handy314 Reviews

Great Performances: Macbeth (2010) Season 39, Episode 3

MacCeaucescu, the Scottish Soviet Play

[9/10 · 23 June 2023]

The Ceaucescu-era Romanian setting is genius for this play. Patrick Stewart and Kate Fleetwood are perfection. And the choice to make the Weird Sisters Nurse/Servants so that they linger around MacBeth in various locations to torment him is brilliantly effective: they make perfect sense silently moving about the banquet table pouring wine and serving blood red soup, or chopping up animals in the kitchen.

The post-industrial Soviet-era settings and de-natured color make the whole production give it a chaustrophobic doom. For my money, no one can manage the jump from haunted murderer better than Stewart. Macbeth is easy to bellow or chop up to make each gorgeous line more dramatic, but his simplicity and gravitas make it entirely believable he can be both the murderer and the haunted man.

The Red Suitcase (2022)

MASTERPIECE OF SUSPENSE

[10/10 · 11 March 2023]

This is perhaps the single best international short film ever made. It's gripping, emotionally riveting, and does the impossible: puts us in the position of a young Iranian girl in an airport in Luxembourg and forces us to empathize with her incredibly vulnerable circumstance and the few options she's afforded.

Cyrush Neshvad ratchets up the dramatic tension the way great suspense masters like Hitchcock, Kubrick and the Coens' do: by merely tossing us Direct Imagery for us to interpret. As Billy Wilder said "Make the audience add "A plus B equals C" and they'll love you.

I hate that this film exists in our world.

But I feel changed and will remember it always.

Hail Satan? (2019)

The Most Hilariously Patriotic Film I Saw All Year

[10/10 · 6 March 2020]

I laughed so much all the way through this film, because these Merry Dark-Robed Tricksters are the most rational and American trouble makers, correcting the skewed theocratic overreach of the white Evangelical movement in America.

It's incredibly thought provoking, and I found myself shocked that I agree with all seven of their Satanic Temple Tenets since they're really just Englightenment Era Rational Thought based on Reason and Fact, as opposed to the garble of Judeo-Christian white supremacy from the church.

I think every American should watch it. It's very even-handed and rhetorically balanced--people who spooked me in the beginning like Lucian, who I assumed is the Villain of the Piece, turns out to be a hero of American democracy by Act III, where the evangelicals are freaky.

Jessica Jones (2015–2019)

Best Marvel Series Period.

[9/10 · 20 November 2015]

I get to enjoy this show in an ideal format: in a big old house, with no distractions all day, on a variety of screens, with alcohol if I need it and homemade steak and potato pies for breaks. To be able to start with coffee and toast and watch the whole series today is like a festival, and to get to do it at home in my Ugg boots and sweats is amazing. Thanks, Netflix.

Having Supergirl and now Jessica Jones available as role models for modern women is a revolutionary feat for television. They're bookends: Supergirl is a kind, unspoiled alien super-oatmeal raisin cookie and Jessica Jones is an Earth-born mutant with similar powers who's been broken and tortured and wounded by a sadist.

I loved Daredevil, though I think it's so much more vital to have JJ's fears and motives based on anguish over her past that still haunts and threatens her: I couldn't help thinking that this heroine is every woman in the world who's ever experienced psychological or physical abuse and is hurt, vulnerable, and even a little sarcastic and calloused about it.

Daredevil fights to save his image of Hell's Kitchen, which is in pretty good shape today though he still fights for it, but Jessica's blows are all motivated by protection of the vulnerable and damage she carries with her inside forever.

She's Ophelia from Hamlet, only she chose not to kill herself, was empowered with superpowers, drinks a lot and participates in casual sex as a PI. Because she's still got her wounds.

I was dubious if I would like the added psychological dark material in this show since for most of the history of TV and film, sex and violence are used for shock and sensation. It's an exciting time we live in when creative minds can include nudity, sexuality, and violence which tug at our heart strings the way these things do in real life, rather than just being titillation. For every pair of exposed breasts on screen there is a heartbroken father whose princess is gone.

But the violence here really chops wood for the story: it's felt violence, not just well-choreographed MMA workouts, which even Daredevil is at times. No fists or lasers can carry the emotional impact a well- portrayed pair of eyes or lips can. Joss' "Avengers" brought humanity and authentic feelings to the characters so we cared and enjoyed their banter. It's why they haven't made, in my mind, a good Superman film nor a believable Batman yet: their humanity is always still in check behind masks of Superness or Bat Brooding.

The rough pounding sex scene in the pilot, for example, seems like as reasonable, though unhealthy, a choice for her as pouring bourbon into her water bottle to go to work as PI: the deep-tissue pummeling that numbs some of the hurt. They're both terrible choices for a hurt girl, but not many of us would say we wouldn't consider them temporarily for soothing deep emotional wounds.

I do think one vestige of noir they chose to keep out was good: cigarettes. I barely know a noir without smoke, and I don't think the comics used them either, but it's a good idea to keep them out for their influence on young women. I bet Jim Beam is glad they have product placement in the pilot, and I bet bourbon sales will skyrocket this weekend.

Lastly, I have to get on board with using women as title characters in a variety of superhero forms--Agent Carter, Supergirl, and this show, because, like Ingmar Bergman found out in his gorgeous films, it's a lot more fun to watch a woman on film than to watch a male actor, especially when we've seen so few of them. A female noir heroine is so much more nuanced and layered with weapons and vulnerabilities than we ever saw from male noir heroes, though I've often thought one reason we loved Bogart was that we could sense the pain he carried.

The scene where Jessica carries out a bit of PI business with a laptop while sitting on her toilet wasn't a choice Lucille Ball or Mary Tyler Moore had, or the Bionic Woman, or any character from Tolstoy or Shakespeare. But you know if Tolstoy or Shakespeare knew they could write those scenes in, they would, to bring verisimilitude to what women really are.

Congratulations, Marvel and Netflix. I hope you make a gazillion dollars on all your shows and last forever because you deserve it. But this one, so far, is the best series I've seen. I rarely cry at TV shows but the emotional impact of the ending of the pilot with the girl and her family was so well-constructed and emotionally justified, though manipulative, that I just collapsed. Because it did what good Drama has always done: given us authentic emotion we earn together.

Good work. We might just be making television that's actually Art and not just entertainment.

Edge (2015 TV Movie)

You lost me at "Missouri" with California landscape

[3/10 · 11 November 2015]

I love westerns, even as shmaltzy as John Ford got, I still loved 'em. And I can even find things to like in the post-mod fun houses that Tarentino puts out.

But this show is barely watchable unless you watch it PIP with "Blazing Saddles" at the same time. The violence is at times innovative but often gratuitous and just vulgar, the female characters are undeveloped, and could we please just put away the strong silent protag with a mysterious past. Toshiro Mifune did it best which is why Leone stole it, but put it in a jar labelled "Eastwood" and forget it.

As with many modern westerns I wonder how they get made. The meeting scene near the end where landowners are getting orally served during the meeting, I think I get a clue what happened to fund this film.

Worst of all, I can't believe Shane Black and not his pre-teen grandson wrote this script. Bad bad puns, unnecessary dialogue, tedious villains. Cmon, Shane.

Was this a community service project to make up for parking tickets?

Good Girls Revolt (2015–2016)

A Bit on the Nose, but Refreshing

[7/10 · 11 November 2015]

Although at times this pilot was a bit too on the nose by referencing actual Altamont, Nora Ephron, and Eleanor Holmes Norton, I like the milieu of "Good Girls Revolt" as an opportunity to comment on female empowerment and a cultural revolution in the newsrooms of print journalism. I believe "Mad Men" was based on memoirs from a male advertising executive, and to me it was unwatchable because it was annoying to see women snubbed all over again. And I'm a guy. I was especially annoyed that my female high school students thought it was cute.

There's potential here, and some wonderful characters, though I'm still puzzling why the show's writers insisted on using real names like Nora Ephron rather than fictionalized characters: it starts to feel a bit like "Walk Hard" when the editor warns Nora Ephron that her writing days in New York are through when I already own several DVDs of movies she wrote.

Maybe it's because the makeup remind me so much of what I saw in 1969 that I enjoyed this one. My ranking of Amazon pilots as of today stands:

1. Patriot 2. Z 3. Good Girls Revolt 4. Edge

Z: The Beginning of Everything (2015–2017)

Ricci, Strathairn, and the Fitzgeralds? I'm in.

[8/10 · 9 November 2015]

The Jazz Age Fitzgeralds were such lightning in a bottle, that to try and capture it is audacious: we know the champagne will pour and the fame will come, and the real pain will come with the hangovers and end in despair for the both of them.

But the controversial choice of Christina Ricci as Jazz Baby Number One instead of any other McAdams Barbie doll from the Hollywood shelf gives this pilot a bounce and possibility because she is such a hellcat. I'm already jonesin' for her wild gin-fed car scream rides and Paris fountain dances. And David Strathairn is such a delightfully stolid and formal southern judge for her to bounce off of.

Fitz is such a limp hankie next to her--which was probably true--that watching him ignite into brilliance from her bad girl spark and become the man who could write Gatsby and fall Icarus-like back to Earth in her skirts to face the Depression is very promising.

Most importantly, this is a sumptuous period piece from one of two most exciting decades of the last century. If Amazon orders more of "Z", I will be a devoted watcher. Thanks for letting us review.

Patriot (2015–2018)

The Freshest Take on a Genre Since the Coen Brothers

[9/10 · 9 November 2015]

Please order more of this show! I haven't seen such a fresh take on a genre--in this case, espionage--since I first saw "Raising Arizona" 35 years ago. My eyes and mouth opened wide at how unique and quirkily this show used the screen, characters, story, and imagery to toss James Bond into a Cuisinart every so often for a pulse.

The whole thing has the feeling, like the incredible camera/bull sequence, of being told as a narrative from the memories and imaginations of two goofy brothers lying out in a tent one summer night, taking turns killing off each other's characters and they hand off the narrative. The setup and pay off of the Asian gentleman and the security guard is brilliant!

I can't stop laughing to make breakfast.

I almost want to never see any more so as to preserve the mystery and perfection. This pilot is Rube Goldberg's Cleaning Closet with all the mops and brooms and buckets just barely kept from chaos by the door.

My one concern is the title, which is hopelessly dull and shares none of the grab bag charm of the script and acting. Even "NOC" is better because it conceals mystery but pays off. Nobody politically left of John McCain would give this a tumble with that name. It sounds like a Tom Clancy novel when it's a lot closer to Tom Robbins.

I'm sold on this writer/director and will now go look up his IMDb credits. Thanks for letting us review.