My thoughts about movies and TV shows I've been watching

See also my blog on books: Elliot's Reading

Tuesday, July 26, 2011

Surprise: 9 episodes into Season 3 of Damages, and more questions keep arising

Nine episodes into the terrific if highly challenging Season 3 of "Damages," the plot is starting to clarify, as the two time layers - the present moving forward the gap narrowing between the present narrattive and the end of the story, with Tom dead, Patti in a car crash, Ellen being interrogated (as in the earlier seasons), which we have seen in pieces since the first episode. Patti/Glenn Close remains a force of nature, and I think Ellen/Rose Byrne has matured as an actor throughout the whole series. At end of episode 9, we at last understand how Tom came to find boots and a phone in the possession of a homeless man. We see a side of Patti we rarely see as she totally loses control, angered by her son's relation with an older woman - which seems to have some echo from Patti's earlier life (a weird reference the son makes to his father's being in prison is left unexplained, for now). As is so typical of Damages, questions still raised by late-season episodes - usually the late-season episodes resolve puzzles rather than add to them. What's the deal with Martin Short's estranged father, and why is it so important to him that nobody know that his parents lived in poverty upstate? What is Arthur Frobisher/Ted Danson, industrialist who now claims to see the light and supports the environmennt, introduced again as a major character, and why does Patti intentionally provoke his anger? What's with the strange Statue of Liberty icon, where some key evidence was hidden back in Season One, and now reappaears in the car that struck Patti? Is the interrogating cop as dumb as he seems, or is it his strategy? And why is that architect pushing Patti to tear down the walls of her apartment and remodel - what will she find behind the walls? What did her ex-husband leave there?

Saturday, July 23, 2011

Am I missing something? Can anyone really watch the (late) films of de Oliverira?

Started watching de Oliveira's "I'm Going Home" last night - apparently a film about an aging French actor - and I have to say the first 10 minutes were the worst 10 minutes of film I have ever seen in my life, with possible exception of a few experimental films of water dripping and the like that at one time were considered artistic. The opening of this film shows an actor on a stage, an aged king, bumbling through is lines, his back more or less to the audience, audience at first laughing (is this meant to be funny?), then silent, a few men step off into an alcove and watch this through a window, the play goes and and on for the whole time - if there's a point to be made, couldn't it be done in one minute? Honestly, I could not bear it any longer. I remember watching another de Oliveira film, about a woman and her daughter on a ship from the UK to, I think, India, that was equally tedious, poorly paced, utterly ridiculous. Look, I know the guy is considered a giant of Portuguese cinema and perhaps it's amazing that he's still making films @ 90 or 100 or whatever he is, but who backs these films? Who invests their time and money in this stuff? Can anyone watch them? Am I missing something here?

Monday, July 18, 2011

Damages: A really smart series, with great acting from Glenn Close

I know I'm a year behind, but Season 3 of "Damages," at least from first 5 episodes, is every bit as interesting and challenging as the first two seasons. With this series, it's virtually impossible (a year after watching it) to recall the intricacies of the plot, the many twists and turns and double-crosses, but what remains is the excitement and the provocation - in part because of the odd use of time, narrrations in all three seasons told in jumbled time sequence, with cues - 6 months later, or 6 months earlier - and because we always see, right from the start, how things ended up - the various dead bodies, etc. - it's not so much that we follow a story but, detective like, we see the outcome and are trying to figure out the clues. Though it's suspenseful, it's not about suspense but about engagement. At times, I feel as if the writers themselves are trying to figure out the plot as it goes along, setting themselves a premise and figuring out how to get there, but most of the time we're in sure hands. And of course Glenn Close as Patti Hewes is a force of nature - every bit as great in Season 3 as in the earlier seasons, this time a bit more vulnerable as her husband's gone and her son is more or less out of her life. Patti, becoming increasingly isolated, is all the more ruthless - and if there's a problem in the series it's that she has no real counterpart, nobody can stand up to her. Ellen (Rose Byrne) is a stronger character in Season 3 than ever before, now working in the DA's office as they investigate a Madoff-like Ponzi scheme and as Patti fights to claim the assets for the victims - you'd think they'd be working in partnership, but there's a lot of opposition and jealousy, that for some reason - we don't yet know why or how - lead to the murder of Patti's partner, the hapless Tom Shayes. A really smart series with great acting from Glenn Close.

Monday, July 11, 2011

A bit of classic cinema noir: Out of the Past

Mobster-gambler Kirk Douglas hires straight-shooting detective Robert Mitchum to track down the gal who pumped him with slugs from the 45 and went on the lam with $40K, but when Mitchum tracks the dame to Acapulco and spots her at a lone cafe he falls for her hard and double-crosses his own client. Mitchum and the gal make plans to head off on their own, but Douglas won't give up this gal - he wants back his 40 grand and a shot at revenge for the slugs to the gut. Douglas hires Mitchum's former sidekick, who tracks the lovely couple at a mountain hideaway, where the gal performs her old trick with a pistol and shoots the sidekick dead. Worried about the rap, the no-good gal goes back to Douglas, who sets a trap to knock off a rich oldster and pin it on Mitchum, but Mitchum sees through the scheme. That's the basic hardboiled plot outline of the 1947 "Out of the Past," a not-bad noirish detective thriller that has an unusual element I didn't catch in the summary above: Mitchum leaves the biz and creates new life under a new ID as a gas-station owner in the High Sierras, where he falls for a sweet young girl in town, but has to tell her ultimately about his troubled past. Will she go for him anyway? Can he make one last foray into the dark world to clear his record, pay off old debts, and spend the rest of his life changing tires? Some of the dialog is pretty funny and outdated, other dialog sharp - though not at the Chandler level, to say the least. Movie marred by some wild improbabilities, such as the likelihood of Mitchum's ever tracking the woman to Acapulco, on a hunch. Has some nice elements, too, including some good outdoors scenes, a rarity in noir films, a very good first scene at which a menacing sidekick finds the under-cover Mitchum, interesting deaf-mute character (played by a deaf actor, I wonder?), and a terrific scene when the thugs visit Mitchum in Acapulco, where he says he hasn't found the girl, and he - and we - expect that the girl will show up at any second and blow his cover.