Poker Face

Long In
The Truth

Poker Face
Created by Rian Johnson
Season 1 10 episodes
January - March 2023
Blu Ray Zone A

I bought new mystery TV show Poker Face for my mum for Christmas because it was being heavily compared to Columbo on the internet, a show that she had loved watching in the 1970s. I wish I’d have held out a few weeks longer because, when I grabbed it, it wasn’t available in the UK so I just assumed it wouldn’t be getting a release in this country. So it cost me more to import a copy than I needed to have paid, if the company putting it out over here had only got its act together and given it a simultaneous release.

Okay, so it’s created by Rian Johnson, who made a couple of films I really liked called Brick and Looper (plus one of the worst Star Wars movies ever... plus the Knives Out movies which, yeah, were okayish I suppose). He’s written and directed a few of the episodes and the lead actress who plays Charlie Cale (aka Poker Face), Natasha Lyonne,  also directed one of the better episodes of the show.

So, I’m not sure my mum could quite get into the swing of them, to be honest, but my dad and I really enjoyed it and, yeah, there are a couple of superficial resemblances to Columbo. The first being that Lyonne does resemble Peter Falk’s detective in her accent and some of her mannerisms (which a lot of people have pointed out to me). Secondly, the structure of the show is not, mostly, a whodunnit every week. Like Columbo, it starts off with the audience usually in full knowledge of the murder and perpetrator(s) in a five or ten minute sequence without Charlie Cale in it at all (my mum could never get the hang of this and kept asking if the woman from the last show was going to be in it). We then flashback to before the murder and find how Charlie has been inserted into that story from before the events we saw... and then we catch up to those events about half way through, as Charlie solves the case.

So here’s the thing... Charlie has a... let’s call it what it is, a super power. She can tell when anyone is telling her a lie. This gets her into trouble because a casino boss (Ron Perlman) bans her from gambling and has her working at a waitress in his casino instead (which she loves). However, when the boss’ son (Adrien Brody) takes over the casino, he involves Charlie in a scheme to get rich quick in a huge gambling game for him. But, he and his right hand heavy (series regular Benjamin Brat) murder Charlie’s best friend... something she figures out right before their end game and which, eventually, leads to chaos and death for the new casino management. From that point at the end of the first episode, Charlie is off the grid and on the run from Perlman’s character for the rest of season one.

So the format is, she’ll stop in a new town each week, get a temporary job and, pretty much every time, get involved with a murder which she’ll try and solve without the police, often bringing justice in her own, unique way. And most of the episodes have celebrity guest spots too... with actors such as Clea DuVall, Joseph Gordon-Levitt, Chloë Sevigny, Ellen Barkin, Luis Guzmán and Nick Nolte all getting involved in the ‘murder of the week’. So there’s a star studded aspect to the show as well.

And it’s pretty well done, the format even allowing for a few twists and turns along the way, as not all the information is always revealed at the episode’s opening and some things become apparent later on which, sometimes, change the identity of the known villain of the episode half way through.

Added to this we have a conclusion to Charlie’s story arc in the final episode of season one, only for it to kind of get soft-rebooted for season two. So, when the casino boss finally catches up with her through his right arm, Benjamin Bratt, the capper of that initial meeting early on in the episode is a) not what you think it would be and b) not telegraphed either. In fact, there’s even a little successful misdirection involved on the part of the writer before the show comes back full circle, with Charlie now being similarly hunted by an even greater threat. I actually thought it was kind of a shame that they decided to soft boot it in that way but I can certainly see why that temptation was there on the part of the show’s producers. They want to keep Charlie hopping from place to place and this is their way of doing that.

One minor thing I didn’t like was the fact that, from episode eight onwards, they gave the main character a facial twitch every time she hears a lie. I guess it’s a nice visual shorthand but, it feels a little clunky and we were doing fine without that for the preceding seven episodes, I thought.

Even so, I really enjoyed the show and, I think I’ll grab the second series of Poker Face too, once it’s aired and played on TV and gets properly released on Blu Ray (otherwise they’ve lost me as an audience, frankly). Definitely worth a watch if you like a large slice of humour with your murder investigations, for sure.

Down By Law

Tom Waits For No Man

Down By Law
1986 UK
Directed by Jim Jarmusch
Screened 7th September 2013

As a celebration of the completion of his latest feature film, actor/director James Devereaux decided to screen Down By Law and it’s not hard to see why. Devereaux’s work is quite influenced by Jarmusch, as much as it is by the likes of Hartley, Godard, Melville etc. His own films aren’t in any way homage but certain concerns and the occasional stylistic flourish do tug at the collective cinematic memories instilled in the celluloidal history weaved by such directors as these (Wow, that was an awkward sentence. Ah, it’s the only way I can express it at this hour so I’ll just leave it in).

Down By Law is a film I first watched on 10th September 1990, one day after it was shown on Moviedrome on BBC2. Yeah, I recorded it off air, you think I was going to stay up that late at night? It was the first Jarmusch movie I’d seen and I responded to it really well. As a result, I got a few Tom Waits albums for Christmas that year.

It’s a film which starts off with a phenomenal pre-credits sequence combining two long, sideways tracking shots of New Orleans pitched against Tom Wait’s song Jockey Full O’ Bourbon. Each of the tracking shots ends with one of two of the three main protagonists, John Lurie and Tom Waits... and the women they are sleeping with. When Lurie’s girl opens her eyes, we cut into the second tracking shot going in the opposite direction. When Tom Wait’s lady, played by Ellen Barkin, opens her eyes, we finally get to the opening credits of the movie. It’s kinda of interesting to note that the two main songs on the film’s opening and closing credits are being done by one of the main protagonists while the other character we just met, John Lurie, provides the film with it’s distinctive jazz(ish) score.

After this powerhouse opening, Jarmusch slows things down for a while as we follow both characters until they both wind up sharing a New Orleans jail cell and getting on each other’s nerves. Asides from the opening tracking shot, some shots of Waits driving a car, a walking scene, and the very occasional POV style tracking shot, there is no camera motion throughout the whole thing. Everything else is shot, in lurid black and white, without any motion other than those of the actors. It is a film built up from canny dialogue, great performances and good editing.

After driving each other crazy for a good long time, Jarmusch reintroduces a character who makes a fleeting appearance earlier in the film, played by Roberto Benigni. Benigni is one of those people who is naturally funny and, although the situations Waits and Lurie find themselves in are already quite... well... smile inducing, Benigni’s English-language challenged, stranger in a strange land character hits like a grenade going off in the movie. The timing and comedy is absolutely hilarious and the charm of his character soon rubs off on the other characters until they all escape from prison together.

Of course, being a Jarmusch film, you don’t actually see the escape itself. This is unimportant and is just a way of progressing the relationship of the three characters in a different environment and set of situations. And, of course, Benigni is the character who highlights Jarmusch’s near obsession (but let’s call it an interest, shall we) with the alienation of people brought about by language and misunderstanding. All of Jarmusch’s films, or at least all the ones I’ve seen, have a theme of the way people communicate independent of language and of the way different cultures can show no awareness of each other but share a common bond... such as the way the old, dying Italian-American mobster figures are pitched against the long dead code of the samurai in Jarmusch’s Ghost Dog: The Way Of The Samurai, even though both cultures are at the same point of relevance (or lack of) in their time and place.

Benigni is very much a poster boy for this kind of exploration and the bond grows between the characters, even as they are shown to be resisting any kind of social commonality throughout the entire movie... summed up best when Waits offers his hand to Lurie and then yanks it away before Lurie can shake it in the final scene. This is almost simultaneously underplayed when the two characters swap coats before heading off in different directions.

Jarmusch’s film is assured and witty and, although todays young Hollywood blockbuster audience mentality might have a problem with the pacing, it’s a film that should hold anyone’s interest. The atmosphere is electric and Robby Muller’s cinematography is characteristically outstanding, pitching verticals in heavily forested areas with tree trunks in a metaphorical reflection of the prison bars used so well as a visual element in the first half of the movie. As if saying to the audience that, yeah, these three may have escaped prison but Waits and Lurie have not escaped the prison brought about by their own alienation of each other just yet.

It’s a satisfying film and, unlike many movies made today where the emphasis is purely on action and less inclined to allow to characters to talk to each other for more than a minute, is a work which stands the test of time and can sustain repeat viewings, always holding the viewers interest with the long, laid back passages of silence pitched against the intense rhythmic changes of dialogue which punctuate the lives of these three imprisoned souls. A film which is always going to be an inspiration for aspiring film-makers and an unquestionable work of American art which, once seen, will never be far from the collective consciousness of those noble souls who strive to make an artistic contribution to the world in which they live. Jarmusch is one of those unique directors you will always find yourself returning to. And Down By Law is one of his great masterpieces.

If you love film and you haven’t seen this piece, then maybe it’s time you put matters straight and acquired a look for yourself. It is a sad and beautiful world... and Jarmusch lazily shows you both the sadness and beauty in a way which you will remember for years to come.

For James Devereaux’s words on Down By Law, go here...