Enjoying the Golden Age of TV: Gems of 2018, Part 3

Coming up on the final segment of my review of TV gems of 2018, I’ll talk about the three movies that I watched this year. A few years ago, I would have used the term “made-for-TV” movies and this usually implied that these films were shot differently for a less demanding small-screen experience, with inferior production values. In the post-HBO age, that of course, is no longer the case; films commissioned by HBO (and now Netflix and other streaming services) are put together by the same calibre of talent as any big screen Hollywood film – the writing, acting, sets and visual effects.

• The Cloverfield Paradox (Netflix): This is the third film in the “Cloverfield universe” created by J.J. Abrams and his cohorts, which started with the 2008 found-footage monster-attack movie Cloverfield. This was followed by the critically acclaimed psychological thriller 10 Cloverfield Lane in 2016, which had only a tenuous connection with the first movie. Likewise, The Cloverfield Paradox establishes its connection with the first film only in the last 10 seconds of the film and therefore has been mocked by critics as just a clever marketing ploy, leveraging Cloverfield‘s cult following to bring in viewers for a rather muddled film that seems to have various action set-pieces randomly stitched together. The story is set on a space station, where a group of scientists are testing a particle accelerator in the hope of creating a new energy source. Somehow the experiment transports the space station to a parallel universe and horrible things start happening. The movie has a top-drawer international cast, the likes of Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw, David Oyelowo, Elizabeth Debicki and Zhang Ziyi. These are actors who typically bring diversity and acting depth as supporting characters in major Hollywood films, but somehow don’t seem to be the right fit for an outer space disaster movie (reminds me of those 70s disaster films with all-star casts). At a brisk 102 minutes running time, it’s a reasonable way to pass time but after the movie’s finished, one is left wondering what it was all about.

left to right: John Ortiz, Zhang Ziyi, David Oyelowo, Daniel Bruhl, Gugu Mbatha-Raw and Chris O’Dowd in The Cloverfield Paradox (Netflix/Paramount)

• Fahrenheit 451 (HBO): This film adaptation of Ray Bradbury’s acclaimed 1953 novel of a dystopian future society in which books are outlawed, was much anticipated as it starred powerhouse actors Michael Shannon and Michael B. Jordan, and was being directed by Ramin Bahrani, an independent filmmaker well known for his highly personal dramas such as Goodbye Solo and 99 Homes. The book was previously adapted by celebrated auteur Francois Truffaut in 1966 to mixed reviews. It was hoped that this version would do greater justice to the novel’s themes of state-based censorship and an illiterate society addicted to mindless mass entertainment – eerily prescient of today’s state of affairs. Sadly, the critics liked this version even less, feeling that the adaptation was too superficial and didn’t really explore these themes. Michael Shannon is convincing as always, as the menacing Capt. Beatty, the chief of the “firemen” who are tasked with destroying all the books. But Michael B. Jordan somehow seems miscast in the role of Guy Montag, Beatty’s no.2, who has a change of heart and goes on the run from his former mentor. I think the filmmakers succumbed to the temptation of focusing on the visual effects depicting the future world, rather than on the human story. With a running length of 101 minutes, which is about the same duration as an episode of Game of Thrones, I think it didn’t give itself sufficient time to explore deeper themes and make us care about the characters. In a way, the movie ended up being exactly what the book was trying to criticize – superficial entertainment for the masses.

Michael Shannon and Michael B. Jordan in Fahrenheit 451 (HBO)

• To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Netflix): Saving the best for last, this film came out of the blue and I heard about it by sheer chance as a film that my kids were talking about. Having nothing to do one evening, and in the mood for a light rom-com, I watched and enjoyed every bit of it’s High School Musical-like tone and pace (without the music, of course). The movie has quickly become a young-adult phenomenon, igniting the careers of the two charismatic and likeable leads Lana Condor and Noah Centino. The initial plot is a bit convoluted, but essentially has the characters played by Condor and Centino having to pretend like they’re going out together, leading to much confusion and consternation among their schoolmates and friends. The story follows the usual rom-com beats but it’s the chemistry of the two leads and some appealing supporting characters that make this a memorable viewing experience. There is now with talk of a sequel, and for sure, I’ll be waiting for the day it comes out!

Noah Centino (as Peter) and Lana Condor (as Lara Jean) in To All the Boys I’ve Loved Before (Netflix)

That’s it for my TV Gems of 2018, covering new series that have been renewed for a second season, mini-series and movies.

For 2019, I am looking forward to Netflix’s live action adaptation of Nickelodeon’s beloved animated series, Avatar the Last Airbender, HBO’s spin-off of the iconic graphic novel Watchmen, BBC’s TV adaptation of Philip Pullman’s His Dark Materials books and The Passage, Fox’s adaptation of the epic post-apocalyptic vampire trilogy written by Justin Cronin. There’s also the third season of True Detective, returning after a gap of a few years (and the forgettable second season) starring Mahershala Ali, and the small matter of the final season of Game of Thrones.

Enjoying the Golden Age of TV: Gems of 2018, Part 2

Moving on from the 4 new TV shows that I watched and got hooked onto this year, let’s talk about the stuff that I really keep an eye out for – TV movies and mini-series.

I’ve had a fantastic strike rate with mini-series in particular over the past couple of years, the notable ones being The Night Of (written by Steven Zaillian, starring the now famous Riz Ahmed), The Night Manager (based on the John Le Carré book, starring Tom Hiddleston and Hugh Laurie), Godless (from Steven Soderbergh) and The Cuckoo’s Calling (the adaptation of JK Rowling’s mystery story written under the name Robert Galbraith).

I’ve watched acclaimed mini-series this year, all British and produced for the BBC.

• A Very English Scandal (3 episodes): This superb mini-series tells the story behind a scandal that rocked British politics in the late 1970s, which traces its roots back to a homosexual affair between British MP Jeremy Thorpe and Norman Scott, a stable boy he met in 1960. After an initially passionate relationship, Thorpe tired of Scott and tried to push him out of his life. After having Scott paid off for his silence through an intermediary for several years, Thorpe eventually conspired to have him murdered. The attempt failed, Scott went ballistic and went public, leading to a “very English scandal”. If all this sounds ridiculous, that’s exactly how celebrated director Stephen Frears has chosen to tell the story…as a biting satire of English manners and the British political establishment. Hugh Grant, who has played his share of over-the-top characters over the years is unbelievably good as the entitled upper class politician Thorpe, who rose to become the leader of the Liberal party and then fell from grace (with his head still held high, one might add). Ben Whishaw plays the equally entitled Norman Scott, whose pride seems eternally wounded by the lack of respect he receives. Truly entertaining and a must watch!
• Bodyguard (6 episodes): Without doubt, this is the breakout TV hit of 2018 in the UK, written and produced by Jed Mercurio, the man behind the hit police procedural Line of Duty. The mini-series stars Richard Madden (Robb Stark from Game of Thrones) in the lead role as war veteran turned police sergeant David Budd, who foils a suspected terrorist bombing attempt while traveling on a train with his kids. His heroic actions land him with the plum job as personal bodyguard to the Home Secretary, Julia Montague. What follows is a densely plotted web of political intrigue, conspiracy theories and personal turmoil. Some scenes are so tense, they are almost unwatchable. It’s unbelievable how good every aspect of this mini-series is – acting, production values, music and editing.
• Ordeal by Innocence (3 episodes): This adaptation of Agatha Christie’s 1958 novel, has some of the most gorgeous cinematography I have seen in recent times, having been filmed near Glasgow at the Ardgowan House by the River Clyde. Bill Nighy and Anna Chancellor (“duckface” from Four Weddings and a Funeral) are the two well-known faces playing the wealthy couple Leo and Rachel Argyll. The other characters in the story are their adopted children and their housekeeper. Since I haven’t read the original novel, the fact that this adaptation controversially changed the ending had no effect whatsoever on me. I thoroughly enjoyed the classic Agatha Christie plot twists and at various points, virtually everyone on screen is suspected of having committed the murder. It is however, a very dark story and made all the more jarring by the beauty of the surroundings.
• The Little Drummer Girl (6 episodes): I just finished watching this over the weekend. Directed by acclaimed Korean director Park Chan-Wook (Oldboy, The Handmaiden), this is another of many great recent John Le Carré adaptations for both cinema and TV. Michael Shannon is amazing (as usual) playing Israeli spymaster Martin Kurtz, who cooks up a plan to get an actress to infiltrate a Palestinian extremist cell and get access to the mastermind behind a series of bombings of Jewish targets in Europe. Set during the turbulent 70s, Kurtz and his hand-picked team of Israeli agents (including Alexander Skarsgard as Israeli intelligence agent Gadi Becker) operate with the grudging cooperation of European allies to recruit radical left-wing actress Charlie Ross as their double agent. The heart of the story lies in how they convince (brainwash? coerce?) Charlie into taking on this assignment, at great risk to her life and her sanity. And herein lies the tragedy of all secret agents (including even James Bond), who ultimately are just pawns in the hands of the people who really pull the strings. While the story was engaging and thought-provoking (credit to Le Carré), it’s on-screen realization was a bit over-stylized and arty for me, especially the relationship between Charlie Ross and her handler/lover, Gadi Becker. The real discovery of this show is actress Florence Pugh who plays Charlie Ross. Much has been written of Pugh’s performance in 2016’s period drama Lady Macbeth, which I now definitely have to watch. This 22-year-old actress is someone who is going to dominate acting for years to come. Truly amazing talent.

So those are my chosen TV mini-series of 2018 and I would pick the first two as absolutely must-watch for anyone. That leaves just the TV movies, which I’ll cover in my next post.

Enjoying the Golden Age of TV: Gems of 2018, Part 1

It’s a generally accepted fact amongst TV critics and viewers that we are living in a “Golden Age of TV” for the past few years, with a wealth of densely scripted, lavishly produced, intensely acted TV content running on cable channels like HBO and AMC Networks and streaming services like Netflix and Hulu. It’s extraordinary that this description covers not just conventional dramatic shows like House of Cards but also genre fare like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead; with rare exceptions, sci-fi, fantasy or horror shows rarely ever attracted top drawer writing and acting talent until the 90’s when we got The X-Files. Since then, and particularly in the past 7-8 years, we have had several long-running shows like Game of Thrones and The Walking Dead that have consistently picked up awards in acting and technical categories year after year.

I typically prefer one-off TV movies and short mini-series as there is a guarantee of a definite end vs. the risk of meandering plotlines, lack of closure (The X-Files and Lost) or “jumping the shark” (season 4 of Falling Skies). Among the multi-year shows, I have limited myself to just a handful – Game of Thrones, House of Cards, The Crown, Madam Secretary and The Leftovers (which I started watching only after learning that season 3 was its last, as I previously feared it would go on and on like Damon Lindelof’s other creation, Lost).

Having said that, 2018 has been a particularly good year as I tried my luck with four new TV shows, all of which were worth the investment in time and have been renewed for a second season.

• Star Trek: Discovery (season 1, 15 episodes): The first new Star Trek show in more than a decade, it started in Sept 2017 and ended in early 2018, so gets into the 2018 list. I wasn’t entirely comfortable with this ‘alternate universe’ messing around with Star Trek canon, particularly the concept of the ‘spore drive’ and the re-design of the Klingon (truly frightening and repulsive). I did however quickly become invested in the fate of the main characters – Michael Burnham played superbly by Sonequa Martin-Green, Saru (played by Doug Jones, the ‘go to’ actor for any alien character under prosthetics) and others. Michelle Yeoh had a brief but impactful role as Capt. Philippa Georgiou. As with all Trek shows, it explores some serious socio-political issues and has some of the most intense scenes of any Trek show. I really like the title sequence and the theme music by Jeff Courage which incorporates elements from the original theme. Season 2 will premiere in Jan 2019.
• Yellowstone (season 1, 9 episodes): I have already written about this show previously. Not quite as satisfying as Taylor Sheridan’s big screen work, the writing feels hurried and less grounded compared to his movies. Like a modern version of Dallas, it looks like the characters are starting to do more and more outrageous things. Still, the powerhouse cast is eminently watchable – Kevin Costner is Montana ranch owner John Dutton, Kelly Reilly is his emotionally damaged man-eating daughter Beth, Luke Grimes and Wes Bentley are his equally damaged sons Kayce and Jamie, Cole Hauser is the fiercely loyal ranch foreman Rip Wheeler, Danny Huston plays real estate developer Dan Jenkins, the nemesis of the Dutton family and Gil Birmingham is the politically ambitious chief of the Native Americans who live adjacent John Dutton’s land. Season 2 will air sometime in 2019.
• The First (season 1, 8 episodes): I briefly referred to this show in my post about First Man, the Neil Armstrong biopic, as I watched it around the same time and there were some parallels in terms of the themes and story beats (not tone). This is indeed a very ‘grounded’ and serious depiction of the challenges faced by the first manned mission to Mars, with my only complaint being a few self-indulgent moments which become a bit too ‘arty’ and drawn out. Sean Penn is intense and magnetic.
• The Terror (season 1, 10 episodes): This show is based on the 2007 novel of the same name by Dan Simmons, a fictionalized account of two Royal Navy ships (HMS Terror and HMS Erebus) which were lost in the late 1840s while trying to find the elusive Northwest Passage through the Arctic to Asia. Subsequent research indicates that the ships were trapped in the Arctic ice and the 129 seamen on board perished a slow and painful death over several months. The novel added a supernatural element to the story – in addition to dealing with the bitter cold, disease, malnutrition, hunger, cannibalism and mutineers, the men are hunted down by a native demonic spirit (called ‘tuunbaq’ by the Eskimo), which takes the form of a giant polar bear. I had read the book many years ago; it is bleak but engrossing. The TV show visualizes the bleakness and the harsh conditions superbly, almost unbearably. The acting is truly top-notch, the cast includes seasoned British character actors Jared Harris, Tobias Menzies (who will play Prince Philip in The Crown season 3), Paul Ready, Ciaran Hinds and newcomer Adam Nagaitis, who plays the despicable mutineer Cornelius Hickey. Although I knew the tragic fate of the men in advance, the show is still compelling because of the acting, the incredible production design, the historically accurate depiction of the inhuman conditions faced by arctic explorers of the time and the morbid fascination of waiting to see who dies next (and how!). The first season completes the story, but now the producers have decided to use the show’s title to tell a new, unconnected story in season 2, taking the same approach as The American Horror Story anthology series. One day, I must compile a list of visually striking opening sequences of TV shows; The Terror will feature in the list, I think.

In my next post, I will cover the memorable TV movies and mini-series that I watched in 2018. Incidentally, all the movies are American and all the mini-series are British!

First Man explores the human story behind a pioneering space mission

Damien Chazelle’s Neil Armstrong biopic First Man has to be experienced on the big screen, ideally IMAX. Having said that, the IMAX format scenes are limited to the moon landing sequence; much of the film is shot on grainy 16mm film in a Cinéma vérité style, as if someone with a home movie camera had been in Armstrong’s home or with him inside the claustrophobic space capsule. There have been quite a few memorable films made about space exploration – The Right Stuff, Apollo 13, Space Cowboys come immediately to mind – but this is perhaps the first one to give the audience a real appreciation of what an astronaut experiences durng a space flight. Being violently shaken about inside a dark metal box, on top of a rocket that is generating 7.5 million pounds of thrust is both terrifying and exhausting. One can only marvel at the physical strength and the nerves of steel that these astronauts had, especially in the early days of space exploration when accidents and fatalities were common.

Ryan Gosling is the perfect choice for this film; an understated actor to play an introverted, understated man. The cast is filled out with a host of powerful actors. The Crown’s Claire Foy plays Janet Armstrong; she had to calmly manage home and family in the glare of the public eye while keeping the fear and anxiety bottled up under the surface. Jason Clarke, one of my favourite character actors has a significant role as astronaut Ed White, a close colleague of Armstrong’s who tragically died in a fire during a systems check for the Apollo mission. Corey Stoll (the villain in Ant-Man) plays Buzz Aldrin, Armstrong’s partner on the Apollo 11 moon landing; Armstrong is a bit frosty towards the brash and outspoken Aldrin in the early stages of their association, but the two professionals work together seamlessly while on the Apollo 11 mission.

Justin Hurwitz has composed the music for all of Damien Chazelle’s films; Whiplash and La La Land were both films built around the theme of music and he was able to work with a consistent musical style throughout. In First Man, I think he had a tougher task and the 33-year-old does a wonderful job alternating between soft melodious passages for the intimate, introspective scenes at Armstrong’s home and the powerful, epic sounds needed for the moon landing.

I mentioned the cinematography earlier; once again, all credit to Swede Linus Sandgren for some truly amazing imagery. He won the Oscar for best cinematography earlier this year for La La Land and is a shoe-in to be nominated for First Man as well. One wouldn’t imagine that both films were shot by the same person; he has completely adapted the equipment and the style of photography to suit each film’s subject matter and tone.

The film was so engrossing and gripping that I didn’t realize that 2 hours and 20 minutes had gone by. There is not a single scene that seems superfluous or indulges the director’s own artistic needs. Credit for this perfect pacing must go to Tom Cross, the editor who won an Oscar in 2015 for his work on Chazelle’s Whiplash and will surely be recognized for this film as well.

A few weeks ago, I finished reading test pilot Scott Crossfield’s memoirs called Always Another Dawn. Crossfield was the first man to fly at twice the speed of sound and was the primary test pilot on the X-15 hypersonic plane which was the technological stepping stone for the American space program. X-15 pilots flew so high (above 100,000 ft) that they technically qualified as astronauts! The opening scene of First Man shows Neil Armstrong completing an X-15 flight. Both Crossfield and Armstrong worked at NACA – the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics, which operated all the experimental aircraft in the 1950s and 60s and was the predecessor to NASA. Reading the book has given me an additional appreciation of the men who paved the way for space flight and for much of the advances in modern day aeronautics. Many of them were qualified engineers who combined brains, brawn, personal ethics and courage in a way that I don’t think we see much of today. Truly a generation of heroes.

Coincidentally, I just finished watching Hulu’s 8-episode first season of The First, which chronicles preparation for the first manned mission to Mars in the 2030s. Starring Sean Penn and Natasha McElhone (who had 2 big movies 20 years ago in 1998 – Ronin and The Truman Show), this is a glossy narrative, visually very different from First Man, but the themes and some of the story beats are similar – administrators having to justify the enormous cost of a space mission to politicians and the public, astronauts managing personal relationships and their own anxieties prior to a voyage from which they may not return. The pacing of The First is inconsistent, but the performances from the leads are top notch, with the 58-year-old Sean Penn still playing the intense, angry man after all these years and looking incredibly fit and bulked up for the role.

In an age when we experience other worlds through the safety of smartphones and VR goggles, both First Man and The First remind us of the physical and emotional dangers associated with real exploration.