TV on Blu-ray Review: The Outsider - Season 1 (2020)

Now Available

Watching the great Ben Mendelsohn play a police detective still grieving the loss of his son to cancer in the HBO series The Outsider just weeks after he made me cry buckets of tears as a father trying to stay strong for the impending death of his daughter in the powerful Australian film Babyteeth got me thinking. Ben Mendelsohn's agent really needs to send him a script for a comedy. Still, for fans of brilliant character actors (like yours truly), Mendelsohn's misery is our gain. From anguish to skepticism to rage, whether it's in Animal Kingdom (2010) or Mississippi Grind or beyond, Ben Mendelsohn puts so much conflicting emotion into his performances that he completely pulls us into the mindset of his character, which we see play out over the course of ten riveting episodes in this HBO miniseries adaptation of the eponymous 2018 novel from Stephen King.

Assigned to solve the heinous slaying of a local eleven-year-old boy, Mendelsohn's Georgia detective Ralph Anderson is shocked when a plethora of evidence including eyewitness testimony, security camera footage, and DNA all points at his son's former Little League coach, Terry Maitland (a terrifically understated Jason Bateman). A well-respected high school English teacher and married father, the seeming betrayal of this veritable picture of clean-cut, white picket fence domesticity inspires fury in Anderson, who sends his colleagues out to make a very public arrest of Maitland in front of the entire community.

 
Requesting his lawyer (the always outstanding Bill Camp) and pleading his innocence, Maitland informs the detective that he wasn't even in town when the murder committed but at a teacher's conference roughly seventy miles away instead. Checking the security footage at the hotel and finding him there, Anderson finds himself completely baffled by how the man could be in two totally different places at once, which sends him on an odyssey towards the horrifically supernatural. Soon working alongside intuitive private investigator Holly Gibney (brought marvelously to life by Cynthia Erivo), the series evolves from a grim but gripping police procedural into something that could only come from the mind of Stephen King.

Adapted from King's work by series showrunner Richard Price, a novelist and screenwriter who penned such '80s classics as The Color of Money and Sea of Love before he wrote for TV's The Wire, The Night Of, and The Deuce, among others, the reason this show works as well as it does is because it's so firmly rooted in reality. We all know a Terry Maitland and a Ralph Anderson, as well as their supportive but equally complex wives (well played here by Julianne Nicholson and Mare Winningham) and the series never loses its grip on everyday contemporary life even when it heads into dicey, unexplainable supernatural territory. Though technically a work of science fiction, The Outsider ranks among the best King adaptations in its decision to endear us to its fully realized characters and let them be our guide into this new world before it drops us straight into the unknown. 

 
While the sudden, slightly abrupt ending doesn't entirely pay off on the incredibly thrilling series-long build-up involving the question of an evil spirit somehow inhabiting or attaching itself to a person, the rest of The Outsider is so insanely compelling — as is the staggeringly gifted cast — that it's well worth the watch. Addicting enough that I devoured all ten installments of The Outsider over the course of two days (quarantine, baby!), the opening pair of episodes directed by Jason Bateman are two of the strongest I've seen from HBO since the days of The Night Of.

Predictably, however, it does use the same grimy palette of saturated colors so indicative of prestige TV series that it's inspired articles all over the web and is also a main feature of Bateman's Netflix series Ozark. A definite bone of contention — given that it's now become a stylistic cliché for prestige offerings — when it comes to The Outsider, however, I am definitely fine with a Stephen King universe devoid of bright primary colors or high key lighting, especially considering the morose, haunting subject matter. 

 
Yet, despite this, far too frequently in the series — and especially in those middle episodes once it ventures beyond procedural territory — The Outsider's recurring lack of light makes it nearly impossible to see what is going on, no matter how many curtains you draw or the color settings you select for your television screen. While the brightest high power setting of "vivid" is undoubtedly the last way the craftsmen behind The Outsider would want viewers to watch this show, it was the only way I could even begin to make out what was happening in a few scenes, which is a major letdown from an aesthetic standpoint overall.

Still highly recommended nonetheless, the new box set of the HBO series — which, rumor has it, may return with another installment featuring Erivo's Gibney — arrives complete with short special features boasting interviews with King, Price, Mendelsohn (who also produced the series), Bateman, and the rest of the cast. Additionally providing a digital code so that you can stream the entire series in addition to playing the included Blu-rays, with the frequently aggrieved but superb Ben Mendelsohn as our guide, the show gives us a hair-raising opportunity to see where the wild things are outside while staying safely indoors (or so we think). 

 
Text ©2020, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. https://www.filmintuition.com  Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  Also, as an Amazon Associate, I earn from qualifying purchases made off my site through ad links. FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy or screener link of this title to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique. Cookies Notice: This site incorporates tools (including advertiser partners and widgets) that use cookies and may collect some personal information to display ads tailored to you etc. Please be advised that neither Film Intuition nor its site owner has any access to this data beyond general site statistics (geographical region etc.) as your privacy is our main concern.

TV on Blu-ray Review: The Casual Vacancy (2015)

Now Available to Own 
 

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A contemporary Dickensian tragicomic tale of two communities and thirty-four characters, 2012's The Casual Vacancy may not have been part of J.K. Rowling's phenomenally popular Harry Potter series but that didn't stop the BBC and HBO from securing the rights to develop the U.K.'s fastest-selling novel in three years.

No stranger to weaving socioeconomic and political themes into Potter's fantastical coming-of-age storylines, as a book targeted to adults instead of children Vacancy offered Rowling the opportunity to do more than just shed a little light on the issues about which she was passionate.

Digging deeper into the topic of class warfare including its main byproduct of prejudice, in the novel Rowling likened the situation to a sort of suburban apartheid set in a west country town (likely modeled on her birthplace of Yate, Gloucestershire).

Yet determined not to lose herself in political theory, she took a cue from Potter and instead focused on her brilliantly conceived characters. Delving into the difference a small election could make in the lives and futures of the well-to-do Pagford community that's largely populated by those that wish to permanently separate from the poor residents living in the neighboring council estate dubbed The Fields, Rowling explores this from all sides to bring her concerns vibrantly to life.

Rather than voting to make The Fields part of the nearby city once and for all, the miniseries enhances the dramatic impact by paring the issue down even further so that the future a vital local community center becomes the focal point of the Pagford Parrish Council election.

Offering not just a safe haven for the children in both communities (especially those in the impoverished, drug dominated Fields) but also an all-important methadone and health clinic that's much easier for recovering addicts to visit than the one only accessible by unreliable bus service in the city, the aptly named Sweetlove House serves as a important humanistic symbol throughout the work.

And after the death of the beloved council member Barry Fairbrother (well played by Rory Kinnear), who was raised in The Fields but – thanks to the opportunities available with social welfare programs and places like Sweetlove House – went on to become a respected champion for civil rights in Pagford, the community center becomes a permanent reminder of Barry for the rest of the miniseries.

With his seat newly up for grabs and the Council suddenly missing their voice of reason, Pagford descends into chaos, especially after an unknown hacker calling themselves "The Ghost of Barry Fairbrother" begins posting the town's dirty secrets on the Council's website to expose the hypocrisy of those trying to claim his seat for the upcoming election.

Hoping to close the community center and instead build a tourist destination spa in its place (despite the fact that most of its neighboring locals wouldn't be able to afford it), the wealthiest and most powerful Pagford residents try to scheme their way to a victory, oblivious to the fact that everyone has something to hide and Barry's ghosts are watching.

Given Rowling's love of the classics, it's only fitting that veteran BBC miniseries scripter Sarah Phelps (known for the channel's recent critically acclaimed presentation of Great Expectations) was tapped to adapt Rowling's ambitious tome.

Staying true to Rowling's character-driven roots, although The Casual Vacancy is anchored by a large ensemble cast including the phenomenal Abigail Lawrie whose deceptively tough, battle-scarred sixteen-year-old Fields resident Krystal Weedon is the heart of the miniseries, Phelps tactfully cuts out the novel's excess.

Merging some characters into one while removing others completely, perhaps most impressively the screenwriter reconfigured key players in order to ensure everything harks back to the most important issues that Rowling longed to get across.

Although the jump from satirical SNL sketch worthy supporting roles to achingly real portraits of those who could easily be your friends and neighbors feels a bit jarring, Casual is at its best when it abandons the Potter-like players and delivers fly-on-the-wall docudrama.

Understanding that, Phelps sharpens her take on book even more, letting Rowling's stunningly crafted, flawed yet fascinating characters lead the way to terrific, often heartbreaking effect.

While some of the film's plot points are a tad too predictable and after the first episode far too much time is spent on unlikable characters that fail to move the plot forward, all in all, it's an intelligently crafted work which (like Animal Farm or The Wizard of Oz) takes an inventive approach to political allegory.

And this production is timelier than ever – not only for Americans gearing up for the exhausting mudslinging that goes along with a presidential election – but also relatable on a global scale for the clever way that Rowling's small town war can be applied to any number of settings and situations.

However, just like certain aspects of the satire fail to translate from the page, Phelps made an incredibly smart decision to rewrite the devastatingly heavy-handed, Thomas Hardy style ending that may have come off as far too hopeless on the screen.

Understanding that the viewer needs to be able to see the ways in which ignorance, apathy, bureaucracy, fear, and prejudice have failed its characters in order to fully appreciate not only what went wrong but also what went right (and how it could've stayed that way), Phelps's more affecting bittersweet coda reminds us of the basic good in people.

Reassuring us that it's never too late to try and fight for what's right (even if you're outnumbered and going it alone), the superbly crafted film helmed by Jonny Campbell plays better as a three hour feature than a three part miniseries.

Bolstered by top notch production values, Vacancy's strong cast and crew meets the screenplay halfway, abridging Rowling's epic with clever costuming, production design, and cinematography that aids in our understanding of this tale of two communities and way too many subplots through visual storytelling.

An extremely polished yet meandering miniseries that mirrors the state of Pagford after the death of Fairbrother by temporarily losing its way after the exceptionally crafted first installment, despite a few missteps, Vacancy finds its footing again and again.

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

Digital TV Review: Silicon Valley – The Complete Second Season

Now Available to Own on Digital HD 


  
Photo Slideshow   

In the race to make our lives easier with their own tech, start-ups, apps, and lines of code, a group of young men make their own lives ridiculously complex while navigating the tricky terrain of the titular Silicon Valley in HBO's ingenious Emmy nominated hit.

Yet rather than focus a majority of its energies on laughter with a more immediate punchline payoff on par with the "us vs. them" approach taken by network television’s smash sitcom The Big Bang Theory, Silicon Valley makes us feel like a fellow conspiratorial member of underdog compression start-up Pied Piper's team throughout.

Operating like well-oiled comedic machines, while each technique serves their respective series well, it nonetheless provides an important distinction between two frequently compared programs. And when it comes to the HBO show, it's one that makes us feel far more invested in the in the goings-on of the stressful environment where with each laugh, we stumble a little further down the path of our slow uphill climb to the top of Silicon Valley.

Fueled by conflict and chaos, the second season of Silicon Valley burns through as much plot in one half hour episode than ABC's sudsy watercooler drama Scandal does in double the running time and twice as many episodes.

And while it's all played for fast-talking, fast-walking thrills in the arena of politics on ABC, the high stakes threats of lawsuits, bidding wars, and reverse engineering woes are no less compelling, despite Valley's laid back demeanor and witty presentation.

But similar to the way that the average consumer isn't going to understand what it takes to make a computer run besides simply relishing in the end result, casual viewers aren't going to give Valley a deeper thought the first time around other than just kicking back for some much-needed Sunday night laughs.

And that's precisely what makes taking a second and closer look at the stellar second season all the more exciting as within the first few minutes of the Emmy nominated season opener, patterns begin to emerge as you realize just how frequently throughout Valley, flickers of what will become some of its strongest subplots are woven into seemingly throwaway exchanges several episodes in advance.

Namely, just like a stand up comedian will often close out their act with a punchline that harks back to one of the first jokes they made in the set, one of the most impressive feats of Silicon Valley's most recent season is in the way that the final cliffhanger in the season finale alludes to a warning given to our main character in the opening sequence of the season premiere.

Obviously, of course, the layering in or foreshadowing of a plot twist that will pay off later on is hardly a new tactic in comedy or drama alike. But when you also consider the countless ways that Valley moves beyond the traditional juggling of an A, B, and C storyline each week without letting you forget the half dozen other characters potentially working against Pied Piper that could come out of the woodwork at any time, you begin to realize just how structurally sophisticated it is all around.

In addition to bringing in some terrific new supporting players to challenge the Pied Piper team in the ten episode second season, Silicon Valley's talented writers built upon the foundation they'd crafted in the first season to likewise enrich each individual preexisting character.

As such, season two is at its best when it pins its ensemble cast into a corner and the forces the guys to rely both on their own intellectual creativity as well as each other to turn things around.

Moving past the limitations of watching antagonists Dinesh (Kumail Nanjiani) and Gilfoyle (Martin Starr) simply try to one-up each other, the series soon realizes how staggeringly funny the two are as (albeit combative) allies, particularly in scripter Carrie Kemper's season highlight episode, "Homicide.”

While Zach Woods remains one of my favorite bright spots as Jared, the selfless teddy bear often overlooked by the rest of the group, one of the smartest things the writing staff did was to expand upon the persona of Freaks and Geeks and Party Down sitcom veteran (and frequent series scene-stealer) Martin Starr's sardonically deadpan Gilfoyle.

Knowing that they have an ace in the hole with Starr, Silicon makes him Pied Piper's secret weapon in season two as he instigates some ethically shady outside-the-box thinking that pushes the troubled start-up in some surprising directions for better and worse.

In addition to giving T.J. Miller’s larger-than-life Erlich Bachman a foil in the sleazy entrepreneur Ross Hanneman (Chris Diamantopoulos) – a rumored extreme composite of Donald Trump and Mark Cuban – which by extension helps soften some of Erlich's often tasteless edges, the series offers Amanda Crew’s delightful Monica a few more great female personalities to play off of as a straight (wo)man and potential romantic interest for Richard (Thomas Middleditch).

Although attempting to fill the shoes left behind by the death of first rate character actor Christopher Evan Welch who played oddball visionary Peter Gregory is an impossibly thankless task, casting Suzanne Cryer as Laurie Bream, another (yet decidedly different) oddball was one of the best behind-the-scenes decisions made by the comedy so far.

Going from over-the-top crass to conceptual to cultural, the series (created by Mike Judge, John Altschuler and Dave Krinsky) culls comedy and conflict from any number of sources, which makes it compulsively watchable for its sheer unpredictability alone.

Deriving some of its most relatable laughs from the stresses of work and everyday life from a precarious phone battery to income rivalry, in addition to skewering the tech industry, Silicon Valley makes a worthy successor to co-creator Mike Judge's word-of-mouth breakthrough hit, Office Space.

Yet while it plays extremely well on its own as a highly entertaining sitcom, HBO's most consistently inventive, topical series is even better when you break down the method behind the madly funny code – reverse engineering the laughs to better appreciate what makes this tech comedy tick.   

Text ©2015, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited and in violation of the Digital Millennium Copyright Act.  FTC Disclosure: Per standard professional practice, I may have received a review copy of this title in order to voluntarily decide to evaluate it for my readers, which had no impact whatsoever on whether or not it received a favorable or unfavorable critique.

TV on DVD: Tracey Takes on... (The Complete Final Seasons)

Now Available on DVD



View Video Clips of Ullman's State of the Union

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Since Kay Clark-- the British bank teller who moved to California in order to become the caretaker of her invalid mother-- was acknowledged legally and due to copyright reasons as the only character wholeheartedly created by the show's star, it's Kay who made the lonely leap from FOX Network's The Tracey Ullman Show to HBO's eight time Emmy award winning smash Tracey Takes on...for its four season run.

Rounding out the rest of the series, the talented, diverse comical actress, singer, dancer, and chameleon-like force of nature that is Tracey Ullman-- along with her gifted writers-- crafted a roster comprised of eighteen primary and countless secondary main characters and this time without the limits of censorship and free from corporate sponsors, they relished in the freedom to go to the extreme in some truly daring sketches.

While E.R. was widely praised as the first narrative and solidly structured show that successfully juggled several plotlines in any given episode to make it suitable for those of the channel changer generation-- Tracey Takes On... essentially worked the same way.

However, unlike Saturday Night Live which kind of stayed current and then dumped a skit to run with whatever was next, Ullman revisited not just frumpy caregiver Kay Clark-- who teams up with Cheech Marin to experiment with marijuana to try and give her mom some pain relief only to test it out herself first-- but other characters' storylines that didn't always end with a comedic zing but an internal chuckle, picking up the narrative thread she dropped later on in the strangest of ways when her many characters found their lives colliding. Sometimes the humor is abandoned completely in favor of pathos or melancholy or getting a point across that she'll use later (for the sake of wit) down the road as the shows meander (mostly) in and around the two coasts of the United States.

Often inspired by those she's come into contact with working in La La Land like one of her early Hollywood agents blended together with the Menendez Brothers lawyer for the downright hideous character of attorney Sydney Kross who can bully death row inmates into doing what she wants or a real life cab driver named Chic-- Tracey Takes on... is loosely strung together by a given topic from "Loss," to "Agents" to "Dating," which she manages to skewer in the most intriguing of ways.

She does so by first opening with an interview styled confessional anecdote as Tracey Ullman herself-- in person and out of makeup, wigs, and fake teeth-- shares a story about each one before she tackles the subjects and all the possible meanings they could incorporate which definitely goes beyond what most of us would probably first come up with in an average game of Password, Scattergories or Taboo.

Although, watching this show just months after viewing the much more recent and vastly superior first season of Showtime's Tracey Ullman's State of the Union Season One (also released by Eagle Rock Entertainment) makes Tracey Takes on... seem noticeably dated and also far less vital than the comedy from State of the Union since in between her impressions of Dina Lohan and Helen Mirren on the latter, she managed to address some of the issues facing our globe but this aside, Tracey Takes on... is still impressive.

While unfortunately, I do have to admit that more than half of her characters were unlikable in this particular show and her impression of the Asian-American character Mrs. Noh Nang Ning struck me on the same cringe-worthy level as Mickey Rooney's in Breakfast at Tiffany's--and I do wonder if she would've made this decision today-- it's still a solid work of entertainment.

And this is mostly due to the extraordinary gifts of our leading lady for not just her incredible versatility but also the way she's able to move right into the demands of any given skit from portraying an Australian stunt woman whose dwarf husband had died, taking part in a rigorous Fosse like dance routine, singing her heart out, and then reenacting the finale of Titanic with Psych's Corbin Bernsen.

Although when it comes to Ullman, I'm still going to tune into her particular State of the Union far more often than Tracey Takes on... despite some great guest work and funny turns by a game Jennifer Jason Leigh and Helen Mirren just to name two-- it's enjoyable for fans of the comical actress who (much like this reviewer) have also relished her turns in the movies of Woody Allen and her willingness to take risks in offbeat projects like Nancy Savoca's Household Saints and Lawrence Kasdan's masterful I Love You to Death as well.

Text ©2009, Film Intuition, LLC; All Rights Reserved. http://www.filmintuition.com
Unauthorized Reproduction or Publication Elsewhere is Strictly Prohibited.

Recount

Director:
Jay Roach

While going through one another’s belongs in The Breakfast Club, a fellow student asks the nerdy “brain” (Anthony Michael Hall) why he would need a fake I.D., to which he replies so that he can vote. Although I was never the fake I.D. type, as a fellow uncool “brain” who started college at sixteen, I could definitely relate to Anthony Michael Hall’s wish and was less excited by the possibility of getting into bars or dance clubs and far more thrilled to finally have a voice in the American democracy when I turned eighteen. You can guess how popular this made me with my peers, which is probably the biggest reason that—even to this day—the average age of most of my friends is at least a full decade my senior. Despite placing the former, tragically deceased professor turned Democratic Senator Paul Wellstone on my personal political pedestal and being from the state where the most notable election was for an old friend’s dad-- Jesse Ventura, the registered independent former wrestler turned Minnesota governor-- the first election I was old enough to participate in was the 2000 presidential election.

I remember it like it was yesterday—knowing full well, I’d be leaving the cool Midwest temperatures to visit my grandparents in the state of Arizona which months later would become my home, I went down to City Hall in person to vote for Vice President Al Gore, having the strangest but surest inkling not to trust the idea of an absentee ballot by mail. It turned out to not only be a good decision but obviously the least of my worries when I sat on the edge of my seat well into the evening of the November 7, 2000 election. Certain that sooner or later the media-- and especially Dan Rather who by about ten p.m. was running out of an increasingly bizarre string of the strangest metaphors one could ever muster-- would finally stop “flip-flopping” their decision over who had won Florida similar to the way the news attacked candidates for “flip-flopping” on an issue, I kept waiting to hear the final word on who would be the next Commander-in-Chief.

And then it continued on well into the night until George W. Bush seemed to be the winner but just when we thought it was over, the next morning it continued again and rumors started pouring in with new phrases such as "butterfly ballots," “hanging chads,” and outcries of elderly and African-American voter suppression beginning to cloud over the election, leaving unprecedented chaos, mounting suspicion, outrageous disbelief, and disaster in its wake over the next several weeks until Florida’s Secretary of State Katherine Harris began setting in motion the events that helped push the Supreme Court to uphold Florida’s ruling and serve up the White House to then Governor George W. Bush. And of course-- no matter which party you belong to—we all know how well that turned out! Still, now with the benefit of hindsight, it makes us infinitely aware in a post 9/11 world, that the pre 9/11 election was one of the most important on record.

Additionally what we didn’t know perhaps-- or what only some of us true news junkies who lived for the latest facts and figures back in 2000 with CNN blaring in the background and newspapers stockpiling on our coffee tables-- is the stuff of political infamy and it makes for highly compelling fodder in HBO’s latest made for premium cable film Recount. After the film’s producer, the recently deceased director Sydney Pollack found his health failing and therefore couldn’t helm the ambitious project, Meet the Parents and Austin Powers director Jay Roach stepped in, which despite seeming like an incongruous choice, turned out to offer the film just the right tongue-in-cheek, awkward, hilariously strange but unfortunately true tone he'd poured into the similarly pitched festival of discomfort, Meet the Parents.

An insider’s look at the events from the point-of-view primarily of one of Gore’s lead strategists, Ron Klain (Kevin Spacey), we follow Ron along with other Gore staffers Denis Leary’s Michael Whouley, and later their lawyer David Boies (Ed Begley Jr.) as they try to get to the bottom of just what went wrong in Florida. Using every legal recourse, they try to demand first a machine and then hand recount of the questionable butterfly ballots which found several elderly Democrats mistakenly voting for Pat Buchanan (who even admitted that his large number of votes must have been an error), and navigate the conflicting rules and biases from one Florida county to the next over how ballots with “dimpled” chads would be handled, while researching questions about military and absentee ballot legitimacy, a highly inaccurate count of voters turned away from the polls for having names similar to those of convicted felons, and voting machines that offer a different read every time. Of course, presiding over the chaos is the overly made-up and-- as the film illustrates-- the cheerleader puppet Harris (wonderfully played by Laura Dern) who seems so unfit for her position that she’s eager to not only seek advice from either the bible or any of Bush’s people including Tom Wilkinson’s James Baker and Bob Balaban’s Ben Ginsberg, but prefers to hide behind an unchangeable recount deadline unless of course—per her most cited alibi-- a hurricane hits the state of Florida.

While admittedly slanted to the left, perhaps the most fascinating thing about Buffy the Vampire Slayer and Gilmore Girls star turned scripter Danny Strong’s intelligent first time screenplay is the way that it manages to illustrate all of the madness and every possible solution including the arguments of both sides. Instead of narrowly offering one specifically definitive view of the situation or even by completely demonizing the questionable motives and back-room deal-making Republicans or celebrating the heroic underdog Democrats, Strong seems to argue that the entire process is filled with potential flaws with neither the hand count or machine count being ideal, showing the equal probability for both human and mechanical errors. And of course, all this is the key to stimulating excellent audience debate... and just think, Roach and Strong didn’t even begin to address the validity and wisdom of the electoral college! Although, as a passionate voter looking eagerly forward to casting a vote this upcoming November, I'm hopeful that this topic won't be explored in a sequel... now only if I could ensure the ballot, the chad, and the machine will read my choice for the Democratic nominee correctly.

PU-239

Alternate Title: The Half Life of Timofey Berezin
Director: Scott Z. Burns

“I need to know my rems!” Russian nuclear plant worker Timofey (Paddy Considine) pleads after he accidentally becomes the victim of radiation poisoning when he intervenes in a near catastrophe. Told he was only exposed to one hundred rems of radiation which isn’t fatal, he discovers on his own that his dosage was lethal before realizing that the company of the top secret town of Skotoprigonyevsk where he resides, is busily covering their tracks as they try to force him to sign documentation taking responsibility for the event before he is placed on indefinite leave.

Angry, scared and heartsick for his young son and wife Marina (Radha Mitchell), a former nuclear facility worker herself who had also had a close scare, Timofey decides to make a bold and aggressive decision to provide for his family and get revenge by smuggling out one hundred grams of plutonium to sell on Moscow’s black market in this made for HBO film that was optioned by Section Eight producers George Clooney and Steven Soderbergh to help launch its DVD premiere.

Journeying from his community to Moscow, Timofey finds that securing a buyer is far more difficult than he realized and with time running out as he’s getting increasingly sicker, he reluctantly pairs up with scheming crook Shiv (Oscar Isaac) who, trying to provide for his own son and Ukranian prostitute wife tries to fast talk Timofey into handling the sale in order to pay back far more dangerous mobsters to whom he owes money. Shiv’s incompetence and associations with various double-crossing villains make up a large percentage of the film which unsuccessfully evolves from Timofey’s touching drama and impulsive, dangerous scheme to a bizarre mix of pathos, dark comedy and outrageous plot setups as it careens to its inevitable fatal conclusion.

Considine’s Tomofey and Isaac’s Shiv benefit from the impressive turns by the character actors who disappear in their roles as well as a pulse pounding script by writer/director Scott Z. Burns who penned The Bourne Ultimatum, although ultimately, while we understand that the character of Shiv would never have been as compelling as Timofey, PU-239 would have benefited from a sharper rewrite and a worthier subplot and character than the version of Shiv that is presented in the completed production.

The Battle of Shaker Heights

Directors:

Efram Potelle

&

Kyle Rankin

Erica Beeney’s screenplay for The Battle of Shaker Heights was chosen as the second winning entry in Matt Damon and Ben Affleck’s popular HBO series Project Greenlight. Similar to another Greenlight release Stolen Summer, 2003’s The Battle of Shaker Heights surrounds the friendship of two boys coming of age. Sweet natured and original, the undisputedly predictable yet charming film helped introduce the world to former Holes star Shia La Beouf before he became a new sensation with roles in Hollywood hits such as Transformers.

Set in the Cleveland, Ohio suburb of Shaker Heights, La Beouf plays Kerry Ernswiler but highly intelligent teenager who spends his weekends as a civil war reenactor where he befriends the wealthy, kind Bart Bowland (Elden Henson) who not only gives him access to his father’s collection of legendary battle artifacts but also introduces him to his gorgeous but engaged older sister Tabby (Amy Smart), on whom Kerry develops a hopeless crush. The son of hippies in the from of a recovering addict father who sometimes lets the at risk homeless people he works with sack out on the family sofa and a mother who runs a bizarre sweat shop mass producing portraits of horses with her Asian staff, Kerry spends increasing amounts of time with Bart. Along with his new friend, Kerry tries to devise a strategy to take on the school’s biggest bully who incidentally is the son of Kerry’s exasperated history teacher who gets routinely challenged by the young war buff in class.

Although the ending wraps things up far too easily and abruptly and the film at times feels uneven in its tone which further research revealed may have been indicative of the studio’s battle to turn the film into a teen comedy whereas the filmmakers intended it to be a drama, it’s still an entertaining time-waster and even more enjoyable than the Affleck/Damon production Stolen Summer.

The Girl in the Café

Director:
David Yates

These days, meeting people is hard. We seldom look at one another in elevators as I should know having been stuck in one last Fall and we begin silently questioning one another’s agenda when we’re chatted up in public, and as we age and become busier with our own relationships and families, people begin to drift further and further apart from the friends we always held so dear. As hard as it is to meet people, it’s even harder to meet someone you spark with—someone who just gets you or with whom you click with instantaneously or at the very least, someone with whom you’re never quite sure what to expect and can’t wait to hear what they’ll say or do next. After a decade on the dating scene with enough horror stories and humorous anecdotes to fuel a week’s worth of material, I continually try not to be too cynical since I’m always trying to hope for the best in others and in my romantic belief that while there are no perfect partners and it’s damn near impossible to imagine a single person fitting all of one’s needs for an entire lifetime since you’ll both change and evolve, we can’t do without that thought that “this time, it will be different.”

It’s precisely this optimism that inspires two introverted, awkward and overly polite characters to fall into something close to love in director David Yates’s HBO film The Girl in the Cafe penned by Four Weddings and a Funeral scripter Richard Curtis. Quickly into the film we meet Bill Nighy’s Lawrence, a fifty-seven year old workaholic whose only luxury apart from his lofty position working alongside the Prime Minister and others in Britain’s government is deciding how many packets of sugar to stir into his tea on the very worst of days. In a crowded café where every table is occupied, he asks the young, beautiful yet approachable Gina (Kelly McDonald) if he can sit down at her table. Cautiously seated diagonally from one another, they fluster for the right words as they politely bond over shared opinions on striped pajamas and other meaningless bits of everyday life until they feel comfortable enough to sit directly across from each other. Like many of us less bold and equally shy individuals would do, one senses that although they’d long to chat even further, neither knows how to do so and when Lawrence realizes he’s going to be late back to the office, he begins to walk away before taking a chance to ask Gina to lunch. Nervous and rambling, Gina reveals that she has nothing to do with her time (which let’s face it, would’ve ended most “dates” right there here in the states) and they plan to meet up in a few weeks.

A few more earnest and polite dates follow until Lawrence, after phoning her a few times in one day (which again would’ve probably caused most of us Yanks to back away) takes an even bigger risk in asking her to accompany him to the G8 Summit in Reykjavik, Iceland. Much to the gentlemanly Lawrence’s surprise and although he’s never actually made any attempt to actually kiss or touch her by their third date (which would never happen here as well), Gina accepts the offer to travel but after they realize that they’re going to be forced to share a room, the two polite and confused souls try to over accommodate one another by debating over who gets the bed or couch while they vow to stay away from the intimate quarters as much as possible. Intriguingly, nothing is made of the age difference between the two as they are visibly May and December with at least twenty to thirty years between them and while, normally one would doubt their true motives with assumptions towards “sugar daddy” or “mid-life crisis,” it just seems like in Girl in the Café that the two feel genuinely pulled to one another.

Moving away from just a true romance, the film becomes more political with each successive minute after they land in Reykjavik and Lawrence, who we assume had gotten into government with an Atticus Finch or Capraesque wish to change the world and help mankind is becoming more and more disenchanted and disheartened by the proceedings that are making his quest to help fight global poverty overshadowed by matters of economics and defense. Couple this with Gina’s newfound passion for speaking out and reading all of the research that the defeated Lawrence brings home which recounts the 30,000 children dying unnecessarily each day from extreme poverty and the two begin to see their budding and sincere relationship tested by political actions and decisions in a land that feels as isolated and introverted as the characters themselves.

Winner of the Best Made-For-TV award as well as accolades for the screenwriting and McDonald’s performance, Curtis wrote his astute, intelligent and quietly powerful films especially for the two stars who were also nominated for Golden Globes. Although I’d always been a fan of the gifted McDonald, especially since her performance in both Gosford Park and Two Family House, I was also pleasantly surprised by Bill Nighy, who in stark contrast to his wild lothario rock star in Love Actually (also written by Curtis) proves to be a fascinating and sensitive actor that’s delightful to watch. Available on DVD, The Girl in the Café may also be found playing sporadically on its home network of HBO.