Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 109
December 23, 2020
Podcast Review of the Blumhouse Horror Quartet
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 162, in which I review four Blumhouse horror movies streaming on Amazon Prime Video.
Further reading, written reviews:
The Lie Black Box Evil Eye NocturnePaul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
December 21, 2020
His Dark Materials 2.6: The Hug and the Control
Not much more to say about the hug, other than it was good to see, especially in this hug-reduced age of Covid. But Coulter controlling the Spectres calls out for a lot more to say, because it changes a lot, maybe even everything.
Up until that scene, Mrs. Coulter was almost a secondary character this season. She was all but beaten by her daughter Lyra last week. Now, suddenly, she has mastery of the one of most powerful and deadly forces in any alternate world. She's gained this control, she said, by suppressing her humanity, and now she's a major evil player again.
Though maybe not as evil as some, like the theocratic Magisterium. They're after Lyra. The witches and just about everyone else are on her side. So, too, is her mother. Will the Spectres be able to keep Lyra safe from the Magisterium? And what role will Will and his knife play?
There are so many factors and factions at play in this narrative that it's difficult to keep track. Let's get back to Mary. What role will her increasing understanding of the dust play in this battle? Perhaps we'll see next week, in the season finale. Or maybe not. But that's ok, because there'll definitely be a third season next year.... Right?
See also His Dark Materials 2.1-3: Dust, Dark Matter, and Multiple Universes ... His Dark Materials 2.4: Chosen by the Knife ... His Dark Materials 2.5: Daughter and Mother
And see also His Dark Materials 1.1: Radiation Punk ... His Dark Materials 1.3: Coulter's Daemons ... His Dark Materials 1.4: The Bears ... His Dark Materials 1.5: Sleepers and Questions ... His Dark Materials 1.6: His Fast Materials
Nocturne: Deadly Player
I saw and enjoyed Nocturne last night, the fourth of four horror movies by Blumhouse on Amazon Prime Video, which four themselves are the first installment in a larger series to continue in 2021. Like the first three Blumhouse movies I saw and reviewed -- The Lie, Black Box, and Evil Eye -- Nocturne is a tightly drawn family drama. But Nocturne has the additional depth of being situated in music.
The story is about two fraternal twins, Juliet and Vivien, who are high school piano virtuosos and in constant fraternal competition. Well, Vivien's a virtuoso, and on her way to Juilliard. Juliet has problems expressing her talent. Fortunately (or, of course, maybe not), Juliet discovers a notebook with strange scribblings and depictions. Will these help her find her confidence and showcase her talent?
I'll say no more, except the sibling rivalry intensifies, affairs and almost affairs with boyfriends and teachers ensue, and the music is beautiful and haunting. The acting is fine, too, especially Sydney Sweeney as Juliet, and it was good to see Dexter's Julie Benz as the twins' mother. The ending was somewhat predictable, but it was effectively rendered, and I thought the real strength of Nocturne was not in the plot per se but in way the parts of this inevitable story were played out. Applause for Zu Quirke who wrote and directed.
So I'm all set for the next Blumhouse quartet next year. In a way, the more I see of these movies, the more they look like a 21st-century streaming Twilight Zone, with longer episodes.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
December 20, 2020
Your Honor 1.3: The Weak Link
That's why, even if Kofi is killed -- and it looks like that's happening when this episode ends -- Adam will not be home free. Ordinarly, it would indeed mean a get-out-jail-free card for Adam. Neither the Baxters nor the police would be looking for the hit-and-run driver. But not with Adam torn apart and confessing to just about anyone who'll listen.
He did do pretty well with the cop who has the hots for the judge. Adam's a smart and resourceful kid. But the guilt that he has is unlikely to abate. What is his father going to do about that?
The New Orleans in this excellent series has dangers on every corner. No one can be trusted. What will Kofi's lawyer do if her client is killed. Just forget about all of this? Not likely, since she and Judge Michael are already kissing. And the last thing Michael needs is someone with legal smarts joining Nancy the cop within kissing distance of the awful truth.
So, at this point, it looks as if the judge is in an impossible situation. But he is incredibly resourceful, too. He thinks of pretty much every angle, and has been doing a pretty good job of erasing incriminating evidence. In the end, the question is who will prevail: the savvy judge or the guilt-wracked son?
See also Your Honor 1.1: Taut Set-Up ... Your Honor 1.2: "Today Is Yesterday"
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
The Mess You Leave Behind: A Rich and Deep Mystery
My wife and I binged watched The Mess You Leave Behind, a Spanish eight-episode series on Netflix. Nothing really messy about it. Instead, a rich and powerful narrative of love and crime, presented in a lovely tapestry that intertwines two engaging stories.
Each of those stories is about a beautiful high school teacher, of the same literature class. The first (Viruca) is found dead in the water, a presumed suicide. The second (Raquel) is her replacement, and has to deal with the same group of students, including a guy who was obsessively in love with Viruca. The cutting between the two stories is artfully done. We see Viruca and Raquel literally in the same classroom, standing before the same mirror, walking the same paths by the river.
Those paths lead to sex, love, and danger. Did Viruca really take her own life or was she murdered? If the latter, by whom? Is Raquel endangering her own life by increasingly wondering about and investigating these questions? The acting -- Bárbara Lennie as Viruca, Inma Cuesta as Raquel, and Arón Piper as Iago, the love-struck teenaged guy who has a violent edge -- is excellent. And the ambience is a creative blend of almost 19-century countryside and 21st smartphones and laptops, all of which play important roles in the twin, intertwining stories.
Carlos Montero gets the "created by" and some of the directing credits. The series is based on his novel of the same name, and its mix of Victorian and digital sensibilities, and the story it tells, is not quite like anything I've seen before. I highly recommend it. Take a look, and see if you agree.
December 19, 2020
Darkness: Those Who Kill: Brutally and Rivetingly
It's been too long since I reviewed a Nordic Noir series -- Wisting on September 15 -- so I thought I'd jump back with a vengeance and tell you about the Danish Darkness: Those Who Kill, which my wife and I binge watched on Acorn via Amazon Prime Video the past few nights.
Vengeance is a good word for Darkness. So would brutal, harrowing, and riveting. A squad of ok not brilliant detectives in Copenhagen, assisted by a profiler who is sharp enough but also has some demons in her background, struggle to apprehend a serial kidnapper/killer. Who turns out to be not one but a serial kidnapper/killer partnership.
Take that literally. One is a kidnapper who keeps his young blonde female victims in chains in his cellar and his sex with them because he loves to the control them. He also has sex with his partner, a woman, who gets off on killing the kidnapped victims. The kidnappings and the sex are shown in brutal detail, in which the victims are usually subdued in a flurry of punches.
[Spoilers ahead.]
There's in-depth development of the killer's story, who was raped as a young teenager by her even younger brother, after leading him on. Being a woman, she's just not suspected as being part of this murderous spree, and in fact being the one who drives it and directs the kidnapper. It understandably take the police and the profiler a long time to catch on to what's going on.
There's edge-of-the-seat action in every episode, along with the punching and the degradation of the victims. Well worth watching, but not by the faint of heart or the weak of stomach. Good writing and creation by Ina Bruhn, good directing by Carsten Myllerup, with persuasive acting by Natalie Madueño as the profiler and Signe Egholm Olsen as the killer.
December 18, 2020
Evil Eye: Reincarnation Across Continents
Do you believe in reincarnation? Or, if not, are you open to accepting it as a premise for a taut, slow-burning family thriller that builds up to a clutched-by-the-throat ending? If yes, you're in for a rewarding 90 minutes with Evil Eye.
This is the third Blumhouse production my wife and I have seen on Amazon Prime Video in about as many nights. The Blumhouse "program" on Prime Video is presented in the promotional trailer as a quartet of "horror" stories. But, The Lie was straight-up crime. Black Box was science fiction -- nothing supernatural. Both were excellent, but neither was horror. I haven't yet seen Nocturne. Evil Eye was also excellent -- and, at last, horror! So, if that's your cup of strange tea, come and get it.
Here's the set-up: Usha in India is worried that her daughter Pallavi, in the U.S., is 29 and not yet married. That may soon be corrected, though, when she meets a cool, well-spoken, good-looking guy. But Usha has increasing misgivings, which we eventually learn derive from her being attacked on a bridge when she was pregnant (with Pallavi) by a ten-years former boyfriend. Usha survived the attack by pushing her former boyfriend off the bridge. Has he come back in America, transcending space as well as time, in the body of Sandeep, Pallavi's suave boyfriend, to exact some kind of revenge all of these years later on Usha?
Ok, that's all I'll tell you about the story. I will say that it's fleshed out by a family of appealing characters including Usha's husband, Krishnan, a man of science and therefore not a believer in reincarnation (good job by Bernard White, whom you may have seen on Homeland), Pallavi (well-played by Sunita Mani) who of course doesn't at first believe in reincarnation, either, and Usha, played by Sarita Choudhury, every bit as impressive as when we first saw her on the screen with Denzel Washington in Mississippi Masala way back in 1991.
Written by Madhuri Shekar, directed by Elan Dassani and Rajeev Dassani, Evil Eye serves up a narrative that blends current Indian and American flavor with ancient belief, in a story that would have fit well in any issue of the late, lamented Weird Tales.
McCartney III: Endearing, Strong, Memorable
I was never one to look for differences between the Beatles on their individual own and when they were The Beatles. To my ear and soul, Paul, John, George, and Ringo on their own sounded far more like The Beatles, captured and continued their extraordinary essence far better than any other artist. Sure, some solo numbers sounded more like The Beatles than others. I heard "Ticket to Ride" in Paul's "My Brave Face," and when someone on the Steve Hoffman Forum said it evoked "Things We Said Today," I could immediately hear it.
Maybe that's why Robert Christgau's dispeptic reviews in The Village Voice of McCartney's of first two solo albums felt so wrong to me that I wrote a Letter to the Editor objecting to it, which The Voice published as a straight-up article, which turned out to be my first writing published anywhere. I realized back then that professional reviewers get to where they are because they write well, not necessarily because they hear well (and the same applies to movie critics writing not necessarily watching well, etc).
So, although I've loved The Beatles more than any other music over all of these many years, I've loved Paul's work almost as much and sometimes just as much, and eagerly await everything he does. McCartney III, which I just listened to, was well worth waiting for.
The album, as I'm sure you know, is the third album in the McCartney (1970 - the one that Christgau didn't care for) and McCartney II (1980) series of recordings in which McCartney played all of the parts. One of the reasons why the new album is so endearing is that it evokes elements from both The Beatles and these solo all-McCartney albums.
Here are my favorites:
"Seize the Day": I just love the sound of "when the cold days come and the old ways fade," which could have come from any Beatles album. Not to mention the double rhymes (cold days and old ways) which I always strive for when I can get them in my own lyrics."Women and Wives": A strong song with a good melody and lyric ("chasing tomorrow")"The Kiss of Venus": Another good melody, which Paul sings in falsetto. Look, his voice is obviously not as powerful or supple as it was for most of his years, but it's still enjoyable to hear. His phrasing and emotion come through fine."Deep Down Feeling": What I really like about this track is the way it shifts into acoustic/melodic in the last minute of the 8-minute-25-second song. That was one of the fabulous moves in "Admiral Halsey".All of this is after only one listening to the album. It took me at least three or four hearings of Sgt. Pepper before I realized how great it was, and I still like Rubber Soul better. But there's no doubt that McCartney III makes a memorable contribution to Paul's astonishing lifetime of work, which continues to light up many a soul.
from the Steve Hoffman forum
December 16, 2020
Black Box: With One Body You Can't Dance with Two Minds
Immortality via uploaded minds into computer systems has been a staple of science fiction for decades. It's rarely done as well on the screen as it is Black Box, on Amazon Prime Video since October.
Nolan's having trouble recovering his memories after surviving a severe car accident, which apparently initially left him brain dead. That's a start for this kind of narrative we've also seen many times before. But Black Box becomes memorable in the almost delicate, compassionate subtlety with which Nolan struggles to regain his self, and the traumatic and heart-warming surprises that await him.
The more specific problem for Nolan is he's recovering not only his memories but even more of someone else's. He goes to a specialist, Lilian, who's very understanding, and puts him through various procedures such as hypnosis and connections to arcane devices. We learn, the hard way -- or Nolan learns, the hard way --
[SPOILERS AHEAD]
that Lilian has actually downloaded another mind into his body, the mind of her son, Thomas, who died some months ago. Lilian uploaded his mind before he died, and she hopes to bring her son back to life, or his mind back to life, in Nolan's brain and body.
I've already given away too much of the story, in case you ignored the spoiler warning, so I won't say anything more, specifically. But I like the way Nolan, who retains some of his memories along with Thomas's, tries to work things out, as does Thomas in Nolan's body, too. There's an old Yiddish saying, with one tuchus you can't dance at two weddings. Black Box is in effect a story of with one body you can't do the dance of life with two minds.
Very well acted by Mamoudou Athie as Nolan, Amanda Christine as his precocious daughter Ava, and it was good to see Phylicia Rashad as Lilian. Fine story by Stephen Herman and directing by Emmanuel Osei-Kuffour. Highly recommended!
See also Review of The Silicon Man by Charles Platt (1991)
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