Cynical Cinema

Numb3rs is a show with a laudable premise. It attempts to educate people about the glorious, bad-ass side of math and physics while entertaining them and catching bad guys. You see, the cops have recruited a mathematical genius to help them solve their more difficult cases. Which, in the end, could really make for a cool show. But…we don’t get that. What we get is a pretty standard template for each episode. A crime is committed, and the cops are investigating. Which proceeds like a normal cop show, with regular filming and standard acting. Then the cops hit a snag, and the math guy happens to be walking by. He comes up with a way to solve the problem, mathematically. He explains this theory using some kind of analogy, and the camera starts jump-cutting, switches to black and white, and the soundtrack funks up. Like the math portion of this show is a music video, while the rest is CSI: Nerd. The math portion, it turns out, is either something obvious the cops should be doing anyway, or it’s a stretch on credibility that this mathematical solution could ever be applied to this problem.

The one episode in the Fourth Season that illustrates this best is one that has to do with street racing. To determine exactly what happened when a street racer crashes into a café and kills a man, the math guy turns to an engineer friend who happens to have the exact car-crash simulation software that can solve the case. Over the course of several music-video-edited montages, he discovers that someone else must have crashed into the car before it ran into the café. After many analogies and simulations, they determine what exactly happened, and then - it has nothing to do with the resolution of the episode. At all. It turns out the real question is “who murdered the street car racing driver”, and not “how did this happen”. In fact, the math stuff makes no difference whatsoever to the outcome of the show. But then, that’s fairly standard with this program. The mathematical “genius” moments are shoehorned in without really being essential to any episode.

Now, there are some good actors on this program, and the actual cop stuff is just about as good as any of the cop stuff on other similar programs. But the one thing that slows the show down is the one thing that is supposed to make it unique. And that’s too bad. Using an analogy to the behaviour of lions and jackals when discussing the behavious of humans who are being blackmailed doesn’t ring true. Then the mathematical model that will plug the name of the real killer into the equation strains credibility. Anyone who thinks they are learning something about math by watching Numb3rs is mistaken. I’m not even sure they will be entertained. Numb3rs, Season Four comes out on DVD Tuesday, September 30th from Paramount Home Entertainment.

There have been many little indie films that have done well with the theme of vigilante justice.  And some bigger-budget ones that haven’t done so well.  The main reason the big budget ones have done poorly (aside from the amazing Death Wish 4, which arms Charles Bronson with a rocket launcher at what appears to be a retirement home) is that they are merely jacked-up versions of the low-budget movies.  And the low-budget movies usually work because vigilante justice is something that is best served in grainy, gritty film-making.  The best of the bunch was Death Wish, which was the first of it’s kind and really changed the genre.  The next-best was Boondock Saints, which was incredibly stylish and managed to infuse Tarantino-esque cool, great lead performances, and some quality humour into a movie that changed the genre further.

Then there were the also-rans.  A ton of also-rans.  Death Wish 2, 3, and 5.  Hero Wanted, Death Sentence, and The Brave One.  And many, many more.  Outlaw fits somewhere in the middle, and at the same time it manages to change the genre once more.  A tight, gritty little film out of Britain, Outlaw is a film about five people who have, in one way or another, been the victims of violence.  As in every vigilante justice movie, the violence that finds these people is arbitrary, and goes completely unpunished.  The only way to get retribution is to go after those thugs that wronged them.  Also, as in every other successful vigilante movie, there is a cop who is helping them all out (Bob Hoskins). 

But that’s where the similarities end.  Because it is a group of people setting out to see justice done, and not just a lone gunman a la Charles Bronson, many different stories are told.  Sean Bean plays a soldier who has returned from Iraq to find his wife being unfaithful, and is unable to function in real society.  He meets a creepy weirdo security guard in his hotel, who sees all his guns and starts to idolize him.  This security guard has dreams of vigilantism, and recruits other people to join the cause.  Those people include a young man who has been beaten by a group of thugs because they thought he was gay, and another young man who has never been attacked but who lives in constant fear of the possibility.  And the last member of the team is a district attorney whose wife and unborn child have been killed as a warning for him to drop the case of a local gangster.  His story is tough to believe, that he would join this angry mob and completely turn his back on everything he believes, while still seemingly maintaining a rational mind. 

But that’s one of the things I like about this movie.  The characters, in a lot of ways, don’t make any sense.  Their motivations are clear, but their reasoning for going through with this gang violence thing is not.  Although Sean Bean is a military guy, an experienced soldier, we never get the sense that he is particularly good at it, and although he is the de-facto leader of this group because of his time in Iraq, he doesn’t really seem to have any real leadership skills, and he isn’t that impressive a fighter.  I like that because it’s realistic.  And I also like the other characters and their doubts and their sometimes half-assed participation in the project. 

That being said, for a movie that is more character-driven than action-oriented, there is not quite enough explanation for the actions of the individual characters.  I understand the initial anger and the desire for revenge.  But from there, I don’t quite know where these characters are going.  The two characters that make total sense to me are the soldier, who is doing this thing because he desperately needs something to do, and the psychopath who is doing this because he likes being involved in the violence.  But the others remain in a murky sort of quasi-morality that is never really resolved.  Hoskins, also, is an enigma, as the cop who helps them because he wants to see justice done, but who seems at other times not to care about his own job or catching criminals at all.

All in all, though, Outlaw is a solid, tight, gritty little indie movie that is unlike any other vigilante justice movie ever made.  And that’s a good thing.  It came out on DVD September 2nd, from Peace Arch Entertainment.

Alliance Films is releasing CSI: New York, season four, on September 23rd. And I actually believe that New York has evolved into the best of the CSI family. William Petersen as Gil Grissom on the Vegas version is vaguely creepy as the super smart father figure to the CSI team. David Caruso as Horatio Caine on the Miami version is fully creepy and completely ridiculous as the Jesus figure to the CSI team. Which means that Gary Sinise on CSI: New York, playing just a regular guy, is exactly what the whole CSI franchise needs.

The rest of the cast on CSI: New York is terrific as well. This is the best cast assembled for a CSI series, and the episodes are better as a result. Really, the plot and the writing of each CSI series is interchangeable with the other series, and so the cast really does make all the difference. Also, New York is just a more interesting city than Las Vegas, where most deaths are gambling related. And it is also more interesting than Miami, where most deaths are bikini related. Season Four is once again terrific, with guest stars like Bruce Dern and Dylan Bruce rounding out the excellent cast. Well worth picking up.

That’s it, people. You can stop buying movies for the rest of your life. Because the ultimate movie item is now on sale. As of yesterday, September 23rd, DVDs have reached perfection, when Paramount Home Entertainment released The Godfather Trilogy on Blu-Ray. The greatest movie trilogy of all time is now available in the greatest Hi-Definition format of all time. And while you may not think at first that The Godfather movies are the kind that require Blu-Ray technology, you would be wrong. There are certain classic movies where Blu-Ray is an obvious improvement over the original transfers. Dark City, or Blade Runner. Movies that started out dark and require that crisp, clear picture.

But The Godfather really does change as well. These are three movies that I have seen dozens upon dozens of times, and yet watching them in Blu-Ray was a whole new experience. When you watch the scene where James Caan gets riddled with bullets, it’s like you’re one of the guys holding a machine gun. When Luca Brasi is rehearsing his speech outside Don Corleone’s office, you feel like he’s talking directly to you, the movie watcher, about this, the day of your daughter’s wedding. And when Michael takes Fredo out for a boat ride…well. You’ll just have to see to understand. And then you will agree. DVD movies have attained perfection with the release of The Godfather Trilogy on Blu-Ray. Throw out the rest of your collection. It is ALL now obsolete.

Alliance Films is releasing the movie adaptation of one of Canada’s most enduring and popular novels, The Stone Angel, today, September 16th. This is one of my favourite books, but it’s not the type of classic book that lends itself to a classic screenplay. And while there are certainly some good things going on in this movie, it doesn’t really work overall. Now, I’ve read Margaret Laurence’s book. So I didn’t expect gunfights and car chases and hilarious jokes. I expected a long, slow meditation on the life of Hagar Shipley full of flashbacks as she reflected on her life as an old woman. And that’s exactly what I got. With an emphasis on the “long” and the “slow”.

Ellen Burstyn is wonderful as the old, stubborn, bitter Hagar. She does a great job of conveying Hagar’s double standards in life, especially when it comes to her children. Do as I say, not as I did, and so forth. Her resistance toward the actions of her children is more of a self-loathing regret than it is good parental advice, and this comes through loud and clear in Burstyn’s performance. Also terrific are Dylan Baker as her adult son Marvin, Kevin Zegers as her adult son John, and Ellen Page as John’s girlfriend. But they all appear so briefly. Or at least it feels that way in a movie that feels far too long. It’s like listening to certain types of jazz, in that you can tell there is brilliance there, but it isn’t immediately apparent where, and even if you knew you might still be bored.

In the book, one of the most interesting and powerful scenes was a scene when Hagar, as an old woman, runs off on her son who is trying to put her in a home, and makes her way to the seaside cabin she remembers from her youth. While there, she gets drunk and has a great talk with a young man, while her past blurs with her present are we’re not even sure if she is in the right house. But for me, the most compelling part of that scene was the journey itself. The way she, as an old woman, snuck out of the house and managed to struggle her way down to this cabin. But that gets left out of the movie in favour of more flashbacks.

In the end, this movie is more skillfully made than it is interesting. There is great acting but it fails to become compelling. I can’t really think of anything (other than the getting to the cabin scene) that could have been either added or omitted for greater effect. I can’t think of how this movie could have been better done, or how it could have been better acted. And yet, I realize that is because I love the book. And I am familiar with the book to such an extent that I watch the movie from that perspective. And it becomes rather clear to me that it was made from that perspective as well. Not that The Stone Angel is too faithful to the book, but that it makes the assumption that simply running through the same scenes as the book does, with great actors to make those scenes come alive, is enough to create the same impact. And it isn’t.

Paramount Home Entertainment is releasing Criminal Minds: Season Three on DVD tomorrow, September 16th. As I have said many times before, most recently in my review of NCIS, these shows are a dime a dozen on TV. And I like almost all of them. Criminal Minds is one of the better ones, and the third season is my favourite to date. Nothing against Mandy Patinkin, who I like, but I am a big fan of Joe Mantegna. Both in the movies and on this show. This is the season where Patinkin left (although he does appear in the first episode), and Mantegna took his place. He adds a certain amount of credibility to the cast, which was already quite good. (Although I still find Thomas Gibson fairly irritating. Call it the curse of Dharma And Greg.)

This isn’t one of those series that delves deep into forensics, like CSI or NCIS. Instead, Criminal Minds deals with, well, criminal minds. Which stands to reason. It’s well-written, well acted, and the plot of each show is compelling. Which is especially true in the third season. Kidnapping, stalking, and murder. It’s worth checking out.

Tout Est Parfait came out August 12th from Alliance Films.  It’s a deep, moving, heartbreaking teen film with the abstract feel of some of Gus Van Sant’s best work.  It’s a French Canadian film directed by Yves Christian Fournier about a teenage boy who loses four of his friends to suicide.  It appears to have been a suicide pact where he was left out.  He begins to drift through life (even more than he already was) and hooks up with his best friend’s girl.  It’s tough to tell at times which of the characters are alive and which are dead, as he is constantly seeing his friends that have committed suicide.  It’s the resolution of this situation that creates the powerful and heartbreaking conclusion.

The lead actors, Maxime Dumontier and Chloe Bourgeois, are terrific.  They do a great job of conveying the disaffected confusion of teenagers, and they have many emotionally charged scenes together that are perfectly understated.  Their relationship, which is basically one of catharsis through sex, is a typical teenage relationship with this devastating undercurrent.  And the adults who play the parents of the dead kids are magnificent as well.  One mother has become almost catatonic, another father doesn’t know what to do with himself.  But all of them are making half-hearted and confused attempts to reach out to the surviving teenagers, with even more devastating results.  Tout Est Parfait is as moving as any Canadian film I have ever seen.

Paramount Home Entertainment releases the fourth season of Medium on DVD today, September 9th. There are many shows right now that explore some kind of mystical, supernatural ability, and this one is the best of them all. Unlike, for example, The Ghost Whisperer, which was released last week, Medium has a considerable amount of substance. Patricia Arquette plays the title character, a psychic who dreams about murder. And not the way I dream about murder, where I wake up and wonder whether or not I did, in fact, kill Steven Seagal during the night. But rather, she dreams about real murders that actually happened. Of course, she never sees the entire murder happen at first, or the show would be very short. As she continues to dream, more and more of the murder becomes clear, until at the end of the show she can put it all together and catch the criminal.

Season four opens with Arquette having lost her job with the office of the district attorney. At the end of the previous season, the DA was forced to resign when it was revealed that he had been using this psychic to help him solve cases. I guess the public wasn’t willing to buy in. Not enough of them watch shows like Medium. Her husband has also lost his job, which means that money is tight and times are tough. An opportunity arises in the form of Anjelica Huston, who is an investigator working with AmeriTips, an organization that helps people resolve crimes on their own, rather than having to resort to the silly police. Huston recruits Arquette to work with her, which means that at least a little bit of money is coming into the house. And while each episode of Medium stands alone, and has a satisfying resolution, Huston herself has a story arc throughout season four that boils down to a very intense conclusion.

Medium has been a good show for a while, but the addition of one of the great actresses in the world for the fourth season, and the story she brings with her, make season four the best of them all. Pick it up on DVD now.

Rescue Me, one of the best shows on television, stars Dennis Leary, and it was really affected by the writer’s strike. Scrambling to put something together to get back on the air when the strike ended, they came out with a series of what they called “minisodes”. Tiny little five-or-six minute episodes of the show, one scene at a time, to get the ball rolling before the next season really begins. These minisodes are going to be running Sundays at 10:45 on Showcase, and the first one is tonight. It’s a quick scene where Sean struggles with a fast, and refuses to break it, but gets tempted with Lou’s homemade donuts and a cigarette. These minisodes are all terrific, but they’re easy to miss. What with being so short and all. You might want to use the PVR for these ones.

Season Four of Weeds begins tonight on Showcase, 10 p.m. I still love Weeds, four years in. The concept of a TV show about a weed dealing suburban soccer mom frankly, sounded awful to me when I first heard about it. But Mary-Louise Parker, Kevin Nealon and Elizabeth Perkins make it work. In fact, Nancy (Parker) makes this show sing. She is just magnificent. At the end of season three, she had just burnt down her house, and the DEA had discovered her stash and her drug operation. And Celia (Perkins) was being questioned by the cops. As season four begins, Nancy and her family are on the run to a border town in California. The DEA is interrogating everyone else, and they all pin the grow op on Celia. There are some really strange scenes involving Celia and the agent questioning her. Sort of a really twisted Basic Instinct interrogation-seduction thing. Bizarre. But worth it. Check out Weeds tonight.