Don't Say It's The End Of the World -- Friday Video Distractions with Mike Norton

 

 

    Last Friday the seventh and final season of Bosch arrived on Amazon Prime. The show's been a contemporized adaptation of Michael Connelly's series of novels focused on the homicide detective Hieronymus "Harry" Bosch.
     Bosch is a champion of overlooked and forgotten victims, taking a personal interest in solving the homicide cases of those who had little to no agency in life. Much of the reason for this lies in his own background, as his mother was a prostitute who was murdered, the case left unsolved, leaving Harry with a hellish childhood that he only escaped at age 17 by getting his then-current foster parent to sign permissions to let him go into the military. A fresh start, in an environment where everyone was stripped down and rebuilt, where aggression and violence were officially, professionally part of the equation, and could be refined.

     I've often remarked that Harry isn't someone I'd want to know in real life. I'd find him uncomfortably hard-edged, and even with the most ethical of mindsets in play (which isn't always the case) I find the brothers in arms themes common to both military and, unfortunately, much of modern police to be unsettling, and Harry's very much in that mindset. Still, he's an interesting character, one dedicated to his mission. He's willing to put his career and his life on the line for what he believes. On a more trivial front, while I'd try to take it in the best spirit, on a bad day I'd find his almost grim zeal for jazz to be difficult to take, and I'm sure my first honest reaction to it would at least foul the well for some time to come. But, again, fine as a fictional character.
   Unlike the previous six seasons, each of which comprised ten episodes, this final season had only eight. However, it didn't feel rushed.

    While this is the official end of the Amazon Prime series, I've read that Titus Welliver and much of the Bosch creative team have been announced as part of an as-yet unnamed spin-off series for Amazon's IMDb TV, which is an ad-supported streaming service. I made a quiet prediction before watching this season as to what that direction would be -- a significant shift for the character,and one from the novels that as hadn't been part of the show -- and by the closing scenes of this series my guess proved right.
     As it stands, the seven seasons hold up, and are to be recommended to any who enjoy neo-noir detective/police fiction. It has a diverse and interesting supporting cast, most of whom have complex arcs that play out across the seasons. The complete package is ready to stream for anyone with a Amazon Prime account. Here's the trailer for the first season:

     Another recently-wrapped series I'll miss is the unfortunately one-and-done single season of Clarice, which had been running Thursday nights on CBS. Centering on Clarice Starling, the heroine of Thomas Harris' Silence of the Lambs, both the 1988 novel and the 1991 movie starring Jodie Foster. The series picks up one year after the conclusion of that film... or a story essentially like that. The only real difference is that adaptation rights for Hannibal Lechter are tied up elsewhere, so in this version there's no such character, though they make a feinting reference to a different, captured serial killer who was instrumental in Starling's success in finding "Buffalo Bill," which works fine within the limits of this show. While I'd initially been unsure of it, the writing and performances won me over.
     Negotiations between Viacom/CBS and those behind the show, unfortunately, hit an impasse, leaving the show without a home, and so no way forward to a second season. Why it lacked the option of jumping from CBS (broadcast network) to Paramount+ (subscription streaming service) the way Evil did still eludes me.
     By way of a silver lining, the 13-episode season of Clarice was tightly and comprehensively plotted such that while I'm left curious as to the next chapters for the various characters, the main plot arcs are all tidily and surprisingly addressed by the end. If one's seen Silence of the Lambs, or is willing to roll with the backstory as given, this single series holds up as something to be recommended. No sloppy cliffhanger close to the season, and so a satisfying wrap unless you insist on following the main characters to the grave or otherwise being given a happily ever after epilogue. Aside from Paramount+, which is a pay service, they're currently free for all over on CBS.com.

     A couple items that register more as misfires than real recommendations, though I stubbornly watched each through to its end:
     On Hulu, a pandemic-set virtual get-together goes tragically wrong in Safer At Home (2021 1h 22m). Set in a timeline (hopefully just) close to ours, where the COVID-19 pandemic rebounded for successive, far deadlier waves, roughly two years into it a group of friends have a Zoom-style get-together, complete with a dose each of a recreational drug, to substitute for the Vegas weekend they'd planned to celebrate one friend's birthday. The plan has problems.

     The group dynamics are fine, though it's all, understandably, skewed toward a market much younger than me. It gets a bit ridiculous past a point, with the obsessive video streaming regardless of the situation, and if you make a guess about the plot twist you're probably going to be right, especially if you think of it with a groan.
     Meanwhile, over on Netflix, we have something that's a sort of romantic comedy called Good On Paper ( 2021  1h 32m).

     A directorial debut for Kimmy Gatewood, the script was by Iliza Shlesinger, who also stars, playing off against Ryan Hansen. Shlesinger plays Andrea, a 34 year-old stand-up comedian and would be-actress, while Hansen plays Dennis, a seemingly very grounded, successful man she meets in an airport. Margaret Cho plays Margaret, Andrea's stalwart friend, and the most reliable element in the film.
     Again, part of the "misfire" here may just be that I'm not the ideal audience for this. Most of it works fine for me, though the ending felt like a stretch to reach a feel-good moment that felt something less than realistic.
     If the trailers for these looked good to you, then go for it.
 
     Back to Amazon Prime, today (July 2nd) sees the arrival of sci-fi military actioner The Tomorrow War (2021  PG13 2h 20m). Haven't seen it yet, so this is all promo.
     Time traveler's from 2051 appear to let it be known that thirty years from now mankind is on the losing side of a war against an extraterrestrial invasion. Reportedly they need people from the present to be pressed into service and sent into the future to help fight. While the metaphorical aspect of deciding whether or not to fight for the future is obvious, I'll need to watch the film to see if they make the logic behind it as a plot point work. Temporal mechanics tend to quickly become a mangled mess of plot points, often intentionally so as it makes lazy screenwriters' lives markedly easier if they can get the audience to tow the line that no one understands how it works, so just roll with the crazy.

    It stars Chris Pratt, alongside Yvonne Strahovsky, J.K. Simmons and Betty Gilpin.
    Originally made to be a big screen release by Paramount, the global pandemic gave Amazon the opportunity to purchase the distribution rights.
     Caught this late Friday/early Saturday (started a bit too late and had to stop in the middle for some sleep), and found it to be generally entertaining, with more of an emphasis on moral messages and the feels than building a seamless plot, but that sort of thing's to be expected especially when time travel's involved. You're very likely to ask the room at least a couple of times "why don't they just..?" and you're going to have to accept that most of the answers are "because it doesn't work that way" and be content with it.
     The main themes are deciding on what's a meaningful existence, trying to take the time and develop the empathy to understand someone else's perspective.., and to appreciate the monomania of a nerd because you never know when otherwise trivial minutiae will suddenly become important.

     Most likely a matter of the rights being tied up elsewhere for some years, and generally being forgotten, it seems I've been rolling across films I'd have expected to see back when I was a kid watching Saturday horror host film shows.

     One of those was the luridly-named Earth Dies Screaming (1964). (Word is that the title was initially just a joke, but it stuck.) Directed by frequent Hammer director Terence Fisher, this very modestly-budgeted, British sci-fi film finds most of the world slain in its opening moments. Survivors trying to get their bearings, put the pieces together, and avoid being killed by the next, different, wave of threats. For whatever reason, reminding me of a few other films from that period (e.g. 1962's Day of the Triffids, and 1958's The Trollenberg Terror) the main hero ends up being an American. Someone big, strong, level-headed and forceful to save a hodgepodge crew of Brits from themselves; I don't know if this was someone's fantasy or pandering to the U.S. market. In this case it was jet pilot Jeff Nolan, played by Willard Parker. The cast includes familiar faces Virginia Field and Dennis Price, the latter perhaps best remembered for playing omniscient valet Jeeves in a series of 1960s adaptations of P.G. Wodehouse's tales.
     Including alien robots and reanimated dead, the film runs a surprisingly economic 62 minutes. I wonder if its short runtime was part of the reason it didn't end up as part of my local Dr. Shock or Chiller Theater stable of oft-rerun films; they've have needed to come up with some short subject to round out the broadcast time.
     Here's a copy of it on YouTube, with Spanish captions and some inaccurate info typed below it - likely both as clutter and misdirection to help it avoid detection by copyright narcs - but otherwise all intact, with the original soundtrack and a fairly sharp print.

    As it's still Friday morning, I'll tack on an addition. Arriving on HBO Max is a crime drama set circa 1955, from director Steven Soderberg - No Sudden Move

     Haven't seen it yet, so if you watch the trailer you know as much about it as I do.
     Okay, so that's no longer true. I watched this Friday night, and can recommend it. It's a good array of characters, in an increasingly intricate series of deals and double-crosses, primarily centering on two men (played by Cheadle and Del Toro) on the outs with the mob, looking for one, quick score to be their ticket out to a fresh start. The film even sneaks in some significant history by the close.
    That's enough for this week.
     For those of us in the U.S. it's a holiday weekend, with the national holiday falling on the fourth I hope that you're among those of us where that translates to a business holiday for Monday. Take care, and stay cool. -- Mike