an aside about justified

*A FEW SPOILERS*

Twice I have recommended Justified to people who ought to appreciate its sublime charms, and twice they have turned away without a second glance. It is difficult to convey the genius at the heart of the thing: a happy synchrony of writing, casting, and production design. Easy to ask, "Who wants to hang out with southern trash drug dealers?" Well, nobody does, unless they are Mags Bennett, Boyd Crowder, and Ava Crowder, and then, up in the Holler, there's Limehouse and his barbecue...

There's a convincing simplicity, droll humor, and occasional poetry to the dialogue which makes it low-key irresisitible. Here's an example of its genius: when it comes up on the inevitable moment when the pregnant Winona is going to leave the man she loves, there is no telegraphing of the intention. The couple is happier than they have ever been, and entirely devoted, one to the other. And yet, when he is riding in the car on his way home and says to his boss that, strangely, Winona is fine with the way things are, a chill goes through your heart and not only do you know exactly the letter he'll find when he gets home, but also your mind flashes back across a series of tiny moments and you know, but only in retrospect, that this is not sudden, that Winona has been coming slowly to grips with this decision for a very long time.

These women: Ava, Winona, Loretta, especially Mags Bennett (who I think I can say absolutely is my favorite villainess of all time, with her lack of glamour, and her particular mix of grounded pragmatism, maternal loyalty, and utter ruthlessness in the running of her crime empire) are some of the best written on television. Only Rachel has yet to spring into flaming life, but there's time.

I'll be honest: it was a hard sell for me, as well. I watched the pilot when it premiered and decided it was intriguing but far too weighty to take on as a weekly burden. Sometime into the second season I read a piece on Slant Magazine's "The House Next Door" blog which instructed me in how to fall in love with it (and I wanted to. What crazy person doesn't enjoy spending time with Timothy Olyphant?), and this knowledge I pass on to you.

Watch the first ep, "Fire in the Hole", not expecting to fall in love, but for purposes of orientation. Give yourself a week, even a month, to let it breathe and twist a little in your subconscious. Then plunge back in with the mid-season episode called "Hatless", which is really where the series moves past its birthing pangs and starts to sail with new grace and humor. It's the episode where Raylan Givens, our Kentucky-born U.S. Marshall hero, he of the quick draw, deadly aim, and constant cowboy hat, loses the hat in a bar fight and is thrown off his game until he gets it back. If you don't fall in love then, keep with it, one after another, until you do. Because you will. My boyfriend resisted: what hillbilly, he said, would say, "I need to know what all transpired," instead of "What happened?" But that's just it: there's such an incredibly strong sense of place, --Harlan County and Noble's Holler and the Bennett stronghold,-- it all feels so real, and the way they talk is part and parcel of it. There was a time in the second season when a new, minor bad guy came onto the scene named, I don't know, Billy Ray Earl or something, and Raylan's first wry comment was, "Uh-oh. Three first names. That's never good." Then, when he went up to question Mags Bennett about the fellow she said, "Three first names. That's never good," the point being that, adversaries that they are, Raylan and Mags sprang up from the same soil, learned the same hard things, probably living within a few acres of one another, and the use of words and humor points that up.

And there is nothing in the world that's better than listening to Boyd Crowder while he's working a crowd into a lather over one thing or another.  Hillbilly drug dealer that he is, he's a genius when it comes to preaching.

So now I'm done with the third season. Each one is better than the last, so far. I'm half in love with Limehouse, and the final vanquishing of Quarles was mad, mad, epic and insane, and I mean that in a good way, in the very best.

two world wars and a staggeringly awful blend of pot humor, dick humor, and swords and sorcery

Air Force: (1943. dir: Howard Hawks) A flight of B-17 Bombers sets off on a routine mission to Hawaii ... on December 6th, 1941! Alright, for an unapologetic piece of wartime propaganda, it's a gem. The lighting and photography (James Wong Howe is my hero) are fantastic, and Hawks manages to avoid the near-stultifying insect-caught-in-amber stern-faced righteousness that freezes up Ford's PT-Boat hagiography They Were Expendable. It still suffers the two inescapable embarrassments of WWII film-making: unabashed "Nip"-bashing (when a Zero retreats to the safety of numbers, it is cowardice; when a Yank does the same, it's common sense) and ridiculously saintly Americans. These men and women are absurdly hard-working, loyal and cheerful, with all chins up through hard times. And as good as Harry Carey and Gig Young and Charles Drake are, John Garfield blows everyone out of the cinematic water with his quiet magnetism. Sure, he enjoys the advantage of being the only three-dimensional character in the piece, playing a disgruntled gunner who flunked out of pilot school and is looking to skip out of the service as soon as he can. (Think he changes his mind before the final frames? Say, what gives? have you seen this before?) But Garfield is a force to be reckoned with: a Movie Star with capital letters, every bit as good and charismatic (certainly as sexy) as Grant or Stewart or Fonda or Bogart. Toss out a name, I'll set him up alongside 'em, and he'll give them their money's worth.

the Awakening: (2011. dir: Nick Murphy) A stately, old-time ghost story whose loose ends don't quite tie together satisfactorily, but the acting is very good (Rebecca Hall, Dominic West, Imelda Staunton, Isaac Hempstead Wright from Game of Thrones), and it captures extraordinarily well the remnants of a generation of young adults left shattered by the Great War and haunted by all its myriad dead. All grown-ups in the film share three terrible things in common: staggering loss, survivors' guilt, and the neverending search for a way to go on living, regardless.

Your Highness: (2011. dir: David Gordon Green) Are you trying to tell me that this was made by the same guy who did George Washington, Undertow, and Pineapple Express? What happened to his talent? He's got star power galore (Franco, Natalie Portman, Zooey Deschanel, Damien Lewis, Charles Dance, Toby Jones), the same underscored lack of shame he used for Pineapple, but he never finds the laughs, not one. The best bits are between Deschanel as the innocent virgin and Justin Theroux as her evil wizard captor: those two manage some twists to their line readings, which is necessary, since the lines as written are so thumpingly lifeless, obvious, and unfunny. It's not enough, though, not even close. Danny McBride (I actually watched this because I mistakenly thought he was going to be Danny Dyer) never comes to life in the lead, -- he's like a bad Oliver Platt imitation,-- and Franco is duller than you can possibly imagine.

two turkeys: clash of the titans and you will meet a tall dark stranger

Clash of the Titans: (2010. dir: Louis Leterrier) Here are the things that are good about it, in order: Mads Mikkelsen, Jason Flemyng, Liam Cunningham, and Pete Postlethwaite. I mean, there's nothing wrong with Alexa Davalos' performance, but it's such a non-role that it doesn't even register as a performance. There's a lot of that here. Ralph Fiennes and Liam Neeson MIGHT have done alright, but they keep repeating the same stupid conversation, so all bets are off. (Zeus: "I must have the humans' love." Hades: "It's their fear which feeds me." Zeus: "Yes, but I must have their love." Hades: "Not me. Just the fear is fine.") In a nutshell, it's a badly-scripted excuse for special effects and monster fights. OK, so was the original, and I didn't like that one, either, but the original had those lovely, sweet, Ray Harryhausen monsters, and this has CGI, which is probably OK if you're a kid and don't know better, but I'm not, and I do.

Once you wrap your mind around this director's resume (two Jason Statham action films, a Jet-Li action film, and the Edward Norton remake of the Incredible Hulk), throw in his Frenchness, and it's amazing it turned out as well as it did. The worst part is that his next film, Now You See Me, will have Jesse Eisenberg, Mark Ruffalo, AND Elias Koteas, which means I have to watch that, too. You think the calling of the cinephile is an easy one to follow? Sometimes it's exhausting, and this is just the aggravating sort of fellow who makes it so.

You Will Meet a Tall Dark Stranger: (2010. dir: Woody Allen) Let's face it: none of us looks for the brilliance of say, Woody Allen from a Woody Allen film anymore. That way when he has an occasional piece of success (his Jules et Jim tribute Vicky Cristina Barcelona was my favorite from recent years), one enjoys it from the easy vantage point afforded by the Plateau of No Expectation. But there comes a time when a filmmaker reaches such a low point of disinterest in his own work that for the good of everyone he ought to just stop. These are actors I LIKE, for chrissake, throwing themselves up against a wall of material so incredibly badly written that it feels like he didn't bother to write it at all. This script is just an outline of the script, the bare plot-points without any finesse, any humor, any care to detail. Everyone says exactly what you think they're going to say, all the time. Everyone is snarky and selfish and no one rises above it, ever. Which would all be alright if Noah Baumbach had written it, or the young Woody Allen, or someone who cares about making films, but this guy, this aging imposter, doesn't.

They say he's redeemed himself since this, and I'm glad of it, but I hardly believe it. Folks love Midnight in Paris, because who wouldn't want to flaneur around the various arrondissements with the Hemingway expats? Plus, there're all those lovely actors: Hiddleston as Fitzgerald, Adrien Brody as Dali, Corey Stoll as Hem, and I love the conversation that Owen-Wilson-as-Woody-Allen has with Luis Bunuel, but that leads to my point, which is that it is a movie with great bits arranged in a great atmosphere with great lighting, but that does not by any stretch make it into a great movie. I believe that Allen has forgotten how do that. Which is alright, it's his prerogative, but I'm not going to bother watching the Italian one.

the sixties from opposite sides of the pond: the paperboy and white heat

the Paperboy: (2012. dir: Lee Daniels) In a year crammed with explorations of human cruelty, here instead is an often excruciating plunge into the urge toward slow self-destruction and its favorite mode of expression, fetishistic sexual obsession.

Like Killer Joe, this one softens its brutal edges by placing itself in the midst of the white-trash south. Ostensibly the story of a reporter (Matthew McConaughey, again!) returning to his hometown to reopen an investigation into an old murder conviction, this investigatory framework is so undervalued by the writers that it is left in the end hanging and unconcluded. Instead, the film is really about the magnetism a sociopath exerts on those with a yearning towards self-immolation. John Cusack as the murderous cracker in question has garnered all manner of hard criticism for his performance, but it's a tough role and I think he nailed it just about exactly. Zac Efron (whom I understand has built up a hardcore teen-idol reputation but will always be the young Simon Tam to me) is equally good as the belated innocent taking his baby-steps into the complex and often ugly world of adult sexuality.

These hard-working actors are not given an easy time of it. There is some obvious improvisational chatter which, along with other things, leaves one with a wish for a more disciplined editor, although, truly, I think we can leave the blame for this failure (and it is that, ultimately, despite a lot of hard work from good people) at the director's door, since the editor sometimes does lovely things which save the movie's collective ass. The unrelenting ugliness of the story is ameliorated by a jaunty comic touch in the lighting and the pace, but there are no laughs here, at least not intentional ones. Pete Dexter, who wrote the book and co-wrote the screenplay, is a fine author with a twisted psyche, and things which work on paper don't always project into light with the same clear result. "Art," said Thornton Wilder, "is not only the desire to tell one's secret; it is the desire to tell it and hide it at the same time." This movie is a failure because it does not value its own story, but uses it as a flimsy framework to explore those secrets: that dark, amorphous and amoral morass that is human eroticism. Which makes it interesting, certainly, but not a good movie.

*SPOILER ALERT*

White Heat: (2012. dir: John Alexander) Wiltingly overheated but engaging six-hour melodrama about London flat-mates renting from the son of a peer. It's the late sixties, and he's assembled the motley group as a sort of sociological experiment. You can name these characters without knowing anything else about it: there's the black man overcoming racial bias, the gay man overcoming sexual bias, the overweight Catholic girl from Belfast who does the cooking and picking up, the flitty arts student, the socially challenged computer genius destined for wealth once the world catches him up, the young feminist fighting with gender bias, and the druggie aristocrat who wants to be Che Guevara but depends on daddy's money to keep at it.

The cast is enormously likable, and that's the rub, isn't it? that's what keeps you watching. Outside of that attraction, it's by the numbers stuff, really; you can close your eyes and guess the crises, from abortion to AIDS to drugs intervention to the brother in the IRA. It's not American TV, though, and some of the choices are unexpected. Not all the lies come out, for instance: the slate is not entirely clean by the end, as happens in life, but never in American television. There's also a throughline of English politics running on screens and newspapers in the background and sometimes running rampant in the streets which provides shape to the passing decades and context for the changing haircuts and attitudes, and that's appealing.

Here's a thing which irks me, though, a thing you can always count on in television anywhere: the girl who ruins her womb with an abortion grows ever bitterer about her sterility until she accepts a second-best in creating a thriving business, and the feminist who doesn't want to subsume herself in motherhood, does, and when anyone asks, what does she say? (You don't need me to tell you this. There's only one answer any woman in any TV show or movie has ever given to the question.) "It's the best thing that ever happened to me." One day I'm going to hear a woman on television say one of these two things, speaking honestly, and without being written off as a villain or buffoon: "I never regretted not having children," or "I've always regretted having had children." On that day, we will know that we have entered a strange and very brave new world indeed.

Watch it, though, for the amiable cast, and for some interesting editing and dialogue. I watched it for Jeremy Northam as the paternal peer, and was entirely satisfied; he was flawless, as ever.