Direct Beam Comms #40

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, TVSeptember 11, 2016September 10, 2016

TV

Atlanta – Grade: B

I’m not quite sure what to make of the new FX series Atlanta, co-written and starring Donald Glover of Community and The Martian. On the one hand, the series is beautifully shot and focuses on something I don’t know any series has focused on before. But I’m just not sure that the story’s there, yet.

In the first two episodes that aired back-to-back last week, we meet Earn Marks (Glover), a 20-something man who’s got a kid but no job and no prospects of one. He’s so down on his luck his parents won’t even let him in the house anymore because he’s always borrowing money. But when Earn learns that his estranged cousin Alfred “Paperboy” (Brian Tyree Henry) is an up and coming rapper with talent, Earn decides that managing Paperboy’s career might just be the thing to break him out of his rut.

Which when the characters were interacting was quite interesting. I think where Atlanta faltered was after the first episode the characters are split up after a shooting where Earn spends the episode in jail waiting to be processed which introduces a bunch of new characters to the story. But I was left wondering, am I supposed to be paying attention to these new characters, or should the focus be on Earn, Paperboy and friend Darius (Keith Stanfield)? It seems to me that if they wanted to separate the group like that, it would’ve probably been better to do a little later in the season. But in doing it in the second episode made me wonder just who was who and what was going on?

I can see Atlanta being one of those series that I like enough to watch a whole season of, but not one that ever totally catches on with me.

Narcos– Season 2, episode 1: Grade: B-

The second season of the Netflix series Narcos became available last week. For whatever reason I got about three quarters of the way through the first season and stopped. I think I just had too many other series to watch at the same time so I “paused” watching Narcos but for whatever reason I’ve so far never gone back even though I’ve tried several times.

Narcos details with the rise of drug kingpin Pablo Escobar (Wagner Moura) who becomes a multimillionaire (billion?) by shipping cocaine from Columbia to the US and the rest of the world while also murdering anyone who gets in his way. Trying to bring Escobar down are the Columbian government and US DEA agents exemplified by Steve Murphy (Boyd Holbrook) and Javier Peña (Pedro Pascal). Whatever moves Pablo makes they try to check, but when Pablo’s organization is much better funded than either the DEA or Columbian government it makes it difficult, if not impossible, to even contain him let alone bring him to true justice.

Narcos isn’t a bad show, it’s just an extremely all right one. Like if they’d take the sex and nudity out of it I could see Narcos as playing as a summer series on NBC or ABC. Maybe with dubbed dialog rather than subtitles for the Spanish parts, but it wouldn’t take too much work to make Narcos work on network TV. And that’s nothing against summer network series that can be very entertaining at times. It’s just that in a world where there’s loads of TV choices many of which are golden and brilliant it’s a shame that Narcos isn’t much better than it is.

Movies

Silicon Cowboys trailer

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1936: Walter Koenig, Pavel Checkov of Star Trek the original series is born
1958: The Blob premiers in theaters
1963: The TV series The Outer Limits premiers
1965: The TV series The Wild Wild West debuts
1965: The TV series Lost in Space premiers
1974: The TV series Planet of the Apes premiers
1993: The TV series SeaQuest DSV premiers

Direct Beam Comms #39

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVSeptember 4, 2016September 6, 2016

Star Trek: The Man Trap

TV

Star Trek – “The Man Trap” – Grade: A-

I had originally intended to write this review as if I were doing it from 1966 as a person who’d never seen Star Trek before and this first episode was my introduction to the series as it was to everyone back then. But it quickly became apparent that this is all but impossible today with 50 years of Star Trek AND sci-fi AND other TV series and movies that have “borrowed” from the series that all exist now beside the original so there’d be no real way to judge that first episode without comparing it to what’s come since.

“The Man Trap” was the first episode of Star Trek that aired back in 1966. However, when NBC originally aired the series they did so out of order so technically though “The Man Trap” was first it’s really the sixth episode of the show.

Here, the starship Enterprise under the command of Captain Kirk (William Shatner) arrives at planet “M–113” to give checkups to a group of scientists living there, one of which is an old flame of Doctor McCoy (DeForest Kelley). But when they arrive on this sun-scotched planet one of the crew-members is killed and the weird murders that leave red splotches all over the victims faces moves from the planet to the Enterprise. The crew quickly surmise that whatever’s doing the killings can shape-shift into looking like anything, meaning that ANYONE abroad the Enterprise might be the murderer.

I was surprised just how good “The Man Trap” was. My association with Star Trek the original series has always been a brief one. Over the years I’d try and watch it but for whatever reason could never get into the show and would bail after an episode or so. It didn’t help matters that when I was really into all things Star Trek in the 1990s the original series was airing exclusively on The Sci-Fi Channel which we didn’t get in my area so I never had a chance to watch the show then. And when episodes of Star Trek began re-airing on TV with new special effects* where I lived episodes aired at 11:30 at night which pre-DVR was a bit too late for me.

It doesn’t help matters that when I think of Star Trek for whatever reason I think of the later years ones of wild west gunfights and toga wearing Starfleet officers. So to say I was surprised at how good “The Man Trap” was is not an understatement.

Even 50 years later the story, abet for a few holes, stands up pretty well. The acting is top notch and the characters here are already well defined. Even if everyone has a tendency of spelling out things about each other out loud, which I suppose was handy for those who’d never seen the series before, but to me who knows just about everything about the show and its characters seemed a little wooden. But I really can’t hold things like that against the show.

I was surprised just how much “The Man Trap” played out like horror/sci-fi than just sci-fi like I was expecting. When the M–113 creature attacks it’s pretty disturbing. And the body count at the end of the show is like four crew members, all with those weird suction cup marks on their faces.

The cast too is much more diverse than I was expecting. Even by today’s standards with Uhura (Nichelle Nichols), Sulu (George Takei) and a multitude of background cast members of color Star Trek back in 1966 must have been really diverse.

I was also surprised just how deep the story goes — the creature of M–113 is described as the last of its kind, so there is an attempt at trying to save it even though it’s killed a lot of people. And we even get a bit of backstory of the character of Doctor McCoy showing that everyone, even those living in the 23rd century, have lives outside of Starfleet.

Looking back at the show, the depth of “The Man Trap” today is very surprising considering some of the series it was up against at the time including shows like My Three Sons, Bewitched, The Time Tunnel and Lost in Space to name a few. I’m not sure how shows like My Three Sons or The Time Tunnel have aged the last half century, but I’m guessing not as well as Star Trek has over those years.

*One thing of note — the episode I watched was one with many of the special effects like the Enterprise in orbit and planet M–113 from above that were redone about 10 years ago. I don’t feel like these new special effects changed the nature of the show but I kind’a wish there was still an option to watch the show originally as how it aired back in 1966. But I guess you can’t have everything.

The Night Of – Grade: B+

What’s been billed as the series finale of the eight episode HBO limited-series The Night Of aired last Sunday and I was mostly happy with it. While the series might not be one of the great HBO shows ever, it was pretty good none-the-less.

The Night Of follows Nasir ‘Naz’ Khan (Riz Ahmed), a college student who’s arrested and charged with homicide after he awoke in a woman’s home to find her brutally murdered in the bedroom upstairs. Naz honestly can’t remember what happened that night and it’s up to his lawyers Jack Stone (John Turturro) and Chandra Kapoor (Amara Karan) to, not so much prove his innocence as to find flaws in the prosecution’s case and keep him out of prison for life. The prosecution, led by DA Helen Weiss (Jeannie Berlin) along with Detective Box (Bill Camp) follow all the leads they uncover with all point squarely at Naz as the killer.

But where The Night Of differs from procedural series like Law and Order is that I never got the sense that Weiss or Box were that personally involved in the case. They simply follow the evidence that seems to have collected around Naz. The problem in their approach, which I’d guess is a problem with real-life prosecutors like Weiss, is that she bends some of the evidence to point more towards Naz that it probably really does and in one case coaches a witness beforehand in the direction of his testimony without actually coaching him.

Which brings up a point — a lot of what we take as “evidence” is really subjective facts that can be bent in many different ways.

In jail awaiting trial Naz meets Freddy (Michael Kenneth Williams) a con who sees something in Naz and takes him under his wing. Unfortunately, under Freddy’s wing brings Naz to being an accomplice to a prison murder and smuggler of drugs. If Naz was clean on the outside, he’s dirty on the inside.

Which all builds the question — if the evidence that Weiss and Box are finding is strong but not absolute that Naz is guilty, but Naz turns out to be a guy who can watch someone else bleed to death in the prison showers, could be also be the guy who did commit the murder he’s accused of?

Think of The Night Of as equal parts Oz, The Wire and the network procedural lawyer show by way of The Wire. The series shows all parts of the criminal justice system where coming into contact with it can be something that ruin’s a life. Guilty or not, Naz pre-jail at the start of the series and where he ends up at the end finds him as a very different person.

And, much like in The Wire there’s a story thread that runs through The Night Of that goes something like those cops and lawyers who do the best and excel at their jobs are the ones who don’t care and are just going through the motions. And those who really care, like Stone or Kapoor, are left as wrecks by the end of the series.

I think if The Night Of had one problem is that while the story is told over the course of several months — the murder happens in November and Naz’s trial in February — it never felt like that much time was passing. Naz goes from college kid to hardened prisoner very quickly, a bit too quickly to be believable. Then again conditions at Riker’s Island where Naz is held are pretty deplorable, so I guess anything’s possible.

If this season of The Night Of is really it I think that would be a shame. I liked all the characters in it a lot and would like to see where everyone, especially the wonderful Bill Camp as Detective Box, ends up after the trial.

Movies

In the Heart of the Sea – Grade: A-

I’m not sure what I was expecting from the movie In the Heart of the Sea, but what the movie actually was wasn’t what I thought it would be.

In the Heart of the Sea tells the story of the doomed crew of the 19th century whaling ship the Essex, them being attacked by a colossal whale which sank their ship and the surviving crewmen being set adrift in small whaling boats in the middle of the Pacific Ocean. The trailers for In the Heart of the Sea made the movie out to be the story of Moby Dick, of which the story of the Essex was an inspiration of. However, the actual parts leading up to the whale attack compromise just about half the movie. The other half of In the Heart of the Sea is about the men’s survival in the great “desert” of the Pacific where they slowly run out of food and water all the while being cooked alive by the relentless Sun.

Directed by Ron Howard who knows a thing or two about survival movies where a group of people are stranded and far from home without any prospects of rescue with the brilliant Apollo 13. In the Heart of the Sea plays out much like that earlier film but since it’s set in the late 1800s it means that when things go wrong the men of the Essex are on their own and can only count on their wits to get them back to Massachusetts.

I do wonder if the trailers for the movie had concentrated on this part of the story rather than the whale attack, which is only really minutes of screen time, if more people would’ve gone to see In the Heart of the Sea than they did since the film’s quite good?

My only quibble with it is of the casting of Chris Hemsworth as the lead of Owen Chase here. Hemsworth is fine in the movie but he usually plays heroic figures who you know will make the right decision and will still be around at the end of the movie. And I’m not sure that the character of Chase really needs to be played by one of today’s best action stars. It’s why Tom Hanks is so great in Apollo 13, he’s the last guy you’d suspect playing that role.

I would’ve much rather seen someone like Cillian Murphy, who co-stars in the movie, in the role of Chase and Hemsworth in Murphy’s role. I think that bit of casting against type would’ve made the good In the Heart of the Sea even better and more believable.

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1907: Fay Wray of King Kong and The Most Dangerous Game is born
1966: Star Trek (The Original Series) premiers
1966: The Time Tunnel debuts
1973: The TV series Star Trek (The Animated Series) premiers
1975: The animated series Return to the Planet of the Apes debuts
1993: The TV series The X-Files premiers

2016/17 TV Preview

Feature, TVSeptember 2, 2016August 26, 2016

New series

It’s been a long while since I can remember the last time I was as disinterested in the crop of new TV series that are set to start debuting on network TV this fall. Usually, there’s at least something I can look forward to, some series I can get excited about. But honestly this year looks like it’s going to be mostly a bust on the networks.

All that I’m looking forward to on network TV this fall is the comedy The Good Place on NBC starring Ted Danson and Kristen Bell about a woman that died and accidentally went to “the good place” rather than the hot one and Star Trek: Discovery on CBS. Though this sixth Trek TV series is set to only air once on CBS before it moves to their streaming service.

And there’s a few new shows I’m looking forward to on cable and streaming too, one of which is Dirk Gently’s Holistic Detective Agency is on BBC America and is based on the Douglas Adams (The Hitchhikers Guide to the Galaxy) book of the same name. This new TV version of the Adams novel is being written and produced by Max Landis (Chronicle). On Netflix is Marvel’s Luke Cage that’s a sort’a spin-off of the Jessica Jones show about a man, Cage (Mike Colter) who’s super-strong with super-tough skin that brushes aside bullets who decides to clean up the streets of New York.

Unfortunately, there’s a lot more to scoff at on network TV next fall than to look forward to.

If the last few years the networks have been trying to turn as many come books into TV series as they could, then this year it’s all about turning once popular movies into TV series, or rebooting once popular past TV series into modern ones. Which I have no problem with, except that nothing I’ve seen from any of these new shows makes me thing that the networks have anything other than a bunch of creative duds on their hands.

Based on the movie of the same name, Time after Time on ABC features author H.G. Wells (Freddie Stroma) building a time machine in 1893 and traveling to present day 2016 New York City to find Jack the Ripper who’s also travelled to New York City in the same time machine. Convenient, ain’t it? If the movie version was a love story between Wells and a modern day woman, then the TV version seems to be setting the two up as a male/female investigative duo ala Castle, Blindspot, The Blacklist, etc., etc., etc.

Emerald City on NBC is the latest attempt at a network to create a TV version of the Wizard of Oz story that various channels have been trying to do since at least 2002. This version of the Oz story has Dorothy being swept off to a totally reimagined and harder version of Oz that seems to be a mashup of Game of Thrones and Once Upon a Time.

Fox has two shows based on movies set to premier this fall; The Exorcist and Lethal Weapon.

The Exorcist looks to be essentially the story of the novel/movie about a girl possessed by a demon — with a little bit of things like The Conjuring thrown in for good measure. My one question about The Exorcist is if the entire season will be about the girl’s possession, or if each episode will be about some other evil forces possessing some other poor souls? It doesn’t help matters that The Exorcist is the second “possession” series on TV with Outcast also about demonic forces already on Starz.

The TV version of Lethal Weapon seems to take the zanier elements of the movie from Martin Riggs (Clayne Crawford) having a death wish which makes him practically fearless and his older, world-weary partner Roger Murtaugh (Damon Wayans Sr.) who has to deal with Riggs and is “too old for this @#$%.” But somehow I’d imagine that if it does take the zanier elements of the Riggs character that it’s not going to use the movie version of him being suicidal and his substance abuse problems. You know, all the stuff that made him seem human and not some cartoon character.

Frequency on The CW, takes the elements of the 2000 movie where someone from the present, here Raimy Sullivan (Peyton List), is able to talk with their father from 20 years in the past via a ham radio. And because she’s able to send information to her father in the past she’s able to change events in her present. But if other time travel movies/TV series have taught us anything, it’s that meddling in the past will being about unintended consequences in the present/future. Time After Time should take note!

On CBS there’s a series based on the movie Training Day and one on the 1980s TV series MacGyver. Much like with the movie, the TV version of Training Day follows a young, idealistic police officer (Drew Van Acker) sent to spy on a seasoned, up to no good, “King Kong ain’t got !@#$ on me” detective (Bill Paxton).

MacGyver (Lucas Till) is a younger take on the character but with the overall concept of the original series — solving crimes/rescuing people/stopping terrorists by making whatever’s needed with what’s on hand to get the job done — intact. I was a huge fan of the original MacGyver as a kid, but somehow I doubt that this middle-aged man is going to be a fan of this new version of the show.

Returning series

If new series this year look crummy at least there’s a slew of great and interesting shows to look forward to.

Out of the gate early this fall are ABC comedies The Goldbergs, black-ish and Fresh off the Boat. While black-ish and Fresh off the Boat get a lot of good press for their diversity and somewhat controversial storylines, I’m more concerned with whether or not the shows are funny or not and these are.

The Goldbergs and black-ish return September 21 and Fresh off the Boat October 11.

I was a huge fan of the Starz series Ash vs Evil Dead right up until the very end of the final episode of the first season when things kind’a fell off the rails. That series deals with sad-sack Ash Williams (Bruce Campbell) who accidentally released evil spirits from the bound in human skin Book of the Dead. And in Ash vs Evil Dead it’s up to Ash and his two friends Pablo (Ray Santiago) and Kelly (Dana DeLorenzo) to figure out a way to undo what he’s done.

The show was everything I’d ever wanted in an Evil Dead TV series with over-the-top action, comedy and lots of gore. But that ending, it was so out of tone with what had come the previous nine episodes that it really frustrated me. That being said, I’m ready for loads more wise-cracking Ash in a second season of Ash vs Evil Dead which starts back up September 23. As long as they do some ‘splaining about that ending I’ll be back for more gore!

Existing alongside the current film franchises, the animated Star Wars Rebels on Disney XD tells the story of what was going on in the galaxy when the evil Empire was consolidating power and trying to wipe a nascent rebellion out. The stories of Rebels can be surprisingly deep and emotional for a series we already know the end to. Hint — none of the characters of Rebels show up in Star Wars Episode IV A New Hope so… Star Wars Rebels returns September 24.

The British series Black Mirror is available on Netflix October 11. This anthology series that originally debuted back in 2001 that’s a bit like The Twilight Zone but updated for modern day originally didn’t have a series run here in the US until Netflix picked it up a few years ago. And boy am I glad they did — this show about what happens when technology and all its uses goes wrong is consistently one of the best things on TV. Black Mirror can be so intense that I’ve yet to be able to go back and watch old episodes again even though I loved them the first time around.

The alterna-history The Man in the High Castle returns to Amazon Prime December 16. I was surprised as to just how interesting a show High Castle was since I’d never really been interested in any of the other original Prime series. Here, it’s an early 1960s where Germany and Japan won the second world war and now occupy most of the planet, the US included. These two superpowers are engaging in a Cold War of sorts with what’s left of the US set to be the battleground for World War III. Except that events in the first season of High Castle reveal that this may just be one reality of many, one where the allies won the war (ours) and others where Germany or the Soviets won it all.

Another sci-fi series The Expanse returns to SyFy this January. Based on the book series Leviathan Wakes, The Expanse takes place in a future where mankind has colonized most of the solar system and has brought along all of the problems we have here on the Earth like racism, war, disease, hunger… But all this pales in comparison to what starts happening when something’s released on an asteroid outpost that threatens to consume all of humanity.

Also sometime in January a fourth season of the PBS series Sherlock is set to return with, I’m assuming, four new episodes. The series has been on since 2011 and has so far aired a paltry 13 episodes of TV. They may be “paltry” but they’re also darn good!

And the show I’m looking forward to most returning next season is Better Call Saul on AMC, the third series about how lawyer Jimmy McGill (Bob Odenkirk) goes from a guy trying to go good to someone who’d have people killed if it would earn him any money which is set to debut sometime early next year.

Direct Beam Comms #38

Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, TVAugust 28, 2016August 30, 2016

TV

Halt and Catch Fire – Grade: A

The highly underrated AMC series Halt and Catch Fire returned last Tuesday with two new episodes. This third season finds the characters in a very different place than in the second. Donna, Cameron and Gordon (Kerry Bishé, Makenzie Davis and Scoot McNairy respectively) have moved their families and company Mutiny from Texas to San Francisco to be closer to computer technology and capital. While Joe MacMillion (Lee Pace), a serial incubator/stealer/taker of good ideas has created a company of his own that sells antivirus software, their motto is “Are You Safe?”, and has become the focus of attention he always aspired to.

I don’t know there’s ever been a TV series quite like Halt and Catch Fire that depicts what it’s like to create something from scratch. For Donna and Cameron who created their company Mutiny which started with online games but transitioned to a message board, there’s no roadmap for what they’re doing. Everything they do is brand new and they’re creating new and exciting places for people to begin meeting up online.

For Joe things are a bit different. He stole the core technology of his company from Gordon and has turned this nugget of an idea into a multimillion dollar empire. Joe’s real strength is of seeing the value of other’s ideas. Be it IBM with their PC that he set out to clone in the first season or Mutiny which he wanted take over in the second. Joe can see the future but he doesn’t have the skills necessary to create something himself of value. And instead of wanting to work with people to create that thing Joe will try and buy/steal whatever this is.

In Halt and Catch Fire, both Mutiny and MacMillion Utilities realize that once you have a company in a highly competitive market there’s no stopping. Everyday you have to think of new and different ways to engage with your users. If it’s Mutiny they’re creating new spaces and ways for people to connect. If you’re MacMillion you start creating software for home PCs when before your main customers were corporate users.

I think that’s interesting. For the people of Mutiny, especially, they think that what they do next will take them to a higher level of success and make life easier. And while they do become more and more successful their lives become harder and harder because there’s always someone else looking to do what they do or other, larger companies looking to take them out.

For Joe, though, success is different. He’s much more comfortable in the role as a powerful businessman. He’s been a guru in search of worshipers since the first season and with MacMillion Utilities and his role as a Steve Jobs-ish frontman he’s finally found his calling.

The Tick – Grade: B-

Last week, during their “pilot season,” Amazon debuted the first episode of several series, one of which is The Tick based on the comic series of the same name by Ben Edlund. I feel bad that I’m not more familiar with The Tick than I am. I never read the comic book — issues of which were quite popular and therefor pricy when I was collecting and out of my reach — and was exactly the wrong age to watch the 1990s cartoon series too.

I did watch the short-lived nine episode live-action Fox TV series, though, and enjoyed that a great deal. So I come to the new Amazon Tick pilot at a different angle than most who I suppose are either super-fans of the cult-character or totally unaware of him.

In the Amazon series, a superhero arrived on the Earth in 1908 and ever since the world has been populated by them some of which are pastiches of popular DC and Marvel characters. But instead of being heroic and serious like the Marvel and DC movies, The Tick is more slightly goofy. Which is one problem I had with the show; its tone.

The Tick is a series where one moment a character can accidentally trip over their own feet and almost do a prat fall but the next a super villain is literally executing the members of rival team on the street of a city. The show was all over the place at times from silly to horrific. And it’s not like some new creative team here has swooped in and changed around the tone of the series either. The Tick was created by writer/artist Ben Edlund who also wrote the pilot to the Amazon version too.

This is Edlund’s version from start to finish but feels unbalanced.

This first episode establishes all the characters from the Tick (Peter Serafinowicz) to Arthur (Griffin Newman) and sets up their relationship of becoming superhero/sidekick. Much of the plot is of Arthur trying to prove that a long dead super villain named “The Terror” (Jackie Earle Haley) is still alive and the Tick being the only person who wants to help him in his quest.

There’s also a bit here where Arthur’s sanity is questioned with him having issues as a kid where his blue nightlight voiced by Serafinowicz used to talk to him and Arthur now being on medication because of certain issues. So is the Tick real, or in his head? Except he’s obviously real since the Tick does battle with some baddies in the episode and leave a smoking crater in his wake.

I’m honestly interested in seeing where The Tick goes from here and hope that the issues I had with its tone get worked out if the series does get picked up for a full season run. Which we won’t know for a while and even if it does get picked up we won’t see the next episode for another year or so.

The Tunnel – Grade: B-

The UK import TV series The Tunnel ended its 10 episode run on PBS last week. The first season of The Tunnel was interesting enough but I think it was just too long for what story it had to tell.

The Tunnel follows to detectives, one from the UK Karl Roebuck (Stephen Dillane) and one from France Elise Wassermann (Clémence Poésy) who are investigating a double murder committed in the Chunnel exactly half way between the UK and France. But the case quickly spirals out of control as this double murder is actually the first “lesson” given by the “Truth Terrorist” (TT) who’s mission is to bring enlightenment to the masses on all the problems of the world by doing things like killing all the residents of a nursing home, kidnapping a bus full of schoolchildren and locking a war hero inside a meat locker to freeze to death. All of which is broadcast live on the internet.

Think a flashier and longer version of Se7en and you’re close to what The Tunnel is. All of which makes for some interesting TV, but as TT’s crimes get more complex and larger in scale the series also becomes less and less believable.

Like if TT is really terrorizing two countries, wouldn’t the UK and France assign more than two detectives to the case? And if TT really is constantly traveling between the two countries, wouldn’t this eventually lead him to being caught since surly there are records kept somewhere of who’s traveling where on what day? And, much like the crimes of Animal Kingdom, TT’s crimes become so complex and convoluted that just one slip-up along the way of 1,000 little details that need to be completed perfectly to not get caught stretch the bounds of believability and break off into some fantastical realm.

It doesn’t help matters that the big “twist” that’s comes at the end of the season, series like The Tunnel always have a twist, is apparent right from the first episode. Like, not to spoil things, but in a TV series the only reason time is dedicated to anything is because that thing is important. And once you realize this there’s something that one character does that’s obvious that they’ve been communicating with TT the whole time.

Honestly, I think that if The Tunnel had been four episodes rather than 10 I would have enjoyed it much more. Instead, it seems like much of the latter half of The Tunnel series is filler and could have easily been axed.

I did greatly enjoy the first half of The Tunnel and loved the Wassermann and Roebuck characters a lot. They have a unique chemistry I’ve never seen before — he’s a dedicated husband and father of a handful of kids yet is a womanizer and Wassermann is a woman who’s so dedicated to policing that she’s almost robotic in her manner yet wants to act more “normal.”

It’s because of those two characters I stuck with the show until the end, not because of what wild and wacky thing that TT was going to do on this weeks’ episode.

Movies

Triple 9 – Grade: B+

I’d been meaning to check out the movie Triple 9 ever since I’d heard of it earlier this year but waited a while to check it out on digital even though it’s been out a few weeks. This movie is about a group of crooks made up partly of cops and partly of ex-special forces soldiers who take on high risk robberies in Atlanta. But when they’re faced with their toughest challenge yet of stealing something from the Department of Homeland Security they figure the only way they’ll have enough time to pull off the job is by killing a fellow officer so that a “999,” or “officer down” code goes out therefor tying up the rest of the police giving them enough time to escape. But things get a bit complicated as the Russian mob who’re calling the shots on this criminal crew gets antsy and while killing a fellow officer is theoretically doable, in practice it’s much more difficult.

I’d been a fan of Triple 9 director John Hillcoat ever since I saw his movie The Proposition. To me, Hillcoat’s films are marked with an overt kind of brutalism not seen in mainstream Hollywood — see his movie based on the book The Road to see what I mean. So him doing Triple 9 had me interested since I wondered if that same kind of aesthetic would be present here or not? And honestly, it’s not. But I’m not sure that’s such a bad thing. Triple 9 is much more of a mainstream action movie, sort’a Heat mixed with Training Day and I’m not sure things like people being stomped to death, something that happens in The Proposition, would’ve flown in Triple 9.

Still, Triple 9 is an intense movie with a bit of heightened realism of street cops operating on the bad streets of Atlanta where the bad guys are as likely to shoot back when they feel threatened no matter what the consequences than they are to stand by and be disrespected.

And the story of Triple 9 flows very well. The crew, including Michael Atwood (Chiwetel Ejiofor), Marcus Belmont (Anthony Mackie), Gabe Welch (Aaron Paul) and Russell Welch (Norman Reedus) are in a bad place with the Russians since at any time matriarch leader Irina Vlaslov (Kate Winslet) can turn on them sending the crew to jail forever. So they end up placing themselves into precarious positions trying for just one more job in order to be let go of their obligations. Of which this high risk Homeland Security job seems to be their ticket out.

Enter Chris Allen (Casey Affleck) a veteran cop assigned as Belmont’s partner and the one they select as their prime 999 candidate. But when Allen saves Belmont’s life during a drug raid things get complicated.

The more I think of it, Triple 9 really is the spiritual successor to Heat except that whereas the criminals of Heat lead by Robert De Niro are suave Armani suit wearing crooks, the ones of Triple 9 are more street-thug is who won’t hesitate to maim or kill innocent bystanders if they get in their way or are needed to prove a point.

However, Triple 9 falls apart in a big way at the end. It’s not so much that the story’s no good, but it’s almost like the filmmakers ran out of time. For 110 minutes the story flows perfectly, but in the last 10 it’s a race to close out a story that had been going so well at that point. Literally the movie ends with one character in the backseat of a car where there’s an exchange of gunfire to close out the movie where I’m not sure that character would have ever been able to get to that car in the first place. Why do things happen this way? I can only imagine it was because that’s the only way it could have happened in the short time left the filmmakers had to tell it.

I wonder how much better of a movie Triple 9 could have been, one of the great crime films perhaps right up there with the likes of The Way of the Gun if it would have had more time to develop the ending.

This week in pop-culture history

1968: Kristen Cloke, Shane Vansen of Space: Above and Beyond is born
1985: The TV series The Twilight Zone premiers
1987: The TV series Captain Power and the Soldiers of the Future premiers

Direct Beam Comms #37

Comic Books, Direct Beam Comms, Feature, Movies, Review, TVAugust 21, 2016August 30, 2016

TV

Halt and Catch Fire

The third season of one of Halt and Catch Fire is set to debut this Tuesday (8/23) with two episodes beginning at 9(E) on AMC. The series about the personal computer explosion in the early 1980s, then the first attempts at networking and the internet, has consistently been one of the best things on TV even though the ratings for Halt and Catch Fire have been dismal. Just that AMC has so far given us three seasons of this series is a bloody miracle that should be celebrated ever year like Christmas and New Years.

The A Word – Grade: B+

This Sundance Channel series that’s an import from the UK follows an extended Scottish family as they come to terms with the youngest son’s autism diagnosis. The A Word stars Morven Christie (Twenty Twelve) and Lee Ingleby (Master and Commander: The Far Side of the World) as the boy’s parents and Christopher Eccleston (Doctor Who) as his grandfather.

I enjoyed this series a great deal, especially the dynamics within the Hughes family. All this felt very real to me. Where I think the series went a little askew for my tastes was that while it was doing all these clever bits with the family story, it was also checking all the typical “boxes” that need to be checked in a family drama. There’s adultery, ‘check’, first sexual experience, ‘check’, the grandpa who at times says inappropriate things…

Still, that’s a minor quibble at best and I genuinely liked The A Word from start to finish.

Comics

Garth Ennis Presents: Battle Classics Vol 2: FIGHTING MANN

The collected comic Garth Ennis Presents: Battle Classics Vol 2: FIGHTING MANN is set to be released this Tuesday (8/23). The first series simply titled Garth Ennis’ – Battle Classics is a collection of comics writer Ennis’ favorite comic stories from the British 1970s comic series called Battle Picture Weekly. And it was wonderful, though decades years old those stories stand the test of time and were gripping and disturbing and amazing all at once. This second edition collects two new stories, one set during the Vietnam War and the other WWII and is something I’ve been dying to read ever since it was announced ages ago.

Movies

The Nice Guys (2016) – Grade: B+

I was really excited when I first heard about Shane Black’s movie The Nice Guys. In the last few years Black has written and directed Iron Man 3 and it was recently announced that he’ll be writing and directing the upcoming Doc Savage movie too. But he’s also written one of the best buddy-cop movies of all time, Lethal Weapon and wrote and directed one of my favorite movies of all time too Kiss Kiss Bang Bang.

So to say that I was interested in The Nice Guys would be an understatement. The minute it was available on digital I bought and watched it. And while there are some very good moments in The Nice Guys, I’m not sure the movie holds together enough as a whole to be considered as good as anything Black’s done in the last few years.

Set in a late 1970s smog shrouded LA, The Nice Guys stars Russell Crowe and Ryan Gosling as Jackson Healy and Holland March respectively. Healy is a bruiser who makes his living giving lumps to those who deserve it and March is an ex-cop private detective who’s decent enough at his job when he can stay away from the booze. Healy is hired to give March a beating in order to chase him off of a case of a missing girl, but afterwards ends up hiring him to look for the same girl he originally was there to warn him off when Healy finds himself in over his head.

What follows are Healy and March chasing down leads, March getting hilariously drunk a few times and the two along with March’s daughter Holly (Angourie Rice) getting in and out of various underworld scrapes in hysterical fashion.

I think what threw me with The Nice Guys is that I never quite understood the plot of the movie — or maybe it was because elements of the plot were so odd that things never really made sense. Part of the film deals with the porn industry and a film in particular that threatens to bring down Detroit and the auto industry. But hiding the evidence in a porno seemed so far fetched and unbelievable it stretched the bounds a bit of the movie for me.

Even if the evidence were in a porno who would anyone ever believe it since it’s in a porno!?

Still, other than the case Healy and March are working on The Nice Guys is pretty great. I loved Crows and Gosling’s characters, especially Gosling who’s playing a version of a detective I don’t think I’ve ever seen before. He doesn’t play the role in a stereotypical “heroic” detective way. He screams like a baby when he’s hurt and cries, and when he’s drunk makes big mistakes.

And time and time again Healy and March’s bad luck keeps them out of trouble, onto the next clue and stumbling towards success.

Reportedly The Nice Guys was originally set to be the pilot of a proposed TV series before Black reworked the script in order for it to be a feature film and I can see that. The movie essentially ends with the setup to the next story which I’d love to see.

The Arrival trailer

“We need to make sure they understand the difference between a weapon and a tool.”

The Reading & Watch List

This week in pop-culture history

1970: River Phoenix of Explorers and Indiana Jones and the Last Crusade is born
1986: Night of the Creeps premiers in theaters
1993: The TV series The Adventures of Brisco County Jr. premiers