shy away from huge winks to the audience (there's a big song and dance number to a thumping rendition of "Puttin' on the Ritz", and the film ends with... "The Monster Mash" playing over the credits. Seriously). Ida, at one point, incites a Pussy Riot-esque meme like trend for girls and women to rebel, adopting her chaotic hairstyle, her ink-stained face and lips, and the black tongue. Women run wild on the streets, gangs of them, tired of all the shit they have to face. It's surreal, unreal, and a surprisingly delightful bit of fantasy to imagine that the patriarchy (of that era, or any era for that matter) wouldn't (or couldn't) just smack that shit down with brutal force. 

But the film, if it's trying to be inspirational and feminist, falters quite a bit, especially in the fact that it wants to have its cake and sit on it too. Gyllenhaal wants her husband playing Detective Wiles and her friend playing Frank to be seen, ultimately, as good guys.  So Wiles has his redemption, and Frank, even after Ida's found out he's been gaslighting her all this time, still gets a "but I love him" signal from his non-Bride which seemed antithetical to the whole purpose of the film. And the gangster sub-plot, the origin story of The Bride in this film, it gets resolved in a mid-credits scene.

The Bride! is not perfect, and its inconsistencies make it less than satisfying, but at the same time it is far from boring and it really has some special elements to it. I think the whole Shelley-possessing-Ida angle is what needs the most consideration upon rewatch, but I just haven't decided yet if it'll be worth rewatching.

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The idea of "burden of choice" is not new, especially when it comes to movies. In the thirty year glory period of movie rentals pre-Netflix, I could often be found roaming around a video store for upwards of an hour trying to decide upon a movie or two (or three) to take home for the night. These days, if I don't have an agenda when I sit down to relax for the evening (or on a lazy weekend morning) then I can be found spending that same almost-hour just jumping around from streaming service to streaming service looking at "cover" images and reading descriptions and maybe taking in 15-second previews. The experience of browsing can be as entertaining as actually watching something.  

Tubi really is the closest approximation to the video store experience. There are quality, big-name, titles, box office hits (and near misses), but there's also piles upon piles upon piles of low-budget, never-heard-of-it goodness that stretches back into the 1970s and maybe even before. It's a bevvy of delights for the trash aficionado.  

Low budget movies aren't the same as they used to be though. There are entire studios and/or distribution houses that fund and assemble the glut as packages to sell to streaming services or cable services internationally. If there's money to be made it's not going to the filmmakers, and a lot of them know it, producing movies where perhaps there's effort but not any care or pride. The majority of low-budget filmmaking from the past 25 years feels...soulless.

So when scroll across something like 2:22 , where it has the usual glossy highly photoshopped poster that looks like every other poster and the requisite "hey that guy (or gal)" star, regardless of the film's enticing high-concept-that-it-cannot-possibly-deliver-on-description I usually just have to turn away. But something in me decided to give this one the rare 5-minute shot... the coveted 300 seconds to impress me or I'm getting out, never to return.

Inside, I found a familiar lead (Michiel Huisman, Orphan Black, The Flight Attendant, The Haunting of Hill House) and a surprisingly creative bit of editing as well as a deft use of effects budgeting.  Huisman plays Dylan, an air traffic controller, with a gift for spotting patterns. As he makes his way to and from his apartment to Grand Central Station every day on his bicycle (it's funny how typing it out, "bicycle" seems so juvenile, but if I were to write "bike" you would probably assume motorcycle) via his train to and from the airport, he starts to see patterns, especially at the station. The movie telegraphs where this is all going with an opening flash...back? forward? sideways? to a guns-drawn standoff in the station.

Then one day at work Dylan begins having a weird...seizure maybe that causes him to sort of blip out of focus for a few seconds, and in that few seconds there's a near-collision on the runway that he manages to save the day on... but he still gets suspended. He's at a "sky-ballet" event where he finds himself transfixed by Sarah (Teresa Palmer, definitely not Kristen Stewart), an art gallery curator, and as they meet they become aware that she was on one of the flights that almost crashed. And they share the same birthday. There's kismet between them that neither can deny. They're both floating on air after just one evening of talking to each other.

But as the days go on, and the patterns become stronger, Dylan starts to become a bit more unglued. Reality is not this precise in its repetitive behaviour, and it's all a bit too intense for him. At the gallery opening Sarah's been working on for her ex-boyfriend, digital mixed-media artist Jonas, (Sam Reid, definitely not Michael C. Hall) one of the centrepieces is a digital recreation of Grand Central, and of the repeating patterns Dylan has been seeing. A fight ensues and things sour with Sarah.

Dylan tries to keep his composure but he goes slightly bonkers with what the world's telling him, only to find other clues in his apartment that lead him to understand what's going on.

It really is a pretty slickly produced movie that has the sensibilities of a 90's mid-budget thriller that would have starred, I dunno, Andy Garcia and Julia Roberts, or Bruce Willis and Andie MacDowell. It has that big-star sheen and polish to it, just without the big stars. That doesn't mean it's good, though, much like most thrillers of the mid-90's.

It's not that there's a logic flaw to the supernatural element to this movie, it all comes together, it's just that the mystery, once it really starts to get solved, is pretty pedestrian. I guess the genre nerd in me wanted more of a sci-fi explanation than a fantasy one.

It also would have helped had the film not been telegraphing its finale so prevalent throughout the film. The idea is that history is repeating itself and once we understand that there's so little drama when we understand what the finale has to be (and some of us may get there faster than others, but most of us will be ahead of the movie on this one).

There are three editors on this film (William Hoy, Sean Lahiff, Gary Woodyard) and it's easy to see why it took three people to pull this together. Not only are the sort of time-flashes pretty intensely cut, there are also the montages of repeating patterns (this was sooo close to being a time loop movie, but it isn't at all) that looked like they took a lot of work to assemble, and then there's the fact that they shot this movie in Sydney but it's set in New York and Grand Central Station is at the very core of every aspect of this film. Shooting, editing, and blending with effects the scenery and backgrounds must have been an absolute chore, and I was astonished at how well it worked. I mean, I knew it couldn't be New York City, and so I spent a lot of time trying to see where the seams were and I failed over and over (I'm also not *that* familiar with NYC).

This is a film everyone involved can be quite proud of even if it's not as successful as was likely hoped for. It's not quite a hidden gem, but it is a quality production.

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If producer Rock Demers is the literal rock of the "Tales for all" series, the solid foundation upon which this house is built, then Australian writer-director Michael Rubbo is the I-beam across the center that keeps the framework stable. He is the writer-director of The Peanut Butter Solution and Tommy Tricker and the Stamp Traveler, not just the two most ambitious of the "Tales for all" but also probably the two most memorable (I was going to say "most successful" but I really don't know what is the appropriate measure for success on these movies which are Quebecois treasures and notable for being staple viewing on CBC in the 80's and 90's).

Rubbo returns for a third outing with Demers and did not leave any ambition behind. With Vincent et moi/Vincent and Me, Rubbo was engaging with his love of art in his screenplay via the character of Jo (Nina Petronzio), a young teen who travels from her rural town to attend a Montreal arts school. She is a Van Gogh obsessive, just idolizes his work (there is a back story there). She is an exceptional artist, though all her form is in impersonating her idol, both in how she paints and sketches. 

On the train to school, a young lad, Felix, tries to make friends, but she's standoffish and just wants to read her book on Van Gogh. Arriving at art school she learns he is the director of the school play. Her teacher is excited by her arrival, as she's seen her talent, and gives the class an assignment: design a jungle backdrop for the school play. Jo is immediately taken aback... she only draws and paints real life, she has no imagination (her words). Her teacher doesn't believe her. Felix pays a visit and brings a book of Henri Rousseau's jungle paintings. The next day Jo show's off her new backdrop, which is a near-perfect replica of a Rousseau. Her teacher catches her in a lie saying it was an original work, and Jo flips the fuck out.

It seems clear that this stage setting is all about Jo having to learn and grow as an artist and as a person, to accept the friendship and input of others while also discovering her own imagination as she blossoms into womanhood. I mean, we've seen at least three other similar films like this in the "Tales for all" series so ...

wait...

To calm herself down Jo runs around Montreal on her own trying to sketch people but they keep moving. She manages to sketch one lean, elderly gentleman with a pointy beard... only when she goes to leave he grabs her by the coat and drags her through a parade to a Chinese restaurant where he demands to see the drawing she made of him. He is immediately impressed, not just impressed, but astonished. He buys the drawing off her for a crisp $50 Canadian bill and requests he meet her back there the next day with a painting of her rural farm life.  Felix has been following her, and warns her that the thin man is shifty business.

Fast forward to the end of the school year and the performance of Felix's play (really, genuinely beautiful sets...awful play with a blunt "save the rainforests" message) when Jo's teacher shows her a magazine article where her drawings have been passed off as newly discovered drawings of a 13-year-old Van Gogh. Jo tries to hide her displeasure, but when pressed, she tells what happened, and she's accused of being a liar again. She flips out and starts flipping chairs. The rage issues in this young lady.

Of course, now she has to learn lessons in humility and to accept things which are beyond her cont... nope her and Felix and a reporter are off to Amsterdam to reclaim her drawings.  There they meet Joris (Paul Klerk), a boy of their age who lives on a wee boat and knows Amsterdam inside out. He's on the hunt for the thieves who recently stole a Van Gogh painting. Jo is smitten and Joris acts like he has foreign girls swooning over him all the time. Felix is jealous.

The kids become detectives investigating some leads and they not only find the stolen painting but uncover a forgery scheme as well. It's only by narrow fortune that they manage to escape the wrath of the thin man. Unfortunately for them, the reward and glory for their discovery goes to the reporter who manages to figure out from context clues the kids mistakenly give him. Not only is Joris not getting his hard fought reward, but Jo isn't getting her drawings back.

Well, I guess this act of international intrigue can only go one place, which is teaching Jo and other kids that sometimes life is unfair and disap....

Or, Jo just literally astral projects back into 1880's Arles France where she meets her hero, Van Gogh (Tchéky Karyo, Goldeneye). He's pretty standoffish with this young intruder as he's trying to work, but they wind up having a real conversation where she tells him of his legacy (which he doesn't believe in the slightest until he starts picking up from context clues that she's truly not from this time). He gives her a lesson in his painting style (something clearly Rubbo is versed in, as he did many of the fake paintings in this film himself) and sends her back to her real time with one of his paintings.

And when she wakes up, yep, there's a Van Gogh sitting right there. She could be a millionaire, but all she wants is her sketches back. So, in voice over montage she tells of trading the painting for her drawing to the Japanese businessman that bought them, and then wraps up any other loose ends in the montage. 

Oh, lest we forget, the film opens with Jeanne Clement, the record holder for being the oldest living person ever validated, having passed away in 1997 at 122 years old. She was 115 when she appeared in this film, retelling her experience of having met Van Gogh in Arles when she was 13 or so. She said he was rude to her and probably drunk. 

I suspect the story from Clement came out probably around the time they were shooting this film in Amsterdam, or perhaps before and maybe inspired Rubbo in writing the tale? Either way, they managed to finagle an interview with Clement, which starts with her recounting her Van Gogh encounter, and ends with young Nina Petronzio talking with Clement in-character as Jo, telling Clement that she encountered Van Gogh and he was very nice. Poor Jeanne Clement seemed so damned confused by this conversation and the encounter and ...I dunno, it felt a little mean spirited, like some sort of Borat shit. I don't think she understood what was happening.

Vincent et Moi is a largely English language film (occasional French or Dutch with subtitles), and the young  cast's performances are a little choppy from the outset. The film feels weighted in its first act, likely because all the budget was spent or earmarked for shooting in Amsterdam, so the early scenes feel rushed and a bit sloppy. Amsterdam, though, is a blast. Not just for the scenery (despite this not being an very well shot film) but the performances and just the tone of the film changes to another gear. It's not until the shorter third act where Jo meets Van Gogh that the truly bonkers nature of the film and its structure are fully revealed. Karyo has been an impeccable European character actor for decades and this early appearance he's so handsome and charming, if maybe not so close to the usual portrayal of the painter. The scenery here shows Rubbo's love and care for art as he recreates through scenery or sets some of Van Gogh's works and, while not the most high-end of cameras and film printing, they're still gorgeous images.

The only disappointment I truly have with Vincent et moi is that Jo isn't more autism spectrum encoded. Here rage issues, her hyperfocusing, her lack of understanding social norms or her ability to read the emotions of others. It's all there, but it's clear it's not intentionally a "coded" performance. 

This is a delightfully bananas film. I never thought anything could dethrone The Peanut Butter Solution as my favourite "Tales for all", given my deep nostalgia for that film, but this one's making a play for it.  It's a weird, wild gem.

Cleaning the Slate: TV (Fortitude)

Making a decision. As I watch too much TV, I have too much to comment on, some great, some good, and mostly only meh. As I always have a massive backlog of movies and TV, and even some video games, I am going to pare that down. Only four five remaindered TV shows will get posts, and after that, only things that leave a great impression will end up here. Well, maybe if I actually clean house on the Movies, I will do the occasional What I Am Watching post.

Fortitude, 2015-2017, Sky -- download

Svalbard, an island off the coast of Norway in the Arctic Circle. Mining and research are the primary things going on there. Technically its not part of Norway, but they run the show. Now, add the fictional town of Fortitude, populated by an international group of hundreds but only four cops, and introduce a murder. And something more than just murder.

One of my fondest regrets was a logical choice I made in my youth, when I was offered a 6 month position in Alert, Nunavut. I was working for the Dept of Defense then, and they are always looking for short term computer nerds; nobody is allowed to be there for more than 6 months. The money would have been incredible, but I was at the beginning of my relationship and I don't deal well with unknowns and loneliness. Imagine the isolation, being trapped with the same people day in, day out. And the fucking cold. I sort of fantasized bringing a giant box of BFFs (big fat fantasies) with me, and teaching all the military types how to play D&D. But I chickened out. I still think about it to this day.

That memory attracted me to the show.

The show begins with a bear mauling and an accidental shooting, that is quickly covered up by the Sheriff Dan Anderssen (Richard Dormer; Beric Dondarrion on Games of Thrones). Not long after, a local scientist (Christopher Eccleston) is horrifically murdered, slashed and stabbed. As the investigation continues, an American detective based out of London flies in, Stanley Tucci. Friction between competing investigations is escalated by the presence of a mysterious ailment, one that drives people mad and is connected to the original murder. On top of this, the Governor of the community is doing her best to keep alive her dream of setting up an ice hotel, to prop up the failing mining interests. Murders and primeval diseases don't make good PR.

The mixture of standard British procedural with plague story is enhanced by the myriad of different cultures interacting with each other. Brits, Irish, Americans, Russians, Norwegians and even local Sami folk are all tossed together in close quarters in cold weather and the ever present fear that a polar bear may wander in and eat people. Flawed characters are the norm, as no one comes to Fortitude because their lives were going well elsewhere. It makes for grand drama.

The most chilling part (pun intended) is the virus. And not just virus but the transmission method, a parasite that inhabits wasp larva that have been frozen in a mammoth graveyard under a glacier, for millions of years. Hundreds of thousands? The virus/parasite forces the infected to attack someone else, and expel more maggots/parasites into the other person. Aspects of The Thing creep in, and we don't know who is infected and who might turn at any moment.

Season One ends with a climax but very little in the way of answers. The infection has been identified, the infected caught before they can do more harm and a a woman has been eaten alive, from the inside, by wasp larva. Horror has supplanted procedural. But Fortitude has survived, as it is a town of survivors.

Season Two picks up weeks, months later. The WHO has come in, cleansed the infection vector and isolated the surviving infected. Dan Anderssen has disappeared and his second is barely hanging on. While the season begins with a murder, there is no procedural here at all. This is all thriller tension and mystery. The plot of the infection has altered much the way the infection does itself, and there are scifi aspects of the infection leaving some of its hosts with miraculous powers of regeneration. There is political intrigue, betrayal and again, aspects of horror.

Dan was and still is my focus of attention. Is he a good sheriff or a bad sheriff, is a line that describes his whole character in the show. He's a good cop, skilled and even toned, supportive of his staff and protective of Fortitude. But he's also obsessed with Elena who works at the hotel, in a rather scary, stalker manner. And we find out he's a murderer. When Season Two comes along, Dan has lost his mind, survived his own infection and we are even more unsure of whether he is Good or Bad. But damn, is he compelling. He does this tilt of his head, not a cute dog "baroo" at all, with a Cheshire smile that could eat your whole head. The infection has merged with folklore, and Dan becomes the Demon that threatens the whole town. And yes, he is still here to save it, as more of its inhabitants are taken by the chaos.

Another aspect that I loved about it, may just be inherent in its Iceland shooting locations, but so reflective of the character of a town on top of glacier, is the architecture. There are the expected corrugated metal shacks, built quickly and reflective of a place that wants cheap and quick. And there are old structures, that must have been built by the original inhabitants, the Norwegians. And then there are these crazy, ultra modern structures with massive glass windows and cold concrete walls, that I could only conceive reflect advances in environmental technology. How else could they stay so warm in the -50 C weather outside at all times?

Again when this season ends, we sum up very little and leave a lot of open wounds for the viewers. Beloved characters have died, the plague is expanding its impact and Dan Anderssen is once again Sheriff. I cannot wait to see what happens next.

I Saw This!! - Nextflix Fix

Daredevil (season 1)

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries (pilot +2 episodes)

Sense8 (season 1)
Wet Hot American Summer: First Day Of Camp (8 episodes)

Master of None (season 1)
With Bob and David (4 episodes)
Jessica Jones (season 1)


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If we've learned anything from the past two years of Marvel Studios' television efforts, it's that it operates best when confined.  Agents of S.H.I.E.L.D. seems to challenge the audience to enjoy it week to week, like some sort of sick dare.  The demands of filling out a 22-episode order while dovetailing in precisely-timed plot elements from the cinematic world is definitely more hassle than it's been worth.  Even with focused story lines it seems like an aimless show, and for some time Marvel's television wing looked dire.   Then Marvel's Agent Carter came along with an 8-episode order, tightly plotted with clear focus, and was one of the most exciting and entertaining shows of the year (if not exactly a ratings blockbuster).  Daredevil season 1 appeared on Netflix in May with a 13-episode order and played out more like a mini-series or, well, 13-hour movie rather than a TV show.  It was definitely built for binge-watching, as is the Netflix way.

If each of Marvel's films are supposed to tackle a particular genre (Ant-Man is a heist film, Guardians of the Galaxy a space opera, Captain America: Winter Soldier a 70's spy thriller, etc) then Daredevil follows that lead by being a heavy, HBO-style, R-rated crime drama, and it does it very, very well.  While the first season does act, in a way, as an origin story, it's decidedly not the focus.  The first episode opens with Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox) already in disguise, battling on the streets and docks of Hell's Kitchen, while trying to establish a respectable law firm with his best buddy, Foggy Nelson (Eldon Hensen).  The tagline could easily be "what he can't do in the courtroom, he does on the streets", but that's terribly lame and thankfully they didn't use it.

The show manages to worm its way into the Marvel Cinematic Universe quite easily, by noting that Hell's Kitchen has fallen on hard times once more (after years of gentrification) in the two years since the alien invasion of New York that occurred in The Avengers.  A coalition of crime lords has taken up residency and sliced up the neighbourhood, but it's a fragile arrangement which breaks easily when a masked vigilante starts to expose their weaknesses to each other. Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio) negotiates these frailties and establishes himself as Kingpin, despite wishing to stay in the shadows.  The show could have so very easily painted Fisk as a larger-than-life villain, but D'Onofrio finds an extremely vulnerable core for the character.  He's a man who's doubtlessly smart and ruthlessly brutal, but he's got a tortured past, and a new love in his life who, more than anyone and more than anything, he wants her respect.  How the show negotiates Fisk, and just as much how it validates his relationship with Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer) is its most deft and brilliant touch.  Vanessa is not in the dark about what Fisk does, and she's not an accomplice either.  She's a woman who understands power and is willing to support the man she loves in his misguided campaign to remake Hell's Kitchen into more than it ever has been.

Murdock and Nelson are joined in their firm by Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll) as their clerk, whose own experiences with the corrupt landlords of Hell's Kitchen draws her deeper into the conspiracies of the criminal underworld.  She gets some assistance from Ben Urich (a fantastic Vondie Curtis-Hall) but knows she's way in over her head.  The show gets a lot of credit for showing Karen's resiliency as well as giving her character-defining moments that are completely separate from the main character.  She gets a really nice arc.  Foggy's character moments are more defined by his relationships with Matt and Karen, but the episode where Foggy has to deal with discovering Matt's vigilante activities, his supernatural abilities, and face a history of lies is one of the absolute best dramatic hours of the year, and certainly a trope of superhero storytelling that rarely gets explored with such depth and emotion.

The series sells itself beautifully at the end of episode two, with a knock-down, drag-out, one-take, no-cuts hallway brawl between Daredevil and a gang of thugs. I'm certain it takes inspiration from a similar scene in Old Boy, and perhaps the confined-space fights of Snowpiercer and The Raid 2.  Through flashbacks with Matt Murdock as a young boy, we learn of his relationship with his father, a boxer who wasn't the greatest but could always take a punch and would always finish a fight standing), so the Daredevil mantra is "get back up, never quit", and boy does the show ever show Matt taking a beating.

The show deals with many themes: fathers and sons, friendship, secret lives, and the power of the truth, among others, and they're all quite deftly handled.  If the show falls flat at any point, it's in its final moments, the rather unclimactic final battle between Daredevil (finally in full costume) and the Kingpin.  Its an event that seems like an afterthought, occurring in a plain back alley without much flare at all.  A big action setpiece wasn't exactly called for, but something a bit more elaborate, a bit more in scale of the show was certainly more deserved.


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I have no shortage of love for stories and characters.  If I could do nothing else in life but read and watch and consume, I would actually be quite content.  I endeavor to do so, often, but as real life busies up, investing too much thought and time into a character or a world becomes more and more difficult.  So when something captures my attention and makes me not just love it, but fall in love with it, that's a pretty special moment.  I kind of had that earlier this year with Peggy Carter, which put on display the character's immense strength that Captain America: The First Avenger never truly let resonate.  The show also gave glimpses into the character's vulnerability (not weaknesses per se), showing that she wasn't Thor or the Hulk or even Captain America, but still a regular (if exceptional) person. 

Phryne Fisher is very much a character in the same vein as Peggy (or perhaps it's vice-versa), a tough as nails, whip-smart, resourceful, witty, utterly charming and disarmingly attractive (moreso because of her personality) woman who, like Peggy, exists in an era where women were almost unanimously deemed the inferior sex and could only contribute to society in a limited manner.  Why Peggy butts heads with the establishment, in no real position to affect dramatic institutional change, Phryne is wealthy enough that the establishment at least has to pay attention to her, if only to humor her (but even by humoring her, she gets exactly what she wants).

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries is, on the one hand, a by-the-numbers Poirot or Miss Marple-like light detective series based off a character who originally appeared in a modern series of novels.  On the other hand, it takes place in the early 1920's in Melbourne and deals with stories that era-authentic novels wouldn't touch, such as mixed race marriages, homosexuality and abortion (that's just in the first three episodes).  It's a tad revisionist, in a way, but it's also heartening to see stories such as these which take a more liberal standpoint than society at the time was actually willing to consider.  That these stories still echo the modern day just highlights their ingeniousness in construction (if not exactly groundbreaking execution).

I would call Phryne an epic woman, not just a detective but a real Jacqueline-of-all-trades, in the James Bond fashion.  Her roots in the world run far and deep, and she can not only handle an airplane and her liquor, but she can handle herself.  She's glamorous and sexy but unafraid to get her hands (or clothes) dirty.  She unapologetically enjoys recreational sex and drugs, which implies a cavalier attitude, but the truth is she cares deeply about people and society, even when she doesn't agree with them.

Essie Davis radiates intense amounts of charisma every moment she's on screen.  She commands the screen so resoundingly that as unbelievable as Phryne Fisher should be, she makes her not only work, but captivating.  The rest of the cast is charming as well, a solid supporting ensemble to the last, but there's no doubt that Davis is the star of the show, and, along with her leading turn in the sleeper hit The Babadook, she should be crashing Hollywood any minute now as the next big bad in a Marvel movie or starting an action franchise of her own.

Miss Fisher's Murder Mysteries only holds the barest thread of ongoing narrative, as such it doesn't command a binge watch.  It's more of an apertif, an amuse-bouche, something sweet and flavourful to savor on occasion.

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When Sense8 debuted, it did so to a lot of confusion.  Advance reviews were middling at best because reviewers seemed to have been given only the first three episodes of the globe-hopping sci-fi epic, and it became utterly evident that the fourth episode was truly the series' lynchpin.  In that fourth episode the crux of the series is laid bare, the mythology explained and the threats were made real.  Even with that clarity, the show would still be a difficult one for many to grasp, as it played heavily with themes of gender and sexual identity, and asked its viewer to invest in a cast that honestly had never been presented before, all while toying with the science fictional concept of a group mind.  It's not an easy sell.  People coming into it based on the names attached -- Matrix creators Lana and Andy Wachowski, and Babylon 5's J. Michael Straczynski -- maybe were expecting something more pulpy, more space operatic, more fantastical, and surely there was some disappointment in that.

Yet Sense8 delivered roughly 12 hours of "television" (it's Netflix) that was rich and diverse in character and story, presenting an unfamiliar world (both real visions and made-up constructs) that took the viewer on a trip to different lands (from Mexico City to Nairobi to  Berlin to Mumbai) and into different cultures, which seemed just as much the point as the story it was telling.  Of equal importance was having a trans woman as one of the main characters (Nomi's story no doubt was particularly personal to Lana Wachowski).

The sexuality, particularly of the gay and trans characters, was prominently on display, almost to a point of not having much straight sex represented at all.  It's hard to say that it wasn't confrontational, showing Nomi and Amanita mid- and post-coitus, nor is it easy to think that showing an honest romantic and sexual relationship between Lito and Hernando wasn't a decided choice.  But the world is better for them, not only as titillation, but as habituation.  If we can get used to graphic violence as we have over the past few decades, then relatively truthful depictions of queer relationships should be just as easy.

For all its progressiveness, Sense8 isn't a flawless show.  There's elements of its international cast that seem reductive and stereotypical, as well, the show has a bit of difficulty juggling its ensemble episode-to-episode, while equally maintaining a consistent narrative.  Some of the characters have more engaging stories than others, though a lot of that seems to be in the eye of the viewer, as I've discovered in many conversations on the series.  But there's no doubt that by the end of episode 12, it feels like it finally found its footing, and "season 1" ends on what feels more like a mid-season break then truly the end of its first run.

Season 2 has been greenlit, and I await it with much anticipation

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I missed out on the sketch comedy of The State entirely.  It was a product of the mid-90's MTV original programming push (which also saw the likes of The Real World, The Ben Stiller Show, and Singled Out come to air), filling the gap as the outre sketch-com of record between the Kids in the Hall and Mr. Show with Bob and David.  But in Canada we didn't have MTV at that time, we had MuchMusic, which was (for better and worse) not the same thing.  I wasn't even aware of The State or its 11-member crew until I started delving into the comedy podcast surge circa 2009.  Then suddenly it seemed the influence of The State was everywhere.  Reno 9-11 was probably the most prominent, but faces and names like Ken Marino, Thomas Lennon, Joe Lo Truglio, David Wain, Michael Showalter and Michael Ian Black just kept cropping up over and over again, especially in those comedy podcasts.  I had barely, if ever, heard of these guys, and yet they were revered, legendary almost, and one of the repeated works of note was something called Wet Hot American Summer ("Wet Hot" for short).

When I finally got around to watching Wet Hot, I found it amusing, but not the groundbreaking comedy that it had been touted, and not something I went back to.  Yet, there was a charm to it -- a cast (which also included non-State players like Molly Shannon, Janeane Garofalo and David Hyde Pierce, rounded out by future celebs like Bradley Cooper, Paul Rudd, Elizabeth Banks and Amy Pohler) that seemed fully invested in the bit (of 20 and 30-somethings playing high-school age camp counselors), and an absurdity that is both subversive and overt -- something that over time cemented itself in my mind as representative of the cult classic it had become.

The Netflix follow-up series, Wet Hot American Summer: First Day of Camp, despite all my podcast listening, snuck up on me, a genuine surprise when I caught wind of its existence only a few weeks before its release.  No only was the entire cast returning, but it was expanding, ballooning out of control almost with guest shots from some of my favourite comedic actors and podcast personalities (H. Jon Benjamin, Michaela Watkins, Randall Park, Jordan Peele, Weird Al, Kristen Wiig) .  Yes, even those big time celebs - Banks, Cooper, Pohler, and Rudd - were back in, with cast member from Mad Men (Jon Hamm, John Slattery, Rich Sommer) joining the fray too.  Even if it was a trainwreck, it would still be a sight to behold.

It's anything but.  Certainly it's not everyone's cup of tea, but nearly fifteen years after the release of the original film, for the same cast to return to the same roles, in ostensibly a prequel is a delightful slice of mad genius. With eight half-hour episodes, First Day acts as ostensibly a four-hour movie rather than a TV series proper, and it features a wealth of comedic performers, writers, and directors at the height of their ability.  Even at 4 hours, it feels even more focused than the original Wet Hot and the narrative arc is thoroughly more satisfying.  It deftly manages to speckle itself with references to the original film without lazily relying upon "remember this" punchlines or stalling the film with in jokes that stifle the comedy.  I didn't have a fresh viewing of Wet Hot under my belt so most of the references flew over my head obliviously, not as curiously stilted lines.

Perhaps the most amazing feat of First Day is the way creators Wain and Showalter negotiated the cast, where obviously many of the bigger celebrities only had limited days to work on the film.  There are times the absence of a character on screen is felt, or the continuity of the narrative as it jumps between scenes and sets feels highly incongruous, but then that's also part of the absurdist charm.  When one of the goals is to create, cast, reherse, and perform a complex musical in the span of 8 hours, logic and time get thrown out the window.  Likewise, rationalizing these largely 40-something performers playing teenage counselors is also something one has to let go of, or rather appreciate the intent therein.

I revisited the original Wet Hot after watching First Day and found it a more rewarding experience as a result.  Unlike some comedies which tend to cannibalize their source material, First Day expands and enriches the ridiculous world of Camp Firewood.  The story of Wet Hot doesn't scream for more, but the experience certainly does.  It would be wise for Wain and Showalter to find another genre worth lovingly parodying, Christopher Guest style.

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Master of None creators Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang have created the perfect anti-cringe comedy. 
After Seinfeld emerged as one of the biggest TV comedies of all-time, the language of humour on TV changed.  With peers like The Larry Sanders Show and successors like Curb Your Enthusiasm and It's Always Sunny in Philadelphia, the genre of "cringe comedy" has become a staple of television.  At its purest it's about awful people doing bad things or being involved in bad situations, both of which they should be smart enough to avoid.  With this kind of humour there's the inevitability, that the characters are going to get found out, that everything's going to fall apart, and in that tension of waiting for it to happen they find humour.

Almost every sit com treads in this style of comedy, though it's more often than not the single-camera comedies as opposed to the traditional 3-camera, "live in front of a studio audience", situation comedies that play deeper into the genre (the conventional sitcom generally wants you to like their characters, while a single camera comedy wants you to like them too, but also hate them just a little bit).  This expectation of things going wrong, of heightened comedic situations, is the norm on TV, which is what makes Master of None so intriguing.

 It's a show about nice people living normal lives, having conversations (sometimes mature, sometimes silly), exploring ideas and being almost 100% relatable even if they're in different careers, living in different cities, and having different cultural backgrounds.  It's a show about many things, but the key is understanding, and to have a central character, Ansari's Dev, actually show an aptitude for learning, growth, and change as a person is almost shocking in a world where sitcom characters generally need to be stagnate.

Ansari is one of the biggest touring stand-up comedians in North America, and having been a fan of his for over a decade now I've watch him evolved from a comic who had a delightful skewered view on observational (and sometimes political) comedy into someone with a genuine interest in society and how it works, examining the way people are different, the same, and how they connect on those grounds, as friends, lovers and enemies.  This perspective informs both Dev and the show as a whole.  Each of its 10 episodes is themed, from children to parents, dating to cohabitating, not always original topics but explored in the most unique of ways.  The inaugural episode, for instance, opens with Dev having sex (when's the last time...or the first time even...you've seen an Indian character on TV having a sexual relationship?) only to stop and worriedly proclaim that the condom broke.  This leads to a frank, yet funny, examination about what the fallout could be and whether taking the Plan B pill is the right decision (again, one waits for the cringe factor to arrive, never to appear).  From there Dev explores with his friends the idea of what it would like to be a dad, from the perspective of people who are in no stage of life to be parents.  The show then takes Dev and friends to a children's birthday party (where in a normal cringe comedy, the childless adults tend to make it an event to exhibit extreme self-centered behavour, here it's really an exploration of parenthood from outside eyes) and follows it up with Dev taking a friend's children out for a day around New York (again, where you're trained to wait for something bad to happen, like the kids running off, or getting hurt, here it's about Dev understanding how exhausting kids can be).  Even as the show explores this topic of kids and parenting, it's smart, insightful, but doesn't come to any pat, definite answers, but there's sincerity and some consolation in watching people explore those thoughts and ideas in an honest manner.

The show continues like this for its remaining nine episodes, exploring its themes with the same forthright nature.  The best episodes have a tremendous amount of heart, such as Dev and his friend Bryan, both first generation Americans, exploring their parents origins from India and Korea, having been afforded the luxury of detachment from  their parents hardships (Ansari's own mother and father play Dev's parents, and while they're not naturally gifted actors, they emit a tremendous amount of charm).  A later episode, titled "Indians on TV", explores the very issue of how Indian characters are portrayed on television, quite hilariously, but also with much provocation, calling out the industry for demanding any Indian-American actor use "the accent".  There's so many things happening here you just don't see on TV and done so in a manner that defies convention.

Despite tackling a new theme each episode, there is a through-line in the series of Dev's relationship with Rachel (the ridiculously adorable Noel Wells), as it goes from the inaugural episode's drunken hook-up to their fraught cohabitation.  The chemistry is amazing between Wells and Ansari, making it utterly easy to invest in their relationship, which results in one of the most rewarding romantic comedies in some time (but don't let "rom com" scare you off, it's more in the Before Sunrise, Richard Linklater style than a Katherine Heigl joint) .  At ten episodes, Master of None is too good to have this short a run.  I caught wind that more episodes are being written, and by all accounts it sounds like feedback for the show has been quite positive, so I'm hoping a second season (if not multiple seasons) is swiftly announced as this is a show with a voice that needs to be heard.  Plus it's got incredible style and great taste in music.

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I brought up Mr. Show with Bob and David earlier in relation to The State as seminal sketch comedy programs of the 1990s.  The implication there is I was on top of the Mr. Show show scene at the time, but truth is I largely came at it from behind, with the DVD releases in the early 2000s.  Not only wasn't I really invested in Mr. Show when it ran, but I'm not even certain I liked the show on DVD...not at first anyway.

Mr. Show was very conceptual comedy, and not necessarily an idea that universal.  They tended to be concepts that made creators Bob Odenkirk and David Cross laugh because they tweaked their particular skewered sense of comedy, pop culture and society.   It took me multiple viewings of Mr. Show's four-season run on DVD to really get the majority of it, but even then it was in large part thanks to the spectacular commentary tracks that I actually felt a part of the joke.  In those commentaries, Bob, David and their cast of writers and performers sat down and doled out stories behind the sketches which brought them to life in a way that they didn't have on their own.

This isn't to say that Mr. Show wasn't funny on its own, because it was, but the true depth of many of the sketches would only reveal themselves if you knew the points of reference or even the frame of mind of their creators.  Without the context, Cross, Odenkirk and company come across as alternately angry or silly, dishing out skit with bite, or ridiculous skits about people falling down (or sometimes just crude, base humour put into a context where its not usually found).

The four-episode Netflix reunion,  ...With Bob and David picks up from Mr. Show as if it hasn't missed a beat.  The majority of the cast and crew has gone on to do their own things -- with Odenkirk breaking out on Breaking Bad into Better Call Saul, Cross featuring in countless movies and shows not to mention his tremendous standup, Paul F. Tompkins having become one of podcast's premiere improv and character comedians, and Tom Kenny making a mint from voicing Spongebob amongst others -- they all come together to reunite and get back to the same vision they had before.  One would think that as they grew and changed as people that their comedy would be somewhat different, but it's pretty much the same.  It's barbed and ridiculous in equal measure, the types of characters one could expect (hateful, self centric people are commonly thrust into situations which they can only make more awkward) are plentiful. 

While the majority of sketches feel like par for the Bob and David course, there are a couple of standouts, including Better Roots, a filmed piece that finds its director whitewashing Alex Haley's roots to make slaves into "helpers" and make the white farm runners look like kind, generous employers (super funny dude Brandon Johnson gets a fantastic lead role here).  Another posits what the "Jew-run Hollywood" would look like if it were "Muslim-run Hollywood" instead.  While not outright hilarious, they are provocatively funny, and somehow feature a sensibility of smart and stupid in some common measure.

The 4-episode season is remarkably brisk, an over-before-it-began kind of feeling, but at the same time it does feel quite special to get this diverse range of talents together, including appearances from most of the original supporting cast (notably missing Jerry Minor, Sarah Silverman, and Jack Black).  There's a behind-the-scenes making-of "5th episode" that, like the audio commentaries on the DVD of yore, provide a peek into the process.  In one particularly delightful moment we see Cross' interview casually interrupted by Odenkirk as  imprompteu through a sketch idea for a few minutes.  It's incredible watching them work through these things in these moments, and a delight.  To see the ideas gestate, it's almost better than the polished product (at times it is).

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If you don't know Marvel's Jessica Jones prior to watching Marvel's Jessica Jones, don't feel bad.  She's a fairly nominal character in Marvel's vast comics pantheon, but giving her a spotlight in the company's "Cinematic Universe" will bolster her to superstar status, if not quite in the same range as Iron Man and Spider-Man, but certainly becoming as familiar a name as Daredevil or probably even Ant-Man.

Jessica Jones emerged as a product of Marvel's "MAX" line of comics, one that allowed creators a bit more liberty with sex, violence, and language than your average tights-and-capes book.  Like the TV show, the comic book (titled Alias, which could not be used for the Nextflix series for obvious JJ Abrams reasons) is about a private detective with a past as a short-lived superhero.  The TV series keeps the relative broad strokes of this story and character intact, including an awkward relationship with Luke Cage, but it forges its own path.  Where the comic seemed predestined to be a semi-conventional P.I. TV series, this series forgoes the "case-of-the-week" setup, instead driving forward through its 13-episode order with a stronger, singular thread.

The show finds Jessica haunted by a past trauma, having been held captive by a man named Kilgrave for six months up until he was run over by a bus.  Kilgrave had the ability to have anyone do as he wishes by simply telling them what to do, and Jessica was under his every whim, a plaything he professed to love.  Time has passed but the scars run deep and now Kilgrave has re-emerged, back from the dead.  Jessica is torn between fleeing and hunting the sociopath down.  It's only the case of another of Kilgrave's victims, heading to trial for murdering her parents, that gives Jessica the fortitude to fight.

The show does a remarkable job building the threat of Kilgrave over the first three or four episodes, with only hints and occasional visual cues of the man himself.  Even once revealed, Kilgrave is easily the scariest villain in a Marvel story to date, and the nastiest predator one could imagine.  Kilgrave is given a couple of episodes focus, even a slight moment of redemption, but the show knows well how to toy with its audience.  Casting beloved Doctor Who David Tennent, with his considerable charm, was a brilliant move as he brings that same Doctor charm, but utterly twisted.  His backstory is made clear and even provides some sympathy, but the show treads it well, saying that sympathy is not enough.  Kilgrave does what he does because he knows no other way, and he's incapable of really trying.

The intention of the show is clear though, this is a story about sexual abuse, domestic violence, and emotional abuse.  It's not the specifics that a Law & Order SVU seems to uneasily delight in, but rather the emotional impact that one has both during and after such an incident, as well as the persistent power one's abuser still has even after the abuse has seemingly abated.  We wade right into Jessica's post traumatic stress right away, but we find the hero within almost instantly in her willingness to sacrifice her own comfort in order to help a stranger who faces a similar situation.  Kristen Ritter, makes for an unlikely superhero, but a winning flawed protagonist.  She captures the attitude, the bitterness, the pain and anger, the desire and drive to do good mixed with the need for self-preservation, it's an award-worthy performance (no doubt to be overlooked because of the genre).  She's the lead of the show, 100%, and she earns it every step of the way.  She's given a love interest in Luke Cage, with whom she has a complicated back story, and their union is fraught with difficulty (it's uncannily like the story of Another Earth though I suspect utterly unintentional), but there's definitely something that works, and Ritter and Mike Colter have a crackling energy between them.

The supporting cast is largely great, and their storylines play out almost universally well.  Eka Darville plays Jessica's strung-out neighbour Malcom, who makes a pretty dramatic transition in the series (though it peters out towards the end), and Rachael Taylor is fantastic as Trish "Patsy" Walker, Jessica's best friend and media personality (Trish is the show's MVP, getting her own very rewarding storyline somewhat independent of Jessica's).  Carrie Anne Moss takes on the role of high-powered lawyer Jeri Hogarth, whose affair with her secretary turns to the messiest of divorce proceedings, all of which gets integrated into the crux of the show's first season, at times awkwardly and at times quite brilliantly.

Like Daredevil before it, if there's a flaw in Netflix's plan for these Marvel shows it's forcing them into a 13-episode format.  Both series start to wear around episode 9, and then have a rough race to the finish.  Episode 9 here borders on being a terrible episode in an otherwise great series, starting with a riling-up-the-mob sequence that's straight out of a 1930's Universal Horror movie.  The show from thereout loses its tremendous forward thrust as it starts to pad out the episode with more asides for its tertiary characters.  I think at 10 episodes Jessica Jones would have had a perfect run, but as is there's at least two "we got Kilgrave...oh, he's escaped" scenarios too many.

But that's a quibble.  It's amazing we now have at least four superhero shows with female showrunners (Arrow, Peggy Carter, Supergirl, Jessica Jones), and Melissa Rosenberg manages to acquit herself of writing the Twilight movies quite nicely, showing more of her experience with Dexter instead by heading another binge-worthy series.  Some are calling Jessica Jones the best Marvel yet, and I can't really agree, since I enjoy the big, brassy, expensive spectacle of the films fart too much, but it's certainly got a case for best drama and best series.  Not having piles of history and expectations behind her has its advantages.