Going Into "Deep Cover"

Orlando Bloom, Bryce Dallas Howard, and Nick Mohammed are three actors that I've had some trouble with.  It's not that they're bad actors, but they're actors who haven't always had the best material, resulting in some less-than-stellar performances in sub-par roles.  The prospect of them starring in an action comedy together wasn't necessarily a deterrent, but it did give me pause.  So was the premise, where the three of them play aspiring improv comedians who are recruited to play buyers in a police sting operation.  I tend to find pretentious hammy actor characters in comedies grating.  This is why "Deep Cover" was pretty low on my "To Watch" list for a couple of months, but I'm glad that I finally caught up with it.    

"Deep Cover" is a British production, directed by Tom Kingsley, and written by two British and two American screenwriters.  Kat (Howard), Marlon (Bloom) and Hugh (Mohammed) are all participants in the same London improv class.  Once promising comedian Kat teaches the group, Marlon is a struggling actor whose biggest role has been in an embarrassing commercial, and Hugh is a lonely IT worker just trying to gain some social skills and confidence.  They're approached by DI Billings (Sean Bean) to work undercover on a small operation, but their decision to play badass criminal characters inadvertently puts them into contact with dealers and operators higher and higher up the chain, including middleman Fly (Paddy Considine), his boss Metcalfe (Ian McShane), and enforcer Shosh (Sonoya Mizuno).  Soon Kat, Marlon, and Hugh, are pretending to be Bonnie, Roach, and The Squire, while getting involved in criminal dealings with London mobsters, and being hunted down by another pair of cops, DI Dawes (Ben Ashenden) and DS Beverley (Alexander Owen).

The last thing I was expecting from "Deep Cover" was a well-written, well-plotted script, but that's exactly what I got.  After seeing so many lazily put-together action comedies over the past few years, it was such a nice change to have one where the story supported the farce.  There are lots of twists and curveballs thrown at the audience, and the story is genuinely unpredictable.  The pacing is also very well controlled, with none of the scenes going on too long or the jokes being overplayed.  You can tell that there probably was some improv with the dialogue, such as a scene where Kat lists all the drugs she's tried, or one where Hugh has to do cocaine, or the whole body disposal situation, but it never gets into unwieldy, Judd Apatow territory.  There's also minimal cringe or embarrassment humor, and no fixation on sophomoric content, unlike too many American comedies I could name.  

The leads are all great.  Bloom's Marlon is the only one who qualifies as a pretentious hammy actor character, but he's unsuccessful and insecure, and an awful lot of fun to watch.  The other two are normal human beings who just happen to enjoy improv.  It helps that all three turn out to be pretty winning underdogs, who are smart, good in a crisis, and play off of each other well.  The line delivery is great, the slapstick lands well, and I'm sure the film can sustain plenty of rewatches.  And it felt good to watch these actors show that they do have solid comedy chops, and can turn in great performances, given the chance.  Mohammed's found a good niche for himself over the past few years as a character actor, but Bloom and Howard have been floundering for a while with crummier projects like "Argylle" and "Gran Turismo."  If they want to stick around in comedy circles for a while, I'd be all for it.         

As for "Deep Cover," it's going on the short list of modern adult comedies that I really enjoy, along with "Game Night" and "Barb and Star."  I hope all the talent involved don't wait too long to make me laugh again.

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Rewatching "American Cinema"

I've always liked documentaries about movies and television, and I feel like being a nerd about media was part of my fandom DNA from early on.  One of the earliest ones that stuck with me was the 1995 "American Cinema" series, an ambitious ten-part PBS program that was designed to be part of an educational course.  

The main part of the series consists of ten hour-long episodes on topics like "The Studio System," and "Film in the Television Age," each with an introduction by John Lithgow and narration from an array of different actors.  There were also a few shorter supplementary episodes intended for classroom use.  My local PBS stations ran marathons of the series a few times, but the two episodes I kept stumbling across were "The Film School Generation" and "The Edge of Hollywood."  The first is about the rise of Francis Ford Coppola, Steven Spielberg, George Lucas, and their cohort in the 1960s and 1970s.  The second is about independent American cinema in the late 1980s and early 1990s, including films from Spike Lee, Quentin Tarantino, and the Coen brothers.  

I recently got a chance to finally watch the whole "American Cinema" series from start to finish, and I found it well worth my time.  It was impossible to cover all of the history of American moviemaking in the allotted time, but I found "American Cinema" a worthy attempt.  There's some variance in quality from episode to episode, but all feature good interviews from historians, working directors, and other Hollywood players.  There are also lots and lots of classic film clips that it must have been a monumental effort to licence.  Five of the episodes are focused on the history of American cinema, looking at the development of the studios, movie stars, and some of the major changes affecting the industry.  The other five are about the movies themselves, specifically a handful of genres that had their genesis in Hollywood - the western, the film noir, and the romantic comedy.  The opening episode is entirely devoted to the "Hollywood style," where Martin Scorsese and Sydney Pollack, among others, try to define what made Hollywood films stand out from the crowd.  

With the benefit of hindsight thirty years later, it's fascinating to see the choices and delineations made by "American Cinema" that don't match up with modern expectations.  There are episodes that spotlight directors who came out of the early television ecosystem, and the "movie brats" who came up from films schools, but the term "New Hollywood" hadn't been popularized yet, and Peter Biskind's Easy Riders, Raging Bulls wouldn't be published for a few more years.  "Combat films" get a whole episode, but there's barely any mention of musicals or horror or animation.  African-American cinema, LGBT cinema, and outsider cinema are all lumped together in the one episode on independent cinema.  

Clearly a lot of thought and care went into the series, however, and despite some of the dodgy calls on what was included and what wasn't, I still found the presentations valuable.  Information in episodes like "The Star" may no longer be relevant to 2020s Hollywood, as it compares the careers of Golden Age stars like Joan Crawford and the more modern Julia Roberts.  However, I found the discussion made for a fantastic time capsule for the brief era where movie stars were real players in the movie business, and had a major say in what got made.  Many of the interviews are very prescient, such as Robert Altman predicting the death of physical film in favor of "electronic" media.  

Because I am easily swayed by nostalgia, I was frequently delighted with the chance to see directors like Scorsese and Spielberg as they were at the height of their powers thirty years ago, departed old masters like Joseph Mankiewicz and Billy Wilder, and even appearances by an appallingly young-looking Whit Stillman and Gregg Araki.  There are a couple of problematic figures in the mix - James Toback participates in one of the supplementary discussions - but the series manages to avoid tripping over most of the serious cultural landmines that I was expecting.  

Modern viewers might find the early installments too laudatory and inoffensive, but the romantic comedy episode has a great time letting Amy Heckerling and Kathryn Bigelow point out the conservative gender politics inherent in the genre and provide a more critical viewpoint.  Other directors air plenty of grievances about their time in Hollywood, and the examinations of the business side of the movies are all pretty even-handed.  I find the historical episodes much more interesting than the ones on genre and style, maybe because this is where I feel the series' age the most acutely.

There have been many other documentaries made about American cinema since "American Cinema," some much better and more insightful about their specific subjects.   However, I haven't found anything as ambitious or comprehensive on the subject yet.  And I do think it's important to acknowledge that this is one of my foundational media experiences, especially as a film fan, and something that I'll continue to judge every other entertainment documentary against.      

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"Materialists" Aims High

The chemistry of a screen love triangle is always a tricky affair.  And the more self-aware a romance is, the trickier it can be.  "Materialists" is a very self-conscious modern day love story that deals in a lot of very old romance tropes.  It depends entirely on buying that our heroine, Lucy (Dakota Johnson), has more chemistry with one man, John (Chris Evans), instead of another, Harry (Pedro Pascal).  Director Celine Song tries her hardest, but by the end of the movie I still wasn't convinced.  I enjoyed the movie for other reasons, but it's a shame that the central conceit never quite worked.

Lucy is a matchmaker based in New York City, who works for an upscale agency called Adore.  Her clients pay thousands for her to arrange dates with potential matches, and Lucy is very good at her job.  Easily the best parts of the movie are the scenes of her offering counseling and insights into modern relationships for her clients.  It's refreshing to hear her talk so bluntly about the transactional nature of many couplings, and all the traits people judge their worth by - age, wealth, height, weight, job, education, and attractiveness.  Lucy herself is happy to stay single, until she meets a "unicorn," a wealthy man named Harry who is exactly what she's always wanted.  However, a complicating factor is that she still has feelings for her ex, John, a struggling actor who she only parted ways with because he's perpetually broke.  

It's a given who Lucy is going to end up with, but getting there is the fun part.  I really enjoyed Dakota Johnson's performance, playing Lucy as this coolly self-assured, but incredibly jaded woman who peddles the notion that all good matches are just a matter of putting all the right variables together.   Johnson always had a slightly unapproachable screen persona, and that works for the character, who hides her insecurities under a facade of the all-knowing matchmaker who has all the answers and says all the quiet parts out loud.  "Materialists" is really a character study of Lucy, and what happens when her preconceptions are challenged.  Equally important as her relationships to John and Harry is Lucy's relationship with her client Sophie (Zoë Winters), an average woman with realistic expectations, who Lucy is having trouble finding matches for.  The matchmaking math isn't working as expected, and Lucy has to face that there are some serious flaws in the way she views love and romance. 

The filmmaking is wonderful, and "Materialists" is such a pleasure to watch.  Sure, there's plenty of lifestyle eye candy, but the visual storytelling all around is superb.  I love the way that Lucy looks subtly different in her scenes with her two love interests, the way that she's lit and the way that she's framed.  You immediately understand that Lucy belongs with John because she's more open and comfortable in his world than the more affluent one she's worked so hard to access.  I wasn't a big fan of "Past Lives" because I felt the story was awfully slight, but it's great to find that Celine Song's style translates to something more broad and commercial.

Alas, the only place where I think she went wrong was casting Chris Evans.  I like Chris Evans as an actor, but he and Dakota Johnson don't pair nearly as well as Pedro Pascal and Dakota Johnson.  Switching their roles might have been interesting, but what I think it comes down to is that Evans doesn't have the energy of a blue collar, average everyman.  There's too much Captain America in him for that, so the interactions with Johnson always ring a little false.  On the flip side, Pedro Pascal as a fantasy of the ideal husband, who turns out to be maintaining his own facade, is spot on.  I don't care that Pascal is in everything this year because he keeps nailing it.        

And despite the flaws, I happily recommend "Materialists."  It has been too long since we've had a high profile, unapologetically romantic film with ambitions this big and from talents this bright.  

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The End of "Squid Game"

Spoilers for the first and second seasons, and the first episode of the third season ahead.

What Netflix is calling the second and third seasons of "Squid Game" were clearly conceived of as a single thirteen-episode season, and probably should be treated as such.  However, I think that the final chunk of six episodes can be discussed on its own, specifically in the way that it reveals some of the problems with trying to continue this series past the first season.  I think the ending of "Squid Game" is perfectly watchable, but it's also undeniably a disappointment.

The second season was decent enough, and ended in a good place.  Most of the interesting characters were still alive and a big, formula-breaking event had just taken place.  The first major mistake that the creators make at the start of season three is prioritizing the status quo.  In a seemingly arbitrary move, Gi-hun is allowed to survive, and the games are forced to continue with only minor consequences for everyone still alive.  The pregnant girl, Jun-Hee (Jo Yu-ri) emerges as a major protagonist at this stage, along with the old woman, Geum-Ja (Kang Ae-Shim), and the crypto guy, Myung-gi (In Si-wan).  Of the three remaining games in this season, I found the first to be very good, but the other two are just variants of games from the first season, and easy to predict.  The creators try their best to throw in some new wrinkles and hint at different outcomes, but you can tell that they're wary of actually making major changes to what worked the first time.  

Another problem is that the show doubles down on the unsuccessful elements from the first season.  Those terrible VIPs in the metallic animal masks are back, are given more screen time, and are just as awful to watch as they were in the first season.  There's been a lot of discourse around this bunch, specifically who should share the blame for their hammy performances and the obviously dubbed dialogue.  However, I'd argue that the two subplots involving the cop, In-ho, and the guard, No-eul, are just as much of a problem.  So much time is taken up with following these characters, and they aren't nearly as compelling as anyone participating in the games.   And after so many episodes of teasing about their motivations and possible connections, very little new information is revealed for either of them.  I can sort of excuse having No-eul as someone to compare and contrast against Gi-hun, but In-ho's storyline is a total dud and absolutely infuriating.  

While I'm fine with how all the ultimate resolutions played out, I found the storytelling too drawn out and repetitive.   The second and third seasons together probably should have only run nine episodes all together, the same as the first season.  The last six episodes could have easily been cut down to four.  With so much extra padding, the pacing is sluggish and the weaknesses in the writing are more obvious.  All of the characters are necessarily heightened, but the participants in the last rounds are especially broad to the point of coming across as cartoonish.  All nuance goes out the window once the end is in sight. However, there are some excellent performances here, and I particularly enjoyed Kang Ae-Shim as the old lady who makes one of the hardest decisions in the game.  Lee Jung-jae has to contend with more convoluted character contrivances, but he still does a solid job as a more bitter Gi-hun.    

The second season was good enough that I don't think it was a bad idea to continue "Squid Game" in its current form.  However, the creators weren't able to make some of their new ideas work, and they clearly didn't know what to do with at least one of the major storylines.  I suspect that it was always their intention to leave the door open for a third season, but the way they went about it left too many questions unanswered and kicked too much down the road.  At this point I don't think another season is possible without overhauling "Squid Game" completely.  The creator has already expressed that he's not interested, so for all intents and purposes, I consider "Squid Game" finished.

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Brace For "Bring Her Back"

I didn't write a review for "Talk to Me," the feature debut of directors Danny and Michael Philippou, because I had a difficult time processing it.  I knew that it was unnerving and an unusually visceral piece of filmmaking, similar to Ari Aster's work.  I could admire it for its aesthetic and technical achievements, but it wasn't the kind of horror that I found entertaining.  I feel similarly about their newest film, "Bring Her Back," which is directed by the Philippou brothers, and written by Danny Philippou and Bill Hinzman.  It's somewhat more accessible, but still the kind of horror intent on getting under your skin, and keeping you up at night.  

Andy (Billy Barratt) and Piper (Sora Wang) are step-siblings who face being separated when their father Phil (Stephen Phillips) dies.  Andy is very protective of Piper, who is younger and visually impaired.  Their social worker, Wendy (Sally-Anne Upton), manages to place them together with a foster mother, Laura (Sally Hawkins), who is grieving the recent death of her daughter.  She also has another foster son, Oliver (Jonah Wren Phillips), who is selectively mute and seems to be deeply disturbed.  Andy hopes to file for guardianship of Piper when he turns eighteen in a few months, but has a few bad incidents on his records, which means he has to stay in Laura's good graces.  She doesn't make it easy for him, displaying increasingly strange and hostile behavior that seems to be connected to her grief for Laura.

What's remarkable about "Bring Her Back" is how it conveys information.  We're told almost nothing directly about what Laura is doing until near the end.  The audience is left to piece together all the separate incidents and discoveries as they happen to Andy - a white substance forming a ring around the house, a missing child poster, glimpses of a disturbing video where a ritual is being performed in a foreign language - every new revelation ratcheting up the tension.  I was also very impressed with the depiction of Piper's experience and POV, often through tight insert shots of her hands and face as she feels her way through environments, or deals with obstacles.  Sora Wang, like Piper, is partially sighted, and it does make a difference.  "Bring Her Back" is a very tactile film, which makes the moments of violence and gore especially gruesome.  As with "Talk to Me," there's plenty of upsetting material involving harm to children.         

What "Bring Her Back" has over "Talk to Me," however, is the underlying sadness and trauma of all the characters.  Laura is clearly doing monstrous things to her charges, driven by great gulfs of desperate pain and emotion that Sally Hawkins is able to convey wonderfully.  She's the scariest when she's at her most calm and sounds the most reasonable, because she's clearly put together this lovely facade of a nice, normal person, but there's always something pinging as very wrong with her.  And the more we learn about Andy, Piper, and Oliver, the more desperate their situation is revealed to be.  You root for the kids because they've survived so much awfulness, and are on the verge of being subjected to so much worse.  

The Philippous' films are filled with horribly damaged people, both physically and mentally.  We see all the worst bits up close, and often for extended periods of time.  While there's relatively little violence in "Bring Her Back," what little there is has a greater impact because so much of it is intimate and realistic.  The Philippous linger on the discomfort, let it fill the screen, and refuse to cut away.  Several of the most memorable images are of Oliver, often with bloodshot eyes and other wounds and marks on his face.  It's difficult just to look at him, because the makeup work is so good, and the performance is so chilling - creating a picture of a child in obvious, festering pain.  

It took me some time to work up the courage to watch this film because of the content.  I strongly urge those with sensitivities to heed the warnings, because this is a tough one.  "Bring Her Back" is an excellent movie, and never gratuitous, but it's not an experience to take lightly.

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The "Dept. Q" Redo

I watched the "Department Q: The Keeper of Lost Causes" movie in 2014 and didn't like it.  This was an adaptation of the first of the Department Q detective novels by Jussi Adler-Olsen.  Both the novels and the ongoing film series are Danish.  At the time, "Department Q" was part of the first wave of popular Scandinavian crime dramas that came with Stieg Larsson's "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo."  I found that first "Department Q" movie, directed by Mikkel Norgaard, to be crudely put together, and the depiction of the villain in particular was rather brutish and exploitative.  I haven't seen any of the other films from the series.     

The English language remake has been a long time coming, and I was initially not happy that the new Netflix "Dept. Q" series was going to start with the same case from that first movie again.  However, the talent involved was too good to pass up.  Scott Frank, who was behind "The Queen's Gambit" and has screenwriting credits on many good films,  wrote and directed the majority of the show.  The action now takes place in Scotland instead of Denmark, and the prickly detective that nobody likes, DCI Carl Morck, is played by a grouchy Matthew Goode.  After being shot on the job, he's tasked with running a new Edinburgh cold case unit with a Syrian ex-cop, Akram Salim (Alexej Manvelov), and a genial cadet, Rose Dickson (Leah Byrne).  In counterpoint, we also follow an ambitious prosecutor, Merritt Lingard (Chloe Pirrie), with a long list of enemies and a lot of secrets in her past.  The supporting cast includes Kelly MacDonald, Kate Dickie, Steven Miller, Jamie Sives, Tom Bulpett, and Shirley Henderson.

"Dept. Q" is significantly better than the "Department Q" movie on every front.  Expanding the story to fill nine hours allows for a much fuller and richer exploration of all the characters, most notably Morck and Lingard. My issues with the villain have mostly been addressed by making the primary victim character a stronger and more active presence as a counterbalance.  I also like the choice of making both of the primary protagonists difficult and rather unlikeable people who are both forced to address some of their shortcomings.  Matthew Goode's Morck is a familiar type - not a team player, a condescending asshole to everybody, especially hostile to authority, and failing at keeping the darker side of the job from spilling over into their personal life.  I was more impressed with the portrayal of Lingard, the kind of unapologetically cutthroat woman that everyone loves to hate.  It's ambiguous for a very long time as to how much we should be sympathizing with her. 

However, Alexej Manvelov steals the show as Akram Salim.  He's the super-competent, very polite foreign detective type who turns up regularly in older crime stories.  Here he's playing sidekick to Morck, but always with the sense that he's in this role temporarily, and he's absolutely the hero of his own story from a different point of view that the audience isn't privy to - not yet, anyway.  There's this wonderful sense of mystery about him, because we explore everything about Morck from his mandated therapy sessions to his complicated living situation, but all we know about Salim is what he tells Morck directly.  Every new revelation about him is a surprise, and it's delightful.  The rest of the ensemble is also very strong, and "Dept. Q" successfully comes across as a totally different animal than its source material.  Instead of "The Girl With the Dragon Tattoo," the obvious point of comparison is now "Slow Horses," which also features a gang of law enforcement misfits and problem children.     

I'd love for "Dept. Q" to get more seasons after this, though if Netflix wants all the key creative talent to stay involved it'll probably be a long wait for more.  Shorter, "Sherlock" style seasons would probably be workable, and there's certainly no shortage of "Dept. Q" books to adapt.  However, this level of quality isn't easy to achieve, and lovers of bleak detective fiction shouldn't pass  it up.  It's rare that a remake comes out this well, and rarer still that a remake improves so much on the original.         

           

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Lilo, Stitch, and Toothless in Live Action

Chris Sanders and Dean DeBlois have had a hell of a summer, with live action remakes of two animated films that they directed decades ago, for two different animation studios, both being released within a few weeks of each other.  "Lilo & Stitch" and "How to Train Your Dragon" are the latest remakes of beloved animated classics, and they're good ones.   Both Sanders and DeBlois are still involved - DeBlois directed the "How to Train Your Dragon" remake, and Sanders is still voicing the blue alien, Stitch, in "Lilo & Stitch."  Frankly, neither of the original films are ones that I'm especially attached to, so I was more receptive to seeing live action versions than I suspect more ardent fans would be.  

Neither remake's plot deviates much from the original films, though "Lilo & Stitch" tweaks its ending a bit.  However, what sets both films apart is that the Sanders/DeBlois films aren't part of the fairy tale milieu, and don't feature princesses or songs or magic.  "Lilo & Stitch" takes place in present-day Hawaii, and stars Maia Kealoha as Lilo, who was six years old at the time of filming.  The scenes of her and older sister Nani (Sydney Elizebeth Agudong) dodging child protective services and worrying over money hit a lot harder in live action than they did in animation.  Similarly, while "How to Train Your Dragon" is a fantasy film featuring all manner of impossible dragons, protagonist Hiccup (Mason Thames) and the other Viking kids are played by young actors instead of adult comedians voicing caricatures of kids.  This makes a lot of the scenes of peril and family strife much more intense, and I was getting unexpected Amblin-esque vibes from the climax.   

A major stumbling block of live action remakes has always been that some characters just don't translate well to live action or photorealistic CGI, particularly traditionally animated characters.  Fortunately, both of the new movies do a good job.  Stitch looks fine in CGI, just as cuddly and destructive as he ever was.  The aliens, particularly Stitch's pursuers Jumba and Pleakley, are less successfully adapted, which is probably why they spend most of their time in human disguises played by their new voice actors, Zach Galifianakis and Billy Magnussen.  "How to Train Your Dragon" is one of the first live action adaptations of a CGI animated feature, and the original film was long ago enough that the animation looks noticeably dated.  The 2025 Toothless looks bigger and more intimidating than the 2010 Toothless, but the character design is almost identical.  I'm sure it helped that DeBlois directed the new film and could keep a close eye on the animation, which is often an improvement on the original.     

I'm surprised how much I liked both of these movies.  "Lilo & Stitch" focuses much more on Nani and Lilo, and Agudong and Kealoha are both excellent.  There's the usual chaos of big action set pieces and Stitch destroying things, but the goofier humor is toned down to let the family drama play out more fully.  A few characters like the villain Gantu are removed, and others, like a supportive neighbor played by Amy Hill, are added to keep the girls' situation from feeling quite so dire.  I'm generally in support of the new ending, which fits the more serious tone of the remake.  "How to Train Your Dragon" is more of a carbon copy, with some scenes recreated shot for shot and Gerard Butler returning to play the character he originally voiced, Stoick the Vast.  However, the spectacle of dragon flights and viking battles is genuinely thrilling, and worth seeing on a big screen.

Both of the remakes feel somewhat less kid-friendly, and there's no substitution for the expressiveness and energy of the original character animation.  Stitch and Toothless feel like smaller presences in their respective films compared to the human characters.  Stitch loses a lot of character development scenes, and it's really not his movie past a certain point anymore.   I expect that some fans will be unhappy with the remakes for being less colorful, less fun, and less silly.  I, however, view this all as a plus.  I found I actually prefer parts of the remake of "How to Train Your Dragon" to the animated film, because I always found Jay Baruchel grating as Hiccup. 

The success of these movies means that we can look forward to a lot more remakes coming our way.  However, Dreamworks Animation really doesn't have a lot in their back catalog to remake, aside from possibly a live action "Shrek" and the "How to Train Your Dragon" sequels.  Honestly, I'd love to see them try a live action "Trolls."  Disney, however, seems ready and willing to tackle their post-Renaissance films, and will be testing our tolerance for remakes of even more recent output, starting with "Moana" next year.    

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