By now, a whole hell of a lot has been written about Netflix series Making a Murder. The documentary series follows events leading to the murder conviction of Steven Avery. It's a story filled with injustices, beginning with his release from prison in 2003 after serving 18 years for a rape he was exonerated for based on DNA evidence. That part of the story alone is bad enough, revealing what is either incredible incompetency in the Manitowoc County, Wisconsin police department or an elaborate conspiracy. Or both. And the journey to Avery being (mis)tried and convicted of murder in 2007 is one that will test your definition of justice at every turn.
Make no mistake, what we see in the series is skewed to make you side with Avery. But there are parts of it that no amount of skewing would change. By the end of the series I don't know if I believe Avery is innocent, but I also don't think that's even the point. The fact is the police and DA most definitely pulled some shady shit. I'm not going to go off on a rant (maybe just a little) about prisons and the justice system and racism, but I do have to point out that it's interesting that everyone is so taken by the case of a white dude who was fucked over by the system, while black kids get shot by cops daily. End rant. Plus, I'm not sure Avery is completely innocent, either. I don't know.
In related news, Serial has started posting daily updates from a new hearing in the case of Adnan Sayed that could result in an overturned conviction. If you never heard season 1 of Serial, you don't know what you're missing. Making a Murderer was good, but it was definitely no Serial. For starters the producers of the podcast are master storytellers where I think the makers of the Netflix series were more lucky than anything else because they happened to be there making a documentary about how Avery would acclimate back into society and then the murder case happened. It sort of just fell in their lap. Also, by skewing the way they did, I think they lose some of the impact a more ambivalent point of view would give them. Serial never chose a side and left you questioning everything. Like life.
And I guess the larger question left is what if Avery and/or Sayed are guilty after all. Does that justify any shortcuts taken to lock them up? If I were a cop, DA or judge and I knew for a fact, that the accused was guilty, would I manipulate evidence or otherwise influence the outcomes? Honestly, I think I would. But that's why I'm none of those things. I'm just a guy watching a show or listening to a podcast. And I expect more from those that chose to be arbiters of justice. I think we all should.
I recently tried to watch Z Nation, the SyFy TV show now on Netflix. I lasted a total of 20 minutes which was at least twice as long as I actually gave a fuck about what I was seeing on the screen, but I'm open minded. It was jarringly fast paced which might be a good way to start a video game, but for something less interactive, I need a moment to figure out exactly what the hell I'm supposed to be looking at before you jump to some other crazy thing in the most jarring way possible. Actually, that's not even fair. It's not that it was fast - that can sometimes work - it's just that it was bad. In any case, I was hungering for something apocalyptic, so I decided to give another show a spin: The Returned (Les Revenants). It's the complete opposite - slow and drawn out and pretty damn near perfect.
This French series is based on a movie I'd never heard of called They Came Back (Les Revenants), about a bunch of people in a small village in the mountains of France coming back from the dead. But this is not what you'd expect, or maybe it is, given it's French. There's no gory zombies or anyone getting their head bashed in. Instead the horror is about dealing with loss, from the point of the view of the families that had lost loved ones as well as from the perspective of the returned themselves who come back to a world that has moved on without them. It's loss, but also, in a weird way, the loss of loss, that's traumatic. There is some real human drama playing out here while a deeper mystery about how and why the dead have come back unfolds, episode by episode, never showing all the cards at once.
There are some genuinely creepy situations in the series, but interestingly, I'm more creeped out by how nonchalant the French can be, even at their supposedly most shocked. There was an attempt at an American version of this show and it was apparently cancelled almost immediately. I bet it's because the tone was way off for American audiences who probably need to see the characters lose their shit every ten minutes in order to go with something like this. But that's the thing about this show. It deals with the reality of getting your loved one back. Yeah, the impossibility of that happening would likely freak you out, but a bigger part of you would likely be happy to see them again. And the dichotomy of those two feelings is where the drama lies here.
Anyway, the first season ended with a hell of a bang and I can't even imagine what is next. The second season already aired in France, so I need to track it down soon. I'm not sure I can wait for it to get to Netflix. This show is so good, it's had my inner voice thinking in French gibberish for weeks. I really should just learn the damn language at some point.
There's a world of difference between making things dark and gritty for the sake of it and exploring actual human darkness and complexity. Too often, what happens is that the whole "comics aren't for kids anymore" thing winds up just adding surface grit. They turn down the colors, add a bunch of violence and say "bam! this is now realistic!" but it's not, Zack Snyder, it's not! But when it's done correctly, we get Jessica Jones, which is probably the only time I've ever seen the real implications of superhero shit handled seriously in live action.
When this show was announced, I was excited because I really loved the comic, Alias, by Brian Michael Bendis and Michael Gaydos. Bendis can be a bit much, but this is probably his masterpiece. It's a corner of the Marvel Universe that he pretty much created. He originally wanted the character to be ex Spider-Woman Jessica Drew, but I think it's better that failed superhero turned private eye Jessica Jones is a character he created for this and nobody really remembers her attempt at costumed heroics. The comic, like the show, winds up exploring the dark toll of her powers as well as what happens when one is mentally raped for years, pulling no punches whatsoever. So of all the Marvel shows coming to Netflix it was the one I was most excited for, but I didn't think they'd get it this right.
For starters, Krysten Ritter just is Jessica. I'm not sure I've ever seen better casting for a comic based thing. The angst just radiates off her but you also see a flicker of hope in there somewhere in her eyes or the way she walks. This is a woman who wants to believe in something: she wants to believe that she can atone, that humanity is worth her sense of guilt and responsibility. She's that damn good. The show is that damn good.
The whole atmosphere of the show just feels real. There are moments where they are out in the crowded streets of New York where I was struck by how "unproduced" it all felt. It seemed as thought they just went out and shot on the street, as is, which I'm sure they didn't, but they certainly pulled it off. There was just something about the way these characters, particularly Jessica, walk and generally inhabit the city, that felt very much alive in a way I haven't seen since maybe Taxi Driver or other 70s productions. I don't know. It's probably best not to even analyze it too much. As expected, I enjoyed this a whole lot more than the adequate Daredevil series. Still, I'm looking forward to more of this side of Marvel's universe on Netflix. And more Jessica Jones, specifically.
A couple of years ago I decided to check out a show on Netflix because time travel, so duh. Continuum wasn't great, but the premise was enough to keep me on board for a few episodes. That grew into having it on mainly in the background and then deciding I wasn't going to watch the next season. Except, when the next season became available, I did watch it. And I went back and forth on my opinion a couple of times, but still continued. By the time season 3 hit, I was all in. And now, having watched the last 6 episode wrap up season, I'm glad I stuck with it.
The premise of a group of terrorists from the future being sent back in time, followed by one supercop (Rachel Nichols) is simple enough. But the show had layers to it at every point. For starters, those terrorists were fighting a fascist corporate empire for which the supercop worked. On top of that, the man responsible for sending them all back (William B. Davis) in time is the man responsible for said empire. And to top it off, who winds up helping supercop in our time but the younger version of the man responsible for the empire. And if that wasn't convoluted enough, along the way the status quo changes a few times due to time lines shifting and other factions coming into play. Basically, the show kept my interest because it never really settled into a grind.
Sure there was some not so great acting along the way and often the dialogue was beyond expository. And the effects weren't great. But at the heart of the show was always the relationship between Kiera, the supercop, and young genius Alec (Erik Knudsen), the potential corporate ruler. Over the three and a half seasons of the show their friendship was tested to its limits and their attempt to fight the future while simultaneously getting Keira back to her son in said future was the blinking light at the end of the twisty tunnel. The last few minutes of the finale were surprisingly moving and satisfying in a bittersweet way. Basically the ending was much better than it had any right to be and for that, I give this show major points that forgive the inconsistencies. It's hard to nail an ending, but man, did they ever. Between this, Dark Matter and Orphan Black, it appears Canadian Sci Fi is kicking some ass.
Growing up, the first person I remember ever saying they were an atheist publicly was James "The Amazing" Randi. I don't think I really understood what it meant, but at the time, like a lot of boys I was into magic and the fact that this guy could and was willing to tell us that these tricks people did were just that, tricks, and that they could be learned by anyone, was important. But it also struck a nerve that I only much later in life understood. He was debunking people who were blatantly lying and more than that, he was doing it because he believed in one thing: reason. So, when I saw the documentary about him, An Honest Liar, hit Netflix, I immediately watched it. I'm sure the millions of other movies and shows that have been on my queue for years are extra pissed at me now.
I really don't want to give anything away about this film because it unfolds in such a great way and apparently some things happened as it was being filmed that make it that much more complex. The basis of it is that after a lifetime of debunking and revealing deceptions, James Randi was hiding the fact that he was gay. At age 81, he finally came out. But the layers to this story are much more complex than that suggests and I think it ultimately reveals something about Randi as well as all the people that choose to ignore reason and believe the huxters he's battled his whole life. I won't review or reveal. Instead, I just encourage you to see it for yourself. I will point out that the movie opens at Lester's Diner in Ft. Lauderdale, which is one of my spots so now I'm wondering why I've never run into him there.
When it was announced I had high hopes for Ascension. Of course, it was a risk that it would just end up being Mad Men in Space, given the premise of a generation ship sent out into the stars in the 60s. Now that I've finally caught up with the first episode on Netflix, I wish it had turned out to be Mad Men in Space. What it turned out to be was boring in space. With a heavy dose of horrible everything. At one point, we cut back to Earth from this ship that's been traveling through space since the Kennedy years long enough for one character to spell out the premise of the show. I'll never know if that scene served another purpose or if they cut back to Earth again later in the series because I'm not watching this crap.
There's a lot to like about The Fall, labeled as a Netflix Original even though it's actually a BBC show (a trick I'm not sure how Netflix gets away with). It stars Gillian Anderson as an English detective investigating a series of murders in Belfast, Ireland. I could see people initially comparing this to The Killing, but aside from the very basic things all shows of this nature have in common, this is different. For starters, the two seasons currently on Netflix are clearly working at saying something about misogyny. And you know what, it's about damn time a crime procedural drama did that. Too often these shows are about titillation at the expense of mostly female victims. And if there is a female cop, they are more motherly than anything else. Shows like Law and Oder: SVU pay lip service to how the culture feeds sex crimes, but the show itself, like most crime shows is really just voyeuristic.
Here, Anderson comes across as cold at first, but you eventually start to see her complexity and awareness of the fact that she's dealing with a male dominated world and how that world predictably results in the crimes she works. But yet, she doesn't judge, really. In the end, she doesn't even judge the criminals themselves as much as she may hate them, because she realizes they are all too human. Of course, in order to get to this point, you have to get past her accent, or more precisely her choice of vocal tone. She has a throaty whisper throughout the series that really drove me nuts most of the time. I get that the character is meant to be somewhat laid back and distant. She's supposed to make you listen to her closely. Her whisper is a sign of confidence. I get all that, I really do. But maybe it's too much. I don't know. She's no Scully, that's for sure. Either way, give this show a shot. It's worth the effort.
She says things like this often and she's right every time.
There are only two seasons on Netflix and it appears to have wrapped up the case, so I'm not sure what season 3 will bring. Will she finally yell at someone? Who knows. It's a standard rule that by being limited, BBC series are usually more contained. But then Luther's last season sort of spun out of control, so you never know.
Another BBC original that Netflix claims is Peaky Blinders, which is one of the most beautifully shot shows I've ever seen. This one stars Cillian Murphy as an Irish gypsy gangster in Birmingham, England just after World War I. The show is great, but I can't say enough how beautiful it is to look at. The sets are so rich and detailed and the photography captures every bit of industrial grime and dirt. There are moments where they walk past local, industrial revolution era workshops of some kind and the fire will just roar in very real detail in the background, inches away from our protagonists, just dominating the scene while lighting it. It's like the opposite of the overblown explosions we see in big budget action movies that frame the heroes in all their glory. This is just part of the scenery and matter of fact in a very scary way. But then the whole city is really like a workshop, with open furnaces and fumes and soot and ash just in the air at all times. This toxic atmosphere is looming and real and dangerous and just a very visible part of the scenery and part of the lives of the working class. And if there's any image in the show that stands out for me it's that fire, sparking violently at times, which appears in various locations throughout the show.
The show is also big on musical, slow motion scenes, set to modern rock. The main theme is Nick Cave and The Bad Seed's "Red Right Hand" and they've featured everything form PJ Harvey to Arctic Monkeys and The Black Keys. Basically, like they've been listening to my favorites on Spotify. Typically, these just come off as stylized transitions and sure, they stick out somewhat at first. But you quickly get over the anachronism for two reasons: the excellent choice of songs and the absolute coolness of the shots themselves. It really is an accomplishment to be able to pull that off, but they do. There are episodes that are a bit slow, but at the risk of getting repetitive, it really is a beautiful show to look at, so it's always interesting. Plus, there's family drama and Irish drinking and fighting and gang violence and communists. There's gypsy shit and Winston Churchill himself is a recurring character. Seriously, check it out. Here's the opening to the very first episode, which hooked me immediately.
