Paul Levinson's Blog: Levinson at Large, page 124
August 2, 2020
The Safdies
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 132, in which I review two movies by The Safdie Brothers -- Good Time and Uncut Gems.
Read these reviews:
Good Time Uncut GemsPaul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 31, 2020
Good Time: Great Time, Until...
So, there's a new app called Swell, which I was invited to join a few days ago, which I did. You can discuss any topic you like, via up to five-minute audio recordings. Today I came across a topic "Reviews," and noticed a review of Uncut Gems, which I reviewed here at the end of May. I heard a comment there by CaliGooner aka Taylor J, recommending an earlier movie by Uncut creators Benny and Josh Safdie, Good Time. Which is how I just came to watch this 2017 tonight movie.
Which was flat-out brilliant, worthy of Quentin Tarantino, until the end. The dialog, the ambience, the situations, the acting - with Robert Pattinson in the lead as bank robber Connie Nikas and Benny Safdie himself as Connie's mentally challenged brother - was a combo of burst-out laughing and roller coaster action. Connie's resourcefulness, able to think at lightning speed on his feet, and get out of and even improve upon nearly impossible situations, was true pleasure to behold.
Until the end. When ...
[Big spoiler ahead ... ]
He gets caught. Just like that. And it's no consolation to see that his brother makes out pretty ok in the end. I'm not a fan of unhappy endings, especially when they happen to characters who deserve much better. The only remedy I can think of is a sequel, in which we get to see Connie in action and maybe this time succeeding.
In the meantime, I hope you haven't read this spoiler, and you can get to see the highly enjoyable 9/10s of the movie which is a testament to how sheer intelligence triumphs. On the other hand, if you haven't read the spoiler, you wouldn't get to read that thought.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 28, 2020
July 27, 2020
Motherless Brooklyn: Go Down Moses and Black Lives Matter
The wife and I just saw Motherless Brooklyn on HBO. It's billed as an Edward Norton movie - he also starred in it - based on the Jonathan Lethem novel. I didn't read the novel (I was busy writing the sequel to The Silk Code when Lethem's novel was first published in 1999). But it's just as well. As readers of my reviews in this blog may know, I like reviewing movies and TV series on their own terms, not on how they compare with the novels or short stories on which they may have been based. I will say that my wife mentioned that she saw that the Norton movie departed from the Lethem novel in many major ways.
The story in the movie is about Robert Moses, the controversial, legendary builder, responsible for any number of highways (including the Long Island Expressway), bridges, and even Jones Beach. Moses was controversial because it was claimed he ran roughshod over and failed to provide for the poor communities near or over which he erected his great structures. This accords with the focus and expansion of Black Lives Matter now, at long last happening, though Lethem's novel and even Norton's movie were created long before this happened.
In the movie, Robert Moses is renamed Moses Randolph, and unsurprisingly very well played by Alec Baldwin. His antagonist is Lionel (nicknamed Brooklyn and long without a mother, hence the title). Lionel is a detective whose boss is killed, likely because he crossed Randolph in some big way. Also, Lionel has Tourettes, which makes for an especially memorable character, and gives Norton the opportunity to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance, which he does. Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura Rose, a pivotal character to Lionel and the movie, and she puts in a winning performance, too.
I also liked the less leading characters. My favorite was The Wire's Michael Kenneth Williams, who plays a Mile Davis-type character who uses his trumpet in more ways than one. I should mention that The Wire is in my view sometimes the best series ever on television, and always in contention for that position, and one of the reasons is that its cast was so stellar. But back to Motherless Brooklyn, it's a satisfying and altogether excellent movie, and I highly recommend it.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
Into the Dark: The Body: The Hitman and the Supernatural
I said in my review last week of Into the Dark's current episode, "The Current Occupant," that I'd be going back and coming back to review all the earlier episodes, so here's my review of "The Body," the very first episode in this Hulu series.
The story is about a hitman, on Halloween, so it has a supernatural element, which doesn't become fully apparent until the end. The ending thus becomes something of a twist, and it's a pretty good one. Our hitman is apparently invincible, but it turns out this invincibility applies only to human antagonists.
[spoilers follow]
He, our hitman, named Wilkes, is also impervious to women and romance. Beautiful, resourceful Maggie would love to be in bed Wilkes, but he says no that, even as he begins to increasingly rely on her in his increasingly complicated and difficult attempt to deliver a dead body he was contracted to kill. Indeed, he's so determined that there be no "we" - he and Maggie - that he kills her as soon as he realizes he's become too dependent upon her, and may be finding her erotic appeal too hard to resist.
Here, a question arises about Maggie. Why does she continue to work with and do her best to help Wilkes, after she realizes he's a killer? The non-supernatural answer is she's just so stimulated, mentally and physically, by Wilkes and what he does. But the twist at the end offers a much better answer: she's some kind of supernatural being who feeds on the energy of death.
That's completely appropriate for Halloween, and I sort of half-expected a twist along those lines, because ... when Wilkes kills her, he doesn't chop off her head or blow her to bits. The Levinson principle when it comes to whether a character is really dead on television is that the head has to be separated from the body, or the body completely destroyed. Maggie suffered neither.
But the 90-minutes was still well worth viewing, lifted by excellent acting of Rebecca Rittenhouse as Maggie, and Tom Bateman (whom I also just started watching the lead role in Beecham House) as Wilkes. And I'll be back soon with a review of another episode from Into the Dark.
See also: The Current Occupant
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 26, 2020
Sanditon: Wonderful but Cries Out for a Sequel
A belated but much appreciative review of Sanditon, folks - the Jane Austen unfinished novel, completed by Andrew Davies. Well, not completely appreciative, because I didn't find the narrative satisfyingly complete, meaning, I didn't like the ending.
But before that, Sanditon on the screen offers a Jane Austen story updated with more sexuality and a social relevance that goes beyond romance and class. As one of the actors mentioned in the commentary after the episodes, the setting by the Regency-era sea in the south of England almost feels like a Western. Except there's no gunslinging. Just a lot of building a town out of mud, or turning a town built in the mud into a colorful resort.
There's plenty of romance, unrequited and otherwise. What's the opposite of unrequited, requited? Yeah, I guess so, as in returned. But there's nothing quiet about Sanditon and its inhabitants, who bubble with passion, dreams of a better tomorrow, and firmly believe that a good regata or ball can always make things better. The costumes are fabulous, as is the acting of everyone. Rose Williams is especially wonderful as Charlotte and Theo James as Sidney.
[spoilers follow]
Which brings me to the ending. I don't care for unhappy endings. Davies expanded on Austen in lots of good ways, but I always loved the ending to Pride and Prejudice. Sidney's sacrifice may have seemed to be necessary to save his brother's dream, but there had to be another way. My wife actually suggested a good one: Georgiana's money. And for that matter, why was Lady Denham unwilling to help after the fire? Surely, she saw that it wasn't Tom's fault. Was she punishing him for not getting insurance?
All of this can be answered in a sequel. I know, there's no sequel planned. But, hey, if you've gone to the trouble of brilliantly fleshing out and extending a Jane Austen story, if you have the inspiration and talent to bring it into the 21st century while leaving it two centuries earlier, why not go the extra mile of giving it a brilliant Jane Austen ending? That's what sequels are for.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 25, 2020
Code 8: Superhero Action with an Ethical Conundrum
Just caught Code 8 on Netflix. It's at once a story of people with superpowers, robot cops, human cops, and criminals. The people with superpowers are feared by normal humans, with the result that most of the superpowered have become criminals. None of this is particularly original, but Code 8 is lifted by a real humanity that infuses the narrative.
The humanity in the people with superpowers - different superpowers - is propelled by Mary Reed, whose superpower is freezing, and her adult son Connor, whose superpower is electrical. Again, we've seen all of that before, in Heroes on television, and countless movies. But what starts to separate Code 8 from the pack is Mary is also suffering from a brain tumor, which is killing her by scrambling her control of her freezing power to the extent that she's freezing herself to death. Connor of course is determined to save her, first by making enough money through crime to pay for Mary's operation, and then by getting Nia, whose superpower is healing, to cure his mother. The problem, though, is that Mia's heals by taking unto herself the ill that she's curing. And that's where Code 8 shows its mettle, in the form of real heart.
Most of the movie are sequences of good shoot-em ups, displays of superpowers, and members of the superpower gang double-crossing each other as members of gangs with no superpowers are prone to do. All of that is fun to see, but nothing close to memorable, In contrast, the ending, where we find out just how far Connor is willing to go to save his mother, is an excellent treatment of the classic philosophic conundrum of if you see two people drowning, and can only save one, which one do you save? Is the answer, save the one you love, by sacrificing someone you may care about, and is certainly innocent?
See Code 8 and decide what you think. And if you enjoy this action movie charged by a fundamental ethical question, thank Jeff Chan, who wrote and directed the 2019 feature-length film, based on the 2016 short version of the movie, which Chan also directed and wrote (Chris Pare shared in the writing in both versions), which I didn't see.
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
The Return of Unsolved Mysteries
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 131, in which I review Unsolved Mysteries, recently returned, on Netflix.
Further reading:
Unsolved Mysteries Is Back - With No Host? The New Unsolved Mysteries: A Proper ReviewPaul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 24, 2020
The New Unsolved Mysteries: A Proper Review
Having complained about the lack of a host in the new Unsolved Mysteries now on Netflix, I figured the least I could is review the first six of twelve(?) episodes now streaming. In a phrase, they by and large were excellent.
Being a science fiction fan and author, my favorite unsurprisingly was "Berkshires UFO" about, well, a UFO in Great Barrington, MA and its surrounds in the Berkshires. You already know how much I liked the Dutres episode in the original series (especially the way Robert Stack pronounced it), and the first thing I realized is that the Berkshires are not that far from Truro and Dutres. Hey, what is it about Massachusetts, maybe it was the same UFO? In any case, the Berkshires episode was so convincing, especially the disparate unrelated people who either saw and/or were picked up by the UFO, I could almost believe the extra-terrestrial visit really happened. As I've said many times, I'll completely believe it when a flying saucer hovers over Time Square, where everyone can clearly see it, or wherever CNN is currently headquartered.
My next favorite episode in the returned series was "House of Terror," which takes place entirely in France, with people appropriately speaking French, a great language. Unlike some of the other unsolved mysteries, we know pretty quickly who the killer is, so the mystery resides in how and will the killer get away. In "Missing Witness," we not only know who the killer is, but she's pretty much living in plain sight at the end of the episode, leaving it a mystery as to why she hasn't been arrested.
The other three episodes were also quite good, which is why I said this first part of the first season is by and large excellent. I still miss Robert Stack, but at least we get his picture at the end of the intro, and I'll be back here with a review of the remaining episodes as soon as they're up and streaming.
See also Unsolved Mysteries Is Back: With No Host?
Paul Levinson's books ... Paul Levinson's music
July 23, 2020
Survival of the Media Fit
Welcome to Light On Light Through, Episode 130, in which I talk about one of the bedrocks of my "anthropotropic" theory of media evolution -- why some media, such as sight-only silent movies, are obliterated by the advent of newer media like "talkies" (sight and sound), in contrast to other media, such as sound-only radio, amply survive and even thrive in the advent of newer media like television (sight and sound).
Further reading:
Human Replay: A Theory of the Evolution of Media The Soft Edge: A Natural History and Future of the Information Revolution
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Levinson at Large
At present, I'll be automatically porting over blog posts from my main blog, Paul Levinson's Infinite Regress. These consist of literate (I hope) reviews of mostly television, with some reviews of mov
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