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

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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.

Blu-ray Review: Extract (2009)

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Jerry Seinfeld once described coworkers as-- and I'm paraphrasing-- just a bunch of people who filled out the same job application that you did.

Of course, many of us have formed our greatest friendships through the workplace. But as Mike Judge brilliantly depicted in his insanely quotable, cult classic Office Space, most of the time we're basically stuck working alongside people whom we'd normally avoid in our daily lives.

The same can be said for neighbors as we're never quite sure exactly with whom we'll be sharing a fence, garbage collecting duty, or fake small talk when we sign on that dotted real estate line.

Overall, we're slaves to chance, luck, and proximity, which not only finds us surrounded by a random group at work or at home but has similarly lent a hand deciding the district we'll end up in for K-12 public school, which team we'll support in the playoffs, and whom we'll marry as well.

While Judge's brilliant Office Space is usually labeled a “workplace comedy,” he manages to touch on a few of those same issues of proximity and chance throughout. This is especially true whether it's in scenes wherein we worry that Ron Livingston's girlfriend Jennifer Aniston had dated his “pig of a boss” or marveling that Livingston would be friends with a hilarious, low-brow neighbor whose greatest ambition if he had a million dollars would be to do “two chicks at the same time.”

Following Space, Judge stumbled quite a bit with the disastrous Idiocracy, which was a much funnier idea on paper than it was onscreen in anything other than a short SNL style skit, which would've better suited the material, especially when factoring in that SNL alumni Maya Rudolph was one of its main stars.

However in 2009, Mike Jude returned with a movie that could be a distant relative of Office Space. Although it's nowhere near as laugh-out-loud hilarious as the one released ten years ago, it still culls comedy out of relatable situations involving impossible coworkers and overattentive neighbors.

Additionally, this time around, a more mature feel permeates throughout as though Extract was something he'd collaborated on with The Squid and the Whale's writer/director Noah Baumbach.

Yet the resulting and surprisingly overlooked comedy Extract is one that puts Baumbach's angst-filled oddities like Margot at the Wedding to shame. Far more importantly, it also stays true to exactly why we cheered for the nerds beating the hell out of a fax machine or looking up money laundering in the dictionary as Judge fills what could be fairly typical indie fodder with a comedic rogue's gallery of Office Space-like characters.

Re-teaming with his Juno co-star J.K. Simmons, Jason Bateman plays our frustrated lead. Despite the fact that the former bartender is financially successful running his own extract factory, driving a BMW, and living in a gorgeous home with his wife Kristen Wiig (SNL, Adventureland, Whip It, Ghost Town), he's personally dissatisfied by the dull sameness and demands that go along with being as Ben Folds dubbed, "male, middle class and white."

Hoping to unload his factory to General Mills to break up the daily monotony of trying to figure out exactly which “dinkus” employee his second-in-command Simmons is talking about or settling petty worker disputes, when we first encounter Bateman's Joel, sexual frustration seems to be his chief complaint.

With the unbelievable yet hilarious hurdle of his pushy, insistent neighbor Nathan (actor David Koechner essentially playing a grown up version of Dennis the Menace) flagging him down with chatter as soon as his car turns down the street, Joel is denied conjugal visits with his equally bored coupon designer wife whose eight o'clock sweatpants rule and Dancing With the Stars devotion has closed his bedroom door for months.

When Mila Kunis's beautiful young scheming con-woman hears about the possible settlement owed to one of Joel's Keystone Kops assembling line workers following a freak accident, she becomes not just Joel's newest employee but also one major flirtatious temptation.

Loyal and unwilling to cheat on the wife he loves but who has become the participant in what he worries is a “brother/sister” relationship, Joel finds himself agreeing to the most outrageous of plans when his best friend and old bartending buddy (an unrecognizable Ben Affleck) plays Dr. Feelgood by serving him an outrageous mix of prescription medication and alcohol.

Under the influence, Joel and Affleck's Dean decide to remove the guilt of Joel's lust for Kunis by hiring a young but extraordinarily dumb landscaper as a gigolo to seduce his wife beforehand so she'll be the one to break the marriage vows first.

It's a similar set-up to the one in the underrated dark UK comedy The Leading Man with Jon Bon Jovi. Yet in Extract Judge is always in comedic control of the taboo turn of events in what could've easily become a despicable plot sent down the Farrelly Brothers rabbit hole of scatological gags or a weak twenty-first century spin on '70s sex comedies like 10.

Playing it purely for the sake of laughter rooted in identifiable truths (raised to a more ridiculous level) and also withholding one key plot point that goes against our earlier expectations, Judge doesn't let any of his characters off the hook... yet somehow, he manages to keep us helplessly hooked at the exact same time.

Similar to Office Space, which was incidentally one of the first DVDs I ever purchased, the technically impressive Miramax Blu-ray transfer of Extract, makes me think that it's the type of movie that will play much better at home. Just like Space, the humor will not age along with Judge's purposely exaggerated yet uniformly intelligent take on workplace and relationship comedy from neighbors to spouses.

Of course, it's safe to say that it won't equal the iconic pop culture level that Office Space has reached in our society. Although, when you watch Extract and think back on Office Space, you may realize just how accessible, universal, and situational his comedy was from the start. In other words, Judge's impact on work-centric TV shows including The Office and 30 Rock cannot be underestimated.

And actually, the success of Space necessitated him to dig a little deeper than he had before yet luckily for audiences, he didn't go as far out on a limb as he had with Idiocracy. Yes, Judge returned to his roots but he moved beyond work to explore the other levels of Seinfeld's law of irrational proximity.

In Extract, he addresses not just the power dynamic of marriage but our second careers as neighbors trying to avoid our second bosses like Nathan who have turned our homes into a decidedly different style of cubicle life ready for laughter. So don't use the "jump to conclusions mat" from Office Space; pick up Extract and make sure, like Office's Livingston, that you "get the memo" on Mike Judge.

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

FTC Disclosure: To extract my thoughts about Extract, I received a review copy of Extract from Miramax Films and Buena Vista Home Entertainment, per standard critical practice.

Spike TV's SCREAM 2008: Voting Has Begun

Your video guide to this year's "other" election.

With awards doled out in categories such as “The Holy Shit! Scene of the Year” and the “Most Memorable Mutilation,” Spike TV’s third annual SCREAM celebration of all things comic book, horror, sci-fi, and fantasy isn’t for the faint of heart.

While the Oscars contain incessant jokes about the show’s endless running time, the Emmys are usually more fun to discuss than watch, the Grammys are growing more and more forgettable, and the inclusion of alcohol at the Golden Globes has made for some increasingly odd acceptance speeches, the mission of SCREAM 2008 seems to be to highlight exactly what entertains audiences. Whether it’s a guilty pleasure for a cheesy horror film, a deep devotion to a favorite comic book artist, or following each and every twist and turn from television shows such as Lost and Heroes, serving up a diverse selection of contenders in more than two dozen categories, Spike TV’s award show has you covered.

While it comes as no surprise that Christopher Nolan’s record-breaking box office titan The Dark Knight leads the pack with 21 nominations, Iron Man and Hellboy II: Golden Army came in second and third respectively. But there are some truly memorable inclusions throughout, including nods for Anna Friel in Pushing Daisies (for Breakout Performance), supporting performer Jason Bateman in Hancock, and nods for the critically divided films Southland Tales and I Am Legend.

Featuring an impressive advisory board including Nightmare on Elm Street and Scream helmer Wes Craven, Neil Gaiman, Stephen King, comic book writer Geoff Johns, Heroes creator Tim Kring, Frank Miller, Kevin Smith, Paula Wagner, Twilight author Stephenie Meyer, Eli Roth, and Guillermo Del Toro who, according to the press release, “were responsible for advising on categories and determining nominees in each category” of eligible works released between August 11, 2007 and August 8, 2008, in the end it’s the fans who decide the winners. With plenty of widgets, interactive opportunities and chances to vote in every category available on the event’s official website Scream.Spike.com, the show, which will air in more than 160 territories around the globe, will premier on October 21 on Spike TV.

And to facilitate the voting process, I’ve drawn from a wide variety of nominated films to put together a mini video guide featuring clips and/or trailers to refresh your memory.

(Feel free to click on the underlined titles

to explore my original reviews)

Cloverfield

The Dark Knight

Enchanted

Hancock

I Am Legend

The Incredible Hulk

Indiana Jones and the Kingdom of the Crystal Skull

Iron Man

The Mist

Sweeney Todd: The Demon Barber of Fleet Street

WALL-E

Wanted

Dedicated to “bringing the fans exactly what they want to see this year with big world premieres, rare performances and the superstars that made this year a record breaker at the box office,” SCREAM 2008 not only demands your participation but also celebrates “the incredible talent behind these genres,” as Spike TV’s Casey Patterson noted in the press release. Remember, voting is currently taking place from now through Friday, October 17 so head on over to Spike TV’s site to make your selections for the works that made you scream your lungs out over the past year… or just simply call out “Holy Shit!” since — wouldn’t you know — there’s a category for that, too.

Hancock

Director: Peter Berg

In order to scare kids straight, there were a string of memorable television commercials which played in regular rotation during Saturday morning cartoons in my childhood that all ended with the tagline of “nobody ever said they wanted to be a junkie when they grow up.” Although that’s definitely true and one can add any addiction (including one to the bottle on that list), however in case of Will Smith’s latest movie character, the alcoholic John Hancock who probably hadn’t intended to fall for the drink, he never said he wanted to be a superhero when he grew up either.

While it’s always a fun game among friends and comic book enthusiasts to speculate about which super power it’d be most beneficial to have whether it’s x-ray vision, the ability to see into the future, immortality, or that always seductive ability to fly (especially now to avoid the price of gas), we seldom realize the downside of an extraordinary gift including the loneliness of being the only one of the kind. Not to mention the forced responsibility and guilt trip we’d face when—like Hancock—we’d prefer to just laze about rather than get up and fight (although he can typically be found passed out in a drunken stupor on a park bench or in his dilapidated camper) and the fact that in a world of law and order, breaking the rules even with the best of intentions is liable to earn you a ticket or two.

In the case of Hancock, he’s racked up over six hundred subpoenas and civil court cases in which he’s failed to make an appearance and as a frequent infamous star of countless embarrassing YouTube videos, his media dubbed “so-called heroics” have made the Los Angeles based superhero a man that citizens love to hate where even children curse at him. Yet all the same, when chaos ensues, he’s the first one they turn to in halting a speeding car full of gun crazed villains, managing to leave several millions of dollars of damage behind by flying into freeway signs, destroying skyscrapers, having close calls with airplanes and using cars or any other object within reach to hurl at another in order to stop whatever crime is being committed, seemingly oblivious that his antics have most likely wreaked more havoc than a typical perpetrator ever could.

Much like our current presidential nominees all turned to professionals to micromanage every aspect of their personality and spin everything related to their persona into the very best version of themselves to win over public opinion, Hancock needs a publicity makeover in the worst way and he fortunately saves just the right man shortly into the film when he pulls good-natured, overly friendly, humanitarian PR agent Ray Embrey (Jason Bateman) from a car trapped on train tracks.

Predictably leaving a ridiculous amount of twisted metal and wrecked automobiles in his wake leading those stuck in the same traffic jam eager to launch into a riot, Ray steps in and reminds them of Hancock’s intentions and good deeds. After “hitching a ride” from the flying man in his battered automobile back to Ray’s middle class suburban home, he invites Hancock to share in the family’s traditional "Spaghetti Madness Thursday." Quickly his young bullied son Aaron (Jae Head) not only takes a liking to the unorthodox, scruffy drunk but eventually requests his help in handling those who target him, although despite her child’s intuition, Ray’s highly skeptical, loving wife Mary (Charlize Theron) seems to immediately sense something in their strange new acquaintance she doesn’t quite trust.



However, partly because he’s grown weary from becoming so ostracized in his community but even more so because he overhears the disfavor in Mary’s voice when she doesn’t know he’s listening, Hancock decides to put himself in Ray’s capable hands in molding his image and turning him into a more traditional version of a superhero that comic book mythology has fostered. To this end, Ray prompts him to make good on all of those warrants by surrendering to the authorities, joining the prison version of alcoholic and rage-aholic anonymous as an act of good faith with the correct impression that eventually the police will realize just how much they need him both back on the streets and back in the skies. And indeed, after the crime rate climbs a staggering thirty percent in just the five days that Hancock has been placed behind bars, the authorities release him to stop an increasingly violent standoff. Of course, this amusingly gives Hancock the perfect opportunity to try and put Ray’s training towards friendlier people skills and beneficial advice to good use in praising the cops, remembering his newfound manners, and above all, not condescending everyone with whom he comes into contact.

After a wildly entertaining, over-the-top, and hilariously offbeat introduction bolstered by the undeniable star quality of one our most likable leading men--Will Smith-- who by now seems synonymous with the 4th of July weekend, the ingenious premise changes along with its cinematic color scheme from light and bright to unexpectedly dark, with a genuinely surprising twist that throws audiences for a loop and completely switches the film’s tone. I hesitate to offer a greater explanation at the risk of giving away spoilers but needless to say, Hancock’s sudden gear switch from wildly fast to deeply heart-tugging jolts us unexpectedly and probably would’ve made a nicer transition had there been more subtle hints dropped into the first hour.

Yet, as I recently learned, following some questionable test screenings, director Peter Berg (The Kingdom) called back his cast for reshoots although it was possibly too late to change enough to give it the right balance it needed for a resounding success. Despite this, I applaud the courage to bring a greater romantic mythology to the piece which admittedly had been so surprisingly light on plot that I think it only occurred to most audiences after the fact, as we’d been otherwise dazzled by the effects to give that much thought to it while in the theatre. Thereby ultimately it makes us wish in retrospect that the creative love triangle set-up of the final act had been developed much earlier on, promoting that to the primary plot in lieu of one sitcom like “uh oh, there goes Hancock” gag after another.

Still, far better than the trailers would have you believe and infinitely better than I assumed it would be going in and in addition to Smith and of course, the always mesmerizing if under-used Theron, one of the brightest additions to the film is Arrested Development’s Jason Bateman who—like his previous work for director Berg in The Kingdom—gamely recognizes his role of selling terrific one-liners with just the right mix of sweetness and tongue-in-cheek humor, making him one of our most valuable supporting players as of late, coming off the heels of his memorable turn in last year’s Juno.

The Promotion

Director: Steve Conrad

On the surface, “the customer is always right” may seem like the ultimate corporate management dictum but as my favorite boss once told me, the real strategy is to never let the customers make a scene. Strange advice from a former heavy metal drummer with plenty of stories of things getting out of control but realizing I’ve never been fond of public scenes of any kind, I took Dave’s advice to heart and despite a few unavoidable hiccups with those who seem to delight in perpetuating misery, it made my employment run infinitely smoother. Unfortunately, for the audience, this advice has never made it to the ear of The Promotion’s main character Doug (Seann William Scott). Slaving away as the hapless assistant manager, Doug fights against impromptu slaps by a gibberish speaking Teddy Graham coveting rebel and trying to broker peace between himself and his two apathetic fourteen year old security guards who—unsurprisingly-- seem more devoted to their cell phones than trying to deal with an intimidating young gang that terrorizes the shoppers and employees of the film’s supersized fictitious Donaldson’s Chicago grocery store. Of course, if Doug had been informed of this tactic, Pursuit of Happyness and Weather Man writer Steve Conrad wouldn’t have had a film with which to make his directorial debut. Although, dubbed “one of the unfunniest comedies ever,” by The Hollywood Reporter’s Kirk Honeycutt who also wrote that “watching The Promotion” should be added “to the Geneva Conventions’ list of humanitarian abuses,” possibly that would’ve been the best thing all around… if only-- much like our sad-sack Doug-- for filmgoers to avoid scenes as unpleasant as the ones found in The Promotion.

In a film that makes the similarly themed Dane Cook, Dax Shepard, and Jessica Simpson vehicle Employee of the Month look downright Shakespearean, our struggling thirty-three year old Doug assumes that his years of serving time in Donaldson’s under a boss who escapes to daytime matinees and car washes while he contends with an overabundance of customer complaint cards will be coming to a deserved end when he learns the chain is building a brand new store nearby. Convinced he’s a “shoo-in” for a promotion to manager at the new location, Doug and his hardworking wife Jen (The Office’s Jenna Fischer) purchase a home they can’t afford to escape their amorous gay banjo playing neighbors. Predictably, a wrench is thrown into Doug’s path in the form of John C. Reilly’s Richard, an aggressively friendly Canadian from Quebec who transfers down to Doug’s store with the intention of going after the same position and cushy benefits package for his new baby and Scottish wife Laurie (Lili Taylor using a hilarious Scottish Canadian hybrid accent) that he’d met while on a Christian mission. Initially unable to get a handle on the new “wild-card” Richard whom we later learn is a recovering alcoholic and drug addict, Doug and the newbie sidle up to one another, forming a strange professional bond that seems borderline friendly and competitive but grows increasingly acrimonious when Doug is relegated to near permanent parking lot duty in favor of self-actualization, self-help book-on-tape obsessed Richard.

All one has to do to anticipate the squirm-inducing, awkward and frankly painful stabs at humor in what I felt seemed like a manic-depressive screenplay is to reread the aforementioned descriptions one more time—a man who may lose his house; a recovering addict—not exactly the most surefire ways to garner laughs. While I applaud Conrad’s ingenuity and willingness to go against standard movie clichés, as Roger Ebert noted, the film is never quite sure of its tone, similar to the writer’s woefully uncomfortable Weather Man. In addition, I still can't get over the troubling realization that I found circulating throughout my screening notes that an overwhelming majority of the humor seemed to stem from cheap shots involving minorities (whether homosexual, ethnic, or mentally disabled). While I can’t imagine this was the film or Conrad’s intention, I couldn't help questioning just how and why so many talented cast members including Bobby Cannavale and Jason Bateman (who turn in nice cameos) even bothered to get involved. Mercifully, it will most likely be buried in the wake of the Edward Norton starrer The Hulk this weekend here in Phoenix, again reminding us that in addition to not wanting to witness such a disastrous scene, when it comes to mean-spirited and dissatisfying drivel like this-- by staying away in droves, in the end the customer is always right.