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.

Harry Potter and the Deathly Hallows Part 2

Remember when I said watching Part 1 when it was on disc meant I could go see Part 2 in the theater and be really fresh on it? Heh. Anyway, the final film in the long-running Harry Potter series finally brings the story to a conclusion, answering a few questions and putting an end to the reign of the evil Lord Voldemort once and for all. I hope that isn't a spoiler. Having now seen both of the films that were made from the final book after it was chopped in half, I definitely think they should have been one movie. I understand why Warner Bros would want to increase their profits by splitting them up, and avoid a running time that was too long. But they could have easily cut the two films into a single three hour one, and I think it would have been a better movie.

Part of the fallout of splitting the story up is that Part 2 has a pretty odd structure. It has a low key little beginning sequence where Harry talks to a few people and establishes his goals for the rest of the film, then cuts to a partly comedic, partly exciting sequence where he and his friends break into a bank to retrieve one of the doodads they need to defeat Voldemort. It's a solid first act, but then the film skips the second one entirely and jumps straight to an extremely long and drawn out climax for the whole series, when the gang returns to Hogwarts to find the last pieces of the puzzle and fight off the evil army, with help from the other students and pretty much every friendly character from the series' history. There's an ebb and flow of excitement and drama during this part that prevents it from straining too hard or forcing its momentum to a grinding halt, but I can't say it entirely avoids feeling off from time to time. The larger cast outside of the main three kids gets more attention here than they did in Part 1, and it was nice to see a lot of these characters get a last moment or two even if they never got developed in the movies nearly as much as they did on the page.

Besides some of the night scenes being too dark to actually tell what was going on, I didn't have many problems with this long sequence until near the end, after all has been revealed and the game is finally on. A couple things just didn't quite work. The Deathly Hallows themselves were a last minute narrative device already in the books, and they come off even more so here. They were already explained in Part 1, but that needed to be reiterated here in Part 2 for those who might have forgotten, and the explanations are brief and incomplete. They seem less like well-considered keys to victory and more like cheap explanations for why the good guys are able to win without actually having to be smarter or stronger than their opponents. And the final battle itself is just a bit clumsy - it's bigger and more spread out than it appeared in the book, which doesn't really do it any favors and seems like a poor reaction to the less than perfect ending J.K. Rowling crafted in the first place. I don't know if I'm presenting my issues well, but the main thing is just that this series has great production values, but the final scenes presented in this film don't quite live up to the decade of preparation that led up to them. I think David Yates did a solid job bringing the second half of the series to life, but he rarely rose above that mark. It was ultimately an entertaining movie though, befitting a likable if imperfect franchise.

Trainspotting

You can pretty easily draw a comparison between Trainspotting and Requiem for a Dream, and the fact that the former came out four years earlier doesn't do the latter any favors. They're not quite the same, but they're both the second film by directors who are still acclaimed today, and use a lot of style to tell stories about the lives of drug addicts. Trainspotting is less overwhelming and depressing, and all told I ended up liking it more as a film. It's about five friends, three of which use heroin. One of them refuses but is a psycho on his own without the help of narcotics, and the other ends up getting pulled into that world worse than all of them.

There's an unusual flow to the plot as the protagonist played by Ewan McGregor goes through many ups and downs over time, falling into and out of his addiction. It's a good performance, making the character sympathetic despite myriad screw-ups and bad decisions, and the people around him are good too. My favorite character might be Tommy, played by Kevin McKidd with far more luxurious hair than I'm used to seeing, and Jonny Lee Miller (who we just saw do his best to save a disappointing season of Dexter) is another friend who sees himself as a very smart person, and who likes James Bond maybe a bit too much. Robert Carlyle is sort of a likable psychopath, and while I didn't know Ewen Bremner by name before this movie, I've seen him before and he fits his sad sack role well. Kelly Macdonald plays a girl Ewan rushes into a relationship with, and it's a pretty different part from what I'm used to seeing from her.

Danny Boyle's direction definitely helps the movie a lot, making every scene more interesting to watch and filling the whole thing with a lot of little touches that are both amusing and enhance the story. The scene where Ewan is in withdrawal and hallucinating is obviously a highlight and the film's most famous sequence, but it's far from the only scene that's unique and inventive. Things like completely entering the toilet and falling into the rug are similarly effective at putting you in the head of someone who's out of their mind, and it all works to somehow make the movie a bit more lighthearted than its subject matter would suggest without glorifying it. I really dug it a lot, more than Slumdog Millionaire, and Boyle is definitely a director I need to see more work by.

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.

No Country for Old Men

The Coen brothers are probably my favorite directors, although Ethan had only been getting producer credit until a couple years ago. He and Joel seem to be able to work successfully in any style. They traditionally write everything they do, although their last few screenplays have been based on other peoples' stories. The last couple weren't that great, but they were able to buck that trend with this adaptation of a novel of the same title by Cormac McCarthy. As a piece of normal entertainment, No Country doesn't work that well. It's not designed to be simple fun like a lot of their work. It's a return to a dark mood they last dabbled in with Fargo (unless The Man Who Wasn't There is like that) and only really explored in their very first film, Blood Simple. There is some black humor, and some of it's pretty funny. But at its core, No Country is a mean-spirited, depressing film, and a slow paced one at that, so it's definitely not for everyone.

A large part of my appreciation for the movie comes from the brilliance with which it's filmed, edited, and acted, and not from enjoying some parts of it. It's the kind of movie that puts off a lot of normal people while it gets nominated for critic awards. Not to say it's a boring or bad movie, though. Ignoring the deeper themes, as a thriller, it works quite well. Javier Bardem is one of the best movie villains in years, deeply psychotic in his calm determination to kill anyone who even gets a good look at him. There are some extremely tense scenes as he pursues Josh Brolin, who's also good as a likable, resourceful normal guy who ends up in an unlucky situation. Tommy Lee Jones plays an old sheriff getting ready to retire, and a lot of the story is really about him coming to terms with what his life's been. The movie takes a strange turn near the end, and I know some really hated the way it closed out. But it does all make sense if you view it in the context of what they're trying to say. I don't think it's the kind of movie I'd watch many more times, but real fans of cinema should see it.