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.

The Mandalorian

Bounty Lines

The Mandalorian
2019 USA Created by Jon Favreau
Series One. Eight episodes.

Warning: Some mild spoilers.

Okay, I finally got around to seeing the new Star Wars TV show The Mandalorian and... it’s not too bad. I think it’s weird that the Disney+ channel has only just started in the UK but almost everyone I know seems to have seen it already. I think it’s even stranger now, having seen it, that this is the big ‘blackmail you into signing up for a Disney + subscription’ bargaining chip at present because, frankly, I think people who are signing up just to see The Mandalorian are going to be angry they did so and want their money back. It’s quite good but not enough to warrant any subscription costs, I reckon.

Okay, so, set five years after the fall of the Empire at the Battle Of Endor in Return Of The Jedi, The Mandalorian is about a bounty hunter who is a Mandalorian (I’m not going to explain why he’s a Mandalorian when you may think he’s not in the early episodes because there’s a reveal coming in the last episode in terms of what ‘Mandalorian’ actually means)... so yeah, the same kind of armour as Bobba Fett with a certain ritualistic and almost spiritual adherence to the ‘faith’, for want of a better word, of his fellow Mandalorians (who are rarely seen and live ‘underground’ since certain incidents from their past took place).

And yes, it’s the Star Wars version of a weekly Western TV show we were all expecting it to be. I mean, there’s an argument that the ‘space opera’ genre of science fiction that encapsulates the Star Wars Saga is pretty much a Western to all intents and purposes anyway but this show is, it seems to me, deliberately trying to be like those old 50s, 60s and 70s TV Westerns like Bonanza, The High Chaparral and The Virginian. And it does feel very seventies and, well, despite the laser blasts and desert canyons, somewhat less epic and more a chamber version of the Star Wars universe we’ve come to know and, for the most part, love.

The plot all springboards from the specific piece of ‘live cargo’ that the titular bounty hunter is asked to retrieve in the first episode and, form then on, the tale becomes one of a fugitive who is trying to stay one step ahead of the authorities and fellow bounty hunters and keep said cargo free from harm. That’s the plot and it’s very much ‘mission of the week’ territory as The Mandalorian picks up a new job or task leading to the ultimate resolution of certain things in a final episode, where he gathers together the various people he’s met individually in former episodes to help him perform a specific mission.

And there’s good and there’s bad, to be honest.

There are some nice Japanese film culture and manga references in some episodes which, in a way, also contributes to the elevation of the Western flavour of the show. For instance, episode four is an absolutely blatant remake of Kurosawa’s Seven Samurai which, of course, was remade as The Magnificent Seven... but let’s not forget that Kurosawa himself was heavily influenced by the cinema of John Ford, one of the leading directors of the Western genre in his time. Also, in the shots where a certain fifty year old child (you may have heard about him referred to with a thoroughly inaccurate nick-name on the internet) is riding in a kind of ‘hover pram’ or floating crib, it immediately lends the episodes where he is doing this a kind of Lone Wolf And Cub vibe.

There’s also a heck of a lot of obvious but still fun Star Wars references littered throughout... with absolutely gazillions of previously seen alien species (including Nick Nolte as an Ugnaught) and I even think I caught a glimpse of a Rodean... except this time it was red? There are also some nice references leading back to the Star Wars Summer Special (I still need to get a contraband copy of that to watch at some point) and some great cracks, including an expanded joke about the legendary inaccuracy of a typical stormtrooper’s aim when handling firearms. I think my favourite thing about the show, though, was IG-11. When I was a kid, I was always tantalised by IG-88 in The Empire Strikes Back (reviewed here) and it was one of my favourite action figures (even though he literally just stands around in a few shots in that movie). In a few episodes here we finally get to see an IG unit in action and it’s really awesome. Hope they release a figure for that one at some point.

Another awesome thing is a toy which I refused to buy in the 1970s called an Imperial Troop Transporter or some such. My cousin had one but I didn’t want it because it wasn’t in any of the movies and was obviously just a needless accessory that either Palitoy or Kenner had dreamed up to a) part gullible kids from their pocket money and b) ensure those same kids would buy multiple stormtrooper figures to populate it with. Well... showrunner Favreau must have had some fond memories of his childhood toy because they’ve finally put one of these things in a Star Wars show and it looks just like the old toy. So this was nice.

Also, the acting is pretty great. Pedro Pascal does an amazing job considering he is only seen without his helmet for a few seconds in the last episode. And it’s great seeing Carl Weathers and Gina Carano again... not to mention 'surprising', seeing somebody like infamous German director Werner Herzog play a recurring villain. These are all solid, reliable people and you really can’t complain about the cast in this.

However, there are a lot of clunky things as well here... or in light of the recent re-edits to the original movies, maybe I should say MaClunkey things?

For example, the sound design brings back a lot of old favourites (I think the mouse robot is really getting a little overdone now guys) but while it’s nice to hear the carbon freezing sound again in the first episode... it seems completely inappropriate to hear the hyperdrive malfunction sound effect when The Mandalorian can’t start up his ship, the Razor Crest, at some point. Why would that even sound the same?

Another thing that gave me pause to think was a new kind of TIE Fighter which is the standard model that can fold it’s wings up when it comes in for a landing. Seriously? If they had these somehow (after the defeat of the Empire) just five years after Return Of The Jedi then why did they not still have them during The Force Awakens? That makes no sense.

My biggest problem with the show, though, is the musical score. Ludwig Göransson’s music is totally appropriate to the action and has some nice, catchy moments. It’s not sounding anything like a Star Wars score though... it’s a much more modern use of an orchestra and is missing that iconic, 'early German refugees invade Hollywood in the 1930s' sound that John Williams (and a couple of other composers) have used in the movies over the years. It’s something that really lets the side down, as far as I’m concerned and I just wish they’d have gone with a more traditional Star Wars sound here. Because as much as the show tries to assimilate itself in with the much loved saga, the soundtrack is working against it and throwing it all away most of the time. Which is unfortunate... especially since it is very nicely scored and could work on any other generic brand, I think.

And that’s me done on The Mandalorian. This is an okay series but not something, as I said earlier, that anybody is going to be that happy about paying expensive subscriptions for. I’d be quite happy to watch a second series but I’m not so sure I’d bother to rewatch the first, in all honesty. They should have taken my Blu Ray cash when they had the chance. Recommended to die hard Star Wars fans only... or those who don’t have to spend a wadge of cash to get this thing.

Angel Has Fallen

No Drone Unburned

Angel Has Fallen
2019 USA Directed by Ric Roman Waugh
UK cinema release print.
Well here we are again with Angel Has Fallen, which finds Gerard Butler reprising his role as ‘bodyguard to the president’ Mike Banning from the previous two installments Olympus Has Fallen (reviewed here) and London Has Fallen (reviewed here). Rejoining him for this movie in reprising a character from the last two is Morgan Freeman, this time promoted to President of the United States after Aaron Eckhart turned down a third shot in the role. In fact, Butler and Freeman seem to be the only two people reprising their roles in this one and even the brilliant Radha Mitchell, who played Banning’s wife in the last two, has been replaced with Piper Perabo here. I dunno, maybe all the others read a copy of the script before signing on for this one.

That isn’t to say the news is all bad here folks. Angel Has Fallen is an okayish kinda action movie but, it has to be said, it’s a pale shadow of the previous two films and I think they could have cooked up something a little better for the third one here, especially with the trajectory of the main character who is leading up to taking a desk job in his near future.

There are also a couple of really good actors new to the franchise jumping on here... namely everyone’s favourite bad guy Danny Huston playing... um... the bad guy and Nick Nolte playing Banning’s ‘estranged father who bonds with his son so he can save him at a certain point in the film’ before going in like the cavalry to aid Banning’s wife and child near the end of the story.

This one seems a little disconnected from the previous two films in the series because Banning’s obvious penchant for randomly stabbing bad guys in the head with a big knife seems to have gone dormant (admittedly, at least in the first movie, it was a necessary stealth tactic to kill people silently). So that viciousness to the character is less obvious and, honestly, that in itself is not a bad thing but, like I said, gives it a bit of a disconnect.

Another thing which lets it down, at least in terms of keeping some sort of stylistic continuity to the previous films, is that the action sequences don’t seem as brutal or over the top as the last two either. Especially in terms of the blaze of destruction as the bad guys wiped out most of London in the second movie. In this one, when a huge building is selected, almost arbitrarily, for complete destruction in the third act of the movie, you kind of get the feeling the studio heads are trying to pitch it back into that direction but, honestly, one building doesn’t cut it in the wake of that last film.

Okay... so one of the good points is that at least Banning has a little more depth to his, still fairly shallow, character. Being that he’s suffering from some kind of vague and unidentified illness which seems to be both something to do with his spinal column but somehow also something which causes almost narcoleptic episodes at unexpected moments. He is warned not to punish his body anymore and, while this character build up is nice, it’s also one of the reasons the credibility is shot to hell right from the start after we see him at both an outrageously realistically staged training session and, a little later, save the president, somehow, from an assassination attempt by a fleet of suicidal, exploding drones which kill everyone else but then, when both Banning and the president are found unconscious in the water afterwards, makes you wonder why the villains didn’t stay and finish the job. Also, I think Banning is in about three vehicular crashes in this one so... after the vague as mist diagnosis we heard earlier in the movie, things don’t really stay that credible for very long.

On the other hand, there are some nicely done things here too. After an interminable time which sets up Danny Huston’s character as a long standing friend and former war buddy of Banning... so you just know he’s going to be the villain straight away, as you’ll very quickly identify who his ‘partner in evil’ is going to turn out to be very early on in the film... Huston’s villain comes across as someone who has a lot of time and respect for Banning. Even in his inevitable death at the end, there is a certain dignity in the way his character is both portrayed by Huston and written by the writers that you don’t get in most of the movie villains on film (maybe Marvel's Thanos recently but, not that many).

The story, such as it is, is purely focused on Banning clearing his name after he’s framed for trying to kill the president (even while he is saving him) and also involves the FBI trying to figure out what the heck is going on. However, as great as Huston’s character is written, everyone else tends to be pretty thinly drawn and it must have been a real challenge to some of the actors here to add some flesh to their lines. For instance, Jada Pinkett Smith plays the top FBI agent in charge of tracking down Banning and she really has a good, powerful presence in the role actually. However, when she gets close to the truth of what’s really going on, she does something so dumb, with the expected consequences, that you have to wonder how she was even let into the FBI in the first place.

So, yeah... the action is nice, the score is appropriate and holds its own against the foley, for most of the time but, ultimately, Angel Has Fallen is not something I could see myself watching again (whereas I am tempted to go back and have a look at the first two again, at some point). It holds its own against some of the other action movies doing the rounds but it’s nowhere near as special as it might have been and just seems very dumbed down from its predecessors. So not much more to say... if you ike action movies then you may want to give this one some of your time. If not then... probably best to steer clear, I think.