Why Season 2 of House of Cards is even better

Season 2 of House of Cards (Netflix 2013) continues in my view to be even better than the highly entertaining Season 1, as the two main characters, Kevin Spacey playing VP Frank Underwood and Robin Wright playing his wife, Claire, become even more devious and loathsome. What makes it better, in part, is that they're working side-by-side toward the same goal - the presidency, obviously - rather than apart and at cross-purposes in Season One. Though both seasons have focused on Spacey's careerist ambitions and his machinations in pursuit of same, Season 2, though episode 8, seems more focused and direct. The one element I miss is his manipulation of the media to achieve his ends - throwing Zoe Barnes under the train was a huge risk to the series, as she was such a strong character and was vital to Season 1 - but the series has moved along well without her - and of course her death hovers like a dark cloud over every moment in the plot: how long will it take before someone links her death to Underwood? The elaborate attempts by her ex-boyfriend, Post editor Lucas, have kind of foundered as a plot element; instead, a much stronger element has been the attempts to silence former call-girl Rachel who could tell a lot about Spacey's link to the death of Congressman Russo. But just as Spacey/Underwood tries to dig up dirt on everyone, at the end of episode 8 the story breaks in tabloids about sexual-romantic adventures of Claire (with that unctuous British photographer in Season 1). We can only imagine that the Underwoods will strike back big time - and will strike, somehow, at the next obstacle, the President. Claire, the most fake friend of all time, has persuaded the first couple to enter couples therapy - will she spill this info, will it damage the president, will it clear the pathway for Frank? The scenes of Wright/Claire with her fake earnestness as she pushes a vulnerable young woman to testify for a bill she's drafted on sexual assault in the military, are great and emblematic of her whole personality: a schemer, a poser, a fake who cares for nothing but herself and Frank, and maybe not even for him.

You can't stop watching House of Cards

House of Cards, the Netflix 2014 American version (the original British is great, too), continues in Season 2 to be a must-watch feel-bad series, in which one character is more loathsome than the next but you can't take your eyes off them anyway, like watching a train wreck or snakes writhing. Based on first 4 episodes, I think Spacey and Wright are even better in this season, growing further into their roles - the the ultimate schemer and conniver as he rises through the Washington hierarchy and she the ice-cold careerist who will do anything to advance her husband, or, more accurately, herself. Some spoilers to follow: I admit I was shocked the Spacey/Frank Underwood through the reporter Kate Mara/Zoe Barnes in front of a Metro subway, killing her - this is roughly how season one of the British original ended, but I was sure they would not dispose of such an interesting character (and good actor) - but there you go - could she reappear in some way? dream sequences, as in The Sopranos? With Zoe gone, Claire Underwood's role becomes bigger, and at end of episode 4 she gives a stunning live TV interview (she is now the veep's wife) to CNN (they would never do this kind of profile interview live, not would they pursue so aggressively questions about why they never had children - but let's just accept the premise), in which Claire reveals that she has had 3 abortions and (lyingly) says one was the result of a date-rape by a guy who's now a prominent general (he did attack her, but the pregnancy was unrelated) - so another plot element gets launched. As with Season 1, some of the plotting is a bit Byzantine, and the attempt by newspaperman Lucas to link Zoe's death to Underwood is getting really weird, as he pursues a lead the would lead him to do some highly illegal espionage (he's walking into a trap - but I think he'd be smarter, or more cautious at least). Season 2 is often the testing point of the value of any series - they tend to get way better or way worse in season 2 - and Netflix has totally succeeded with Season 2 of HofC as you just can't stop watching.

Spy v Cylon: The Americans

Watched the first three episodes of the FX series The Anericans and it remains to be seen whether we'll stay with this or jump right into season 2 of House of Cards. The Americans is certainly entertaining and fast paced but, despite its loose approximation of certain actual events, it's a series that does not stand up to scrutiny. The less you think about it the better, but here goes. The real spy cases on which this is based involved, as I recall, people living in the U.S. who were Russian and living as Russians, but as grad students, business people, and so forth - nobody suspected that they might be sending info back to Soviet headquarters. This series takes that premise a megastep forward: certain young people were recruited in the USSR from childhood, trained in martial arts and in English, and sent to the U.S to live not as Russian immigrants but as native-born American citizens, though they are KGB agents trained to get info and send it back to the beloved motherland. This premise is ridiculous on a # of levels, not the least of which is it's almost inconceivable that these people who immigrated to the U.S. at age 20 or so, posing as a married couple, could Americanize so completely and thoroughly and invent an entire history (e.g., they have two children - was there never any talk about family background, home town???). Also, having gone to all that trouble, what kind of info could these people actually get? Isn't much more efficient to bribe U.S. citizens in the intelligence community to become double agents (this actually worked, obviously)? This series, and to a lesser extent Homeland (and also the recent British movie on a very similar theme - a Soviet citizen poses for her whole lifetime as a native-born Brit - wow, these guys are good at languages!) are really all based on the fear so well dramatized in Battlestar Gallactica. These spies are like Cylons: They live among us, look and act just like us, but they are alien and dangerous. That's what makes this series click, to the extent it does - it's creepy and odd, but on any examination it become pretty ridiculous - especially the uber-sexuality of the two leads and their seemingly supernatural ability to fight of large bands of armed assailants.

Like all good sailors do: All Is Lost

The J.C. Chandor-Robert Redford All Is Lost is a tour de force, completely held my interest and attention - striking how much it's like the nearly contemporaneous Gravity, both stories of an individual fighting alone against technical and natural challenges to recover from a terrible accident in near or complete isolation and to return to the safety of society and family. Not an orbiting spacecraft this time but a sailing yacht on a solo voyage, probably round-the-world, it's never specified, crippled by an at-sea collision. Redford - in a role w/ almost no dialogue and in a movie with no other actor even for a moment - shows the typical sailor's competence and ingenuity in recovering from one setback after another - repairing a gash in the hull with mesh and a repair kit, navigating by sextant, drying out batteries, devising a hand-made bilge pump - I would have given up at day one and sat still and hoped (futilely, no doubt) for miracle rescue. It's in a way a very painful movie to watch, as Redford suffers through almost Job-like tortures, but it's also triumphant in a way, too,, as he never gives up or gives in and seems, like all good sailors, prepared for any emergency or contingency, with redundant backups. I am often very troubled by these high-anxiety movies but much less so in this one, as I knew I would never be in that situation in the first place - though plenty have been. Is there some kind of message in a bottle here, some reason why these two movies of individual struggle and technical ingenuity and incredible forbearance and cool under pressure have emerged at the same time? Interesting in that in neither case is there a human antagonist. I'm sure some have said these are paradigms for life in America (or on Earth) during times of great technological change - what happens if we're cut loose from all that technology and left to our own "devices"? Maybe it's a metaphor for the Obama administration, one setback and torment after another, but moving forward, moving on. Or maybe nothing of the sort - just a good adventure movie that will take you for 90 minutes away from your own troubles.

Ideals or violence?: If a Tree Falls

Marshall Curry's 2011 document, If a Tree Falls, is a fine and very objective examination of the radical environmental movement Earth Liberation Front, told mostly through a close focus on one group member, Daniel McGowan, who was arrested and charged with terrorism, and who gave Curry seemingly unlimited access to his life during the time he was awaiting trial. First of all, as  New Englander, I was completely ignorant about this movement, which obviously was a major and somewhat scary presence, especially in the Northwest, in the last 90s - so the film was stunning and informative, at least to me. The archival footage of many demonstrations, sit-ins, and other forms of resistance is terrific - and we get a real sense of the passion of the people in this movement, the violence they confronted, and, in true dialectical spirit, how that clash between ideals and violence led to the extremely radical ELF - a group formed out of frustration with peaceful resistance. The ELF destroyed a great deal of property - houses, lodges, a sawmill - in its reputed attack on corporate America; to its credit, the ELF was scrupulous about not injuring people in its attacks (of course firefighters and others were put at great risk combating the arson), but to its detriment the ELF chose some of its targets very carelessly and was totally askew in its aims - the attacks did absolutely nothing to halt the rape of Western forests. McGowan becomes an interesting choice as the narrative center of the film, in that he's not at all our stereotype of the NW crunchy movement radicals - he's the son of a NYC cop who by his account had never spent a day or night out of doors in his life till joining the group. He was drawn to the group by girls handing out leaflets in a downtown park (Have a moment to talk about the environment? I guess that works), and became increasingly active, committed, and maybe a bit unbalanced - tearing paper of canned goods to recycle, before the cans are opened, for ex. - but also remains a sweet and sensitive young man who got in way, way over his head. As noted, Curry retains a very neutral stance - he doesn't make the factory or saw mill owners and spokesmen into cartoon villains; even the cops, whom we see mercilessly beating the protesters, scenes that made me think of the recent doc The Act of Killing, made me shamed to be an American, are reasonable and thoughtful when speaking on camera. A very fine and provocative film that will surprise and inform most viewers (esp. here in still-forested East).

This is what J.D. Salinger hoped to avoid

The Salerno film Salinger, shown (director's cut?) on PBS American Masters, is an anti-Salingeresque project in every way: too long, to heavy handed, too detailed - everything his best fiction is explicitly not. And of course it feels like a stalker movie, as the whole point of it is to strip away his privacy and reveal as much as possible about J.D. Salinger's life. So I feel like a voyeur watching it - but did so anyway, and I hope I did so in part as a tribute to Salinger's work. As the film makes clear, and so have other writings about him he was not a recluse; he led an active if somewhat eccentric social, marital, and paternal life - but the public saw him as a recluse simply because he declined virtually all interview requests. In other words, he could have been a celebrity, but he preferred not to. Salerno does make a few contributions in this film, which not all about dish: mostly, he makes it clear that JDS was writing throughout his life and uncovers the themes and topics and expected release dates of the manuscripts JDS left behind. He also give more info about JDS's wartime experience, which affected him deeply, and his first marriage, to a former Nazi no less - adding more elements to the picture, or to the mystery (he does not at all look into JDS's Judaism, or lack thereof - there must have been a lot of self-loathing, wouldn't you say - and his fiction is split between the very WASP HC and the half-Jewish Glass family.) The best part is that this film makes we want to go back and read more of the work - we see pretty clearly, from the tributes of (too many) critics, that he was a completely original, completely confident talent, and that his work spoke to millions and still does. Worst part of the film is too many talking heads, absurd jump cuts, pounding background music, over-playing the too-few images of JDS that do exist, using too much background footage and making us think it may be about JDS when it's not, and some shaky connections drawn between Catcher and the minds of several assassins or killers. Hell, everyone read Catcher. One of the best sequences is the interview with an obviously disturbed stalker - no doubt one of many, and it gives us an idea of what JDS was trying to avoid. Weirdest part is the revelations about his many strange (though not abusive) relations with young girls and girlish women - and this is a theme of his fiction as well, the struggle against that impulse in part. The Joyce Maynard segments are revealing - she tells a lot - and repulsive: e.g., Maynard says she saw some stacks of paper in a safe and she knew they were completed manuscripts because: "I've published 9 books so I know what a manuscript looks like." Well, I've been to Staples and I know what 300 pages of paper look like. Anyway, kind of wish I hadn't seen it but: I just had to look, having read the book ...

Formulaic: Rush

Even a bad sports movie is usually pretty good. There are several basic formulas that sports movies can follow, and if the filmmaker does so with honesty and fidelity he or she will produce a movie that is reasonably entertaining, satisfying, heartwarming, perhaps even informative. Ron Howard, the master of the high-quality middle-brow Hollywood film, manages all of this in Rush, which is formulaic for sure - arch-rivals competing head to head, in this case rival formula one race-car drivers James Hunt and Niki Lauda, are opposites in temperament (Hunt a cool and loose-living playboy who's actually much more nerve-wracked than he lets on; Lauda an automaton disliked not only by other drivers but even by his own teammates) but, over time, develop a respect and even fondness for each other - despite their differences, they share one trait - the desire and ability to be the best in their field. OK, we've seen all this before - although for me at least Formula One Grand Prix racing was a totally new milieu; I had never heard of either driver, but quickly conned that this movie is based, at least in its broadest strokes, on historical fact. Howard does very effectively convey the dangers and difficulty of race-car driving - the race scenes are suitably nail-biting. Howard also effectively captures the look of the time period - the early 1970s - possibly using some archival footage for the crowd scenes? The two racers are pretty much just types, without much depth to either, but it's a sports movie - not Ingmar Bergman. Essentially, it's a movie about these two guys and about cars - there are no other people of any substance or importance to the story line; their wives/girlfriends are there mainly for a few cutaway shots during the race scenes, that's all. Rush breaks no new ground, nor does it try to do so - it accomplishes its own modest goals, which is success of a sort.

Gravity's weight

Cuaron's Gravity came in with a bang but has kind of gone out with a whimper, as it's garnered few award nominations this year - but let's not lose sight of the achievement of this really entertaining film: at its heart, it's just a simple adventure story, plot can be told in a sentence - two astronauts, Sandra Bullock and George Clooney - are only survivors of an in-space catastrophe and have to keep cool and think straight as they desperately try to get aboard a working landing device and make it safely back to Earth; Bullock is not exactly an astronaut, she's the on-board scientist, so she's of very limited skills with spacecraft. Anyway, it's a nail-biter through and through, a very simple film with only two actors (some radio voices and one character in for a very short time) - and it's a technical marvel (unfortunately I didn't see it in 3-D), with absolutely beautiful footage of earth from space and a very realistic sense of the challenges of managing navigation through space and of the ergonomics, the engineering, the physical difficulties, and the very real limitations on human capacity - namely, first of all, oxygen, and 2nd, fuel. Bullock does a fine job - an under-appreciated actress with good comic-dramatic range; the scenes in which she's desperately trying to make radio contact with other craft or earth stations is very fine and haunting. Her back story - a dead child, a workaholic - is a little simplistic, and the screenplay relies pretty heavily on having her speak her thoughts aloud - but maybe there's no other way for us to understand what's going through her mind. I've posted a lot about movies that are just too damned long, and part of the beauty of this one is it knows less is more and comes in at only 90 minutes. Bravo for that.

The Bridges of Madison County, Hostage Edition - Labor Day

The movie Labor Day starts out pretty well, with the voice-over narrator giving the setting, a 7th-grade boy lives alone with his mother, post-divorce, in a small New Hampshire town; the mom, the always-good Kate Winslet, is sorrowful and disturbed and perhaps agoraphobic - emotions Winslet always plays very well. We see them head to a Wal-mart type store where a man emerges from a corner and grabs the young boy; the man, Josh Brolin, is bleeding and obviously in trouble. He forces boy to bring him to mom, where he pressures her to give him a ride. They take the guy - who menacingly sits in back seat with arm draped over young boy - back to their house. He asks for shelter only till nightfall, when he'll make a getaway. They quickly learn that he's an escaped prisoner serving time for murder. As he says, there are 2 sides to every story. No doubt. In fact, there are two sides to this story, because in a matter of hours, or movie minutes, Brolin turns out to be the ideal dad, lover, husband, neighbor - not only a good pal to the young boy, teaching him how to throw a baseball, which real dad never did of course, but a handyman around the house, good auto mechanic, but also smart and sensitive - a terrific cook who soon has them making pastry crust together - and he even strums away on somebody's viola or cello. And of course a great lover - bringing life into Winslet's abandoned soul. In other words: We're now in the midst of Bridges of Madison County, hostage edition. All that said, the movie is actually pretty effective in many ways. The leads are likable and credible, and I found myself rooting for a successful escape together, even though I knew, given the conventions of the genre, that would be impossible. They make some really stupid decisions in planning their escape, and the young boy also pretty much gives away the game in his desperate attempts to relate to his first girlfriend and to maintain ties to estranged dad. In fact, the boy's guilt about the giveaway is the most important element in the film, and I wish director Reitman had done more with that. The biggest flaw by far is the series of flashback scenes telling Winslet's back story - very difficult to follow or discern, probably worked OK in Joyce Maynard's source novel but in this movie they just confuse us and break up the pace. As hostage movies go it's only OK, but there aren't that many romance-hostage movies (though there are plenty about guys who seem evil and horrid on first encounter and turn out to be kind and sensitive, esp to kids and to lonely women - see the recent Mud, e.g.) and it will hold your attention, which is more than many.

More deaths in Venice: Some good reasons to resurrect Don't Look Now

Nicholas Roeg's 1973 Don't Look Now is a little dated of course but still a movie well worth watching for its highlights and for its overall mood of creepiness. Briefly, it's a story (based on a story by Daphne Du Maurier, which maybe I ought to read) about a 30ish husband and wife - Donald Sutherland, looking hilarious today in 70s era window-pane business suits and cravats and abundant hair, and Julie Christie, looking gorgeous as always - whose young daughter drowns; during their mourning, they move to Venice for a winter, as Sutherland works on the restoration of a church, which has been pretty much eaten alive by acidity in the air, as he notes. Christie encounters two British sisters, one of whom is blind and claims to have psychic powers - in fact, within the logic of the movie, she does have psychic powers, as she conjures visions of the dead child, whom she says is warning them to leave Venice. Sutherland also has psychic powers of some sort - a series of warnings that come to him as visions. Sutherland begins to follow a ghostly image whom or which he suspects to be the ghost of the daughter, and he comes to no good end. So, pretty simple ghost story, with a bit of a serial-killer angle thrown in for good measure, but if you don't believe in spirits who will have to suspend your disbelief in order to buy into this plot. Yet even if you don't buy into it, Roeg brings so many great scenes along the way that the film is worth resurrecting: the great scenes of Sutherland pulling his daughter from the pond, Christie's first encounter with the blind sister, her fainting in the restaurant, a very intense and erotic sex scene between Christie and Sutherland far advanced for its day or even for today, the accident in the church, the final encounter with the red-cloaked image, and most of all for the many excellent on-location scenes in a wintry Venice - anyone whose been there will understand the anxiety about getting lost on those beautiful and confusing streets, especially at night. The city looks a little more down-at-heels than it does today, and much less crowded - though granted these are winter scenes under crowd control - all the main tourist sites are avoided and we just see the tiny bridges on the ordinary neighborhoods, not the lovely little passageways but the bustling Grand Canal, all of which in my view are far more beautiful and mysterious than the monumental structures, anyway.