The Vampire Diaries - "A View to Kill" - Review

There are a lot of individual moments I really liked in “A View to Kill” but as a complete narrative it leaves a lot to be desired. It doesn’t pay off the “kill Kol” story arc all that gracefully or imaginatively. It’s a very stop and go episode. Though it has the advantage of a clear end game in getting Kol knocked off and finishing the hunter’s tattoo, it just doesn’t effectively pull this off as well as previous episodes that bring together a number of the characters to stop some baddie or achieve some goal. Season 2’s “Masquerade”, for example, remains to be a series highlight for how a delightfully devious Katherine plays cat and mouse with a number of characters gathered together at a party. Here though, the characters are mainly scattered or ill-used (Matt’s role in it all is an afterthought, especially considering he doesn’t even actually find the dagger). The tension building between Kol and Elena also is very, well, just un-tense. Elena is no longer human so it’s not like she’s in completely dire straits. On the other hand, I’ve never been a huge fan of Kol; he’s been underutilized and never all that interesting when he has appeared.  

Bonnie on the other hand keeps continuing her streak of doing stupid life decisions. All she needs to do now is become a teen mom and she will have completed the transformation into total useless idiocy. The only reason her character exists is because she can use magic. Her story is rarely ever about anything else, and that’s just poor storytelling and character development. And we know the writers are far better at creating sympathetic, dynamic characters. But instead, we get Bonnie being angsty, letting dark magic consume her, and using magic to hurt her mother. None of the type of character traits or actions that will make me view a character kindly.

It’s not all sore spots though. I’m very enthusiastic about the pairing of Rebekah and Stefan. This is a far more interesting and engaging couple than Stefan and Elena. They both know they’re getting played by the other one, but they’re so deeply damaged that they kind of want to get played. As much as Stefan uses Rebekah to get the dagger, he also has feelings for her, and so he takes her to have the 80’s high school dance she never got to have. This leads to them bonding further and realizing that there’s potentially more between them than just sex.

The Klaus-Damon scenes were also well-written. Damon is able to discuss his inkling that Elena might not still feel the same way when she’s cured. Klaus opens up about his weird undying feelings for Caroline (though there’s chemistry between them, I just don’t ever see that pairing working, especially now that Joseph Morgan is going to play Klaus on the spin-off The Originals).

It has its moments, but this is a largely disappointing episode that fails to be very engaging throughout.

Stray Observations:

-Stefan attempts the walk of shame post-coitus, but is caught leaving by Klaus.

-“Looks like my brother took a page from my revenge sex handbook”

-I particularly like the part of Klaus and Damon’s conversation where Damon talks about being bad versus being bad with a purpose.

-Is it just me or does the series seem to be implying that all witches are black? Kol says that he met witches from Haiti and Africa.

-Bonnie’s mom did “chloroform” her but I kind of side with her on this one: Bonnie needs to get her shit together.

-“I don’t foresee happiness for you at the end of the cure rainbow”

-The flame death effect is kind of awesome.

-“I was going to make him suffer on my terms!”

-Klaus wants to the cure so he can destroy it. Anyone see this coming cuz I totally didn't.

-“Did she pledge her allegiance to you while she was naked in your bed?” – Elena’s reaction to this is priceless.

Grade: B-

30 Rock - "Hogcock!/ Last Lunch" - Review

I know you’re probably mourning the loss of 30 Rock, and it’s very good that you are (because 30 Rock was so very good and so very unlike anything else on television). But it was time. Increasingly descending into the caricature-ish, cartoonish and bizarre between its 4^th and 6^th season, if the show had gone on any longer, it may not have remained as indelible, as funny, as rapid fire and as unlike everything else on television as it was.

What set the series apart wasn’t just the level of intricacy and intelligence and pace with which it tossed jokes at you (other series have done this quite well; i.e. Arrested Development, Community, and Happy Endings), but also how oddly touching and heartwarming it could be in the midst of all those jokes. 30 Rock lacked the cynicism of other series that attempt to pack each episode with jokes. It mocked and made fun of television tropes and sitcom scenarios, while simultaneously embracing them. And it told a lot of very traditional sitcom stories (and made a lot of heartfelt references to the history of television and sitcom in particular) that sometimes changed up the formula but never cared to make that the end goal. When the series ended on a St. Elsewhere snow globe jab where the whole show never happened, it was merely the series wearing its sitcom heritage on its sleeves to very wonderful and funny effect. 

The series managed to come back for an awesome final season that paid homage to its entire run and still managed to tell touching, funny, memorable stories. The finale feels like a microcosm of all the best aspects of the series. The series’ best relationships are explored once again including Tracy and Liz, Liz and Jack, and Tracy and Kenneth. Plus we get to see Jenna go off and be crazy one final time. 

Liz is forced to put on one last show (due to a clause in Tracy’s contract where if he doesn’t shoot 150 episodes of TGS he’ll get several million dollars). Meanwhile, Jack continues to contemplate whether he’s actually happy, which brings some incredibly inspired, hilarious moments of soul searching.

There are nice little send offs to all the series regulars. Pete gets a subplot about him trying to fake his death. The writers get a subplot about Lutz ruining their final lunch order. Even Grizz and Dotcom get some very funny scenes. 

Allowing the finale to be an hour long lets this episode breathe and take its sweet time. There are jokes left in that would have been on the cutting room floor in a normal episode (that motherly advice forum Liz goes to is very funny but wouldn’t have gone beyond one scene in a standard episode). The show gets in some of its most memorable jokes to date in (I will include many in the “Stray Observations”). 

The show gets all goofily touching in a few scenes that are simultaneously touching, odd, and funny. Tracy admitting he doesn’t want to say “goodbye” got me surprisingly choked up. Liz and Jack’s farewell is played so well by both Tina Fey and Alec Baldwin, and the whole speech on “love” is filled with great character beats. That scene is all the better for how Liz cuts off Jack with, “I love you too!” Better still is how Jack immediately turns the boat around after having another brilliant idea: “Clear dishwashers”.

What is there to say other than this was a great episode of a very unique show, and one of the better finales a tv comedy as managed in a long time. You will be missed 30 Rock. 

Stray Observations:

-The “Gotham Moms” forum is eerily spot-on about real internet forums.

-“Then we’ll be able to get even better trophy wives. Half Asian ones!”

-TGS is only syndicated in Greece.

-Liz’s Yoda impression sounds like a New Yorker with cigarette induced lung disease.

-Kenneth on adapting a Japanese game show for an American audience: “We thought people could win money instead of penis punches”

-“I hope it’s at NBC because we have hiring quotas”

-Of course after mentioning letting a moment land, the episode cuts causing said moment not to land.

-“It’s like when a pig telepathically communicates with you asking whether it has a soul”

-“If you get hit by a car, they put you in a hospital and you get soup”

-Great return/callback: Julianne Moore and Selma Hayek reprising their roles as Jack’s exes.

-“Dammit why’d I get such a loud pacemaker!”

-“…And I don’t mean those two santas kissing on the subway”

-“I pissed off all my enemies: Pelosi, Maddow, Baldwin”

-“You’re just an alcoholic with a great voice”

-The way the scene is shot where they first learn Lutz gets to choose lunch is a brilliant piece of direction. The zoom ins are perfect.

-Return of Conan: “We were going to lose our virginity together! Now I’m always going to be a virgin!”

-A great piece of meta humor: “I can’t do this anymore. I’ve never met Mickey Rourke”

-Lutz changed his last named to Aardvark to win at getting to choose lunch.

-“I want you to have this bag of my hair”

-Grizz has a deal for a new sitcom: “Grizz and Herz”. It even gets its own banner ad!

-Liz on what she presumes to be Jack committing suicide: “This is like my gynecologist all over again!”

-Tracy and Jenna get to say goodbye to one another dressed up as Hitler.

-1 year later: Tracy’s dad finally comes back from getting cigarettes. 

Grade: A

"The Umbrellas of Cherbourg" - Film Review

“They don’t make ‘em like they used to,” the old saying goes, and far and few between has that sentiment been more apt than for The Umbrellas of Cherbourg. This is filmmaking at its purest; here is a film crafted to be fun, entertaining, and immersive. And yet it still manages to say something meaningful about the human condition and all that good junk us serious film types like to discuss. The film is a French operatic (every single line is sung) story of romance, love, and loss that utilizes its music and its striking atmosphere to perfectly exude the feelings and emotions of its characters.

Think back to the first time you were in love; now consider the devastating heartbreak that accompanied being unable to be with that one person you were so maddeningly, deeply in love with. That’s The Umbrellas of Cherbourg in a nutshell. The film manages to remarkably distill that kind of experience and the hold such experiences have over us.  

Carried by it all is the happy-go-lucky, wide eyed visage of Catherine Deneuve as Geneviève Emery. Her popularity blew up in the wake of the film’s release and it’s not entirely surprising. Though Deneuve’s lines were dubbed (by Danielle Licari), it’s the youthful vigor and enthusiasm of Deneuve that makes so many of the great hyperbolic, starry-eyed, love-struck lines work. 

The film is eye-popping with dazzling colors, and it’s hard to decide whether Michel Legrand’s music or the brilliant visuals is more wonderfully infectious. It’s difficult not to be smiling at the utter sincerity and charm of the film. While many modern films have a level of cynicism or a jaded vision, the film, even as it takes darker turns later on, never succumbs to a totally bleak or miserable worldview. 

Director Jacques Demy is one of the lesser known figures of the French New Wave. Not as interested in political or structural concerns as his contemporaries, what makes Umbrellas stand out is how fantastical it feels. Demy chooses every detail (the ties, the wallpaper, etc.) so its colors will visually explode out from the screen. The film resembles a heightened fairytale; only instead it lends this imaginativeness towards describing the events of ordinary, everyday people. 

We’re lucky the film still exists. Almost all the negatives for the film had become faded and unusable. But thankfully the film was restored in the late 90’s, which allows us to still watch this fun, vibrant gem. 

Grade: A

Cougar Town - "I Should Have Known" - Review

Tom is a character Cougar Town has never really taken a stance on. He’s funny in his awkward, kind of sad way, and he works well in small doses. However, the characters keep walking all over him like a doormat and feeling little regret afterwards. This couldn’t keep going on much longer; as selfish as the Cul-de-Sac Crew is, “mean spirited” would not be the appropriate adjective to describe them. They’re deeply clingy and codependent, and they can do mean things to one another, but what pervades it all is a well-intentioned, loving sense of goodwill and affection for one another. So feeling no guilt towards their terrible (escalating) treatment of the misanthrope just could not last.

Though this and other aspects of the episode in theory feel like they’re good ideas, they’re not nearly as well-executed as they could have been. Bobby and Ellie are an underused pairing that I would like to see more of, but their storyline comes off as if it’s just going through the motions. Andy and Grayson are very amusing for how they subvert the “change approved” rule making that Ellie and Jules have monopolized, and providing a new perspective on it, but it’s never really followed through on. 

We haven’t spent enough time with Tom to know him as anything more than this cartoonish oddball who pops in every so often and does peculiar things. So attempting a main plot about him, and how Jules and Laurie (selfishly) protect him from a gold-digger doesn’t have enough stakes. If the series is going to make Tom a larger fixture of the cast, and not just somebody who pops his head through the window every now and again, they need to start humanizing him.    

Stray Observations:

-“That exact moment happened in my dream as well” – The “best friend kiss” isn’t just a funny gag but well-integrated by being made the catalyst for Tom’s anger towards the groups.

-“Cousin stuff can be hot … It’s like they instinctively know what want” – Busy Phillips is having a great season, and the writers have provided her with some great monologues including this episode’s one where Ellie has Laurie let her know when the midway point of the speech is by raising her hand (a nice meta commentary).

-“Did she still not like Ellie?” “Why would you say that?” “Because”

-“Your shirt does seem to come off a lot for no reason” – There was a lot of self-awareness to this episode.

-“That explains the bronze penises in your closet”

-“He’s washing his food pushing pinky”

-Tom’s photo of himself with a sleeping Jules.

-“Laurie thrown wine at her!”

-Great emotional moment: “Do you really think he’d be happy?” “No!”

-Adorbs: Andy and Grayson’s response in unison.

-Laurie climbs into Tom’s house through the roof in heels … and falls.

-I love the hug pact. There was another gag they used for some great emotional effect. 

Title Card of the Week: " Welcome to Cougar Town. Donny made the title cards about him, so he's gone now."

Grade: B-

New Girl - "Cooler" - Review

Television series (and especially tv series of the last twenty years) are largely about world building. Creating a sandbox to play in and that we as an audience want to return to. Television’s major advantage over movies is its ability to uses its extra time we spend with the series to establish locales and characters, as well as to build towards certain events (some more obvious than others). New Girl isn’t The Wire, but it’s created likable characters who (well Winston is still a bit of a wildcard) we know the behaviors and personalities of. Television’s goal is to do unexpected but plausible things with these characters, and it did one such plausible but expected thing (and one the series has been hinting at since practically day one) on the latest episode of New Girl.  

“Cooler” gives us the moment we know would happen, and, for many of us, wanted to happen, but then smartly leaves the door open for a boatload of complications down the road. It’s a well-executed moment led up to by a series of a well-executed moments between Nick and Jess beforehand in the episode. Or in more layman turns: OH MY GOD! NICK AND JESS KISSED!

“Cooler” is an episode largely about contriving a reason to get this particular moment, one the series has been building towards for almost the entirety of its run. We might have expected the two of them to get together as a couple before the incident happened, but it’s a far more interesting and exciting narrative choice than to so easily guide the always destined couple to their inevitable pairing (and there’s some potentially good story to be mined from this down the road). It might have been nice if the show had built towards this moment a bit more cleanly and with greater precision and focus; however, it’s not implausible, and as someone who’s an ardent shipper when it comes to his shows, I’m down with this. And I’m even more down with the mechanics that lead us down this rabbithole. 

The mechanics before the hangout in the apartment are more scatterbrained in terms of plotting. The episode is largely unfocused in the first half, splitting up into two plots and then three (and then finally grafting in a Cece plot in), before drawing everyone back into the apartment. While this is a hodgepodged, hazardous mess at times (the episode appears to have no idea what it wants to be until about the halfway mark), things become sharper, more focused, and more interesting after everyone comes back to the apartment.

Once we return to the apartment, the episode becomes much more entertaining and much more satisfying. There’s some funny moments to be had beforehand (Jess’s montage is a perfect set of little character beats at once adorable and yet rather funny, Winston mumbling his way to failure trying to pick up girls is also amusing, and the woman who has a thing for sad people is surprisingly entertaining despite having no resemblance to a real human being), but it really can’t compete with the return for the first time of everyone’s favorite, incoherent drinking game “True American”. 

However, the wandering aimlessness of this narrative, in hindsight, feels like it’s merely distracting us like a magician, providing us with so many red herrings that we don’t anticipate the true end game of this episode. The plot leads to an unexpected, inspired sequence where the attraction between Jess and Nick is put front and center. I didn’t see this coming, and it’s a nice piece of plotting that creates believable enough stakes to breakdown their defenses and lets their sexual tension seep out. Part of the rules of True American apparently includes some bylaw that forces two people to makeout behind the iron doors of the apartment. Jess brings it up to try to get either Schmidt or Nick to hook up with the crazy girl addicted to sadness. But it backfires. 

Nick and Jess complain at length but no one will let them out, and so they consider going through with it, but then they argue with their usual banter about how the kiss should go down which leads them to talking themselves out of it. When Sam, Jess’s boyfriend, arrives at the behest of Jess, he doesn’t stop this but instead joins in the fratboy style chanting of “Kiss! Kiss!” Fed up by all of this, a frustrated Jess insists they just get the dirty deed over with. “Kiss me!” she yells; “Not like this!” Nick cries, unintentionally revealing his true feelings. The look on Jess’s face says all we need to know: whatchu tryin’ to say Nick? *Raises eyebrow* Nick can’t deal with this; it’s too real for his fragile mind, and he dashes out the nearest window to climb back to the adjourning room. 

Cue some time passing, and this moment appears to have blown over. As Jess walks back to her room though, Nick can’t handle it anymore, and grabs her arm and pulls her in close, kissing her, and she doesn’t fight back at all. “That’s how I would have done it,” Nick lets her know, and quietly, sadly returns to his room. 

Begin the countdown to Nick and Jess dating by season’s end!

Stray Observations:

-“Now are you two going to have sex with me?”

-There’s an odd running gag involving Nick accidentally receiving a package containing a woman’s coat and deciding to wear it for the rest of the episode. It’s funny and Jake Johnson's very committed to the gag, but it’s still strange.

-Jess’s melon with Nick’s face drawn on it is creepy and funny, and has got a fair amount of subtext to it: Subtext that by episode’s end has become text!

-Winston is befriended by a seemingly engaged chick played by Brenda Song that tries to help him overcome his flirting problems. Anyone else see her being single from the get go? Well, at least Winston has a new beau. (Also, did anyone else feel the age difference was odd?)

-“Nick I need you”; with lines like this, I should have seen the end coming. The writing was on the wall.

-“Lets suck it up and French a little”

-“I don’t really know what that accent is but please speak English”

-“We’ll talk about this in the morning … but now I’m going to do things to a girl”

- The only thing that we learn from the Cece plot is that Schmidt and Cece are totally going to get back together at some point since she seems disinterested in every other person she dates.

Grade: B-

Despite the Nick and Jess stuff, this is one of the weakest episodes this seasons that had some major identity crisis problems in defining and deciding what it wanted to be

"The Player" - Film Review

 The Player starts off with a tracking shot, a long take that’s incredibly tricky to pull off. The scene clocks in at 7 minutes and 47 seconds without a single cut; it’s an impressive and memorable sequence that establishes what the film is all about: a satirical hyper-meta film about movies and the film industry.

Griffin Mill (Tim Robbins) is a writer’s executive for a major unnamed film studio. His job is endangered by up and coming Larry Levy (Peter Gallagher). If this weren’t enough, David Kahane (Vincent D’Onofrio), a screenwriter whose story he dismissed, keeps sending him postcards threatening to kill him. He goes to confront Kahane to get him to stop, but this only causes things in Mill’s life to spiral even further.  

The film has a twisted, sardonic, self-aware sense of humor, undercutting conventions or lovingly buying into them to dark or cynical effect. The film is thoroughly immersed in references to cinema and it uses these references to pay homage and to make commentaries on its own structure. When a dead screenwriter begins to figuratively haunt protagonist Mill from the dead, a poster for the film Laura is framed soon after in the background of one of the shots. Laura is an Alfred Hitchcock film about a dead wife’s lingering presence causing trouble for all the people still alive from her life. When Kahane harasses him, he calls into the office with the name of Sunset Boulevard’s doomed protagonist Joe Gillis to tease the imminent demise he seeks to bring upon Mill. Besides these more subtle references, there’s an abundance of cameos from notable Hollywood actors too long to count; a fair number of whom lightly mock their established public personas (including an amusing appearance of Julia Roberts as herself in a fake film and Malcolm MacDowell angrily scowling at Mill for no seeming reason other than star based egotism). 

Director Altman had never been a fan of the Hollywood studios. He had made politically bent films in the past (i.e. M*A*S*H* and Nashville) and purposefully went out of his way to challenge his audience’s viewing experience (he would record actors talking over eachother to make it more naturalistic as well as more difficult to follow). Here in The Player, the film studios are stripped bare before us, depicted as shallow, callous, selfish, greedy entities who have no interest in making “films as art” (as Mill so eagerly, falsely lies to us about in a speech at one point). 

The film has a Jackson Pollock like energy to it, and like many of Robert Altman’s previous films it features a collage-like quality of strung together vignettes and smaller incidences that carry a larger narrative. Altman establishes peculiar personalities and interesting scenarios, but he lets his stories meander and wander, emphasizing character work more often than plot.

The Player deftly handles its satire (as well as its homages and meta commentary) whilst managing to tell an intriguing story of its own. It’s populated with extensive, talented casts; none of whom, besides a sweaty, crazy-eyed Tim Robbins, dominates the film but instead are given small, well-observed scenes. This is a very funny film that uses satire to imaginative, smart, and hilarious effect. 

Grade: A-

"The Lady Vanishes" - Film Review

Alfred Hitchcock was always very good at balancing widespread Hollywood appeal and artistic auterustic stylishness. This finesse for balancing an entertaining story with interesting artistic flourishes is apparent in The Lady Vanishes. The film was one of the last films Hitchcock made in England where he first gained notoriety. Despite being one of his earliest films, it’s also one of his most competent and efficient films, as well as one of his most entertaining.

Though the film starts out slow and unfocused, it allows itself to take the time to establish the characters so that when they eventually get onto the train, we have a sense of who everyone is and a reason to care about them. Once on the train, the action really starts to pick up. Iris Henderson (Margaret Lockwood) befriends elderly Miss Froy (Dame May Whitty) after getting hit on the head with a fallen plant holder. When she falls asleep and finds kindly Miss Froy missing she begins to inquire, but everyone else seems to have no recollection of Miss Froy ever having been on the train. As she investigates the incident, the more baffling and conspiratorial the case of Miss Froy’s disappearance turns out to be. 

The film excels at slowly escalating events; gradually earning it’s more audacious and exciting turn of events as it goes along. It remains indelibly exciting in spite of the seventy plus years that have passed since its initial release; the film deliberately paces itself to effectively draw us in more and more as the film progresses. 

The film also manages to be surprising comical and humorous. Charters and Caldicott (Basil Radford and Naunton Wayne) in particular provide some of the film’s most memorable, funniest lines as cricket enthusiasts rushing back to England to see a match. There’s also an incredibly memorable sight gag in one of the fight sequences involving a height deficient Iris having trouble taking away a knife from her attacker. 

Some of the most distinctive shots of the film are the stylish touches that Hitchcock added, but rather than being empty and pointless they’re used to progress the film. Seeing “FROY” written in the mist clinging to the window as the train passes through a tunnel is both a very cool visual and a great way to further Iris’s investment in her suspicion. The incredible shot of Gilbert (Michael Redgrave) climbing on the outside of the train as another train passes by is wonderfully exciting and a plausible challenge (especially since that's something that a stunt person would have to actually have done) for Gilbert to confront while attempting to get into the neighboring passenger car. 

Hitchcock always had a tremendous gift for getting great character work out of his actors. The chemistry between Lockwood and Redgrave is incredibly palpable and sells much of the film. and even minor, fleeting characters are given some nice screentime including Cecil Parker as Mr. Todhunter and Linden Travers as “Mrs.” Todhunter.

Though it’s almost too obvious that Iris and Gilbert will end up together, and that Miss Froy will show up again at some point, and the “good guys” will triumph over the “bad guys” up to no good on the train. And though a lot of these characters are lovable but clear stock characters, there is something to be said about being the first to do something and to do it well. As critic Ryan McGee so accurately noted, “Another trope? Sure. But tropes often last because of their continual applicability, not simply because they are an easy go-to for a show looking for a plot.” Though McGee was referring to television, this is also true of films; when put in the right, capable hands of talented individuals, it doesn’t matter that we’ve seen some of this before. When it’s this entertaining, and this exciting, and this engrossing, and at times, deeply, purely fun, why would we want to get nitpicky about the structure? Not only that, but in 1938, the film industry was still on a learning curve, and Hitchcock was an innovative, smart guy that took advantage of the medium to make interesting, engaging stories and he was the first to make them quite like he did.  

Grade: A