Love and Death (HBO) - Miniseries Review: Trite True Crime Deep in the Heart of Texas

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 2 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a great cast this is just another true crime retread with a prestige tv veneer.

The HBO miniseries Love and Death, which stars Elizabeth Olsen and Jesse Plemons and tells the true story of an extra-marital affair and murder in the small town of Wylie, Texas in 1980, finished its seven-episode run on Thursday.

The series, which was written by David E. Kelley, recounts the salacious tale of Candy Montgomery, a mild-mannered Texas housewife and church choir member who has an affair with a fellow married church member Allan Gore. Months after the affair ends Allan’s wife Betty is found brutally murdered with an axe.

Despite the fact that this is apparently a well-known tale and has already been made into a Hulu miniseries (Candy – starring Jessica Biel – which I have not seen), I did not know the Candy Montgomery story prior to watching Love and Death and so I won’t recount it in detail here for you in order to preserve spoilers for any of you who are in the same boat as I am.

The verdict regarding Love and Death is that it’s little more than a true-crime, Lifetime movie with an HBO prestige veneer and some top-notch acting.

Elizabeth Olsen is particularly good as Candy, as she masterfully captures the performative nature of a certain breed of Southern woman. Candy’s mask is so effective it even fools Candy into thinking she’s not who she really is.

As evidenced by her breakout role in Martha, Marcy, Mae, Marlene (2011), Olsen is a terrific actress but her career seems to be a bit stuck at the moment after getting caught in the MCU cul-de-sac. Her performances in the MCU films as Scarlet Witch have not been notable, but her work in the MCU TV series Wandavision was magnificent for the intriguing first half of that flawed season.

One can only hope that Olsen has put the MCU in the rearview mirror and now that she’s financially secure can explore more interesting projects and roles. Love and Death may have been her attempt at doing that, but unfortunately the series never lives up to her stellar work in it.

Jesse Plemons is also very good as the subdued and rather odd character Allan Gore, who sports a hairdo that is a first ballot Hellacious Haircut Hall of Famer.

Plemons is a master at filling quiet characters with a peculiar and pulsating inner life, and his Allan, who we are told has a “perfectly formed penis” – good for him, is bustling just under the surface and behind those curiously dead eyes but is always assiduously contained and constrained.

Plemons is one of the more oddly compelling actors of his generation and it’s always a treat when he’s on screen, even here in the tepid Love and Death, but he deserves better than this series.

Tom Pelphrey, who recently made a name for himself in the Netflix show Ozark, is terrific in the under-written role of the passionate and combative lawyer Don Crowder. After reading the post script at the end of the series I have to say that Crowder’s life seems to be much more interesting post Love and Death than it is during this story, and would prefer to have seen that tale told.

And finally, Lily Rabe does the very best she can with the unfinished character Betty Gore, and she too deserved much better than what was written for her.

As good as the cast is across the board, the problem with Love and Death is without a doubt the overrated writer David E. Kelley, who simply never elevates the story or makes it more than just another recounting of a true crime in a culture awash in true crime.

Kelley is considered one of the untouchables in Hollywood but I’ve never understood his appeal. Doogie Howser, Picket Fences, Chicago Hope, The Practice, Boston Legal, Ally McBeal and Big Little Lies are his most famous series and they’re all egregiously awful to the point of being entirely unwatchable. I’ve never liked a single one of his shows and never understood why others fawn all over him.

The failure of Love and Death lies at the feet of Kelley, who across his career has seemed allergic to insight and addicted to disingenuousness. Kelley’s consistent vacuousness as a writer and his vapidity as a storyteller infects Love and Death and leaves it completely devoid of profundity and power.

Love and Death reminded me of another true crime story given the HBO prestige treatment last year, The Staircase. That series, which starred Colin Firth and Toni Collette, was intriguing on its salacious surface but once you dig in to it there was nothing there…as it was devoid of even an ounce of drama or insight.

Like The Staircase, Love and Death is underwhelming as the longer the series went on the less interesting it became until finally you only finish watching it out of a demented sense of obligation or in my case, completion OCD.

Ultimately, Love and Death plays acts at being meaningful but is a rather vacant exercise in true crime exploitation and failed titillation. If you haven’t watched the series then trust me when I tell you that you never need to start. And if you have watched it then I assume, like me, you either regret the time committed or have entirely forgotten it.

 Follow me on Twitter: @MPMActingCo

©2023

Empire of Light: A Review - Empire Strikes Out

****THIS IS A SPOILER FREE REVIEW!! THIS REVIEW CONTAINS ZERO SPOILERS!!****

My Rating: 1 out of 5 stars

My Recommendation: SKIP IT. Despite a cavalcade of top-notch talent working on this film the end result is little more than a muddled mess of a movie.

Empire of Light, written and directed by Academy Award winner Sam Mendes, attempts to tell the story of Hillary, a middle-aged woman struggling with mental illness who works at a seaside British cinema in 1980.

Empire of Light is the fourth, and thankfully final, film in what I call the Masturbatorial Manifesto Movie Quadrilogy of 2022. The other members of this awful foursome who made autobiographical, virtue signaling, ego/nostalgia driven films are Alejandro Inarritu with Bardo, James Gray with Armageddon Time and Steven Spielberg with The Fabelmans. All of these films are navel-gazing, self-serving stories about their directors past lives, social justice issues and the magic of cinema.

Of these four films, Empire of Light, which is currently streaming on HBO Max, is the most astounding, but not because it’s good…it certainly isn’t, in fact it’s downright dreadful. No, Empire of Light is astounding because it brought together a remarkable collection of talented individuals and all they could collectively produce was this really, really lousy movie.

For example, the film boasts not only Oscar winner Sam Mendes as writer/director, but also Oscar winning cinematographer Roger Deakins, as well as Oscar winning musicians Trent Reznor and Atticus Ross, not to mention Oscar winning actors Olivia Colman and Colin Firth. This very impressive group combined to make a most unimpressive movie.

The problems with Empire of Light are numerous but the most egregious of them is the script by Mendes, which is all over the map. Mendes obviously wanted to make a movie about his real-life mother’s struggle with mental illness, which he did, but, like his predecessors Inarritu, Gray and Spielberg, he also wanted to cram in as much politically-correct social commentary as he could about a variety of topics, the most obvious of which in this case are sexism and racism.

Sexism and racism are perfectly fine and often remarkably compelling topics to feature in a film but in Empire of Light they feel artificially added-on and inorganic and this distracts from what could have been a very interesting character study with the sublime Olivia Colman at its center.

Instead, we get a scattered, paper-thin story about a mentally-ill white woman who is sexually exploited by her boss and who learns that racism exists in Margaret Thatcher’s Britain in 1980. How revelatory.

The racial angle in the film is so vapid and panders so aggressively as to be offensive. This racism narrative was so heavy-handed, so after-school special level unsophisticated, and so lacking in any nuance that it made me roll my eyes on numerous occasions to the point of near seizure.

Equally forced and lifeless is the love story between Hillary and her young black co-worker Stephen (Michael Ward). Ms. Colman is a marvelous actress and quite lovely but Michael Ward is a considerably younger and very handsome man and the pairing is never remotely believable nor well-explained. The two also lack chemistry and their relationship devoid of dynamism and this heightens the sense of their tryst being unbelievable, if not inconceivable.

Mendes, whose famous films include American Beauty, Road to Perdition and 1917, is a filmmaker I’ve never particularly enjoyed as I find him to be a middlebrow moviemaker masquerading as an arthouse auteur. Mendes comes from the theatre world and his movies often reflect that limitation as his scripts are too verbose and his stories too obvious, flat and literal.

On Empire of Light, Mendes gets lost in the throes of a victimhood narrative and social justice fantasy and ends up losing the vitality of what should be, but isn’t, the main thrust of the story, Hillary’s struggles.

Speaking of Hillary, Olivia Colman, who may be the best actress working right now, does excellent work in the role but is time and again undercut by the asinine script. Colman’s finest hour comes when Hillary loses grip on her mental health and dissolves into a raging madness that is visceral and combustible. But beyond that, Colman is too often stuck in an anemic narrative maze of Mendes’ making.

I’m a newcomer to Michael Ward, who plays Stephen, and found him to be a compelling and very pleasant screen presence, but he too is hamstrung by the clunky script and incessantly vapid cultural politics. Too often Stephen feels like little more than a black prop in a white woman’s journey to enlightenment on racial issues.

Colin Firth has a smaller role as the cinema’s manager Donald, and he does all the Colin Firth things you’d expect him to do, but he, like every other character in the film, never feels like a real person.

It must be said that the film is beautifully photographed, not surprising considering Roger Deakins is the cinematographer, but for all of Deakins’s coloring and camera wizardry, the film cannot be elevated.

As for Reznor and Ross’s soundtrack, it’s very reminiscent of their other stellar work but here it surprisingly underwhelms and feels a bit too derivative.

As a whole the film feels stridently antiseptic, allergic to drama, and relentlessly generic. For instance, the movie is set in the 1980’s and yet it never exploits that setting and fails to much look or feel like the 1980’s. It’s also set in a cinema and it fails to exploit that potentially dramatic setting as well as movies are never featured prominently or used effectively as a dramatic device. Truth be told the whole exercise is so devoid of any genuine place, people or purpose that it just feels very weird, dramatically disconnected and like a terrible waste of an opportunity.

Which brings us back again to Mendes’ script, which is also disconnected and disjointed to the point that it seems like nothing but a collection of random scenes and not a fully formed story.

The truth is that making a good movie, never mind a great one, is unconscionably difficult, and the fact that Oscar winning talents like Sam Mendes, Roger Deakins, Trent Reznor, Olivia Colman and Colin Firth all got together and made a piece of junk like Empire of Light, is proof of that. That Alejandro Inarritu, James Gray and Steven Spielberg all tried to make similar movies this past year and all fell flat on their faces too only further reinforces that fact.

Having seen all four of this year’s autobiographical ego/nostalgia movies, the most difficult thing to do is decide which one is the worst as they’re all truly terrible in their own special ways. Deciding which of these insipid movies is best is simply a physical and metaphysical impossibility.

In conclusion, Empire of Light is a messy, middling, misfire of a movie that you should skip entirely, just like Bardo, Armageddon Time and The Fabelmans.

Hopefully these navel-gazing, nostalgia-addicted auteurs have gotten their mindless Masturbatorial Manifesto Movies out of their systems so that we never have to see this type of shamelessly awful garbage again. These filmmakers are simply too good to waste their talents making such dull, derivative, sanctimonious, self-serving detritus as this.

Follow me on Twitter @MPMActingCo

©2023

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

On this episode, Barry and I don a stiff upper lip as we try to grin and bear the new Netflix WWII movie Operation Mincemeat starring Colin Firth. Topics of discussion include the banality of evil that is sub-mediocre cinema, John Madden as great NFL coach and commentator but abysmal film director, and the missed opportunity of a Weekend at Bernies World War II movie.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 69 - Operation Mincemeat

Thanks for listening!

©2022

Amazon Studio's Playbook to Ruin Cinema

Estimated Reading Time: 3 minutes 42 seconds

Amazon Studio’s new “playbook” makes it official, diversity, not talent, skill or merit, is the only thing that matters anymore in the entertainment industry

The stunning document is shameless in its disdain for artistry and individuality, and its aggressive worship of all things woke.

The entertainment industry and the art of cinema took a gargantuan step on their relentless death march into the hellscape of the woke Mordor recently when Jeff Bezos, the Sauron of Amazon Studios, released his new “diversity, equity and inclusion (DEI) playbook”.

Following in the footsteps of the Academy Awards, which implemented new diversity and inclusion mandates into awards eligibility criteria, and Disney, which has turned the happiest place on earth into the People’s Republic of Wokestan, Amazon Studios, the new home of James Bond and Rocky, has, like a suicide note, put in writing its demand that film and TV ignore talent, skill and merit when hiring in favor of diversity, equity and inclusion.

It’s now clear that the corporate human resources junta has successfully transformed Hollywood into nothing more than the propaganda arm for the woke Savonarolas who burn art and entertainment on the bonfire of inanities that is DEI.

Among many things Amazon’s “playbook” demands are creative roles on productions being 50% women and underrepresented racial/ethnic groups by 2024, and documentation and reporting of these diversity quotas is required both pre and post production. Unfortunately, the exact skin tone and percentage of “racial/ethnic” blood needed to qualify as belonging to an underrepresented group, and the papers you’ll need to show to the DEI gestapo to prove it, are not made clear.

The insidious “playbook” also declares its commitment to “authentic portrayals” and its intention to cast “actors in a role whose identity aligns with the identity of the character they will be playing (by gender, gender identity, nationality, race/ethnicity, sexual orientation, and disability) and in particular when the character is a member of an underrepresented group/identity.”

In other words, Amazon appears to be outlawing the art of acting as only disabled actors can play disabled characters and only LGBTQ actors can play LGBTQ roles. This is what happens when human resources deplorables take over the creative process.

One wonders how exactly Amazon will check if an actor up for a lesbian, gay or bisexual role is the real deal or not? Will actors be forced to “prove’ their lesbian, gay or bisexual bona fides by performing a sex act with an appropriately aligned producer? Maybe the casting couch can get a public relations facelift if it’s used to help Hollywood achieve the woke nirvana of diversity, equity and inclusion.

Of course, from an artistic perspective, the absurdity of Amazon’s totalitarian woke decrees is only topped by its power to suffocate and stultify creativity.

Consider this, some of the greatest performances we’ve seen in recent years would be wiped out by Amazon’s DEI manifesto, and it wouldn’t be surprising if eventually they’re retroactively cancelled for not being aligned with the new mandates.

For example, Daniel Day-Lewis is one of the greatest actors we’ve ever had, but despite not being disabled he won an Oscar for playing Christy Brown in My Left Foot, and won two Oscars for playing Americans in There Will Be Blood and Lincoln, despite being British and Irish.

In addition, Sean Penn isn’t gay but won an Oscar for playing Harvey Milk, Eddie Redmayne is able bodied but won for playing Stephen Hawking, Colin Firth won for playing King George VI but didn’t have a royal stutter and Jamie Foxx won for playing Ray Charles despite not being blind.

Even last year’s crop of movies would be affected by Amazon’s woke encyclical. Anthony Hopkins doesn’t have dementia but won the Best Actor Oscar playing a man suffering from that malady, Daniel Kaluuya won Best Supporting Actor Oscar is British but won for playing an African-American, and in Amazon Studio’s own Sound of Metal, Riz Ahmed was Oscar nominated for playing a deaf character but has perfect hearing.

Two of Amazon’s big hits from last year, Borat Subsequent Moviefilm and Coming 2 America violate this new woke law too as Brit Sacha Baron Cohen played a Kazahkstani, and New Yorker Eddie Murphy is played an African King. The horror!

Amazon’s decree is so specific it even states “But if the character has a distinct ethnic background, make sure that the actor’s ethnic background doesn’t conflict with this portrayal”, using as an example of a bad approach “are you casting a person of Puerto Rican heritage to play a character who is Colombian?” Under this edict Benicio del Toro’s Best Supporting Actor Oscar for playing a Mexican in Traffic wouldn’t happen because he is Puerto Rican.

Amazon’s “playbook” blatantly declares its repulsion at talent, skill and merit as a casting-criteria when it states that casting directors need to avoid “Relying on your “gut” or seeking “the best person for the job” as that’s an “inherently biased processes that may skew your decision making.”

If this relentless focus on hiring actors, creatives and even crew based on their gender, sexuality, race/ethnicity and nationality all sounds legally dubious if not outright discriminatory, Amazon agrees, as they throw in this playbook disclaimer to cover their backsides, “While this Playbook provides a general overview, it is not intended to provide legal advice, so it’s crucial to discuss these issues with your attorney.”

As a cinephile and lover of quality art and entertainment in movies and tv, I’m looking forward to the day when the despicable woke totalitarian philistines currently running and ruining Hollywood learn the hard way, at the box office and in the courtroom, that “get woke, go broke” is a universal law that supersedes their self-righteous, anti-merit, DEI declarations of blatant discrimination. They deserve nothing less.

 A version of this article was originally published at RT.

©2021

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 15 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

This week we dive into my second Quarantine Watch List pick…the overlooked 2011 British movie Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy.  This movie is one of the best crafted movies of the last 10-20 years but has a little bit of an unorthodox story structure for a spy movie.  This film makes you think, doesn't spoon feed you nor does it lay everything out with a nice bow on it. That is precisely why Barry and I want you to check it out. Be forewarned there are some plot points and minor spoilers revealed in the podcast.

Looking California and Feeling Minnesota: Episode 15 - Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy

Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy is a slow burn so don't turn it on late at night when your eyelids are heavy.  If you are a cinephile you can watch the movie, listen to the podcast and then re-watch the movie. Or if you’re concerned the movie might be a bit slow or too complicated you can listen to the podcast and hear our thoughts, favorite scenes and what to watch out for that will help keep you engaged during your movie experience and then check out the movie on Netflix today!

Thanks again for listening, and stay safe and healthy out there!

©2020

The Imitation Game: A Review

****THIS REVIEW CONTAINS SPOILERS!!! THIS IS YOUR OFFICIAL SPOILER ALERT!!****

The Imitation Game, directed by Morten Tyldum with screenplay by Graham Moore (based on Andrew Hodges book "Alan Turing: The Enigma"), is the story of Alan Turing, a British mathematician who, during world war two, broke the Nazi's secret enigma code which was a major key in the allies winning the war. Adding to the drama of the story is the fact that Turing is a closeted homosexual at a time when homosexuals were persecuted and prosecuted for their sexual orientation.

Benedict Cumberbatch plays the socially inept yet mathematically brilliant Turing. His work here, as always, is consistently solid. Cumberbatch is a very skilled actor, and his portrayal of Turing is finely crafted. Cumberbatch has the very unique ability as an actor, and it is put to good use here, to keep the audience at arm's length yet tantalize them with just enough intimate glances into his character's soul to keep viewers intrigued. His Turing is off-putting yet magnetic, which keeps us rooting for him even when he isn't all that likable. 

Keira Knightley as Turing's co-worker and fiancé, Joan Clarke, is very good in a, not surprisingly, under written role. Clarke's relationship with Turing could have been a goldmine of dramatic intrigue, yet it is never really fleshed out in any meaningful way, which is a disappointment. Knightley has the ability to light up any screen on which she appears, and this film could have used much more of her rather than less.

Mark Strong is one of my favorite actors, and he does his usual superb work as Maj. Gen. Stewart Menzies. I also thought Charles Dance as Commander Alistair Denniston was very good. The Brits can really churn out quality actors, and both Dance and Strong are without question living proof of that. (Speaking of Britishness, this film is so thoroughly and distinctly 'British' that my teeth went crooked watching it!!) As for the other supporting actors, though, they were not as strong, and better performances from them would have lifted the film a bit. 

The most conspicuous thing about this film is that it is painfully 'safe', and it's glaring timidity. It is timid and safe in story, dramatically and in it's direction. The film makes the easy commercial choice in narrative, but dramatically, they bury the lede. We know the allies win the war, what we don't know is what happened to Alan Turing and why. In a postscript, the film tells us Alan Turing committed suicide a year after court ordered chemical castration due to a conviction for a homosexual encounter. It is blatantly obvious to me that the film should have started where it ended. That last year of Turing's life is infinitely more important in terms of drama than all the years he spent cracking the Nazi code. I think the 2009 film A Single Man, starring Colin Firth as a gay man contemplating suicide in 1962, is a great example of what The Imitation Game could have been. The intimacy of that portrait in A Single Man, was astounding, as was Firth's performance. I felt that excruciating intimacy was what was missing from The Imitation Game. One can only imagine how agonizing the final year, never mind the final day, of a man as tormented and tortured as Alan Turing could have been. The choice to simply make his suicide a few sentences written on the screen after the movie is over is incomprehensible dramatically, and feels terribly cold-hearted and obtuse. 

I think a wiser choice for a film about Alan Turing would be to start the story with Turing already deep into the Enigma code breaking process, and then we see him succeed and 'win the war'. But then we transition to how his country repaid him for his genius by persecuting him for his sexuality, and then harassed and finally crucified him. Add into this mix his complex and conflicted relationship with Knightley's Clarke, and you have the recipe for a really compelling film with forceful performances from both Cumberbatch and Knightley, who are unquestionably up to task. 

Returning once again to the great Colin Firth, the film that The Imitation Game has been most compared to is the one Firth won a Best Actor Oscar for,  The King's Speech from 2010, which also won the Best Picture, Best Director and Best Screenplay Oscar . I understand the comparisons, both are set around the same time period, both are exceedingly mainstream, and both are strikingly British.  The King's Speech is a fine film, not great, but well made and I very much enjoyed it, particularly the acting. The Imitation Game is nowhere near the film The King's Speech is, and neither are the performances, of that there can be no doubt. The comparisons to The King's Speech do The Imitation Game no favors.

In conclusion, The Imitation Game is an achingly safe and straight forward Hollywood film, even though it is unquestionably British. The heroic, yet tragic story of Alan Turing is one that deserved considerably more bravery from the people making it. Solid performances aside, the film fails to live up to the life of the man it is made about, and that is a shame.

© 2015

FOR REVIEWS OF OTHER FILMS RELEASED DURING THE HOLIDAY SEASON, PLEASE CLICK ON THESE LINKS TO THE THEORY OF EVERYTHING , WHIPLASH , BIRDMAN OR (THE UNEXPECTED VIRTUE OF IGNORANCE) , FOXCATCHER , WILD , AMERICAN SNIPER , A MOST VIOLENT YEAR , NIGHTCRAWLER , STILL ALICE , INHERENT VICE , SELMA , MR. TURNER , CAKE .