New Girl - "Quick Hardening Caulk" - Review

Will they-won’t they tension is very easy to handle. For some pairings it will be infinitely more entertaining to watch the dance.  But any show can throw together two individuals with some chemistry and play out endless variations of sexual tension never amounting to anything. What’s far more difficult is to break that comfortable barrier and throw the will they-won’t they individuals head long toward eachother. 

When New Girl finally acted upon the clear development of feelings between Nick and Jess, reactions were mixed. It was a great moment and near perfectly executed, but the moment after being pleased at how well done it was, the next feeling many of us had was a sense of dread: there’s no way they can pull off the aftermath of this. But New Girl has continually proven itself incredibly capable of dealing with the aftermath of the Nick-Jess kiss.

In fact, the newly arisen tension between the two characters has sparked even more energy and life into a series that was already very good. Nick and Jess’s dynamic pre-kiss was amusing but it’s in some ways even more entertaining now post-kiss. Part of the success is due to Jake Johnson and Zooey Deschanel’s performances, but it’s also due to some great writing.

Having Nick be suddenly sexually attractive once more due to him being ambitious and goal oriented is a brilliant idea. Having it be due to him trying to win the affections of his new boss (a relationship Nick hilariously describes as, “going to end badly. But the middle part is gonna be awesome”. Oh how right you are Nick) is an even better decision. This is smart writing; it’s a surprisingly complicated conflict that requires a lot of tough balancing and it effortlessly establishes an ending that gives us a Nick-Jess hook up that doesn’t bring them together. There are other things along the way. Jess fawns for Nick in spite of herself while Nick is too oblivious to notice, and his obliviousness leads to Jess ultimately being in a drugged up state that leads to the removal of all his naivete about her feelings. This scene also ends up unexpectedly causing problems for their eventual hook up since both are too injured to properly make out. It’s an excellent series of bread crumb trail laying that pays off great. 

The will they-won’t they is still there but it’s far more complex now. Putting the cards on the table hasn’t made the show any less enjoyable; the show still has me so thrown that I have no real inclination as to what’s in store for these two, but with the feelings out in the open, there’s a livewire energy that is trickling down into all other aspects of the show. New Girl is also really good at having stories intersect and dovetail. Schmidt and Winston have their own plot going on, but before they gallivant off, they find themselves giving advice to Nick. It allows both plots to be pushed forward while finding ways to have the stories not feel entirely closed off and unrelated. 

Schmidt using a lionfish as a bizarre metaphor for losing Cece is also very funny in its own right. The way Max Greenfield plays Schmidt’s commitment to his delusions is so well-done. In the hands of many other performers, Schmidt could become grating, but it’s to Greenfield’s credit that we find Schmidt so damn endearing. When Cece shows up at the hospital and Winston has to tell her that it’s best that she leaves, it’s terribly heartbreaking. Like the Nick-Jess story, the Schmidt-Cece storyline has worked really well this season (though I’d have to say less well then Nick and Jess).

Grade: B+

Hannah Horvath and Co. Hit the Self Destruct Button: Thoughts on Season 2 of "Girls"

Spoilers on Season 2 of "Girls" Below
Was season two of Girls a perfect season of television? No. It was a season, much like its characters, constantly in flux. It was a show changing from episode to episode to become something unexpected and occasionally incredibly experimental (“One Man’s Trash”, aka the Patrick Wilson sex romp, anyone?). Though it was an uneven season (at times more so than last season), it remained a great season of television.

There are very few shows attempting what Girls is. It isn’t even that it’s about twentysomethings (we’ve seen plenty of series like that); it’s that it’s a series about frequently terrible people who it wants you to simultaneously be disgusted by and yet still like. Part of this is because we can often see ourselves in the characters; I’m twenty so I sadly do see much of myself and people I know in them. It's a show about people doing terrible things because they’re not completely tied down and they don’t know what they want to be yet (The series plays around with the idea of characters trying on new identities, pretending to be someone they’re not just to see how that new identity fits).  They're often too naive or feigning naivete about the consequences of their actions or the dickeshness of them.

But more importantly, the series manages this tricky feat by often calling the characters out on their nonsense. It may have done it less this season than last, but generally, Girls is a series that doesn’t let its characters do terrible things without saying, “Hey, that’s a pretty terrible thing. You shouldn’t do that!” And sometimes it can be far, far too subtle about this point.

By season’s end my sympathies for the character were mostly undone by the penultimate episode. I chose not to write a review for “On All Fours” because it was a deeply dark and depressing episode, and my heart just wasn’t into the whole idea of reliving that episode in minutia. Besides the now infamous sex scene between Adam and his girlfriend, there are numerous cringe-worthy moments (some funnier than others – particularly Marnie’s strange rendition of Kanye West’s “Stronger”). All in all, it’s a painful episode to sit through, and it even made me angry with the show's most likable character, Shoshanna, who has a taken a turn for the worse. 

The finale isn’t the season high point (“On All Fours” is arguably the best episode but there are other contenders). Much of it feels rushed. Shoshanna has been underutilized this season (despite being better utilized than last season), and while her decision to break up with Ray isn’t unexpected (it was something clearly in the making), it does come off very abrupt. On the whole, everything is tied up a little too nicely and the episode feels like its leaping over a few plot points to get to these endings.  Part of the problem is that this season is shorted which means the season feels less holistic than last season. 

What shines through this all though is the distinctive vision of Lena Dunham. Dunham has in her mind what she wants to do with the show, she sets out to do it, and you can love or hate it but it’s her product through and through. Frequently the show is more concerned with establishing a tone than pushing the plot forward in some direction. There’s this cool, autumnal color scheme that pervades every scene. It’s a dulled, earthy tone and it’s a look and feel quite unlike any other show. It’s hard to anticipate where an episode, or even a season is going, because big moments don’t have this tragic aura to them. They’re not built towards in the traditional plotted sense. The plot could go anywhere at any moment, and any character could carry the story at any given time.

No one has learned anything by season’s end. They typically avoid learning lessons. Hannah keeps being given opportunities for self-actualization and she never takes them. Jessa marries Thomas-John despite the fact on some level she knows it’s a bad life decision. She visits her father, knowing that there’s nothing to be gained from such a frustrating experience from a man who was never there for her. Does up and leaving mean she’s learned anything? Probably not, but only time will tell. Marnie keeps turning back to her ex Charlie, out of familiarity, though their relationship felt claustrophobic and boring in the past. In the process, she wrecks his relationship with his current girlfriend. Charlie knows getting back together is a terrible decision; it can only end badly between again, but he’s so obsessively infatuated that he can’t escape Marnie’s control. Shoshanna purposefully goes out of her way to wreck her solid, stable relationship with Ray because it doesn’t align with her fairy tale visions. She cheats on him and lies about it (with the most awkward and awful euphemism: “I held hands with a doorman”). In turn she wrecks Ray who is the only person willing to accept himself for what he is. Ray hates everything (or so he claims), but the one thing he didn’t hate was Shoshanna, and maybe he was wrong about that. 

And then there’s Hannah. The show sometimes leans to heavily on just the character of Hannah and this can be frustrating. Many characters are short shrifted screentime because the show keeps returning to focus on this character even when it isn't her story ("Video Games" is an episode about Jessa that some what awkwardly shifts the focus to Hannah to put the thematic button on the episode). But for better or for worse, Hannah is the show's protagonist. And what an awful protagonist she is. By season’s end she has isolated herself from every person around her. She’s pushed away Marnie, forced Elijah to move out for hooking up with Marnie, got dumped by Sandy, and cut ties with Adam for getting stalkerish, while Jessa has bailed. With no one to turn to her OCD kicks in. Initially this feels like it comes out of nowhere, but it ends up becoming a great part of the season (Hannah’s descent into mental illness parallels everyone else’s lives falling apart around her wonderfully). She’s bizarrely enough rescued by Adam, who romantically runs to her apartment and kicks down the door. 

Though the endings of the finale appear happy, it’s only surface level. Charlie and Marnie can’t sustain a relationship with one another. Adam and Hannah have been proven to be no good for one another. Shoshanna might need some time to hook up with people, but it’s likely to leave her empty in the end. So we’re back to the status quo of the Pilot but everyone is even more fucked up then when we first met them.  

"The Night of the Hunter" - Film Review

If you met a preacher, you’d trust them, right? They are a man of God after all; a community figure that helps those in need.

The Reverend Harry Powell (Robert Mitchum in a phenomenal, chilling performance) is anything but your typical preacher. He’s a conman who swindle widows out of money. When he learns from a fellow inmate on death row that he’s left some money behind at his home, he leaves prison with the desire to claim the money. He woos the widow, Willa Harper (Shelly Winters), and marries her. 

Ageism is major theme of The Night of the Hunter. The real protagonist of the film is the son, John (Billy Chapin), who despite his protestations can’t seem to convince his mother or anyone else that the preacher is up to no good. Even the preacher tells the boy that “it’s my word versus yours. No one is going to believe you”. And so the boy continues to persevere.

Chapin gives a surprisingly assured performance. It’s not one completely marked by cutesy or whimsy, and both John and his sister Pearl (Sally Jane Bruce) are put through deeply trying and difficult circumstances.  

His father (Peter Graves) told him to keep the location of the money, inside his sister's doll, a secret, and he holds onto this secret for the love of his father. Pearl on the other hand is slowly becoming ingratiated to the preacher, who has an abundance of charms and an uncanny ability to use religious scripture to win anyone over, including a now infamous example re-appropriated for Do the Right Thing describing the war between love and hate. 

The preacher is a wily one. He wins over the townspeople, including the mother’s close friends and employers, who tell her that she needs a new husband. He plays her to a tee, refusing sex on their wedding night by claiming that he’s here to help raise the children and nothing else. The mother soon finds herself a devoted religious follower; she yells out speeches about staying true to scripture and how the preacher has shown her the way of the righteous. 

By the time she’s wised up, matters have gotten far out of hand. He kills her and the children are left in an even more precarious situation than before. It’s an incredibly nerve-racking film where it feels like something could go wrong at any moment (and in a number of instances certainly does). The calculated, shadowy imagery (that beautifully contrasts scenes of night and day) ramps up the tension. Night scenes have an eerie, surreal quality and there are scenes that take advantage of their studio set nature to form disturbing, jaggedly framed shots reminiscent of German expressionist films such as The Cabinets of Dr. Caligari.

Walter Schumann's score serves to heighten every moment even further. While sometimes the score is overblown, during the intense cat-and-mouse moments the score parallels the action perfectly. 

The film is underscored by significant religious undertones. The woman, Rachel Cooper (Lilian Gish), who will later become a major figure in the film, and actually believes in the religious views she’s preaching, starts the film in talking head-like pose against a dreamy, starry background discussing “wolves in sheep’s skin”, a fitting description of Mitchum’s character. Powell manipulates the religious language for his own gains, but the film doesn’t buy into his mocking of scripture. In fact, the film seems to be set in a very moral universe where actions have consequences and tend to be punished in the long run.     

   

Though the ending feels a little like a cop out, everything up to that point is superbly shot and acted. It’s a frightening, mesmerizing film that’s still thrilling and riveting. 

Grade: A

How I Met Your Mother - "The Fortress" - Review

Structurally “The Fortress” is a well-made episode. It has a clear beginning, middle, and end that all flow logically from one point to the next. The episode even finds ways to be at its core an exploration of the relationships of Barney and Robin, and, to a lesser extent, Marshall and Lily. A foundation which is something a number of episodes in recent seasons have been lacking or acting like they had but totally didn’t (which meant emotional moments that weren’t well-earned).

And yet, there’s something missing. As Community reached a new low in its most recent season, critics scrambled to figure out what had changed to cause such a distinctive diminish in quality. Todd VanDerWerff tried to grasp at what was wrong with the latest season. He argued, “This is Community, yes, but it’s a version missing the most crucial element to keeping an audience that loves a TV show in love with that TV show: its soul.” Similarly, Matt Zoller Seitz noted, “It’s still a good show, but it doesn’t give me that anticipatory buzz that defines a really great series, that joyous anxiety born from being continually, often delightfully surprised”. While Community has made a much more significant leap in decline than HIMYM, whose decline in quality has been a slower trudge, there’s a fundamental similarity in the clear change in quality. 

I could keep running through the gambit of critics who’ve made complaints, but what they’re saying about Community is something that’s true for HIMYM. HIMYM feels like it’s going through the motions. There are all the jokes and all the gags, and yet it all feels incredibly forced. There’s an artificiality to the whole enterprise. To use a turn of phrase from A.O. Scott: “chuckles and heartwarming moments [are] distributed as carefully as nuts in a factory-made brownie.” There are jokes and they seem like the jokes the characters of HIMYM would be making, and they’re in character and they fit the scenarios at hand. There are even some slightly touching moments between characters that grow out of the conflicts of the episode, and sometimes I get “all the feels” about it (though not in this episode to be honest). And yet it doesn’t inspire any great feeling in me other the occasional sentiment of “Oh, I guess that was sort of amusing”. 

Now being funny is subjective. What I find funny and what you find funny are possibly not going to line up. And so it’s tricky for me to throw around the term “funny”, but (and I can only give you my opinion because may be you disagree), but this episode, and this season in particular, just hasn’t been all that funny. For a series that is so very, very obviously stalling and killing time until it reaches the point where we meet the mother, it NEEDS to be at least funny to justify itself. Because none of the situations we’ve been privy to are really all that interesting, and they’ve increasingly had little to say about these character growing up and dealing with the ups and downs of life (two broad themes that would elevate the series if it chose to tackle them). 

Shows tend to go broader with their jokes as they get older, and HIMYM has become a pretty bad offender of this. That bed that shoots into the wall and sweeps away Barney’s hookups (along with his other bag of tricks described throughout the episode) is squarely in a realm of jokes that the series doesn’t necessarily want to lean on. These jokes can work when they come from unreliable narration (i.e. Older Ted’s many euphemisms), but they work much less so when the show seems to accept them at face value. 

There’s chuckle worthy material here and some well-delivered lines. But the show is using the likability of its cast to cover for some very weak material. Neil Patrick Harris is a great performer, but some of these “Barney used to be a man-whore” jokes are getting really repetitive. They also don’t line up with the new direction of his character as he chooses to settle down with Robin. But then again, I’m finding that pairing incredibly problematic. The show in this second half of the season is using our affection for these characters and the desire for this coupling to justify them being together, when it often feels like it’s been achieved too easily. Conflict drives a show, and there’s no conflict between Barney and Robin. This is especially true if the writers are going to give easy resolutions to established problems such as selling the apartment. Barney and Robin have become boring because they’re not challenging eachother. There’s glimpses of the instability here (such as in “Weekend at Barney’s”), but the series tends to sweep aside these apparent problems for something simpler and therefore a whole lot less believable. 

Stray Observations:

-As someone who enjoys Downton Abbey (often despite my better judgment in the second and third season), I found the Woodworthy Manor concept amusing but I wish it had more specificity. Without the bite of full-on satire the joke fell into that that broad joke telling that has become a problem.

-All the art suggestions by the Captain were another example of broad joke-telling, but even I couldn’t help but laugh at, “I’m willing to go as high as 600 cigarette cartons and a jug of toilet wine”.

-“Know what’s not a choice? Being gay for this kitchen” – Colbie Smulders’ line delivery is priceless.

-“… And that the Superman films are uneven”

-“Why do you think light bulbs are boob shaped?”   

Grade: B

"Nashville" - Film Review

If you’re looking for a film with a plot, Nashville isn’t the recommended film to turn to. There are stories here (a ton of stories in fact), but no single story dominates the plot. Typical of director Robert Altman’s trademark style, the film isn’t all that concerned with establishing a plot. It ends just as abruptly and aimlessly as it begins (And wow does that ending come out of nowhere and leave the film on an incredibly odd note). The moment we start to think particular characters are there for us to hang our hats on them; they disappear for long stretches only to reappear much, much later in the film.

Nashville is a satire of country music and Southern culture to an extent, but it’s oddly enough fairly subtle with the satirical elements. There are big concerts and events in the hyped-up, deep fried style of country music and patriotic exuberance of the South. But it’s often just a more straightforward comedy at times, and even a surprisingly serious drama. There is affairs, domestic disputes, political campaigning, exploitation of talent (or rather lack thereof), and coping with illness and death. 

Occasionally the film takes time to let us to just listen to people sing (some of them are very good singers), and many of these songs are similar to many other country songs you’ve probably heard while also being their own original work. But more often the film is jumping from one character to the next, casually observing one little small, well-observed moment after the other. 

Altman always liked to work with large casts, and Nashville is no exception. It has a sprawling cast (there are 24 main characters), and some members are short shrifted in favor of other story lines. But for the most part, everyone gets a fair amount of screentime and each is given some wry or funny moment. Much of the dialogue is improvised and overlapping which creates a wonderfully naturalistic feel.  

It's an incredibly assured film in the hands of Altman and he gets great performances of nearly everyone. Though it's often sprawling and directionless, none of it ever feels pointless or overstuffed. The film frequently feels true to life and the time it was made in, while also being very funny and featuring some great musical numbers.  

Grade: B+

The Walking Dead - "Prey" - Review

Between “Clear” and tonight’s episode “Prey”, it’s become very apparent that The Walking Dead is a show that is much, much better when it focuses on just a few characters and puts everyone else on the backburner for a while.

Why is that exactly? Good series can manage many different characters effectively all at once in a given episode, but The Walking Dead feels much more stop and go when it tries to find excuses to fit in a scene for every one of its characters. Though this episode puts on hold a number of characters that are some of my favorites, and though it focuses on one of the series’ most problematic characters (Andrea), for me this worked.

It worked firstly because every scene for these characters particularly Andrea, Tyrese, and Milton (and I supposed the Governor) were used in order to advance the plot in a certain direction. While some of these scenes could have been better (The other members of Tyrese’s group are severely underdeveloped, but Chad Coleman is so good he sells much of the conflict), at least it was human drama that was stemming from conflicts that had been hinted at to some degree and that were built to a point of tension where, particularly in the case of Andrea, it was guttural, spine tingling, and nerve racking.  

Could these conflicts have been established and built towards better? Absolutely. But the mere fact that there was drama that didn’t come from zombies or didn’t exist just to kill time and that felt like they were in service of the larger plot elevated the episode at times. 

Sure, there was clunky exposition and scenes here because The Walking Dead is still an occasionally clunky show (Seriously, go back to the first eight episodes and you’ll find they’re still very, very clunky despite their improvements). For example, Andrea taking a breather in the forest only to get attacked by walkers was one of those scenes where a character is doing something that by no logic they would ever be doing simply because the writers wanted to force something to happen. Another example was that flashback between Andrea and Michonne, which should have had way, way more umpph since it was supposed to establish the tone, theme, and emotional grounding of the episode (seriously, if you didn’t realize something terrible was about to happen to either Andrea or Michonne by episodes end based on that flashback, you need to take Television 101. Anytime an episode starts dedicating weirdly significant amount of time to a character, especially on a series like The Walking Dead, their days are numbered). 

But in spite of this clunkiness (which is an unfortunate inherent part of the show that you sort of have to accept if you want to get to the good stuff), “Prey” manages to pull off one of the most intense action sequences the series has ever staged. This is, of course, the terrifying scene where the Governor hunts down Andrea. It plays out like an excellent horror film with a brooding, creepy atmosphere, heightened by some of the best music Bear McCreary has ever produced for the series, and filled with tons of twists and turns, and a real sense that, hell, Andrea might just die. I’m not the biggest fan of Andrea, but I’m a human being dammit and no one (shy of the Governor - who is getting into cartoon villainy levels of unbelievableness) really deserves to die, and especially not by the twisted designs of the Governor. 

Anyone who’s read the comics would have recognized those chains the Governor was fiddling with at episode’s start from the prison story arc and been reminded of a particularly gruesome incident involving Michonne. The “torture chair” (as I have it labeled in my notes) is pretty sadistic creation, and it’s not something I entirely expected the series to put in there. The series went “rape-y” but they stopped just shy of actually having anyone get raped (because that would be awful especially in a world where you’re already paranoid and miserable because of zombies).  The show has always gone just shy of the worst possibilities an apocalyptic world might bring. Zombies have caused bad things but it never goes Game of Thrones levels of terribleness (or, for a much more awful example, The Following) to its characters. It shies away from letting the awfulness of this world be felt. I was foolish enough to think Andrea might just get the attention of Rick (who is only in the episode for that brief moment, while no one else from the prison is in this episode).

The vibe that anyone could get harmed or die at any moment is one necessary for a show like The Walking Dead, and, in this episode, I actually was given that overwhelming sense. Not just about Andrea, but Tyrese as well. I even suspected he might wise up to the true nature of Woodbury (but that’s probably too soon for where we’re at in the season). But the seeds of doubt have been placed and since Tyrese is likely to be a character that will go to be part of the series beyond this season, he’s likely to be returning to the prison at some point. Milton has also pushed himself into an uncomfortably precarious position where he’s clearly lost favor with the Governor, which means that his safety is also in question.        

Still the episode had the problem of feeling like patchwork, which is yet again another problem of this show. Some scenes worked better than others, but the elements that worked I found to work really well. And it was in some instances the type of material the series had trouble with, including exposition and interpersonal conflicts. But it was also the elements that have proven to be what the series at least needs to do to stop itself from being stale and that’s pure action, and here we got to have our cake and eat it to. Not only was it a very, very intense action, but action that made sense in terms of the characters and plot. And how did we get here? By being more focused. Hopefully the series will take a lesson because it works much better when it chooses to focus on a handful of characters. 

Stray Observations:

-My notes read: “Underdeveloped Milton is torn as to what to do”- Milton may have been underdeveloped and they should have emphasized how torn he was more, but I ultimately bought his distress and his inevitable choice of actions, even if it could have been handled a lot better.

-The Tyrese-Andrea scene felt stilted but was necesary in order to sow doubt in Tyrese’s  mind.

-Seriously, I forgot that other guy was part of Tyrese’s group.

-Tyrese at the pit was another good scene, especially since Tyrese doesn’t fully comprehend how unstable the ground he’s walking on is.

-Sure, just go on and believe the Governor when he claims the pit walkers are for show. Makes total sense. 

Grade: B+

"Easy Rider" - Film Review

It may not seem as revelatory as it was in 1969, but in its heyday Easy Rider was groundbreaking. Its stripped down, DIY filmmaking style was a breath of fresh air in an increasingly stagnant studio based system. Its en plein air approach to tackling a film opened up the floodgates for films to be made outside on location and not just confined to studio sets.

What the film pulls off better than almost any other film is capturing a particular cultural milieu. This has counterculture written all over it and it’s an endearing, humanistic portrait of two members, Wyatt and Billy (Peter Fonda, Dennis Hopper - Hopper also directed, and both wrote the script) of a subculture that was definitely not getting much screen time back in the 1960’s. 

Our protagonists set out on motorcycles after scoring big on a drug deal and take a meandering road trip that leads them from LA to New Orleans. Along the way they stop at farms and communes, and camp out in fields and forests (after hotels refused their patronage, mind you). They pick up hitchhikers with similar hippie, free-spirited lifestyles, including Jack Nicholson as a well-educated, drunken Southerner. They take plenty of drugs (there’s a memorable Avant-garde-like sequence where they take acid and go on a wild drug trip), they sleep with prostitutes, and they ride their hogs. 

The soundtrack is incredibly well-chosen. There’s rarely ever been a song in a film as perfectly used as Steppenwolf’s “Born to Be Wild”. When it plays as the characters ride their bikes across the vast Southwestern landscape, it establishes the tone of the film impeccably.  

It’s a didactic movie that makes an argument in favor of these characters and their life styles. There’s a great scene where they stop in at a café to eat, and sitting in a nearby booth are a bunch of racist Southerners who make homophobic remarks about them (due to their long haired appearances). They can see the writing on the wall and leave before any trouble is stirred up (though sadly they come back after them in the middle of the night and it ends badly).  

It’s not a perfect film; it’s incredibly uneven, dated at times, and some parts work better than others (the parts with Jack Nicholson stand out, including the aforementioned diner scene and one where his character gets high for the first time and describes his views on aliens). The film always feels a bit livelier and truer to the spirit of the people it’s following when it moves along at a brisk pace, and when it gets sidetracked, that’s when it tends to drag. The ending is also terribly abrupt and comes out of nowhere. But this scraggly, fitful nature goes well with the sensibility of the film and its characters

Even if Easy Rider hadn’t ushered in a new era of film-making, it would be worth watching. A great soundtrack and an unmistakable counter-cultural vibe make Easy Rider an entertaining if occasionally irregular and artefactual experience. 

Grade: B