Community - "Paranormal Parentage" - Review

I was probably too overtly harsh on Community in my last review.

The series isn’t bad. It can still manage some rather funny and touching moments. But something is very noticeably off. It’s hard to pin down what exactly feels wrong, but it’s enough that it keeps me at arm’s length when watching these new episodes. 

This episode returns some tried and true stories. We get Britta psychoanalyzing Jeff, more explication on Annie and Jeff’s relationship, Pierce attempting to get the study group’s attention, and Jeff exploring his daddy issues.  So it’s nice to see some of the underlying kinetics that made this series so fluid.

But the cast is split up into too many pairings (and for too long), the pacing is still dialed down a few too many notches, and (worst of all) the show feels like it’s just going through the motions.   

The series needs to find its footing or re-brand itself. Either way, as critic Ryan McGee put it, “That… Community wasn't good. But it was hardly horrible. It totally, definitely existed.”

Grade: B-

"Last Year at Marienband" - Film Review

Today’s filmgoers are massively literate about film language. They know how stories are told. When someone glances off in the distance and the next shot is some other object, we immediately make the connection that the person is gazing at the object. But people had to establish this language, and breaking the rules took time. The Lumiere brothers produced “actualities”, single frame shots of some real life event. George Melies soon started doing multiple shots to tell a story. In The Great Train Robbery, we got our first use of crosscutting: cutting back and forth between two plots to create tension and new meaning. And so on and so forth.

Last Year at Marienband came out at an interesting time in film history. It was released during a time when filmmakers were hugely interested in testing what was possible within the film medium.  It was made during the early years of the French New Wave, and like many other noted French films of the time, it blows up structure in mesmerizing, offputting, and bold ways. Linear storytelling is thrown out the window entirely. The film plays around with time and reality, posing existential questions and an uneasy sense of ennui. Much of the film feels like we’re walking through a dream, as we dash through space and time with uncertainty. 

The film often chooses to go for style over substance; shots are carefully calculated and framed, but the tidiness of the artistic design is occasionally undercut by how deeply surreal the film is. This is perhaps best exemplified by the now infamous shot of the perfectly positioned people standing amongst the manicured French garden; we see them from a distance with the sun overcast; the people cast long shadows while the trees cast no shadows at all. 

The film leaves itself up to interpretation. The plot is fairly straightforward: a man approaches a woman at a gathering at a hotel and claims that they met last year and insisted upon meeting again a year later. The question is posed for us as to whether this is true or not, and through repetition of events in multiple locations and in different contexts, the breakdown of reality and the truth continues to collapse until it’s nearly impossible to tell. 

To some it might be seen as intellectual masturbation, so overtly attempting to be highminded to the point of being irredeemably pretentious, and far too purposefully convoluted and incomprehensible. And to an extent it’s a smattering of all these qualities; but it’s also aesthetically interesting and vibrant. Plus its utter rejection of structural conventions has been highly influential on films.

Grade: B-

The Office - "Moving On" - Review

Well, that was … I don’t want to say a mess. But it was a lot of ideas that really didn't amount to much.

Shows should have some level of cohesion in each episode, no matter how many plots are thrown at us or how structurally unique it may be. Thus a show like The Walking Dead gets flack all the time for starting out with opening scenes that don’t feel like they logically lead us to the end scene of an episode (no matter how well those individual scenes may be executed). 

These plots don’t feel like they should be in one episode together, or really any episode at all for that matter. The backdoor pilot doesn’t make sense anymore because Dwight’s escapades on The Farm have been canceled and aren’t happening anymore. And so we get a storyline that is just plain weird. Dwight goes to take care of his ailing aunt, who we’ve never heard of before. He brings along Angela, and just flat out strange, unjustifiable things occur. The scene where he plans to hose his aunt feels like it’s coming out of a redneck caricature. If Dwight still had feelings for Angela, it should have been hinted at least a few times before this.

The most pointless plot of all: Toby’s misplaced affections for Nelly cause him to visit the man incarcerated for the Scranton Strangler murders. Toby goes to the prison and lets the man know that he now believes him to be innocent, despite the fact that his juror vote was “guilty.” And in fitting irony he ends up getting strangled by the man. At least, Nelly gives him a ride home (not that I care).

These subplots were each odder than the next, but we weren’t there enough for them to become completely grating. On the other hand, the Andy-Erin-Pete plot that dominated the episode is noticeably all over the place. The real problem is that Andy has become a plot device and not an actual character. Sure, Andy could be weird in the past, but the writers kept him just on the right side of crazy. Now though, he’s descending into a moustache twirling villain intent on nothing but seeing the pain and destruction of Erin and Pete for hurting him. 

The best plot in theory proved to be also very frustrating. Bob Odenkirk is usually comedic gold, and positioning him as an office manager who’s one step removed from Michael Scott sounds like one of the most inspired things the show has done in a long time. But few people apparently can control and capture the manic energy that made Michael Scott so joyous and oddly charming like Steve Carrel (even a seasoned comedian like the brilliant Odenkirk – who isn’t bad, but trapped by predictable and constraining material).

Worse still is that this was an hour long episode that had little right to be an hour long. Least of all not when this felt like four different series having their episode’s haphazardly cut together. Duct taping a number of plots together and hoping the mere charm of a cast will make it work is not a recipe for success, especially with plots as empty as these.

Any of these plots could have become something. May be not something spectacular but something where they felt like there was a point to them and that they mattered. Modern Family has been doing a good job about this lately. I never really laugh anymore at Modern Family, but I also rarely think to myself, "Oh my God what is that thing?" It's not a form of storytelling that will blow my mind or keep me a devout follower, but it puts a show one step above the mediocrity.

Stray Observations:

-Oddly enough the return of one of the series’ worst characters, Gabe, proves to be one of its best moments. “Yes, thank you for remembering,” he cheerfully says when Kevin points out that he and Erin used to “do it”

-Kevin’s miserable failed attempt to introduce himself to Pete’s ex is hilarious.

-Pam admits she wants to stay in Scranton. We’ve known this for a while so it’s really not surprising. 

Grade: C

"Eyes Without a Face" - Film Review

Eyes Without a Face is usually labeled as a horror film, and largely to an extent it is. But more often it feels more like an incredibly disturbing melodrama.

The film is more concerned with setting a mood or staging scenes so that you feel the utter isolation, sadness, and desperation of the characters than with trying to scare you. The film is thoroughly frightening but less because of the presentation of the story and more due to how unsettling the film’s premise is.

Doctor Génessier (Pierre Brasseur) is performing experimental surgery in order to restore his daughter Christiane’s (Edith Scob) damaged face; all that remains unscarred are her lovely, sad blue eyes (hence the title). With the help of Louise (Alida Valli), his assistant who he restored the face of, he kidnaps unsuspecting women with similar faces to Christiane’s. 

There’s a somber beauty to the film. The film is filled with a sense of anguish and psychological pain. This is perhaps best exemplified by Maurice Jarre’s haunting score; the leitmotif musical piece that plays when Christiane is on screen is unspeakably chilling. While the visuals formed by Eugen Schüfftan’s vivid black and white cinematography are striking and enchanting with undercurrents of melancholy. 

Though largely overlooked in its own time, through theatrical and home video releases the film began to collect a greater reputation. It’s now widely accepted to be a major influence on both European and American horror movies.

Its fascinating, poetic exploration of identity and beauty, and its considerations of the price being paid to achieve the surgery make it achingly mesmerizing even as it continually unnerves us. 

Grade: A

My Thoughts on Season 1 of "Suburgatory"

Suburgatory is exhaustively filled with tropes. Its stories take place in and around the candy-coated, bubblegum pop vision of a New York suburban town that is Chatswin. A town populated with meangirls like Dalia (and still yet mean girls with outlandish names such as Kamantha); happy-go-lucky neighbors like Noah; overbearing soccer moms like Sheila; a southern belle like Dallas; and then our two protagonists Tessa and George (both a tad clichéd in their own way). Tropes are almost to be expected in the story of urbanites getting stuck in the suburbs. Early on in the show’s run, however, this played against the series. A lack of continuity and a lack of through line for characters hindered the series from rising above these tropes.

Now tropes aren’t a bad thing. When used effectively, they remind us why they exist in the first place. Suburgatory slowly began to peel back the layers on its archetypes, and in the hands of some great performers, particularly Alan Tudyk’s Noah and Cheryl Hine’s Dallas, the show became more consistent and more endearing. Consistent both in its characters and its jokes, the series became at times incredibly funny and oddly, even surprisingly touching. 

“Cartoonish” is a word tossed around by television critics often when they want to make an underhanded jab at a show they consider to have failed to be good. It’s a word that should be taken back, and re-appropriated. Being cartoonish isn’t bad, but it’s an easy insult to poke at shows that over time fail to maintain the logics and mechanics of their universe. However, some of television’s best series were very cartoonish. The Simpsons’ first nine seasons are masterful at being both hilarious and heartwarming, while also being everything one would expect (and often wonderfully not expect) from a cartoon. 

Suburgatory because of its tropes and because of how bizarre many of its characters, scenarios, dialogue, and jokes could be felt like a live-action cartoon. This was something, especially very early on, the show didn’t always handled well. Early episodes such as “The Chatterer”, “Charity Case”, and “Don’t Call Me Shirley” are rather cartoonish, but they don’t really work because we know next to nothing about the characters at this point to justify much of what takes place or for a number of jokes to land. The characters failing to be well-defined played into this problem. Typically the best comedies are those that create jokes out of character observations rather than contrived scenarios, and here the characters changed frequently from episode to episode in these early days. 

There was still much that didn’t quite click later on this season. However, the writers began to make better use of the cast and learned to balance the many, many talented performers. “Thanksgiving”, for example, is a very overstuffed episode, but the series efficiently tells the many plots without short shrifting any of them. It’s an early example of what the show would become confident and good at, incorporating many, many characters while never losing thematic cohesion or failing to be funny. There are a number of characters I never anticipated ever liking such as Rex Lee’s overly optimistic, clueless guidance counselor Mr. Wolfe and Parker Young’s hopelessly dumb jock Ryan Shay. But by the Eden story arc of the last four episodes, Chatswin had exposed the heart and sincerity underlying its façade, and the show had paid off on many of its early glimpses of promise apparent in the “Pilot” and “Barbeque” that may have gotten lost for a little while along the way. 

While if it doesn’t continue to expand itself and take risks, the praise I’m heaping on it now will have been premature. But this series charms me and I have hopes, and that’s enough for now.

"Alphaville" - Film Review

Alphaville is a peculiar movie, to say the least. Unconventional, hard to follow, and a smorgasbord of this and that, the film is certainly not for everyone. For those interested in the work of seminal director Jean-Luc Godard, this is not the suggested entry point upon his unique auteuristic vision or his influence on the French New Wave and films more generally.

For starters, the plot in a nutshell: intergalactic detective and spy Lemmy Caution (Eddie Constantine) infiltrates the futuristic, technocratic dictatorship Alphaville in order to dismantle it from within. Alphaville is run by a sentient computer Alpha 60 (flavorings of Hal-9000 from 2001: A Space Odyssey). Alpha 60 has banned all non-logical forms of thinking such as love and various other emotions, and breaks between sequences are filled with the odd, larynx impaired Alpha reciting bizarre, surreal poetry. 

Unexpectedly though, the film doesn’t feature any unwieldy sci-fi sets; instead the film was shot on real locations in and around Paris with more modern architecture standing in for futuristic designs.

Featuring Godard’s usual jump cuts and improvised dialogue, the film is tinged with a feel of the avant-garde and the experimental. More appealing as a sumptuous, gorgeous sight to behold than a satisfying narrative, the film is gorgeously shot and has beautiful use of lighting. 

Godard loved unconventionality, innovation, and experimentation, as much as perhaps his radical political views, and nowhere is that more apparent than in Alphaville. For the uninitiated, it might be better to start with Breathless (which is far better and far more influential), but it still represents much of why Godard was such a breath of fresh air in the 1960’s, just in mash-up form. 

Grade: B

How I Met Your Mother - "Bad Crazy" - Review

How I Met Your Mother is a case study in “stalling” tactics for a television series. I know I’ve reiterated this to the point of beating a dead horse profusely. However, it bears repeating simply for the fact that the show may finally have found a story that unlike many stories it’s done in the past actually works as a stalling effort. The Jeanette story is clearly a stall tactic but works much better than previous stall tactics because it feels like there’s real stakes and significance to this plot beyond it being something to distract us until we meet the mother.

Older Ted makes the claim that Jeanette is the last stepping stone that Ted needs to cross in order to be ready for the mother. In the flash forward, we even see Ted say: “No more dating. I’m settling down”. Whether this story will prove to be a plausible enough catalyst to lead Ted to want to cut ties with single life remains to be seen, but it’s a start. 

Though this isn’t exactly the most interesting story the series has attempted (and there's some leaps in logic), it’s still amusing and at turns charming, and the writers find nice ways to milk jokes (the Lily-Robin flash forward every few years plot started to grate but then they did the Mike Tyson reveal and it made it all worth it).

While the two plots of this episode clashed with eachother at times, both in terms of format and tone, taken on their own, they’re both two of the better plots the series has done this season. I wasn’t blown away by this, but like last week’s Robin Sparkles video (although to a much lesser extent) the series still managed to find some nice character moments and some good jokes (even if at turns both were a bit predictable).   

Stray Observations:

-The flash forward to the aftermath of Jeanette could be another one of those things the series never really pulls off that gracefully, but the writers have executed such things well in the past, just not in the last three seasons.

-The montage of Barney and Marshall bringing stuff to Ted’s apartment is clichéd but it gets in some solid jokes including Marshall leading in a horse, and Barney somehow defying physics and carrying both ends of the boat.

-Jeanette really likes Marilyn Monroe … so they had a séance … where they talked to her cat.

-Abbey Elliot is really great as Jeanette and she makes the character charming and sweet even as she’s threatening to kill a referee.

-“You’re the one who invited in the vampire”

-Jeanette’s apparently a cop. And cue more Departed references. They have not felt at all organically introduced even if it's fun to watch Josh Radnor and Jason Segel say "Cawp"

-Jeanette’s description of Lily is possibly the funniest line of the episode: “with her fancy medical degrees and her sexy southern drawl”

-Apparently Mike Tyson is a senator in the future.

-“We heard you screaming from three blocks away”

-One of the mysteries Barney puts out there as never going to get answered is his job.

-“Oh right. I’m a monster.”

-“May be the old lady with a face tattoo is right”

-“I think you’re a little crazy right now” – Lily convincing Ted to keep dating Jeanette felt like a really nice and true character beat. Even if I don't buy the rationale behind it.

-Lily on when things end up going badly with Jeanette: “And when things go up in flames, and I expect there to be literal flames”

-“I’m going to send Lilly a dead animal in the mail”

Grade: B-

What did everyone else think?