True Detective Series Two

Sleuth or Dare

True Detective Series Two
8 episodes June - August 2015
USA HBO

Okay... so the second series of True Detective takes a bunch of new characters and locations and, as far as I can tell, doesn’t actually relate to the first series in any way. This one is set in Vinci, California and deals with three police detectives (initially, their status changes somewhat throughout the course of the story) and one career criminal who is trying to leave his illegal empire building behind him and retire to a lucrative, legitimate business.

So the three detectives of the tale are Detective Ray Velcoro played by Colin Farrell, Detective Ani Bezzerides played by Rachel McAdams, Officer Paul Woodrugh played by Taylor Kitsch and all three of these are from different territories, teamed up initially to solve the murder of the right hand man of the career criminal... a victim who has been tortured to death and his eyes burned out with acid. 

The fourth protagonist of the tale is the criminal himself, Frank Semyon played by Vince Vaughn... who wants to find out who is attacking him through the death of his employee and just what is going on and, of course, will it impede him in his chance to become a legitimate business man. 

Now, I was not as on board with this one at first... mainly because I liked the first series so much and particularly the two characters played by Woody Harrelson and Matthew McConaughey. But... and this is no bad thing... this second show is definitely not trying to reproduce the same atmosphere used there and, as I slowly got into the characters and how the various pieces of the jigsaw come together, I enjoyed this one almost as much. 

There are a couple of basic similarities to the first one though. Such as the story taking place over different time zones. However, in the first series it was a good decade or two between settings and this one takes place for two weeks over the first part of the case and then just a couple of months down the line, after the aftermath of the carnage of the shoot out which ends the investigation. Unlike the first one, though, it doesn’t ping pong between the two times and is presented in a more linear fashion.

Secondly, the initial investigations in the first two seasons ends the careers of the main protagonists... and this one, with the catalyst for that happening at the end of episode four in a most spectacular action sequence, sees them coming together again to work the case and dive deeper into it a little later. 

So, yeah, this one has a very different atmosphere from the first season and, I think if I were to compare it to something... and this was perhaps on the mind of the writer simply by osmosis... it would be the novels of ace crime writer James Ellroy, especially his LA Quartet of novels. I mean, the characters in this are all either bad and compromised in some way or have a huge chip on their shoulders. Or both. It’s like the world of Ellroy’s LA, where nobody is really good, especially the cops, is playing out in a slightly more toned down version here. It’s not as in-your-face violently gory as Ellroy, quite a lot of the brutality is implied here... but I can’t help but think Ellroy’s writing must have has at least some influence on the DNA of season two of this show. 

The acting is terrific. I’ve never been a fan of Colin Farrell in the past but he does an excellent job here of giving his character many facets which gives the audience an insight into his motivations and choices. McAdams is equally good in this and, as the only one who isn’t bent and on the take initially, she has a steely determination which puts other characters on edge. Taylor Kitsch is incredible in this. It took me a while to figure out that this fairly ‘contained to the point of instability’, confused character once played a very confident John Carter of Mars (reviewed here). He looks totally different here and, if I hadn’t read the cast list, I would have never known it was him. 

And as for Vincent Vaughn, well. Such an understated performance where he mostly uses his eyes and forehead to give an air of intimidation but, also a certain thoughtfulness. He’s a man who wears his history on his sleeve almost and, even though you see him do brutal things (like using pliers to extract the gold teeth of someone who won’t do what they’re told), you end up totally sympathising with him somehow and, yeah, rooting for him by the end of the show, for sure. In much the same way you sympathise with Robert DeNiro’s character in Sergio Leone’s Once Upon A Time In America, even though you know he’s done brutal things in his past. Vaughn, who I’ve seen do both comedy and human monster really well, in the same film no less in Freaky (reviewed here), really manages to ring the sympathy out of this while being totally shark-like in his role of head hoodlum (something which Jimmy Cagney could also channel well in some of his gangster pictures, if memory serves). It was such a good choice to cast him here and he pretty much steals any scene he’s in, in my opinion. 

And, yeah, that’s me done. The ending is not remotely similar to that of the first season, in the way things get resolved (or might possibly get some kind of closure after the end of the last episode) and the downward spiral it takes is not much less than the audience may be expecting by the last few episodes. So, yeah, it’s hard to compare it to the first series since they are both very different animals but I certainly thought True Detective Series Two was very good television and is worth a watch if you are into stories with a gritty undertone to them. 

Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness

Stephen Things

Doctor Strange And
The Multiverse Of Madness
USA  2022 Directed by San Raimi
UK Cinema Release Print.

Warning: Yeah, this’ll have some spoilers.

Okay... this is going to be a fairly brief review, I think. It’s not that I didn’t like Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... I did (and it might still grow on me some more). It’s a fine film and certainly an example of what is, currently, a typical Marvel Cinematic Universe movie. With more in the same vein teased in the first of the mid and post credits scenes. But I wasn’t exactly bowled over by it either... which is a shame because I think Sam Raimi can be a good director (I don’t think it’s his fault, for the record, as to why I had a less positive reaction to it than I'd expected) and I’ve always had a soft spot for the Marvel character of Doctor Stephen Strange.

The plot in this one deals... not with fall out from Spiderman No Way Home (reviewed here) as you would expect (although Spidey does get a quick mention)...in fact, it turns out that this film was originally supposed to have been released before that one. Nope, this one has a definite plot device of its own to cause alarm in one of the facets of the multiverse that Strange travels to. I said there would be spoilers in this review and so, if you want to avoid them, stop reading now...

It’s not a secret that joining regulars returning from the original Doctor Strange MCU film (reviewed here)... including  Benedict Cumberbatch (as Doctor Strange), Benedict Wong (as Wong), Rachel McAdams as Dr. Palmer and Chiwetel Ejiofor as Baron Mordo... is Elizabeth Olsen, reprising her role as Wanda Maximoff aka The Scarlet Witch. Well, this film is pretty much kick started from fallout from her TV show WandaVision (reviewed here) but, instead of being a heroic character as she became after a brief stint as a villain at the end of Avengers Age Of Ultron (reviewed here), she actually reveals herself from very early on to be the main villain of the piece. It is she who is trying to get hold of new MCU character America Chavaz (played really nicely here by Xochitl Gomez). Chavez can travel through the multiverse but Wanda wants to kill her and take her powers to travel to a variant universe where she has children instead... which actually makes less sense than you might think, since she can piggy back into other versions of herself anyway.

It all gets a bit fraught and we get to see some guest character appearances, in different versions of their previous Marvel selves, along with new actors playing other variants. So Patrick Stewart enters the MCU as yet another version of Professor X (this film apparently marks the character’s fourth death on screen as played by Stewart), Hayley Atwell as Captain Peggy Carter (but a new superhero variant where she’s a kind of Captain Britain character who was in the What If? cartoon series) and John Krasinski as Reed Richards (yep, a multiverse variant of Mr. Fantastic also gets his MCU debut here)... plus a few others. And all of them die pretty horrible deaths at the hands of Wanda, it has to be said, although this is in no way a horror film, as some delicate parents have suggested (it’s a 12A certificate over here, for goodness sake and probably could have gotten away as a PG). True, there’s a person whose head implodes and another cut in half but, yeah, it’s all pretty bloodless for the most part (including those specific scenes), it has to be said.

It was fairly entertaining but the text was extremely dense and, on the way home from the cinema I was reflecting on why it mostly failed to connect with me. Well, despite a couple of scenes featuring Bruce Campbell (it’s a Raimi movie, so of course), there’s really not much humour in it. I mean, sure, some of the characters act in a humourous manner sometimes but, yeah, the script is not loaded with amusing dialogue and one liners like, say, the recent Spider-Man and Avengers movies. The film has a lot of gravitas and sometimes I felt like the writers were beating the audience over the head with the weight of the emotional consequences for various characters when they maybe should have injected a little more fun into things.

Raimi regular Danny Elfman was trying his best with the score here but, while he does include Michael Giacchino’s excellent leitmotif for the Stephen Strange character, it’s mostly very subtly done when, honestly, we needed that familiar theme to pop up way more often in the film, I think. It’s an okay score but, again, not much chance of me really finding out just how good or bad it is because, at time of writing, Hollywood Records have only released it on a useless electronic download and not on a physical CD... so this is another modern movie score I won’t be able to listen to properly, alas.

The first of the post-credits scenes, technically a mid credits scene, sets up another movie as a woman confronts Strange on a New York street and opens a portal to take him, once again, into another part of the multiverse. Well, this scene disappointed me because, when I saw the woman I was thinking to myself... “... please don’t be Clea, please don’t be Clea”. But then I checked the IMDB and, sure enough, this character is supposed to be the first appearance of Clea in the MCU. Frankly, she has none of the look and gothic impact of Doctor Strange’s future wife (and niece of the Dread Dormammu, if memory serves) and, yeah, she looks just like every other Marvel superhero clone (in fact, she looks more like the original version of Valkyrie in the comics). So I felt a bit deflated after that.

And that’s me done on Doctor Strange And The Multiverse Of Madness... which really does feel like a sequel to WandaVision more than anything else, truth be told. If you like the usual Marvel movies you will probably like this and, I certainly didn’t hate this one. However, all I will say is that, for residents of the UK, this is not the best of the multiverse movies at cinemas at present. For a much more entertaining look at alternate realities, check out my review of this one here.

Doctor Strange

Benedict In Monks

Doctor Strange
2016 USA  Directed by Scott Derrickson
UK cinema release print.

Doctor Strange is one of those comic book characters who I loved as a kid and I got quite excited when I’d heard Johnny Depp was in consideration for the role. I wasn’t too disappointed when he exited the scene because, frankly, Benedict Cumberbatch is one of those actors who you know will do a great job with any material he’s given and I could see how the arrogance his Sherlock character projected would be something which could really help bring the pre-magical version of Dr. Stephen V. Strange to life (the V stands for Vincent and that was who the original look of the character in those early 1960s appearances in Strange Tales, which I loved so much in reprint form, was based on... Vincent Price).

Now, I used to love these comics because Doctor Strange could jump out of his physical body and do battle on the astral planes, while somebody was hanging around and guarding his physical form so it was kept safe from harm. As a young 7 or 8 year old, of course, I was all about things like astral projection and ‘out of the body’ experiences so, when you had a Marvel superhero who could do all that stuff, it was a treat.

I went to the cinema on the first night of release in the UK, which was unusual enough in that it was a Tuesday, because I just couldn’t wait to see how this character fits into and pushes the boundaries of the Marvel Cinematic Universe and the answer, on both those counts, was... well, actually pretty well. Scott Derrickson, who directed this wonderful movie, has actually treated the material with the respect it deserves and you get a real feeling of those early short strips co-created by Stan Lee and, as importantly (perhaps more so), original Spider-Man artist Steve Ditko, who helped write and then drew the strips. They were pretty much a guide to the psychedelic world of the spirit in its hippiest, trippiest form but, a good few years before all that wave of counter culture hit (I’d personally say that certain sequences in Roger Corman’s Edgar Allan Poe cycle of movies also foresaw and possibly ‘usher’ed in the birth of psychedelia... possibly as influenced by the colour work that Mario Bava brought to the cinema and which the people at AIP studios at the time were more than aware of).

The movie really does those early 1963 and 1964 tales justice and the origin is pretty much the same as the one depicted in the comics, although I believe The Ancient One was originally based in the Himalayas and, either way, he was most certainly an old man...not Tilda Swinton, who plays the role in the film. And that’s not a dig by the way... the casting of the always brilliant Tilda is a really shrewd one, especially since the wonderful Rachel McAdams plays the only other female character in this movie and she’s pretty much wasted in how little screen time she has for the majority of the story. We also have the amazing Chiwetel Ejiofor, a villainous Mads Mikkelsen and a very funny Benedict Wong in the cast. Along with Cumberbatch, absolutely nailing Strange as you would expect from him, they have a really great ensemble group of actors here... at least two or three of whom will definitely need to come back for further Marvel movies.

I do have a few disappointments in the film but they are really minor. I’ll just get them out of the way now.

Okay... so somewhere in The Avengers (aka Marvel’s Avengers Assemble and reviewed here), I’m pretty sure Doctor Strange is mentioned in the helicarrier (also in Captain America: The Winter Soldier, reviewed here... but that’s a different issue). Now the Stark Tower wasn’t rebuilt as The Avengers Tower until after the events that took place in that movie so... how can a ‘pre-heroed up’ version of the character be looking out on a New York skyline that includes The Avenger’s Tower? Surely the timeline here doesn’t make sense and is a bit of a... well, a huge continuity error? I may be wrong but that kind of hit me between the eyes when I was looking at this movie in cinemas.

The other thing is that the tone of the story seems a bit... hmmm... somehow a bit too ‘even’. The magical battles are really something special in that they’ve done it all superbly... well okay, the astral plane versions of the characters aren't totally white ghosts like they were in the comics but what they’ve done here gets the message across pretty well and probably appears a lot more acceptable on screen than taking the look straight from the page, is my guess. However, there doesn’t seem to be much contrast within the scenes... with the last third of the movie being a few battles at different locations following on in quick succession without any real contrast in the sequences. I felt it needed just a little more ‘oomph and rest’ between set pieces to give you time to breathe and pace things a little more... thus enhancing the action sequences when they come...  but that didn’t quite get that feel here so it almost threatens to become somewhat less than the sum of its parts on occasion.

A third thing is problematic purely because I knew the early comics. There’s a character in here and, as soon as I heard his name, I knew where the story arc was going to be taking him... I won’t reveal the character name here because if you know the comics you’ll know it already... and I don’t want to put in any spoilers here. I didn’t know if they were going to be saving a certain ‘turning point’ for that character for a later movie or maybe they were going to go the full Green Lantern movie route and have that character do his thing in an epilogue scene. Well, this movie has two post-movie scenes, as do a lot of MCU movies these days. One superb one in the middle of the credits with exactly the Marvel character I had suspected would turn up making an appearance and gluing it together with one of next year’s MCU movies... and a post credits scene where the character I mentioned before gets to live up to the character as portrayed in the comics. So, yeah, they went the full Green Lantern on this one... which is fine by me because I’m one of the few people who actually loved the Green Lantern movie and I believe the plot and structure of the new Doctor Strange movie shares a lot of DNA with it, actually. Anyway, my problem was that I knew something pretty basic about a certain character who is in the movie way before it happened and so... maybe that wasn’t the wisest move. Then again, there are probably a significantly less number of people who used to read Doctor Strange than most of the other Marvel comics so... it’s not such a big deal, I guess.

Everything else about the movie works really well. The acting, the look and design, the spectacular special effects are all absolutely brilliant... and the dialogue in this one is really great too. There’s definitely a lot of fun and humour about this movie and it’s certainly a sharp relief from the previous MCU movie, Captain America - Civil War (reviewed by me here). Another great thing about it is the music...

Now, I’m gutted that Brian Tyler didn’t get a chance to work on this because I like how he’s slowly been bringing the musical elements of the Marvel cinematic universe into some kind of coherent style (something the company seriously needs) but now they’ve pulled in Michael Giacchino on scoring duties. Now I quite like Giacchino anyway (although I don’t like his opening, Marvel company fanfare as much as Tyler’s) and he turns in a really great score here. Definitely loved the sitars used in the end titles and it all works really well with the movie. Cant wait to get the CD of this one... it’ll be on for quite a few spins, I can tell you.

This movie has all the usual tie ups that the Marvel Cinematic Universe is known for and I’m sure Doctor Strange will be playing a special role in the proceedings in the third of The Avengers films. There’s a special artefact he always had in the comics, apart from the famous red cloak (blue in those original stories... if memory serves me... it didn’t change to red until later) and I’m sure anyone familiar with the artefact I’m talking about from the strips will realise exactly how this factors in with some of the last few years’ Marvel movies... so I won’t say anything more on that subject here because one of the characters, Wong, makes the connection quite implicit by the end of the film. So, basically, if you’re trying to watch all the specific Marvel movies which link into each other at the cinema... definitely don’t miss this one.

And, really, you don’t want to miss Doctor Strange anyway. It’s a terrific, fun movie and, although it injects a certain gravitas into some of the subject matter, it’s a welcome antidote to some of those solemn, darker super hero movies which have been doing the rounds at the cinema lately... juggling a dark, frightening tone with a light, frothy window dressing. Great stuff and easily the best of the superhero movies I’ve seen this year. Watch it while it’s hot!

Spotlight

A Priestful Of Dollars

Spotlight
2015 USA
Directed by Tom McCarthy
UK cinema release print.

So Spotlight, directed by actor, writer and director Tom McCarthy.... is not the kind of movie I would normally take a look at in my local cinema, to be honest. With the subject matter being the 2002 scandal of numerous Catholic Priests molesting children that the church was covered up or, more properly, the investigative team on The Boston Globe who brought it to light, the Spotlight of the title, it's really not something I would usually go for.

However, the trailer was pretty good for this one and it had a couple of actors in it, Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo, who I happen to think a lot of in terms of giving strong performances. I could tell from the trailer that the studio were trying to pitch it as a kind of modern equivalent, in terms of atmosphere, to the classic Watergate scandal movie All The President’s Men and I guess, yeah... that’s exactly what this is, in some ways. Although, if I’d known that the film was directed and co-written by the same guy who had written and directed The Station Agent, one of the great modern classics of American cinema, then I would have rushed to the cinema even faster.

Now, this is not a perfect film here, in my book, but it’s pretty close to being one and I have to say that if you want to be on the edge of your seat with a movie that’s based on real life events then this one’s a pretty good choice. It’s apparently fairly accurate to the original events and situations too... as much as a Hollywood movie could be, I guess. According to some quotes from various people who found themselves being played by some pretty great actors, that goes for the accuracy of the portrayal of the personalities in question too, by all accounts.

Michael Keaton and Mark Ruffalo knock it out of the park, just as I would expect form them. Liev Schrieber, Rachel McAdams, John Slattery, Stanley Tucci and Brian d'Arcy James are all pretty darned amazing too, it has to be said. If you want believability and credibility... not to mention a sense of naturalism that can carry a drama of this emotional weight while still accenting it enough to give it all a broader sense of entertainment value, then this group of actors are very much people who you are in good hands with. If you admire films which can flow forward breezily as you follow the characters in the course of their investigation then this is definitely one for you. It’s the kind of investigative movie that does what it should do... explain what the Spotlight team are after, explain the individual's assignments and then follow through on their detective work with well put together montages punctuated by key excerpts from their interviews. So that’s all good.

One thing which didn’t sit well with me, however, were some scenes... not all that many of them but enough for me to sit up and pop out of the experience somewhat... where the editing of the footage didn’t seem all that great. Not necessarily the fault of the editor, by the way, it might have been the only way to sort out the footage in some sequences. Those sequences in question being some of the back and forth conversations which litter the movie in several places. These are often treated with static shots and the standard TV style of editing where we cut from one shot to the reverse is very much a present constant in some kinds of scene. I also thought the placement of the focus of the eyes on those shots and their reverse equivalent was conflicted and it was the contrast of forcing the eye to suddenly jerk between different areas of the screen at speed in a few places which really started distracting me from what I was supposed to be looking at. Not throughout the whole movie, for sure, but I did find it quite gruelling on a few occasions in there.

The other minor thing, and it is a minor thing, was that I felt that Mark Ruffalo’s passionate, hot headed reporter was somewhat bereft. His wife or girlfriend is mentioned a couple of times but, though we see him in something like a home environment on a number of occasions, we never catch sight of the lady in question. This is even when we see him working on stuff at home at night... when you would think the lady of his life would be present in some way. Maybe I missed a detail in the dialogue to explain that but I think it would have given Ruffalo’s character a little more context if we’d had seen the lady in his life, to a certain extent.

But yeah, minor grumbles at best in a film which delivers the tone and passion you would expect from people being forced to confront the truth of a story rapidly expanding in scope as the Spotlight team discover more about the unwritten conspiracies which have kept the story from breaking in the press over the decades that this kind of abuse had being going on. Their initial story began with just one priest and, by the end of the investigation, there were around 87 priests who had been uncovered.

The film is very sparsely spotted in the musical content and I would have expected this kind of movie to have no score at all but certain key montages and highlights are given a certain emotional presence by Howard Shore’s piano dominant score. At  points it maybe felt a little heavy handed in contrast to the many scenes without music but that’s always a hard balancing act to get right and, where some of these scenes reach for the music in a less naturalistic accompaniment... there’s always another scene where the score gets it dead right. I’ve been a big fan of Shore over the years, especially with his scores to the early David Cronenberg films and Kevin Smith’s Dogma and it’s not a bad match for the movie in most scenes. People who are only familiar with his brilliant scores to the less than brilliant adaptations of Tolkiens works by Peter Jackson may be a little surprised at the modest scope of this piece but, frankly, anything heavier may well have undermined a movie of this nature and even this one threatens that on occasion. I know I wouldn’t normally argue for this, being as I love movie music so much, but maybe the mix was a little more prominent than it could have been in certain scenes but... yeah, for the most part it’s pretty good and it may be a good stand alone listen too.

And that’s what I thought of Spotlight. A pretty amazing movie with some things which irritated me but which in no way put me off the movie as a whole. A brilliant cast and some nice dialogue make for pretty compulsive viewing, in my book, and I wouldn’t be too surprised if there isn’t at least one Oscar nod to this one sometime soon. Definitely worth a watch, as far as I’m concerned.