Boardwalk Empire - Season 2

When the first season of Boardwalk Empire aired last year, I was impressed by the quality of its production and enjoyed its variously interconnected characters and sense of humor. I was less enamored by the plot, which was mostly fine but a bit slow-going and nothing too new. That hasn't exactly changed too much this year, but the show definitely felt more confident and original in what it wanted to be, and that along with an extra year of time to deepen and explore the show's ideas and themes resulted in something ultimately more satisfying and exciting to watch. At the very least, my anticipation for what would happen next was more breathless, and the big moments packed a bigger punch.

Although the ending of season one wasn't exactly a complete upheaval in the show's world, it did provide a number of developments which played out over the course of season two. Nelson Van Alden's upright, do-gooder image was tarnished when he started committing crimes of his own and got someone besides his wife pregnant, and this year we spent a lot of time watching that veneer peel away in public, which made him more sympathetic despite him still being a self-righteous bastard. Jimmy and Eli joined forces with the Commodore and other influential men to challenge Nucky's supremacy in Atlantic City, and their back and forth along with the other organizations in other cities that get dragged into it makes up a lot of the season's most overt conflict. Margaret decided to stay with a man she knew was a criminal in order to provide for herself and her children, and this year she definitely struggled with her own feelings on the matter.

On top of these, the show piles on even more little struggles and battles. Chalky's operation is attacked by white supremacists, and he has to manage both his duties to the black community and his loyalty to Nucky. I thought Chalky had the weakest arc of any that really lasted a significant amount of time this season; Michael K. Williams' performance is strong but they just didn't put the time into making me buy how hamstrung he appeared to be. Perhaps most significantly, Nucky himself is charged with a number of crimes, and finds out who his real friends are as he struggles to keep himself out of jail. He was pretty put upon all season, with the law and a lot of his former friends working against him, and really only having the Irish and Arnold Rothstein (still a fun character even if he doesn't have much to do) on his side consistently. By the end of the season though, he's cemented his ability to fight his way out of jams and win some allies when he needs them.

They've done a good job of building him up from a shrewd manipulator of men and money into more of a complete criminal mastermind, not exactly invincible but smart enough to find a solution most of the time. We do see though that there are still chinks in the armor, and I look forward to the continued development of the character. As far as the content itself goes, it seems like they definitely cut back on unnecessary nudity this year, but they increased the violence to compensate. Boardwalk Empire's first season drew a little criticism for being mellow now and then, a complaint that seems weird to me since The Sopranos and The Wire are two of the best crime dramas ever, and aren't exactly dripping with blood from week to week. Boardwalk was definitely more brutal this year though, and I won't deny that the unflinching nature of the violence enhanced the intensity of the show's most shocking story moments. Maybe just a bit over-the-top though, I was watching the show at the same time as The Walking Dead and it was often the former than was the most disgusting. In any case, I still don't think Boardwalk is quite the classic drama it wants to be just yet, but it's still a very fun and often poignant one, using its period setting to highlight issues that cut across centuries, and always trying to get better. I'm easily on board for season three.

Hugo

A lot of people were loudly skeptical when they heard that Martin Scorsese would be directing a 3D family movie, but for some reason I wasn't. The main things I thought were that his films are successful because they are well crafted, not because they're violent, and he is a strongly visual director, so he could probably handle the third dimension as well as anyone in the business. Both of these proved to be true when I saw Hugo, based on a book that weaves a small part of the real history of film into a nice story about a young boy who finally makes some friends.

Hugo Cabret is a young orphan who lives in the walls of a Paris train station, and is left to maintain the building's clocks on his own when his drunk uncle skips town. He's also trying to repair a broken automaton that his father found in a museum and was working on before he died, and his quest to do so introduces him to Ben Kingsley's character, the owner of a small toy shop in the station, and his adoptive daughter played by Chloë Moretz, who loves reading but has never seen a movie. He takes her to the theater, and shows her the automaton, and they eventually stumble into revelations that that bring the seemingly disparate elements of a broken robot and the love of film together.

Visually the film is pretty stunning, whether you see it in 3D or 2D, though I saw the former. The sets and costumes are impeccably gorgeous on their own, and the depth from the 3D further brings the world to life in a pretty incredible way. I was definitely more impressed than I was by Avatar. This movie proved to me that the argument that 2D film is inherently superior because it is more dreamlike is absolute garbage. The visuals in this movie make it seem almost like it's animation even though it was filmed with live actors, and they bring you into a fantasy setting that doesn't seem real, but much more imaginative and fun than that. I don't like the over-saturation of 3D in the theater market, because most films aren't made with it in mind and don't seem to really benefit from the process. But Hugo was made to be shown this way, and the effect is great at pulling you into this other place, in the same way that many people probably felt when they watched a movie for the first time.

In a funny way, that 3D thing does really well to tie into the idea of the dawn of filmmaking and the newness of the concept when the film takes place. It's a couple decades after the cinema had become commonplace, but the characters do a good deal of digging into the medium's origins, and a good portion of the running time is just devoted to celebration of the art form. Scorsese is a big proponent of film preservation and film in general, so it makes perfect sense for him to get attached to this concept, almost to the detriment of the main plot of the movie. There were some flaws with the movie that detracted from the overall good feeling I got from the experience. I thought Asa Butterfield's performance was a little uneven, and while I liked Sacha Baron Cohen's inspector character, he only seemed to be in the movie because the story needed an antagonist. I definitely liked him more when he was awkwardly trying to be friendly than when he was the villain rounding up orphans.

And for a family movie, I don't know how much kids would actually like it. A good deal of what's interesting about the film is referential to things they probably wouldn't understand, and it was neither terribly funny not terribly exciting most of the time. There were a couple really fun moments, but what I liked most about the movie was the setting it created, and pretty much every kid's movie is decent enough at that. But if you enjoy Scorsese as a filmmaker, and still have a sense of wonder, and an appreciation for the history of human entertainment, you'll probably like the movie a lot.

Boardwalk Empire - Season 1

The most remarkable thing about Boardwalk Empire might be that its main cast features two Steves and no fewer than four Michaels. Besides that though, the first season, while not quite living up the billing of the great crime dramas of HBO's past, was still a very good show with loads of potential going forward. It was created by Terence Winter, who wrote frequently for The Sopranos, and was executive produced by Martin Scorsese, who also kicked things off by directing the pilot. So it has a strong legacy, and it's no surprise that is was a success out of the gate. It doesn't quite have the magic of a true classic series yet, but I still feel like it could be one. What's most interesting so far is how it mixes together all its elements of politics, business, and crime. Other shows have covered all of these topics, but they're all brought together at once by the central figure of Nucky Thompson, and it's a twist we haven't quite seen before. There's just something intriguing about a man who can influence candidates for national office and then turn around and order an execution, and Steve Buscemi is great in the role. He doesn't have the fire or passion of someone more charismatic, but there's something equally compelling in his cold and calculating demeanor. He rarely lets anger get in the way of a good deal, and its this that makes him powerful yet also keeps him alone. The show might not work without him.

Nucky is just one part of it though, as there's a whole world revolving around him. If I'm being honest, the show feels less like it takes place in 1920 and more like a modern series about what 1920 is like, which isn't really a complaint, just an observation. It takes place mostly in Atlantic City, but also partly in the New York and Chicago of that time, and likes showing a lot of the corrupt politics and criminal dealings that happen around Nucky, as well as rooting a lot of the story in history. Obviously prohibition is the major subject of the show, but there's also women's suffrage, the presidential election, and all sorts of miscellaneous events that come up. It's a wonderful looking series, with its own boardwalk set and endlessly gorgeous cinematography that helps the period feel. The sets and costumes look great, and it all adds up to something prettier than just about any other series. Again, I didn't believe I was watching 1920, but it helps a lot when your series is enjoyable even in moments where very little is happening. This being HBO, of course there's plenty of violence and nudity. There's an almost comical amount of naked women around, and I thought the show might have been going for some sort of record for consecutive episodes with nudity before they broke the string late in the season. The violence serves the story a bit more, and it's usually visceral and shocking when it shows up. There are of course a few Scorsese-esque moments where things get operatic and there are montages of death set against more mundane events, but they are rare and well-earned.

The cast is great, featuring a mix of fictional characters and notable figures from history like various politicians and infamous criminals. I don't want to go through everyone, but I'll mention a few that were particularly interesting. Michael Shannon plays Nelson Van Alden, a prohibition agent and one scary, psychotic son of a bitch. Stephen Graham proves again he was born to play crooks, portraying a perversely likable Al Capone. Michael Stuhlbarg was perfect in A Serious Man, but he proves he has a lot of range as elite criminal moneymaker Arnold Rothstein. Michael K. Williams was underused as Chalky White, and I hope he gets more moments like the tools scene in season two. And while it's kind of a silly character, Anthony Laciura playing Nucky's German butler was always fun. There are plenty of supporting members as well, the most notable probably being Jack Huston's Richard Harrow, a veteran of the war missing half his face who becomes a useful and completely terrifying member of Nucky's network. Most of the characters get a nice arc over the course of the season, as everyone has grown up a little and accepted more of what world they live in by the finale. The set up for next year isn't made too explicit, but it's pretty obvious what the major story ideas going forward will be, and I can't wait to see them play out.

A Serious Man

The Coen brothers have been making movies for a while, though this is the first time they've really dug into their Jewish heritage. I wasn't quite sure what to expect going in, with the mostly unknown cast and not a ton of hype, but I ended up enjoying it a ton, and I'd say it's one of my five favorite films by them. I can easily see why someone wouldn't enjoy it, as it seems to feature every weird and potentially annoying technique the Coens use, and honestly I'm a bit surprised it was nominated for Best Picture over some of their more accessible stuff, although the expansion to ten nominees helps. It's quirky, it has unnecessary violence, it has dead end plot points, it ends abruptly, and it's really only funny if you get their unique sense of humor. But these are all reasons that I enjoyed it. As a longtime fan of their work, it almost felt like a reward for years of watching and appreciating their style.

An easy problem to have with the movie I guess is wondering what it's actually about. It begins with a vignette in an European village some time in the past, where a Jewish couple has an unusual encounter, and the movie doesn't make a terribly strenuous attempt to connect it to the rest of the story. It stars Michael Stuhlbarg as Larry Gopnik, a physics teacher and family man in the late 60s or early 70s, and shows what is probably the worst period of his life. There's no single tumultuous event that changes everything, stuff just starts to go wrong and doesn't stop. Some problems are more mundane than others, but they all keep piling on. He has several misleading dreams that go nowhere, and as previously mentioned, the film ends right before anything truly significant actually happens, although more bad news is on the horizon. For some reason this sort of ending seems to be in vogue right now, and as much as it bothers other people, I kind of love it when done properly, and this was one of my favorite examples.

The question of the point of it still exists, and I'm not sure there is one. The Coen brothers love their allusions, and comparisons can be pretty easily drawn to various stories from the Bible (or Torah, I guess), where the wrath of god rains down on a poor soul for no real reason. Larry has something of a crisis of faith throughout the movie, turning to various rabbis for help and questioning his beliefs, in ways both obvious and hidden under tricky dialogue with double meanings. The Coen brothers' movies lately have tended to be pretty bleak even when they're being funny, and A Serious Man is no different. But it still is really funny, one of their most humorous if you're in the right mood. Characters are bizarre without being silly, and there's just the right balance of absurdity with the darker elements to keep it entertaining the whole time. It's hard to pick just one thing to highlight the comedic aspect, though I will say that Sy Ableman is definitely one of my favorite Coen characters. What an asshole.