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.

Monster Hunter

 

Gates Of Meow

Monster Hunter
2020 Directed by Paul W. S. Anderson
Germany/China/Canada/Japan/South Africa/USA
UK cinema release print.

Warning: Some spoilerage but, it’s not really that kind of movie.

So, once again, director Paul W. S. Anderson teams up with his wife, Milla Jovovich to make another movie adapted from a video game series. Now, I have slight issues with their Resident Evil series of films because... well, they were nearly all absolutely brilliant with the exception of two of them. The second one was kinda let down by some of the prosthetic ‘man in suit’ effects but the real disappointment was the sixth film in the series, Resident Evil - The Final Chapter... which totally failed to make any kind of sense and contradicted the running story of the films up until that point with absolutely no attempt to explain the complete lack of continuity, effectively negating everything we’d learned in the second movie.

So, yeah, I was always going to go see Monster Hunter, although, I hereby make the usual caveat that I haven’t played the game so really don’t know if it’s any good as an adaptation or not. Although the film has been freely available for a while in HD from ‘the usual web sites’ (and I believe that’s where at least one of my friends saw it), I decided to wait for half a year and see if it got any kind of cinema release in the UK. Since I’d seen the Resident Evil films at the cinema, I wanted to do it right with this one because, whether you like them or not, Anderson always tends to make huge spectacles of his movies and so I booked a local screening, even paying a little extra on top of my Cineworld card to see the film on a big IMAX screen.

The film itself... well, I firmly believe that with a few tweaks this could have been a really great movie but, I did have an issue with it and I think, all in all, it’s an okay and relatively entertaining movie and, at the very least, has the potential to be a long running franchise, if it gets the box office take to make that happen.

Okay, so the film is almost but not quite plotless. There are two worlds, one of fantasy style sand ships and big monsters and... also our world. After a brief prologue on the other world where the leader of a band of ‘yo hos’, played by Ron Perlman, gets in a skuffle with a big monster on his sand galleon and has to leave behind one of the monster hunters of the title to fend for himself, played by the ‘legend in his own lifetime’ Tony Jaa (who I though t had retired to become a buddhist monk or some such but, apparently not)... we join the main US protagonist of the movie, a ranger played by Milla Jovovich. She and her band of hard core military types are taking their heavily armoured transport to look for a scout team that have gone missing (in our world). Then, some archaic markers in the sand they pass by suddenly go all pyrotechnic and they are transported into the world of the prologue... and come face to face with various giant beasties.

It would be true to say there’s not much plot development after that. The film becomes one big action set piece after another and, within half an hour, Jovovich is the only one of both her team and the original team she was looking for, left alive... and only because Tony Jaa has tried to help out on occasion. When the two leads finally meet, after she manages to escape from a load of quite vicious giant spiders, everything gets a bit Hell In The Pacific meets Shelob for a while as the two, who don’t speak each other’s language, work through their issues with the tried and true movie clichés of violence and mistrust followed by, eventual, mutual respect.

And there’s also a double climax to the movie... one set in the other world and then one set in ours... both of which involve some large, ‘almost but not quite unkillable’ giant dragons and Ron Perlman, whose character can speak English due to a twist in what little of the plot there is, as he brings his team in to help out in our world after another dragon crosses over.

Okay...so the film is nice to look at, has some great actors, some not bad special effects and is quite pacey but, alas, that last thing is also the big problem with the film, for me at least. There’s no let up. The first half an hour is quite relentless, driven and harrowing, as Jovovich’s team all die big, monstery deaths but, it just carries on and on. There’s no real calm before the next storm... even the scenes where Jaa and Jovovich meet up for the first time are full of sequences where they are continuously brawling for way too long. This film, in my opinion, makes the one big mistake that a lot of modern action picture directors tend to make and that is... falling into the trap of giving the characters no real downtime before they face the next peril... thus giving no contrast within the tone of the scenes and, by the end of the film, it all seems just a little bit dull. Indeed, even the double climax seems like something of a let down because there’s no real build up to it... just conflict after conflict with the only really nice moments involving a cat... which I won’t spoil for you here but, make sure you stick around for an extra scene mid way through the end credits. I actually think that, in the case of this movie, it might have been more effective if the director had made it a little longer and put more pauses in the film to help liven up the action scenes. As it is... yeah, it feels like a ‘pretty good’ kind of movie rather than a truly great one, to be honest.

Even so, I think people who are into big monster movies will still find a lot to like in Monster Hunter and, like I said... the cat, man. We need to see more of the cat! I’d be quite happy if some more of these were made because, like I said, the director is a bit hit and miss and I’m sure he could make some decent follow ups which surpassed the original, if given half the chance. I might grab this one on blu ray once it goes into the sales and, I guess I’m still relatively happy that I waited to see it on the big screen. Hopefully there will be more to follow.

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them

Bestiary In Show

Fantastic Beasts And
Where To Find Them
UK/USA 2016
Directed by David Yates
Warner Brothers Blu Ray Zone B

I’m really not much of a Harry Potter fan, it has to be said.

Unlike my parents, I’ve not read any of the books avidly and the only reason I’ve seen the films, once each, was because they dragged me along to the cinema to see them as each new one turned up. Alas, due to circumstances beyond their control, they never got to see this at the cinema so, instead of being dragged to my local flea pit to see it last year, I instead found myself watching it with them in a communal Blu Ray session so... I’m probably not the best candidate to give you a review focusing on the 'authenticity' of a story set in the Harry Potter universe.

What I can do, however, is at least give a view of how it works as a film and, it has to be said, this one’s not bad at all.

For me, the setting of 1920s big city America coupled with a central cast who aren’t a bunch of teenagers solving groovy mysteries is a good start at not alienating me completely and it’s also lucky I quite happen to like Eddie Redmayne as an actor, who plays the lead character here (yes, I even didn't mind him as that shouty bad guy in Jupiter Ascending, reviewed here... I have a lot of time for him).

Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them dealt me its first surprise in that Potter creator J. K. Rowling actually wrote the screenplay... which isn’t based on a novel. What’s more, it doesn’t look like she had any help doing it (unless there was an uncredited script doctor in the mix) and so I have to say I’m very impressed that someone who is used to writing narrative based in novels is actually able to express themselves so quickly and competently in the rather more different medium of film. The more cynical part of me might say that’s no big surprise since she’s obviously been involved, to some degree, in the successful series of films based on her Harry Potter books for a fair few years but, nevertheless, the fact that the majority (for me... I’ll  get to it in a minute) of the film holds up as a cinematic whole is quite amazing and so she definitely is someone I should probably sit up and take more notice of at some point.

Not only is it a coherent movie... it’s also a fast paced one, which actually builds up characters and situations the audience can actually care about while still managing to cram in a heck of a lot of good ideas. The fact that she has an excellent cast such as Redmayne, Katherine Waterston, Samantha Morton, Dan Fogler, Alison Sudo, Ron Perlman and Johnny Depp obviously contributes greatly to the characterisations but, even so, the dialogue is quite well written and so is the way in which certain set piece events impressively move the story along in an efficient yet, wildly entertaining manner. And believe me, I didn’t expect to be writing something like that about this movie.

We also have Colin Farrell thrown into the mix who is not, I have to say, an actor I usually have a lot of time and sympathy for but, since he’s playing an obvious villain here, that kind of worked for me too, in actual fact.

The juxtaposition of the quirkiness of the wizarding world we are familiar with now from the Potter series of movies (and books) with the 1920s big city milieu really works very well and everything slots together in a fashion which, at times, made me think of watching certain Terry Gilliam movies in my youth. That being said, there was one problem I had with it but, honestly, it’s only a minor one...

The zoo that the main character played by Redmayne carries around with him in his suitcase, which kinda works like the TARDIS in Doctor Who in terms of the inside being vastly bigger than the outside, features in a couple of scenes but the very first time we are taken in there... it kinda outstays its welcome just a little bit. While I can see where an overly long CGI sequence introducing us to various beasts is probably a great scene for kids, I kinda got bored with it in the same way as the extended Enterprise vanity shots in the original Star Trek The Motion Picture (reviewed here) failed to quicken my blood as a young ‘un. However, I have to remember that, as I am now approaching 50 years of age, I’m probably not the primary intended audience for a movie like this and so... yeah, it is what it is and it doesn’t ruin the movie, for sure.

Other than that overly long section, though, I certainly didn’t find myself getting bored by any of the other sequences in the movie, which are all a lot more faster paced and which never got in the way of character development. Indeed, I can’t wait to see what happens to Dan Fogler’s character in any of the sequels because I really had a fondness for him in this and his final fate is something which is not uncommon in modern science fiction but which is handled so beautifully and tenderly here that... well, you have to wonder how Rowling was able to write anything quite so subtle and equally have to wonder how much of that cinematic sophistication in the handling of certain scenes was aided by the director and actors in terms of the conceptual input. You also have to ask yourself if it actually matters too because... what is cinema if not a collaborative art form?

Not least is the collaborative input of James Newton Howard's excellent score which takes Johnny Williams’ Hedwig’s Theme, quite literally, as a starting point and then gently but surely takes us on a new musical voyage completely appropriate to the movie. That being said, there was a scene where Williams’ theme resurfaces in the last third of the movie for a moment and I was trying to figure out why that particular piece of leitmotif was being used here. I suspect if I knew more of the subtle references from the books and previous movies, which I’m pretty sure must be scattered about in here too, I’d have my answer but... ah well. That stuff is off my radar.

So there you have it. A movie I never really wanted to see turns out to be quite a good film and most certainly a well crafted one. If you are a fan of the Harry Potter series then you are probably going to want to take a look at Fantastic Beasts And Where To Find Them, especially since I suspect the narrative will be linking in a lot more strongly in terms of the characters etc. in the next installment. For muggles like myself it’s probably not so essential but, even so, I quite enjoyed this one.

Season Of The Witch

Witch Black

Season Of The Witch
2011 USA
Directed by Dominic Sena/Bret Ratner
Momentum Blu B

Warning: Spoilers of the witch in this one...

A few years ago a movie called Black Death came out at cinemas and I was hoping it was going to be a nice little tale of swords and sorcerers in medieval England. Instead, although skillfully put together and certainly quite gripping in places, I was disappointed in the film because the whole thing took on a certain ‘scooby-doo’ aspect when it came to the actual witchcraft element of the tale and, tonally, the film bore more resemblance to films like Witchfinder General than anything that could have been conjured up as something ‘not of this world’. I reviewed it here and, though I can appreciate it on some level, it’s really not my kind of thing in terms of things I’d watch for entertainment. That kind of subject matter really needs to be treated in a more ‘fun’ fashion I feel, otherwise it becomes fatally serious.

Not too long after, Season Of The Witch got released in cinemas over here having suffered, it turns out, severe release delays and a load of reshoots by “rescue director” Bret Ratner. I was kinda interested in seeing it to see if it did the same thing as Black Death or actually gave my b-movie monster passion a work out but, alas, the film only lasted a week at my local movie house. However, I have a friend who has been persistent that Season Of The Witch was a nice bit of film-making so, despite having been critically reviled the world over (I found this out after I’d seen the movie), when I chanced upon a copy for “the right price” (Cash Converters Blu Ray for £3.99) I decided to give my friend the benefit of the doubt and take a look at it.

I’m kinda glad I did.

The film stars Nicholas Cage and the always watchable Ron Perlman as two long serving knights who have become disillusioned with the Holy Crusades after being asked to slaughter women and children for God’s cause. They desert the army but, two months later, find themselves once again allied with the church when they are tasked, with a guide, another knight and a priest, to escort a witch to a far off monastery (requiring several days travel) to put her on trial and read from the last copy of The Book Of Soloman... as a solution to ending her witchery and lifting the plague from the land. Here, of course, it gets a bit tricky because Holy Knights and bubonic plague are two completely different time periods but, in deference to Sergio Leone’s use of the IRA in his Western A Fistful of Dynamite (aka Gui La Testa aka Duck You Sucker) I’ll turn a blind eye since it makes for a good story and in our postmodern times and attitudes I seem to be the last person upholding that kind of “finger pointing and wagging” at the sight of anachronism anyway. So I won’t spoil the party here... although it would be good if writers and directors of historically set dramas could read the odd history book once in a while.

So far, so good. We have, basically a medieval road movie with witchery, which turns out to be not just witchery, and lots of fighting and moralising and so on. Cage and Perlman make a heck of a double act as the two larger than life heroes and with various creatures to be slain, especially in the last third of the film, this is about as entertaining as any old relatively well made B-movie can get... so that’s all good. There's even a cameo by Hammer Horror stalwart Christopher Lee although, it is such that I completely failed to recognise him when he was on screen.

I especially liked that the film doesn’t scrimp on letting you know that there is truly something supernatural going on either. The opening prologue, which I suspect is a result of one of the reshoots, certainly makes it known to the audience that there are demonic forces at work here when the aftermath of a triple witch hanging ends up with one dead priest and a burned copy of the book which our heroes are later going to seek out. Followed up by a nice and exciting opening montage of Cage and Perlman fighting and drinking their way through a number of Holy Crusades, its a genuinely good set up for the movie and, although the pace slows a little to make way for things like plot and... um... well a bit of a plot anyway, the film makes good on its promise and offers up exactly the kind of movie you’d expect from taking the main quest at the heart of this film to its logical confusion. That is to say... never mind the witchery, they’ve got full on demons and possessed dead bubonic reanimated zombie priests to deal with.

Some of the photography is really beautiful and, even when it’s not, it is at least competent and this also goes for the editing in this one too. The action is not as confusing as a lot of modern Hollywood movies and you can follow it fairly well. Add in discussions by the various characters about the confusion as to whether their prisoner is a witch or not and recollections of “the good old days”, when you could be sure that a good head lopping was being administered to the proper recipient, and you have a film which is just about entertaining enough to not get boring. Add some CGI demons in the mix and you start venturing into Robert E. Howard territory too for a while.

The film ends in a way diametrically opposed to how most Hollywood films end these days... that is to say, there is some significant sacrifice on the side of the just, and I found this to be a bit of a relief to be honest, although I suspect this is one of the things that has helped the movie garner the bad reviews it has. People do not necessarily want to see their films ending this way, with fallen heroes and voice-over narrative. But I liked it... it reminded me of a crude version of the closing of Seven Samurai in some respects, although this film is truly not even close to the same league as Kurosawa’s epic masterpiece, to be sure.

But the main ingredients are here for a good time with a movie. Knights in armour, swords flashing, heads popping, zombie priests and big as f*** flying demons to boot. It may not ever really rise above the “quite entertaining” level but, compared to some modern Hollywood movies, it’s got a lot more going for it than a fair proportion of them. Give it a watch if you have nothing better to do, maybe.

Pacific Rim

Apocalypse, No!

Pacific Rim
2013 USA
Directed by Guillermo del Toro
Playing at cinemas now.

Guillermo del Toro’s Pacific Rim is basically a giant monster VS giant robot “bash ‘em up” of the specific kind which started out life in the 1954 movie Gojira (aka Godzilla) but which, in fact, became more into its own in this form in the series of movies which followed on from that initial Big G outing from the 60s through to the early 70s and then again for the next two waves of related films (plus in every kind of official and unofficial spin off from those ever since). Del Toro is quick to play up that analogy, not that we needed it, in the first few seconds of this film.

Kaiju, it tells us, is a Japanese word for monster and Jaeger is the German name for hunter.

Of course, what we have here, right away, is a double pun from Del Toro.

The actual genre of Japanese film which encompasses all these giant beasts is Kaiju Eiga, a term I expect most of my readers are not unfamiliar with and which is literally translated as “monster movie”. The Jaegers which are the giant robot machines of this movie are apparently pronounced with a silent J, giving them a 'y' sound. So, kaiju jaeger = kaiju eiga. That’s the first bit of fun in the film.

The other little side swipe of a joke within that, of course, is that Jaeger also looks like Jaguar, as in Jet Jaguar, who was probably the most influential (if not the first, although I suspect probably the first too?) of the giant monster fighting robots, making his debut in the 1972 film Godzilla Vs Megalon and much copied since then (you wouldn’t have stuff like Shogun Warriors, Transformers or even The Mighty Morphin Power Rangers without him... although I’m not sure that’s a good thing, to be honest). So that’s what all these giant robots are stand-ins for... they’re all Jet Jaguars. Hence Jaeger...so there you go, fun pun number 2.

Now I find Del Toro a bit hit and miss as a rule and tend to like his big commercial movies such as the Hellboy series rather than his smaller stuff, like Pan’s Labyrinth (goodness knows why I couldn’t appreciate that film... it had everything I’d want in a movie in it except, perhaps, for something which could trigger an emotional response in me) and so Pacific Rim should have been right up my street... and it kinda was. I just didn’t have as much fun as I was expecting from it... and certainly not as much fun as other people have, by the sounds of it.

Looking at it, it might be my response to Del Toro building an absolutely credible world from his ridiculous premise and then further populating it with a cast of actors who are absolutely convincing and, with the exception of Charlie Day, Torchwood’s Burn Gorman and the ever watchable Ron Perlman, totally serious and in no way tongue-in-cheek when it comes to playing their parts. This means I was totally watching it with my serious head on for a lot of the time, except when the three actors above were hamming it up beautifully in their scenes. I was thoroughly invested in the characters in this film and also the stakes they were playing for (the end of humanity) and that’s certainly not a bad thing... it just didn’t feel like fun, is all.

This is not, of course, to say that Pacific Rim is a bad movie. It’s certainly not a terrible film and it is a thing of spectacle and, to a certain extent, wonder. The fight scenes with the jaegers left a lot to be desired in that I couldn’t figure out what was going on half the time, though. The editing was just too... um... choppy for me. But I could get a sense of it and it all looked mighty impressive. Also, the relationship between the two main protagonists played by Charlie Hunnam and Rinko Kikuchi was good but I would have liked to have seen a lot more of it and developed the underlying romance that was obviously there between them. I would also have liked a lot more fleshing out (there was a little of that but not enough) of Idris Elba’s character, who is another actor who tends to dominate whatever movie he’s in.

I think this highlights my main problem with the movie actually. Everything was just not quite enough. Especially since the story I thought the film was going to tell was completely dealt with within the first ten minutes of the movie as a pseudo recap to get you up to speed with the world these characters live in. However... after doing that the first time, the film then did proceed to tell me exactly the same story again, but with more urgency to it. I wish, in fact, the film could have been the story which is described as it was in the first ten minutes, because then we could have had the appearance of the initial kaiju monsters and the move towards the construction of the jaegers to deal with them and, from them, a champion set of pilots could arise... and this film we have now could have been the inferior sequel.

But... I don’t want to stomp all over this movie Tokyo-style because Del Toro has realised a great achievement here and he’s got something which could re-trigger a resurgence of kaiju movies, if we’re lucky. Also, Perlman’s performance as Hannibal Chau is pitch perfect and as over-the-top as you’d like. It’s worth the price of admission on its own, never mind the monster robot carnage... which is at least better handled than the action sequences in the confusing Man Of Steel from earlier in the year. Saying that, there’s a big underwater battle towards the end which had me totally baffled as to 1) how the things taking place could be happening under water and 2) how the sound design for the under water sequences made any sense whatsoever. Seriously, the lack of “physics logic” kept popping me right out of the movie during these sequences.

On the other hand, the musical score by Ramin Djawadi (no stranger to composing music for characters in metal suits) was one of his best scores to date and will be an interesting listen as a stand alone element, I suspect. It held its own fairly well when pitched against the “noisy as hell” sound design in most places, so that’s definitely doing its job as well as it could under such circumstances, I would say.

Pacific Rim succeeds as a film, I think, but I’m not sure its the kind of film which would bear much repeat viewings. All in all, I’d personally be watching classic stuff like Invasion Of The Astro Monsters or the original version of Terror Of Mehagodzilla, truth be told, but I think Pacific Rim will certainly find an audience that loves it and may even become a classic itself for future generations. Not a bad movie to spend time with on a weekend I think although, if you are going to go see it, make sure you stay sitting tight until halfway through the end credits for a great little reveal scene. It might be important if they get around to making a sequel.