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.

Machete

Machete is a pretty good companion to The Expendables, another bloody ensemble action film that came out in the late summer of last year. It's a little more low budget and skews a bit differently with its cast, featuring more well-known women than men and a bunch of character actors. They both have their strengths and weaknesses, and I hesitate to declare one or the other the truly superior film, but they're both mostly enjoyable, hilariously violent movies.

The movie stars the instantly-recognizable Danny Trejo as Machete, a Mexican federal who gets betrayed, crosses the border, and gets betrayed again, when he decides to finally fight back against all those who have wronged him. It's a pretty extensive list, including Jeff Fahey as a slimy businessman and Steven Seagal as a slimy ex-federal. Robert De Niro plays a slimy politician with a fake Texan accent, in one of the more obvious jabs in a movie full of easy commentary on the whole immigration issue. I didn't bother trying to really understand what the movie was trying to say, because it was clear from the beginning that the real purpose of Machete was to be a silly Mexploitation film, and the politics are just there so a bunch of Mexican people can make speeches and then fight a bunch of white people. Basically, our economy needs cheap illegal labor to run, and if you try to totally get rid of it, bad things will happen. In real life, people would lose money; in the movie, they might get shot or blown up.

But anyway Machete joins an underground criminal network in an attempt to get back at the many villains the film quickly introduces. To sum it up simply, much like Once Upon a Time In Mexico, the plot is kind of an overstuffed mess. There are too many characters who don't have enough to do and the movie doesn't take enough time to make them all worth the effort. Luckily, unlike Mexico, Machete mostly makes up for it by generally acknowledging its own silliness and letting the fun come from a bunch of silly one-liners and especially absurdly gory and occasionally honestly clever action scenes. There's also some pointless nudity and winking celebrity cameos, this movie did come out of the whole Grindhouse project after all. Rodriguez has proven himself pretty consistent at making entertaining low-brow movies on the cheap, and he did the same thing again here. Things kind of peter out once you realize there's no way he's going to resolve everything in a unique and satisfactory way, but if you just let it be a stupid action movie with a lot of mediocre-to-good ideas, it's not bad.

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.