TRUE DETECTIVE 1.06 - "HAUNTED HOUSES"

“Haunted Houses” is by necessity a filling-in-the-blanks episode.  It is focused mostly on the 2002 interval that we know will not advance the primary mystery in any huge ways.  And even on a character level, it’s mostly filling in the blanks that most of us have guessed at already regarding Maggie’s role in the dissolution of the Hart/Cohle partnership.  An episode featuring the implosion of Marty’s two most important relationships should probably feel more seismic than this, except that we’ve known it was coming since the beginning. That focus on Maggie in the “present” also adds to the feeling that this episode, while doing some interesting things on a character level, is deflating some of the momentum that had started to build around the main storyline.

Maggie is brought in for questioning, but the detectives aren’t recording her and act a lot chummier than they do with their fellow officers.  Even in the early going, it’s clear that she is more defensive of Rust than her ex, which all but confirms what happened between them even before she seduces him into a thoroughly unsexy 45 seconds of coitus.  Of course, she’s not doing it because McConaughey is so dreamy, but as a drastic bridge-burning measure to ensure that the flat circle of Marty begging forgiveness, shaping up a little, then going back to old ways, slipping home unannounced and secretly washing only the clothes he’s wearing.  I’ve never been married and had an affair going on the side, but even I can recognize that this is some sloppy work on his part.

It’s almost as if he were distracted by something…but what?

Marty’s latest side dish is the (formerly) underage prostitute they interviewed in the Lange case, who he coincidentally runs into at the same time Rust is looking up the Reverend they spoke to around the same time.  While the Rev has fallen away from the Lord and off the wagon, she’s straightened out a bit, and has even picked up a bit of the metaphysical bayou philosophizing bug that seems to be infecting pretty much everyone in TD’s Louisiana.  This was kind of eye-rolling to be honest (I don’t mind when it comes from Rust, because that’s an established, dominant aspect of his character and McConaughey sells the soul-weariness behind it so well), but I don’t think it’s the stuff about God creating us as perfect in our imperfections that seals the deal with Marty.  It’s when she tells him exactly what he has not been hearing of late – that he is a good man.  He desperately wants to believe that, not that it’s particularly true.  He was even desperate enough to try to solicit it from Rust at one point, which could not possibly be a wrong-er tree up which to be barking.

A Man’s Sentence Construction charges a Man’s Grammatical Stricture.

But we know him well enough, and have seen so much of these events through his point of view that it’s easy enough to view his bad behavior as, in Rust’s words, “an expression of weakness.”  I’ve been talking about Marty almost exclusively in terms of his faults, but I don’t loathe him the way I sometimes did proper TV antiheroes like Tony Soprano, Walter White or Vic Macky.  I don’t really have to strain myself to relate to issues with alcohol and a tendency for self-sabotage, so I actually still find Marty generally sympathetic, even when he’s doing bad.  He doesn’t operate out of malice, vicious beating on the frat boys that took advantage of his daughter aside – that’s not exactly a noble moment, but no father is going to handle that situation with an enormous deal of grace.  His failings stem from issues with women and life in general (eloquently summed up by Maggie as “never knowing what he should want”) that cause him to lash out in destructive ways.  And he eats pasta like a slob.

OMG THE YELLOW KING LOOKS LIKE HE HAS SPAGHETTI

 ALL OVER HIS FACE MARTY IS THE KILLER I HAVE SOLVED

 ALL YOUR MYSTEREIES TRUE DETECTIVE GAME OVER

But other than the pasta thing, we knew all that about Marty already.  The most revealing moment for him this episode was probably how he turns sullen and evasive when the interviewers start talking about Reverend Tuttle’s overdose and the break-ins at his house in 2010.  While Marty has not been in contact with Cohle since their dust-up in the parking lot, I would not be surprised to learn that Rust isn’t the only one who had trouble forgetting this case in the interim.  In any case there’s clearly more to that part of the story that we’ll learn shortly.

Rust, meanwhile, is at his Rust-iest throughout “Haunted Houses”.  It’s the second week in a row that someone mentions wanting to hurt him just….well, just because he’s him.  He doesn’t seem put out by it either time, so he must just get it constantly, which makes sense really.  It’s hard to say which is the more thoroughly self-parodic exchange; the “pure gibberish” of the alligator in muddy waters metaphor, or calmly telling the homicidal mother that “if you get the opportunity, you should kill yourself.”  That poor nutjob, she probably doesn’t realize that he offers the same advice to high schoolers, relatives at thanksgiving, parking lot attendants and the doctor who gives him prostate exams.

They don’t come out and say it, but what do you THINK

 happened to this guy between last episode and this one?

But subtlety is not necessarily True Detective’s forte.  It’s crazy dense, which makes it easy to miss a ton of things with a relatively quick look like this, but lines like “without me, there is no you” and shots like the final, lingering look at the taillight still broken from the fight a decade earlier aren’t trying to obfuscate their message about the duality of the main characters or lingering of unhealed wounds. Okay, some of the metafictional aspects that folks have been talking up on the message boards recently are not particularly foregrounded, but in truth those are some of the least interesting aspects of the show to me.  Metafiction doesn’t fit well in such a deadly serious setting in my opinion, so for the most part, I’d prefer it if Pizzolatto kept the focus on delivering the murder mystery and character aspects of the show.

Which “Haunted Houses” continues to do quite well, to be fair, even if it’s not as jaw-dropping as the last couple weeks have been.  The brawl between Hart and Cohle is not going to supplant the projects raid as the show’s signature action scene, but it is rough and really well shot without being too showy. Hopefully we’re just about through with the 2002 section and next week will focus mainly on the present, where we can ramp up to a proper conclusion.  Although maybe I shouldn’t be getting my hopes up too far for a conventionally satisfying resolution to the mystery.  Another none-too-subtle statement from Rust has told us that “this is a world where nothing gets solved,” after all.  I don’t know that Cohle can live with that, but I think I can.  As long as they don’t pull some bullshit twist where Maggie or Marty has been working with the cult all along or something.  If that happens, you can expect the finale recap to consist solely of that picture of Johnny Cash flipping off the camera.

TRUE DETECTIVE 1.05 - "THE SECRET FATE OF ALL LIFE"

On a scene by scene basis, “The Secret Fate Of All Life” is as grim and unsettling as any other episode of True Detective.  There’s the normal murder and nihilistic grumblings, plus kids locked in crates and increasingly disturbing Hart family drama, and even the detectives’ vanquishing of Ledoux and closing of the Lang case is undercut by our knowledge that the triumph is based on a narrative that is false not only in the details, but in the assumption that it means the end of the killings.  But I also found the episode tremendously encouraging in terms of the metagame TD’s been playing with its framing structure.  I enjoy some structural experimentation as much as the next pretentious internet writer-type, but I am glad that the 1995 segment has closed out and the 2012 storyline will not play out entirely within the confines of the interviews, leading up to the dramatic confession that one of the main guys has been the killer all along, which is about the only twist possible if they were to remain in that restrictive environment.

Which is not to say I have hated the interview aspect.  Harrelson and McConaughey have done a great job carrying it, and it’s actually at its most effective this week, as it begins to contrast in earnest the falsehoods the detectives are telling the interviewers with the reality of how the showdown at Ledoux’s cook site played out.  This keeps us a little off balance, when the framing device could easily rob all tension from the proceedings.  Between this and last week’s masterful closing sequence, it’s to Pizzolato and Fukunaga’s credit that they have managed to make it work as effectively as a thriller as they have in spite of our foreknowledge that the only developed characters will make it out of the dangerous situations of 1995 unscathed.

Of course, we also build dread as they continually fail 

to see the disappointment of The Phantom Menace

  looming in front of them

No, my main issue with the interviews has been the nagging suspicion that they were building up to that twist I mentioned.  Now, maybe you like that kind of thing, and more power to you if so.  But me, I’m a simple kind of man.  I like butter in my ass, movement in my plots, genuine uncertainty in my suspense, and my narratives to play fair with the audience and make a modicum of goddamn sense in hindsight.  That’s just me. And it means that I generally disdain twist endings.  Oh, I love me a twist, if it’s setting up a conclusion and not constituting the conclusion in itself (so without getting into specifics: yay, Fight Club and Psycho!  Boo, Usual Suspects and Shyamalan!).  There are twist endings that work, but they’re few and far between, and generally fit better onto shorter narratives, in my opinion.  Particularly in the internet age, hinging a longform narrative on a shocker ending is a recipe for disappointment and discontent.

“How could I commit the sin of  bringing a child into

 a world that contains the final season of LOST?”

What this means is that I am happy that we will be getting a proper third act in 2012, and that both our leads are effectively exonerated as suspects.  I know the big “reveal” of the episode is that the interviewers like Cohle as the culprit in the new murders, but we and he have been on to that from the jump, and you don’t put those cards on the table in episode 5 if it’s supposed to be the shocking finale to the series.  And Marty, well he’s got issues with anger and women, but he’s not the type to go in for the occult, or to have metapyschoses or paraphillic love maps in his repertoire.  “Do you know the good years when you’re in them?  Or do you just wait for them until you get ass cancer, and realize that they came and went?” is not the sort of sentiment I’d expect to hear from a man who carries out sadistic, ritualistic serial murder.  It’s a great line, but I’ll court controversy and say this for the serial killers: I don’t think they are prone to doubts about whether they’re making the most of their days or really leaving their mark on the world.

Diem: Pretty Well Carpe‘d.

Plus Marty would never allow his daughters to be hurt, and while we see that none of his family is the most recent victim in 2012, it’s looking more and more like Audrey is growing into precisely the sort of troubled, probably substance-addled woman that the cult targets.  Really I base this more on the transitional shot of the tiara she threw in the tree fading to resemble one of their wicker symbols than anything, but it makes me nervous all the same.  Symbolism has been kind of a thing with this show, after all. Like for example Ledoux’s (who, along with his partner, is creepy and philosophical to such an extreme degree that even a Debbie Downer like Cohle snaps at him to shut the fuck up already) talk about the black stars (and note the asterisks on the windows framing Cohle as he investigates the abandoned school) and time as a flat circle, which leaves an impression on Rust.  To hear he/they tell it, this means that we are locked into repeating the same events over and over again, our lives an endless, repetitive cycle.  Or perhaps an endlessly downward spiral, such as the Ledoux’s flat, circular tattoo suggests. Now, this is a bunch of BS, if you ask me.  My own understanding of the 4^th dimensional shit Rust spouts at the table indicate that time certainly exists, it’s just not as linear and immutable as it seems to us.  But TV show doesn’t necessarily have to conform to my own views of reality, and we are seeing the characters repeating the same scenes again and again.  Marty and Rust give the same, fabricated account of the “shootout” to the review board in 1995 as they are giving again in 2012.  Rust is again pouring over cold case files and examining woven statuettes in creepy abandoned buildings (not to mention visiting the site where Lang was found) in 2002, just as he did in 1995.  Maggie takes Marty back, despite the cycle of infidelity and neglect that has come to define their marriage (all while the girls take “one more lap” around the roller rink).  She’s also the one who insists on setting up Cohle repeatedly, despite his obvious defects as a mate.  But of course the big one is that these murders will continue as long as there is a horrific Yellow King out there.

And with HBO’s current slate of original programming, that will be quite awhile

I won’t try to rehash who the Yellow King is, or pretend I knew about this before reading this link in another review (TL; DR version:  The Yellow King is a sinister figure who rules over Carcossa, a place of madness and despair that has also been referenced multiple times by Ledoux and other cult-adjacent figures).  It seems that in this context, he will be the leader of the cult, or leaders, if the mantle has been passed in the interim between 95 and the “present” day.  And as I type that, I’m starting to wonder if in the end Cohle might not be faced with the decision whether to embrace the demon Ledoux’s partner references in the opening and become the Yellow King himself, or to remain the titular detective?  Nah, that’d be pretty crazy.  The type of twist that could only fit in a place of utter madness and despair.

TRUE DETECTIVE 1.04 - "WHO GOES THERE?"

This week’s opening is jarring, so much that I double-checked to make sure they didn’t actually air a new episode during the Super Bowl last week that I had just missed completely. But they didn’t, apparently, so after ending with a cliffhanger last week of the detectives closing in on Reggie LaDoux and a hinted-at gun battle, this one jumps back to show how they got to that point. It’s disorienting, all the more so because the opening scene alone leaps the case progress forward more than the prior 3 episodes combined.  All of a sudden we know that there is some cult operating in the swamps and LaDoux is affiliated with them somehow, unless the spiral tattoo thing could somehow be a coincidence, but no one really believes in those in a detective story, right?

Meanwhile, in the framing segments, Woody is getting a little shirty with the interviewers, leading me (and possibly him) to suspect that perhaps they are more interested in dirt on him than pinning the copycat killings on Cohle.  In the 90s, he’s getting Dear John letters from his wife and having a truly nasty blow-up at his mistress after she strikes back for his horrid treatment of her.  This is not exactly a shocking development, but it’s good in how it forces him to lean harder on his always-strained relationship with his partner.   And has him getting more and more unhinged in scenes like the one where he interrogates Tyrone the meth-dealer at gunpoint.

Couldn’t find a picture, but this is close enough

But despite prominently featuring the implosion of Hart’s marriage, this is Cohle’s episode, overall.  Hart spends the back half of the episode ineffectually trailing after his partner, who we find out he has a go-box with an AK-47, freaking hand grenades, and a pint of Jameson of the variety my peers have colloquially dubbed a “McNulty”.  He dives right into the last one, but Chekov would tell us it’s only a matter of time before the others get their turn.  He’s also got history with the biker gang that LaDoux supplies with meth, and a plan for a rogue undercover operation that Hart is surprisingly quick to get on board with, considering he’s nominally the “straight-laced” one of the duo.  And these bikers make the Sons Of Anarchy look positively cuddly.  They’re unstable, violent racists with about half of a not-very-good plan  (the bikers are much less believable as cops than Rust is as a tweaker criminal) to rip off some drug dealers, and they want “Crash” to help with in order to prove his bonafides.

And that “plan” turns True Detective into a more conventional, action-oriented cop show than it has been til now, in the episode’s show-stopping final setpiece.  It’s sort of baffling that the third episode ended with the promise of one gunfight and then this one delivers an entirely different one, but I’m not complaining because as much as I’ve enjoyed True Detective as a tone poem for a few episodes, there’s nothing wrong with putting some actual story in your story from time to time, and holy hell, this sequence is an all-timer.  The sustained tracking shot following McConaughey through the projects is as intense a sequence as we will likely see on TV this year, outside of the 9^th episode of Game Of Thrones anyway.  And it’s this tense, and cackling with fractured, druggy energy, despite our knowing that both detectives will make it to 2012 relatively unscathed.  Which is no mean feat.

Spoilery image from the finale

It may not be the gunfight I was looking for, but it was even better than I had hoped for.  Cary Fukunaga shoots the living hell out of the sequence in one long take; there might be a hidden edit when it tracks up to the helicopter briefly, but I didn’t catch it.  I have so far neglected to speak of this unique nature of True Detective, in that every episode is written by Nic Pizzolatto and directed by Fukunaga.  This gives it a steadiness of authorial voice that is atypical for a TV show, and to its credit.  Even if I find that voice to border on pretension and hard-boiled caricature at times. The visuals similarly have provided a consistency to the proceedings, and along with the performances really elevate material that may not be game-changing on the page.  The grimy, oppressive feel and simmering tension of the gang milieus recalls Fukunaga’s 2009 debut film Sin Nombre (highly recommended, by the way), and as mentioned that raid was as breathless a sequence as you’ll find on big screen or small.  The man should be able to write his own ticket after this (he should’ve after Nombre, really) and I’ll be look forward to whatever he decides to tackle next.

In the meantime, I’ll also be looking forward to the next episode of True Detective.  While in some ways we are further from a conclusion than we were at the beginning of the hour, I’m down for a few more digressions like this if they are this well-produced, and if McConaughey is going to maintain the level of commitment he brings to his character’s spiral out of control.  Given the steady hands on the writing and directing side, and the show’s limited episode run, this is not a series that I’m worried about stumbling on the landing.  It might be weird to have such a despairing show bring out the optimist in me, but things have only been getting better and better thus far.  If they can stay at this level for 4 more weeks, I’ll be awfully pleased.

“”Pleased’ is what feeble minds call it when they’re able to block

 out the stark meaningless of conscious existence for a

 fleeting moment.  Sounds pretty awful to me.” – Rust’s Daily Greeting

TRUE DETECTIVE 1.03 - "THE LOCKED ROOM"

As True Detective moves into its second act, its central mystery has come into focus, and it is not who killed the girl in the opening, but what went down between Cohle and Hart to end their partnership.  The guys are still investigating the murder, but the case is not progressing as a typical drawing-room type mystery.  Rust spends sleepless nights working the case, but he’s not puzzling over the creepy stick figures, or the cryptic symbol on the back of the corpse.  Those are the type of mysterious, distinctive “clues” we are accustomed to watching TV detectives follow from plot point to plot point like bread crumbs.  But in TD, those most outlandish aspects of the crime things are largely ignored while the detectives pore over other unsolved deaths looking for a connection and doggedly, methodically try to find anyone who knew the victim well.  This is probably more realistic, but that doesn’t mean it’s more interesting to watch necessarily.   But as I mentioned last week, the limited series nature of this show makes this intriguing rather than frustrating to me.  On a network or ongoing series I’d probably view this with a skeptical eye and assume that they were reaching for “new” mysteries to distract us and put off having to resolve the show’s primary dramatic engine as long as possible.

Why yes, I am still nursing wounds from the last 

mystery-driven show to hurt me. Thanks for asking.

But the murder is not show’s primary dramatic engine, the relationships are.  While I enjoy a well-crafted mystery as much as the next chap, this has been a deliberate commitment on the show’s part from the start (and interview segments have promised that we’re on our way to at least a gunfight and arrest, which makes it easier).  Just look at what it calls itself.  How many serial killer movies/shows – Kiss The Girls, The Bone Collector, The Following, even good ones like Seven or Psycho – have names that reference the killer or his M.O.?  But this show is all about the detectives, as the title bears out.  So we aren’t getting any creepy glimpses of the killer at work in his occult lair, or sequences showing him stalking or abducting another victim, to provide a “ticking clock” sort of suspense as to whether the heroes will piece things together in time to save the next girl.  There’s nothing wrong with such plots or devices (it worked pretty well for Silence Of The Lambs), but this show is simply not a thriller in its heart.  It’s a character study and philosophical rumination, and so how much you like it will probably depend on how seriously you are able to take large doses of McConaughey’s despairing sage schtick.

That schtick wearing its thinnest so far in “The Locked Room”.  His circular statement, featured so prominently in the promos for the show, about Bad Men being needed to “keep the other Bad Men from the door,” is sophomoric in a way that I was hoping the show would acknowledge, but I’m not sure it realizes how corny it sounds.  And the episode-ending monologue that leads up to “and like a lot of dreams…there’s a monster at the end of it…” is going for portentous, but I can’t get over the weird assumptions underlying it.  Is this an accepted fact about dreams?  Does everyone else tend to have Godzilla step on the school at the end of the “test you didn’t study for” dream?  Or have sex dreams where Alison Brie morphs into a Swamp Thing right as you finish?  Maybe I’m the strange one here, but when I have a straight-up, classical nightmare, the monster is usually there the whole time, not just popping up for a cameo at the end.

“And then I realize Rodan’s not wearing pants either, then I wake up.” – Most dreams, apparently

 But even if Cohle is starting to wear on me a bit (and it’s not like he didn’t tell the detectives he does this to people in the last episode), Woody Harrelson proved perfectly capable of carrying the episode.  Hart is unraveling very quickly, as his insecurities about women are sabotaging both his marriage and his extramarital fling.  Yes, there is a ritualistic murder to deal with, and a looming occult task force to fend off, but he is ultimately more concerned that his partner had the presumption to mow his lawn.  Of course, these things all feed into each other.  If Rust and the task force weren’t literally and metaphorically threatening to usurp his mowing duties, would he be so crazed with jealousy as to assault his girlfriend’s date?

Maybe he would.  He’s feeling beset from all sides, right from the opening at the revival tent.  Cohle has some predictably, amusingly pessimistic things to say about religion, and Hart can’t help but get riled even though he knows his partner well enough by now to expect it.  His objection doesn’t seem to arise from any genuine religious conviction, but rather an instinctual defense of tradition and order, concepts which Rust dismisses out of hand.  But maintaining surfaces, be it a lawn or a vague Christian identity, is important to Marty.  He’s not comfortable with what he might find if he looked inward (hence the Bad Men question), so he ties up as much of his self-worth as he can manage in maintaining appearances.  And he doesn’t like his partner because he’s given up on pretending he’s anything but a burned out shell of a man.

Though its the burned out shell of this man, 

so let’s not go shedding all our tears for him.

The episode ends on a strange sort of cliffhanger.  We’ve been told the detectives are heading for a firearm fracas in the woods, and we close on an ominous shot of a machete-wielding, half-naked man in a gas mask.  There is not any suspense about our heroes coming out alive, but a feeling of dread pervades the sequence nonetheless.  These guys may have survived what’s coming, but it sure doesn’t look like Rust made it through intact.  And while Marty seemed to have it pretty together in 2012, what we’re seeing in 1995 gives plenty of cause to distrust his surfaces.  It’s odd, because “The Locked Room” may not be a traditionally suspenseful pot-boiler (like a Breaking Bad), or a wildly entertaining hour of television (as I would call, say, any given episode of Justified or Sherlock), but I do want to keep going with it.  To see, if not what happens next, then what lies a little deeper within these disturbed characters.

TRUE DETECTIVE 1.01 - "THE LONG BRIGHT DARK"

HBO has decided to try to make dramatic anthology series a thing again, and has put considerable resources into making their initial foray a winner.  It’s got the expected top notch production values, cinematic feel, and a couple of genuine movie stars in Mathew McConaughey and Woody Harrelson.  They’re both terrific here, McConaughey in particular, who is having the damnedest career resurgence in his middle age.  His character is potentially problematic, prone to grim philosophical pronouncements that should come out as hard-boiled cliché.  But he finds a weariness that sidesteps by removing any sense that he thinks this world-weariness makes him a tough guy.  He’s unimpressed by the whole of the world, and that includes his own negativity towards it.  It’s a subtle gradation of performance, but it’s enough to take Rustin Cohle from eye-rolling to interesting for me.

Harrelson is the more grounded of the pair, but it is hinted that this is because he is less honest with himself.  His Hart has a home life that seems to be mostly cordoned off from his work, whereas Cohle only has a home in the strictest sense that he pays rent for a roof over a bare mattress.  And the show’s flashback structure (the men are being interviewed about a 1995 case in 2012) reveals that the two have gone in very different directions. Hart seems to be roughly the same guy, having progressed up the ladder a bit further, but still holding it together.  Whereas Cohle is a disheveled drunk, still sharp in the mind but clearly far off the job and run down in appearance.  

This device allows for shifting perspectives that keep the episode interesting as it moves at a pace that would charitably be called deliberate, but could also be called slow without sacrificing accuracy.  These portions of the show are more compelling than baroque, Hannibal-lite murder tableau, because it’s here that we see the results of the different paths these men are on.  For as antithetical as their appearances are in the 2012 segments, and despite the episode ending by positioning Cohle as a suspect for the present-day murder, it’s the buttoned-down Hart that sweats and stumbles more under questioning.  Cohle meanwhile is perfectly comfortable demanding to smoke and drink his way through his interview, despite knowing all along that it’s actually an interrogation

Also keepings things interesting is the supporting cast, including Michelle Monaghan, Steve the Drunk from Deadwood, Lester and Brother Mouzone from The Wire, the One-Niner leader from Sons Of Anarchy, and the Kevin Dunn of Luck, Veep, and approximately 24,000 other supporting roles. They’re all solid, but it’s definitely the leads and their chemistry that carry the show.  Sure, there’s a mystery in the ritualistic murder the guys are investigating, but it doesn’t seem to be a particularly twisty or novel one.  The series, at least in the premiere episode, is more interested in exploring the psyches of those detectives than the killer they’re chasing, and while there is a reveal at the end of the episode about the killer having supposedly been captured 17 years prior to the new murder, I’m not looking forward to finding out more about that as much as I am to just see McConaughey’s rub his character’s abundant collection of raw nerves up against the seedy sides of Louisiana.

TD may not have a great deal to add to the already overcrowded serial killer genre, but it has atmosphere to spare, some genuine philosophical issues on its mind, and terrific performances at its center.  That it’s a contained, 8 episode story with no need to spin wheels to extend its lifespan to fit a traditional TV structure is also encouraging.  The 13 episode cable drama season is just as arbitrary, and nearly as protracted as the traditional network 24, and seeing places like HBO and Netflix experimenting with different lengths and release schedules suggests that story is being allowed to dictate form to a greater extent, rather than vice versa.  Also, McConaughey orders booze by brand name instead of just asking for “beer”, which is one of those things that us movie geeks appreciate.  Yes, this should do nicely to ease the wait til Game Of Thrones comes back in April.

TRUE DETECTIVE 1.02 - "SEEING THINGS"

Last week’s True Detective premiere was primarily concerned with introducing us to the desolate mindscape of McConaughey’s Rustin Cohle.  This week does provide us some more of his depressing, violent origin story, and new wrinkles about his psychedelic-flashback souvenirs from his time as a narco mole.  That’s a touch that should be silly and over-the-top, but is handled with such matter-of-fact beauty that I once again go with it.  But “Seeing Things” is much more about digging further into Martin Hart’s psyche, and all the things that he doesn’t (or simply won’t) see there.  Cohle is definitely still the defining force of the show’s personality, but he wears his damage on his sleeve, in both 1995 and 2012.  His partner, meanwhile, has reserves of anger and ugliness that he does his best to keep hidden even from himself, and so the show has to take its time peeling back his surfaces.

“I think part of Rust’s problem was there was things he needed, that he couldn’t admit to,” Hart offers to the interviewing detectives.  But I have this theory that if you want someone to tell you what their own biggest problem is, you could do worse than to point at someone else and ask them what they suppose that guy’s deal is.  Hart clearly has desires and resentments that he won’t acknowledge.  He is jealous of how his young girlfriend (who it must be said, has one of the most ri-goddamn-diculous bodies in even the storied history of pay cable T&A) spends her time away from him, but has to couch it in paternal protectiveness.  He will sit in the car while his partner roughs up some hillbillies for directions, but offer neither help nor criticism.  And he refuses to meet his wife’s complaints head on, using the job and her brittle relationship with her mother to deflect the argument away from anything he doesn’t want to talk about.

To be fair, she did sleep with Chook  Chutney

He also has reserves of anger hidden very close to the good ol’ boy surface, as he explodes at Cohle’s mild observation that he isn’t hiding the affair well.  He even tries to warp that confrontation into a defense of his wife’s honor, not that Rust is entertaining that fiction, or remotely afraid of a middle-aged detective after what we learn he’s done before.  He tells the 2012 detectives “I know who I am. And after all these years, there’s a victory in that.”  But he doesn’t look victorious, with the cigarette constantly smoldering and that wispy wig and droopy moustache, drinking alone on nights off from working presumably at a bar.  

“Whoa, why would you just assume that?”

Marty still does not seem to know who he is in 2012, as even in hindsight he justifies his drinking and adultery as for the good of the family, allowing him to exorcise some of those generic cop show demons and be a better overall family man when he does get around to coming home (to his daughters setting up gang-rape tableaus with their Barbies, in the episode’s most unsettling beat).  I think he actually does believe that, or at least did in 1995; we haven’t heard any mention of his current family situation in those interview segments.  The girls would presumably be grown and gone in any case, but at this point I’d hazard a guess that while he may be married, it’s not to Michelle Monaghan.  

I feel like I should probably mention the actual case progress at some point, but there isn’t a ton going on there.  The guys get threatened with losing the case to the new occult task force, but mostly just do basic legwork.  What they find out about the victim could probably have been guessed by anyone who has seen a fair amount of serial killer fiction and/or CSI:  childhood defined by poverty and abuse, drug problems, fell into prostitution, met a mysterious new man shortly before being killed.  What makes True Detective distinctive thus far is not the content of those beats, but the stylistic way they are depicted: the quiet despair of the rural settings, the subtle hallucinatory touches, and the simmering tension between the two men walking these familiar beats.  I am only mildly interested in whether they catch the real killer in the “present day”, but I’ll tune in next week to see how these guys manage to continue to share those long car rides through the bayou back in the 90’s (apropos of nothing, I’m eagerly waiting for the moment when Woody turns on the radio to relieve one of those awkward silences and is greeting with an endless, period-appropriate loop of Alanis Morrissette’s “You Oughta Know”).

Never forget how this man trampled our collective heart, America

BEST MOVIES OF 2013

Standard Disclaimer that I did not see all the movies I should’ve to make such a list.  In particular I wish I had made it to Rush, Frances Ha, The Act Of Killing, All Is Lost and Dallas Buyer’s Club, but I have a day job and all.

The ordering of these things is always fairly arbitrary (particularly in the case of my no. 10 pick, which could have just as easily been 4 or 1 for that matter), but I’m not going to do any of the little cheats and load the thing up with ties and honorable mentions or ballooning it out to 15 or 20.  It’s a Top 10 list, so here are 10 movies in list form.

10.  12 Years A Slave

      

The placement of this movie is entirely arbitrary.  I can’t compare 12 Years directly to other movies with their 3 Act structure and traditional character arcs, as it is not a conventional dramatic story.  It is an endurance test, seeking to illuminate how terrible humanity’s ability to endure can be.  I could say that it’s well acted (particularly by Chiwetel Eijiofor and Lupita Nyong’o), and that the cinematography was accomplished, or praise it in other technical ways.  But I can’t say that I liked it, even the way I like other downbeat movies.  

I shuffled home from the theater with my head hanging low, contemplating man’s inhumanity to man and my own capacity for tolerating atrocity.  Which probably means that Steve McQueen accomplished exactly what he set out to.  Whether it is a “good movie” or not, this is a towering piece of work, scarring in both a visceral and emotional sense.  Everyone should probably see it, even though I have trouble recommending it wholeheartedly, because it is definitely going to hurt.

See It For:  Putting a finer point on your white guilt

Trendspotting:  Rich White People Get Away With Everything, “True Story”, Period Piece

9.  IRON MAN 3

       Marvel films get flack for being product, churned out by a rigid studio system that drowns out the voice of any particular filmmaker.  But Shane Black’s voice is so sympatico with RDJ’s depiction of Tony Stark as a self-obssessed, fast-talking playboy with a heart of gold (well, at least gold trim) that Iron Man 3 comes out as distinctly a Black film, with all the dock shootouts, witty banter, circuitous villain plans, and arbitrary Christmas settings that entails. 

I really should be sick of RDJ’s schtick by now, since it hasn’t changed much since the 2006 original, and he’s even spread it to another franchise with the middling Sherlock Holmeses.  But Black brings out the best in that schtick, to the point when even an extended interlude with a pint-sized sidekick can’t stop IM3 from being an utter blast.  It’s funny enough to be a straight up comedy, with time for action beats for the previously-underused Don Cheadle and Gwyneth Paltrow, and possibly the best Marvel villain turn this side of Tom Hiddleston’s Loki by Ben Kingsley.

See It For:  The marvelous “barrel of monkeys” sequence.

Trendspotting:  Marvel Bitchslapping Diminishing Returns, Near Future Sci-fi

 8.  THE WOLF OF WALL STREET

      Wolf  is a tremendously energetic, angry film to be coming from a septuagenarian.  But surprise, surprise, Martin Scorcese is better than the rest of us, and his collaboration with Leo Dicaprio seems to be keeping him engaged and young in spirit.  Wolf has issues; it is a scathing comedic satire with the bloated runtime of a historical epic, it doesn’t even use that time to get very deep into what makes its primary character tick beyond being a, well, everything addict, and seems to think that the audience will be bored by the details of Jordan’s Belfort’s biggest crimes (when we eat that type of confidence scheme stuff up).

But it has even more considerable strengths, in its performances, editing, and the fact that it’s a scathing comedic satire that is really, really funny.  Dicaprio is having the time of his life playing the least inhibited douchebag who ever lived, and reveals a facility for physical comedy that I never would’ve guessed at.  A 3 hour runtime may not have been truly necessary to tell this story, but with Marty and Leo at the helm, that time flies by.

See It For:  The best Popeye reference that was or ever shall be

Trendspotting: Rich White People Get Away With Everything, “True Story”, Period Piece

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7.  INSIDE LLEWYN DAVIS

      The Coen Brothers don’t know how to make a bad movie (I remain our message board’s most frequent defender of the maligned screwball Intolerable Cruelty).  Inside Llewyn Davis is not their best, or particularly eventful if I were to describe the plot.  But it is a sad, funny (OUTER….SPAAAAACE), profound meditation on loss, doubt, and the pains of falling just short of greatness. 

Llewyn Davis is recognizably Coen in nature – prickly, hard luck protagonist, underplayed humor, blustery supporting turn from John Goodman, conclusion involving retribution of questionably divine origin.  But it’s also less talky, and less overtly comedic than most of their non-crime thriller output.  It’s practically a musical, chock full of musical performances, but the last time they toed that line the bros produced O Brother, Where Art Thou?, which remains one of the best films of this millennium.  This one isn’t quite as great as all that, but it’s still one of the best films of the year, sporting a bonafide star turn from Oscar Isaacs.  Also there’s cats, and a wonderful song about space.

See It For: The amazing soundtrack performed by the actual stars and co-produced by the legendary T. Bone Burnett

Trendspotting:  Period Piece

6.  CAPTAIN PHILLIPS

           

Paul Greengrass has carved out a very particular niche for himself, as the purveyor films that have a way of making even well-executed, adult-oriented thrillers look like “movies” – lightweight, phony, and manipulative.  But the truth is that Greengrass himself is a master manipulator, walking audiences through complex scenarios and forcing them to sweat and cry and feel empathy for parties that they would much rather write off as one-dimensional villains.

Captain Phillips is built around two towering performances.  It’s no surprise that Tom Hanks is fantastic in the titular role – “fantastic” is practically his blood type.  But newcomer Barkad Abdi is a revelation as the leader of the desperadoes that take Phillips and his ship hostage.  The two men create a shaky, unexpected but real bond as the situation spirals further and further out of control, until the last-act arrival of the SEALS feels less like a fist-pumping cavalry charge than an implacable Hand Of God that you wish the “bad guys” could be spared from.  See it, but maybe double your dosage of heart medicine beforehand.

See It For:  The airless final 15 minutes.

Trendspotting:  Limited Cast, “True Story”

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5.  THOR: THE DARK WORLD

      There were plenty more important, more emotional, more “artistic” movies that came out this year, but Thor: The Dark World was easily the best time I had at the movies.  A lifelong Marvel partisan, I never cared for Thor growing up, finding him too silly and outright dumb (in both concept and personality) to fit in even with the colorful ranks of the Avengers.  But Chris Hemsworth’s insanely charismatic performance made a convert of me, finding just the right notes of sincerity and humor to make the Odinson come alive as a simple man rather than a simpleton.  The rest of the cast, talented thespians all, take their cues from him and find a way to have an absolute ball with the goofy material without winking at the camera.

Thor 2 is a big, friendly golden retriever of a movie that slobbers all over you in its eagerness to please.  You liked Loki, right?  Sure you did, and we’ll bend over backwards to give him an important supporting role!  Want to see Stringer Bell stab a spaceship to death?  Done!  Here’s some Kat Dennings comedy to go with it!  More Warriors Three?  Okay!  And Space Elves with Implosion grenades!  The action finale borders on incoherent in how hard it tries to make sure you never get bored (Wait! We also have an  Ice Monster!).  And I never did.  I just sat there with a big dumb grin on my face for 2 straight hours.

See It For:  Loki.  Duh.

Trendspotting:  Marvel bitch-slapping diminishing returns

4.  BEFORE MIDNIGHT

         We live in the age where everything is or is at least hoping to become a trilogy, but Richard Linklater (/Ethan Hawke/Julie Delpy)’s Before series is unlike any of the fantasy or young adult “epics” that have been polluting the multiplexes for several years.  It’s more akin to Michael Apted’s Seven Up documentary series, providing periodic portraits of a grand, touching, intelligent romance between young, not-so-young and middle-aged partners who love, above all else, to talk to each other.   

Hawke and Delpy’s performances are so lived-in, so natural, that the effect of Before Midnight is like watching your best friends fight.  Only good.  They have all the affection, resentment, intimacy and ennui of a real marriage, and Linklater has the honesty to delve into the way that you can’t really, truly loathe someone unless you really, truly love them too.  This is the apex of one of the greatest, realest romances ever put to film, and manages to maintain the series streak of ambiguous endings while putting a different, less optimistic spin on it.

See It For: Hawke and Delpy’s incredibly real, volatile chemistry

Trendspotting:  Limited Cast

3. Spring Breakers

          I never liked Harmony Korine, finding his films to be grossly unpleasant, self-indulgent messes to be endured rather than enjoyed.  And none of them were as indulgent as Spring Breakers, a bizarre, ungodly mutant of a film, unlike anything I saw this year, or ever really.  Part crime movie, part hedonist romp, part dreamy fable, part oddball romance, part cantankerous screed about what’s wrong with “kids today”.  Wholly original and completely unpredictable.  It plays like someone, for some reason, decided to let the scumbag founder of Girls Gone Wild write a self-aggrandizing screenplay mythologizing his smut as the ultimate expression of the American Dream, then for some reason turned around and hired Michael Mann to shoot it, then for some other reason gave Terrence Malick final cut.

And then there’s Alien.  James Franco has been dancing around the line of self-parody for awhile now, but this is one of the strangest, most compelling characters and performances of the young century.  And it’s the center of an insane, beautiful work of something that feels too grubby to call genius, but too singular to call anything else.

See It For:  James Franco(‘s sheeyit)

Trendspotting:  Rich White People Get Away With Everything

2. GRAVITY

          Gravity is a truly phenomenal movie experience, one of the few times where shelling out extra $ for Imax and 3D were not just worth it, but absolutely essential.  The best roller coaster I’ve ever been on (it took an hour for my stomach to fully settle afterward), and just about the best theater experience I’ve ever had.  Clooney and Bullock are cast precisely, perfectly to type.  A barebones script with exactly what we need and nothing we don’t.  A effects thrill ride without a nuclear bomb or alien portal in sight, that scrambles your innards and gets you out in a tight 90 minutes, they don’t make them like this anymore, but then they never really did anyway.  A visceral experience unlike any I’ve ever had, Gravity makes the case for the continuing viability of the big screen in a world where bigger and bigger spectacle is increasingly ported to smaller and smaller TVs, tablets, wristwatches, etc.

See It For:  The best representation of the disorienting axis-lessness of space ever brought to the screen

Trendspotting:  Near Future Sci-fi, Limited cast

1.  HER

      Spike Jonze is one of America’s underappreciated geniuses, possibly because his early triumphs (Being John Malkovich, Adaptation) are rare cases where the director is overshadowed by the writer in auteur terms, and/or maybe due to his association with the Jackass crew.  But Her should change that.  An incredible piece of low key scifi world-building, the film also boasts a small but insanely talented cast.  Joaquin Phoenix’s quietly wounded lead performance, Amy Adams topping off a simply extraordinary year with a remarkably warm and genuine performance (including doing her feisty best to save Man Of Steel from iteslf and a glammed up, scorching turn in American Hustle that is 180 degrees from her mousy, affectionate work here), and absolutely wonderful voice work from Scarlett Johansson.  It’s beggars belief to learn that she was brought in as a replacement in post-production and never actually interacted with Phoenix, but she makes an operating system into not just a fully believable, dimensional character, but one charming enough to anchor a movie romance without a face.

What is most surprising and wonderful about the movie is how conventionally that romance plays out, despite the inherent ridiculousness of the “Guy Falls In Love With His Phone” conceit.  I went in with a vague worry that the movie would turn out to be a simplistic “we all need to unplug and really talk to each other” parable.  What I loved about Her is that while it does aver the paramount importance human connection, it does so while celebrating technology as creating new ways for people to connect rather than an impediment.  The film is funny, but it never treats the central relationship as a joke.  Samantha, despite originating as lines of code, is a fully intelligent being with a personality that is much, much realer and deeper than “Siri with a sexy voice.”  What Jonze seems to intuitively understand is that for as glued to our screens as we can be these days, the most popular and important apps and sites (be it Twitter, Okcupid, or CHUD.com) are built around allowing us greater interaction and access to each other.  Looking around today’s world, it occurs that the bulk of our collective technological will seems to be aimed less at eliminating poverty or disease than loneliness.  Jonze finds that completely understandable, and even kind of beautiful.

See It For:  Scarlett Johansson.  As absurd as the premise of this movie sounds, I dare you not to fall a little in love with her disembodied voice along with Joaquin.

Trendspotting:  Near Future Sci-fi, Limited Cast