Poker Face
Lately, I keep seeing movies and TV shows that are pretty good … but not great.
Here is a sampling from the past week, along with my humble opinions on what went wrong with the shows. Hint: It’s rarely bad acting or direction; it’s usually a problem with the script or story development.
Poker Face, season two
I enjoyed Natasha Lyonne in season one. Critics loved the return to a format out of fashion since Columbo went off the air: We see the crime and offender in the first 15 minutes, then watch as our heroine solves the mystery. It’s not a whodunit, but rather a how-will-she-catch-the-culprit.
Season one felt fresh, a welcome throwback to rumpled, lovable Peter Falk’s Columbo. Charlie (Lyonne), also lovable and rumpled, saw that justice was done.
What went wrong — Columbo was deceptively sharp. He lulled his prey into a false sense of security and then, relying on his little grey cells, nailed the bad guy. Charlie, on the other hand, relies on a gimmick: her “bullshit” detector. For some absurd reason, she always recognizes the big lie. That’s gotten old. Another problem: like Columbo, Charlie is comical. But the humor is too over-the-top now, including random shootouts and chases with bad guys who are out to get our girl.
The Changeling
George C. Scott plays a widower living in a haunted house near Seattle. Roger Ebert had this to say in 1980: “Scott makes the hero so rational, normal and self-possessed that we never feel he’s in real danger; we go through this movie with too much confidence.”
Sorry, Roger, but I disagree. I thought it was refreshing to shake up the usual ghost-story set-up — young, trembling female terrorized by evil spirits — and instead, give us a cantankerous, middle-aged man. If George C. Scott is unsettled, is it any wonder that the audience is, too? The first hour of the movie is scary-good fun.
What went wrong — When George leaves the house in the second half of the film, the story goes off the rails. (I, too, frequently go off the rails by resorting to cliches like “off the rails.” But I digress.)
None of us know what happens after death. When screenwriters attempt to explain too much, their answers are usually far-fetched.
They should have left George in the house.
Black Bag
Here is director Steven Soderbergh lamenting the box-office failure of his clever black comedy about British spies: “This is the kind of film I made my career on. And if a mid-level budget, star-driven movie can’t seem to get people over the age of 25 years old to come out to theatres — if that’s truly a dead zone — then that’s not a good thing for movies. What’s gonna happen to the person behind me who wants to make this kind of film?”
Black Bag has clever dialogue, good acting, and an amusing plot.
What went wrong — I’m not sure. I suspect the fact that the characters, although interesting, are not particularly likeable, might have something to do with it.
**
Enough critical nit-picking. Let’s praise something. Let’s praise a girl who knows how to shake things up.
Apparently, the angle above wasn’t sufficiently close to Ary Tenorio’s buttocks. So they tried it again:
**
I can carp all day about the dangers of “third-stage feminism,” but only a (relatively) young, attractive woman can get by with truth-telling like this.
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