A Fantastic Fear of Everything (2012, Crispian Mills and Chris Hopewell)

It’s so easy to pick on A Fantastic Fear of Everything there’s basically no fun in it. The only thing worse than co-director Crispian Mills’s script is his and Chris Hopewell’s direction. For the first half of the movie, when Simon Pegg’s basically all by himself making a mocking impression of someone with paranoia, the direction is shockingly inept. It gets a little better in the second half once Pegg leaves his flat and ventures into the world.

The “story” is simple. Pegg is a successful children’s book author who wants to be a legit historical true crime playwright because the world needs garbage. Filled with Victorian-era classist ideas about what does and does not make a murderer, which will fit with the film’s general xenophobia and obsessive punching down, Pegg becomes terrified the world is full of murderers. Including some who live in his flat with him.

The paranoia thing is all a bit to fill runtime. Fear is an excruciating hundred minutes, and once Pegg’s out in the world, the paranoia thing pretty much doesn’t matter. Then he’s just a guy with crushing social anxieties the film mocks. But it’s all going to be okay because Pegg is a white guy who loves gangsta rap, so he’s obviously going to fail upwards. If he can survive the killers after him. And the Vietnamese gangs. Lots of Fear is about being afraid of Vietnamese people, which makes it okay to be low-key racist since they bring down property values after all.

The third act’s a little better than the rest of the film; Pegg’s not acting off himself or his terrible narration, and there are finally other actors. Unfortunately, in the first act, it’s just agent Clare Higgins, who’s xenophobic and maybe homophobic—I actually blocked it out—and she ignores him, so he’s basically just riffing on the entitled white guy author bit with a disinterested successful female agent. Fear’s only got tropes. Tropes, an embarrassing performance from Pegg, lousy writing and direction, and bad editing. Not a great combination.

But the third act’s got Amara Karan, who’s more professional than anyone else in the film, and she brings it up (as much as possible). There’s only so much anyone could do.

Silly, bad cameo from Paul Freeman as Pegg’s obnoxious therapist.

There are no redeeming qualities to the film, though there are more competent moments than others. There’s an impromptu stop motion sequence, and it’s effective enough. It’s not great, but it’s not incompetently produced. So much of Fear is just blisteringly inept; whether Pegg’s acting or Mills and Hopewell’s direction, competence goes a long way. Even middling competence.

There are a few laughs in the movie; there ought to be more given most of its slapstick. You feel bad about all the laughs, of course, because they’re funny but bad. As opposed to desperately unfunny and bad, which is ninety-eight percent of Fear. Mills, Hopewell, and Pegg only impress in what a crappy movie they make together.

Room 237 (2012, Rodney Ascher)

If you told me Room 237 exists because someone wanted to test out how far the “Fair Use” part of copyright exception went… well, okay, I wouldn’t believe it because obviously there’s the other terrible stuff going on and you’d do it better if you were just trying to bring “Fair Use” to the Supreme Court or something. It’s amazing Warner Bros. didn’t sue (or wasn’t able to sue). It’s also amazing Tom Cruise didn’t sue for the film using him as an avatar for one of the interviewees.

Room 237 is probably a bit more of a trip since we’ve learned—in the mainstream culture—more about conspiracy theorists and how the conspiracy takes off and what not. So it’s identifiable in all of the interviewees, whose bad ideas about Stanley Kubrick’s The Shining accompany the uninspired montage of shots from various films (mostly The Shining, obviously, but also the TV version). Director, uncredited writer, and (of course, naturally) uncredited editor Ascher doesn’t push back or have any presence in the interviews until the very end and then only for (tepid) effect. Otherwise, he just lets the various people monologue, leaving one to worry about the historian’s work in that field, ditto the reporter, who’s got some of the silliest “legit” takes. There’s a moon landing was fake guy (but, wait, the science existed to get us there, it’s just Kubrick shot the landing stuff because matte painting or something). There’s one interviewee who talks a lot about compulsively drawing maps, who doesn’t mention her profession, which is nice. It’s worse to realize these people could be promoting all their bad movie watching epistemologies, their fails in critical thinking, understanding of confirmation bias, and, I don’t know, just general bad taste. The only potentially good take is from the cartographer about the maze and the minotaur and Theseus. But it’s got a silly opener on it so it never actually resonates as an observation.

Ascher’s not interested in whether or not these people’s ideas are accurate. One of the interviewees talks about countless examples and his best one is profoundly bad. Ascher’s got the technology to examine the film and, outside occasionally highlights to showcase the interviewee’s iffy (at way best) take, never does it. You learn more from one five minute Kogonada video essay about Kubrick’s filmmaking than you do from the entirety of Room 237, which raises another question. Is Ascher just trying to embarrass all these people for the sake of attention? If so, he could’ve edited them more amusingly.

Technically, the best thing about Room 237 is the high definition original footage Ascher presumably ripped from his Blu-ray since Warner Bros. didn’t give it to him. You can still see the quality in that restoration work, something the interviewees wouldn’t have had for most of their studies of the film Seriously, Room 237 is an argument against home video. Actually, more an argument against film in general.

What else… the music from William Hutson and Jonathan Snipes could be a lot worse and the superimposition stuff (running Shining forward and backward in a composite shot) is kind of neat because you see how Kubrick shot the film. Though it’d work with all sorts of superimpositions, not just the front and back.

I get it takes a lot to work up a defense of The Shining but Room 237 isn’t just disingenuous, it even manages to do a disservice to the crackpot ideas it showcases.

Stick around for the end credits though—teaser: Ascher was able to get real clips from one copyright holder and it’s a very unexpected one.

If I Were You (2012, Joan Carr-Wiggin)

At the halfway point in If I Were You, it seems like the film’s biggest problem is going to be Joseph Kell being charmless. Close second is Valerie Mahaffey’s small part being a waste of Mahaffey. Director Carr-Wiggin’s script is a tad plodding in the plotting, but it’s because she’s thorough and it does just mean more great acting from lead Marcia Gay Harden. Then, somewhere in the second hour… they change film or video “stock” and cinematographer Bruce Worrall cannot shoot it. Especially not in the finale. It’s stunningly bad lighting, especially given the first half or whatever looks really good. Carr-Wiggin’s composition is fairly standard, but they’re fine shots.

And then… we get to the third act and the resolve. There are problems with the movie jumping ahead three weeks, hiding important things from the viewer, and coping out getting through all the drama. But they end up not mattering because also find out second lead Leonor Watling is great. Can give a great performance and act the hell out of anything and Carr-Wiggin doesn’t have her do it. Carr-Wiggin lets Watling stay solvent opposite Harden—who knocks over everyone else in the cast, especially Kell and Gary Piquer, until Aidan Quinn shows up to show off how good it can be when Harden’s got someone with the same ability class in a scene. But it could’ve been Watling for the whole movie.

Only they didn’t do it. There wasn’t even a reason for it with the time job and the way they do the resolve.

It’s really disappointing.

Especially since, just before the time jump, If I Were You has never been better or had more potential. Well, sort of it. I’ll get there.

The movie opens with seemingly happily married Harden discovering Kell is cheating on her with Watling. When Watling turns out to be in need of a wellness check, Harden ends up being the one to do it and starts hanging out with her to find out about the affair. For this portion of their relationship—and most of the first act of the film—Harden’s blotto. She plays a great drunk. Like, masterclass in drunk acting. When she stumbles around you can feel it because you’ve felt it. Also Harden doesn’t tell Watling she’s the wife. But she does tell Watling she’s got a cheating husband.

Eventually Harden and Watling come up with this plan where Harden’s going to tell Watling what to do, Watling is going to tell Harden what to do. It’s a middling but effective scene. It’s got a lot to do and it takes a while but it gets it done but now, having finished the film, I know it could’ve been so much better because Watling could’ve been amazing in it.

The movie runs almost two hours—and is missing at least another ten minutes of story—and there’s a very clear first and second act. Second act is about Harden’s mom being close to death, Harden and Watling teaming up to star in a play together, coworker Piquer (who’s good and funny just not able to stay afloat opposite Harden) pursuing her post-affair discovery, and then Quinn as another son of a patient at the mom’s care facility.

There are only a couple scenes with Quinn and Harden but they’re so good together. He’s so good. It might be an hour before he shows up (“and” credit, after all) but when he and Harden have their meet cute in bad circumstances? It’s killer. You could watch a whole movie of them smiling at each other. Longer than even If I Were You should run. Just excellent acting. Two performances of it instead of just one and, I don’t know, forty percent and lower ability-wise.

Except, of course, Watling could’ve done more. Carr-Wiggin just didn’t bother with it. And then completely copped out with the conclusion. Skipped all the important character development. Movie goes from four days being thoroughly inspect to three weeks not being important at all.

The kicker is the play-in-the-movie implies this exceptional potential project, far more promising than the film itself. And even with that highlight—albeit a poorly lighted one—Carr-Wiggin’s still cops out. It’s very weird to see such an… elaborately plotted film very clearly not have an ending. It’s disappointing. But Harden and Quinn give exceptional performances, admittedly in not-heavy-lifting parts (partially because not even the movie asks you to take Kell seriously opposite Harden), and Watling can probably be great in stuff and got very awkwardly wasted.

Oh, and strangely great support from Bethany Jillard. Only strange because she’s just in the play and doesn’t even have a real character name, but she’s always doing something awesome. Much of If I Were You is waiting to see excellent acting, usually from Harden, then Quinn, and then—if you’re playing attention—Jillard. And, you know, Watling when she gets to do it.

The Bay (2012, Barry Levinson)

Most of The Bay is tolerably tedious and mediocre. Levinson’s doing a found footage documentary—he may also provide the voice of filmmaker—about a bunch of sea cockroaches eating its way through a little Maryland town. It plays like a combination low rent Michael Crichton adaptation—the action skips to various government agencies and their internal camera systems—and a lower rent Jaws. Or more accurately Piranha.

There’s one problem so significant they can’t succeed with it—they’re going to need a bigger boat—that problem is narrator and occasional protagonist Kether Donohue.

So three years after Homeland Security covers up a bunch of mutant sea lice eating hundreds of people in a vacation town on the Fourth of July, Donohue and an unseen documentarian (voice by Levinson I think) get together to have Donohue narrate all the video footage from the incident.

They’re able to get it because screenwriter Michael Wallach and Levinson’s target audience is people who don’t understand how WikiLeaks worked; the in-movie WikiLeaks, Wiki-whatever, gets all the footage and so then Levinson assembles like a horror movie and has Donohue record narration.

The problem is Donohue’s terrible at the narration, terrible at the speaking directly to the camera. She ends up ruining the movie in the end, but for a steady clip during the second act she’s barely narrating and it’s… tolerable.

Though it helps some of the cast can act even with the found footage thing going on. Levinson mixes all sorts of formats without much thought, though I suppose putting too much work into realizing Wallach’s insipid screenplay might have been hard to get excited about. The movie's target audience is also people who don’t understand how 24-hour clocks work. In addition to technology and probably protein in chicken shit. The film’s got a strong environmental message about pollution but it’s also very bad and very silly at times so it’s impossible to take it very seriously.

If it weren’t for Donohue—and if the acting from government officials weren’t so terrible—The Bay probably would be okay. It wouldn’t be good because Levinson’s got zero touch for the found footage thing and no apparent ear for “real” dialogue, but it wouldn’t be as bad.

Stephen Kunken’s okay as the doctor—it’s obvious The Bay does not care about verisimilitude when they don’t even bother finding out what Kunken’s position at an ER would be called. He’s something like the attending personal physician for waiting room patients. It must have been hard to watch this one as a personal friend of Levinson and have to talk to him about it.

Frank Deal’s terrible as the mayor, who’s got that factory farmed chicken money in his corrupt pockets and calls in the National Guard without anyone knowing to keep the outbreak isolated.

Christopher Denham and Nansi Aluka are okay as the oceanographers who get a very important flashback subplot threaded throughout the micro-monster movie so it’ll have maximal impact for presumably disinterested audience. Levinson’s pretty craven in his indifference to trying to make The Bay good at all. It’s contemptuous of the found footage horror audience it assumes it’ll have.

Kristen Connolly is almost good as a vacationer. She’d be good if it weren’t for the movie itself being bad.

And then a quick shoutout for Robert C. Treveiler, who plays the CDC guy who’s got terrible, goofy dialogue but Treveiler still holds it together reasonably well. He’d probably be the hero in a big budget version.

The Bay is bad. It’s worse than it needs to be thanks to Donohue’s terrible turn as narrator; she’s even likable in the found footage parts too. Even though you’re predisposed to dislike her because of the narration. Worse, the opening scene with her is she and Levinson talking about how he should’ve hired someone who would do the narration better.

It’s like you’re agreeing to give it a pass on the bad from the start, which is an interesting device but maybe shouldn’t be the most significant device you come up with for a piece of work. Then again Levinson giving up after the first three minutes are a flop explains a lot.

The Sapphires (2012, Wayne Blair)

When we were about halfway through The Sapphires I figured something must go wrong otherwise the film would have a better reputation. Though you never know; music biopics do have their unfortunately hidden gems (no pun). Sapphires doesn’t succeed as a music biopic or a music pic or a biopic but it’s got some excellent performances and a sincere script (screenwriter and source play author Tony Briggs is son of one of the real-life principals).

Outside Don Battee not delivering in his big scene during the third act, which is a combination of the script and Battee, nothing really goes wrong so much as director Blair and co-writers Keith Thompson and Briggs turn the film, which promised to focus on the experiences of four Indigenous Australian women as they went from their home to Vietnam to perform as a soul quartet for the U.S. troops in 1968. Through the second act, two of the four women get their spotlights turned off while two of the other women then get the focus. But one of them only because she figures into top-billed Chris O’Dowd’s story arc in a more significant way than originally forecast.

It’s particularly frustrating because O’Dowd’s so good because Sapphires never just relies on him. Instead he has these killer moments as a stranded Irish soul music aficionado who “discovers” sisters Deborah Mailman, Miranda Tapsell, and Jessica Mauboy in a singing competition and soon finds himself involved in their scheme to become famous. Sort of a royal their; it’s mostly Tapsell and Mauboy, with Mailman being the responsible oldest sister, who immediately finds herself at odds with constant and somewhat malfunctioning drunk O’Dowd, who assumes the manager role, which just reminded me the movie opens up a big plot hole where they were going to do some character building for Mailman and instead just skips it. But at least she gets the set up, I suppose.

Briggs and Thompson do a good job plotting the script—it moves at a fantastic pace (the plot holes not obvious until it’s over, which is about all you can hope for with them) and is always entertaining. It’s most entertaining when it’s O’Dowd, but because O’Dowd gets more and more to do in the second half of the film as the sisters—who also have brought along cousin Shari Sebbens, who had been one of the stolen light-skinned Indigenous Australian children, which then causes a lot of drama as Mailman has let her anger over past behaviors fester. Weird and easy resolution to that subplot. It feels like Sapphires is missing four or six minutes where everyone decides the movie’s over and so they’re going to wrap things up but instead it’s just the wrap up. And even the wrap up is rushed and feels truncated, like Blair just doesn’t want to give his ostensible leads any more material, he just wants to showcase having O’Dowd in his movie.

It’s a bummer.

But O’Dowd’s still charming as hell.

The best performances are Mailman and Sebbens. Both ought to be better because their parts ought to be better. Youngest Mauboy gets ignored when the adults are talking—or flirting—but she’s good with the little she gets. Tapsell gets the least of the four; she’s good, definitely, but it’s the worst part by far. And Mauboy’s part is bad. Like, they skip very important character development for her all the time. But then when the film gets to the postscript real-life biography title cards… it turns out the women were all far more interesting after their time as a girl group than during their time as a girl group.

Except in the historical context, something the film heavily embraces but then abandons. It’s smooth sailing until the third act and then it’s immediately going down. It’s never a race to see if they can finish before the film goes under—there’s O’Dowd—but… only because it’s obviously going for unambitious and mediocre but also sincere and competent. All fine enough things.

Pretty good photography from Warwick Thornton until the nighttime war action and then not really. Blair does better with the war action than he needs to do; it’s the only place where he shows any directorial flourish, the rest of the time just relying on the actors. But there were plenty of opportunities for said flourish in the other parts, he just doesn’t take any.

Excellent production design from Melinda Doring and costume design by Tess Schofield.

It’d be nice if Sapphires were as impressive as its cast. Or if it even knew how to properly showcase them.

Outside O’Dowd, obviously. Blair’s got showcasing O’Dowd down. But Mailman, Mauboy, and Sebbens deserve it more. And Tapsell too. But after a certain point, Sapphires wants to be about everything except its title characters. Like I said, it’s a bummer.

Rock Jocks (2012, Paul V. Seetachitt)

Rock Jocks is full of “it’s not racist because” jokes. There’s even a moment early on when Felicia Day tries explaining to Gerry Bednob how he’s actually a racist even though he says he’s not. When he disagrees, Day gives up, which is a fairly good place to give up on Jocks. You’ve hit the peaks worth sitting around for, namely Bednob is funny as the crotchety old White bigot who just happens to be of East Indian descent. It’s real cheap, real easy jokes. All of Rock Jocks is real cheap, real easy, real problematic. Writer and director Paul V. Seetachitt likes teasing racism, sexism, homophobia, whatever, but he never commits to it.

Well, wait. The sexism. There’s some real committal to the sexism.

The movie’s about the night crew at the United States’s secret remote asteroid destroyer program. If you’re good at video games, you get recruited and then you save the world from big asteroids the rubes don’t know about night after night. The captain is burn-out waiting-to-happen divorced bad dad Andrew Bowen. Bowen’s never anywhere near as bad as some of the other actors in the movie, which is the closest his performance gets to deserving a compliment. Day’s his first officer. She’s overly ambitious because she’s a woman and so it’s funny. He’s going to mansplain to her fierce and her other major subplots involve asteroid shooter Kevin Wu trying to humiliate her—his commanding officer—while captain Bowen ignores it to mope.

Part of the joke is supposed to be how all the Jocks are actually just shallow, thinly written assholes, but Seetachitt makes Wu the biggest asshole of all. Wu’s the shooter with the big ego, but Justin Chon’s still got the higher scores. Chon… could be worse. Wu could not be worse, not without supernatural intervention or something. He’s real bad and not funny.

Jocks hits occasionally—almost always in some way thanks to Bednob—but it’s a very low success rate on the jokes working with the acting working with the directing. In some ways, Rock Jocks is impressive. It’s low budget, but Seetachitt knows how to shoot everything in the script, he just doesn’t have a great editor in Adam Varney and for some reason Seetachitt and photographer Polly Morgan really want to do shaky-cam and shaky-zooms. Just, you know, because.

It’s annoying.

And invites you to ignore the performances because the camera’s ignoring them.

Supporting cast. Mark Woolley’s bad as the bean counter who just happens to be there on the night of the biggest, most important asteroid strike on the planet Earth in… at least a couple days. Who knows.

Doug Jones is great as the space alien who just walks around the base. There’s a bunch of nonsense about Jones having a giant Rube Goldberg contraption in his quarters but it’s all time waster. Lots of time wasting in Jocks, which would be fine at twenty-two—as a TV pilot—or maybe seventy as a goofy low budget, independent pop culture reference comedy….

But it’s ninety minutes.

There are subplots.

There are Robert Picardo and Jason Mewes as the security guards who sit and bullshit all night. It is very awkward. Especially since Picardo and Mewes aren’t bad. They’re just not funny. Ptolemy Slocum is bad as Bowen’s ex-wife’s boyfriend, who shouldn’t be in the movie but again, Rock Jocks really wants to hit that ninety minute runtime so let’s do full subplots for these jerks.

Day and Wu both have moments good and bad. Middling would be an accurate descriptor.

Rock Jocks proves you can be not competent while also not being incompetent.

Vampira and Me (2012, Ray Greene)

For its protracted 106 minute runtime, Vampira and Me is a combination of tragic, frustrating, annoying, and enthralling. The problem with the whole project is writer, producer, editor, director, and narrator Greene. Well, okay, the problem with any project about Vampira (Maila Nurmi) is the lack of extant footage of her television show, “The Vampira Show,” which ran in the mid-fifties. Nurmi was an immediate hit—the first glamour ghoul—but broadcasts were live and no recordings were made. Watching Me, there’s just enough remaining footage to show Nurmi as an excellent early television comedian, who kept up and outpaced her costars, and it’s an exceptional bummer the footage just isn’t here.

Much of Vampira and Me is an at least hour-long interview Nurmi recorded with Greene when he was working on another project. Greene, as narrator, says Me is going to be all about how Nurmi isn’t “just” Vampira, so the Vampira in the title is a little weird… ditto the Me, actually, because Greene barely has any anecdotes about his friendship with Nurmi. Except one where he emphases her emotional problems. It’s a weird choice. But Vampira and Me is full of weird choices, like Greene using a bunch of unrelated but contemporary footage because none exists of Nurmi. So you’re watching some commercial from the fifties and supposed to pretend it’s Nurmi or something. Plus he then goes on to add sound effects to actual recordings of Nurmi monologuing. And there are sound effects all the time.

It’s annoying. Like I said, frustrating, tragic, enthralling, annoying.

Nurmi herself—based on the filmed interview material—is a natural raconteur. She knew Orson Welles back in the day and you can imagine they’d have done great banter if given the opportunity. She was also good friends with James Dean during his meteoric rise, which gets a lot of coverage in the film but very little insight. Nurmi was into New Age woo and Greene’s not a good enough interviewer to get through that murky pool to actual insight. The biggest bummer of the film itself is the interview, which a better filmmaker could’ve incorporated into a far better project. The lack of other interviewees is a big problem.

But then there’s Greene’s narrative construction. He jumps ahead to the sixties at one point, then pulls back to the fifties. The timeline wouldn’t be muddled if Greene just did a better job presenting it. He also doesn’t get anything out of the jump ahead and fall back. It also contributes greatly to the slog of the second half.

Then there’s Greene “killing off” his subject; at the beginning of the film, he implies this rare, exclusive interview is going to be the emphasis and everything else will serve to annotate it. Nope. Greene doesn’t cover a lot of Nurmi’s rougher days—she spent almost fifty years in abject poverty, screwed out of continuing popularity because of a dispute with the TV station (they wanted to syndicate with other Vampiras in local markets, she apparently wanted to be Vmapira in all of them—not clear because Greene didn’t think to ask, apparently). He’s got some line about how she went on to a somewhat happy ending at the end and then doesn’t show it or talk about it… she just dies and it’s funeral footage, which is weird.

Also weird is the clips of a dancing fifties girl who looks a lot like Carolyn Jones, who played Morticia Addams on “The Addams Family” TV show. Nurmi got her idea for the Vampira costume from the Addams Family cartoon strip. She was trying to get noticed by producers to do an Addams Family adaptation, not “The Vampira Show.” And given the Elvira vs. Vampira stuff, which barely gets covered—and Greene at one point makes it sound like Cassandra Peterson (Elvira) was a reluctant nemesis… you’d think he’d clarify. Nope.

But then it turns out Greene’s not a very honest documentarian.

He implies Nurmi’s “Vampira” show was up against “I Love Lucy” in the 1955 Emmy’s when Nurmi was actually nominated for a local Emmy. What makes that deception so galling is the James Dean friendship, which was in contention for years because of a Hedda Hopper book and Nurmi had to fight to be believed. Documentation backs Nurmi up, but it took decades.

Greene’s got a great chance to look at fifties Hollywood and the ephemera of television–the first viral sensations—and he has a handful of good observations, they just don’t go anywhere. And they’re really early in the film.

It’s a testament to Nurmi as a storyteller and personality she’s able to surmount this wanting “homage” just in the single camera interview and a few surviving clips.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e13 – King Memses’ Curse

I’m a fan of this season finale—and season resolver—and would be even if it didn’t (unintentionally?) follow a bunch of the same narrative beats as Halloween H20. No spoilers. But… it’s H20.

After the pre-title murder—a gruesome but not gory one—the action picks up the next morning after last episode. Phryne (Essie Davis) is freaking out trying to keep ward Ruby Rees safe—enlisting the taxi drivers as bodyguards again, giving them a third chance after they botched the first two—and heads off to investigate a seemingly planted clue.

At the corresponding address (an antique shop), she and Ashleigh Cummings discover the pre-title body (with some gore this time) and get the coppers involved. Except Nathan Page just wants Davis at home staying safe, so when Davis finds another clue—a photography of the suspect and victim—she has to follow-up.

Davis’s investigation takes her to egyptologist Matt Day (Brice from Muriel’s!) while Page and Hugo Johnstone-Burt interview Cassandra Magrath, who was a kid when she escaped the villain. None of the others were so lucky. The details Magrath gives about her abduction and Day’s details about mummification run parallel, particularly when it comes to a paralyzing serum.

A paralyzing serum the villain has unleashed on Stately Fisher Manor so they can come in and grab Rees, needing her to fill the last open spot for whatever evil they’ve got planned.

It’s then a race against time for Davis, Cummings, and Page, with Davis charging ahead without concern for her personal safety. Her behavior pushes Page to the limit and he has her locked up, taking it upon himself to move forward with the case.

The resolution is incredibly dramatic, incredibly tense. Davis is outstanding, ditto Page. And obviously Daina Reid directed it; she’s so good with the tension. So good.

The postscript brings back all the favorite recurring characters—Miriam Margolyes, Tammy Macintosh—and provides a very nice bookend to the pilot, showcasing Davis’s character development over the season, as well as her presence’s effect.

Nicole Nabout’s really good as a nun who figures in and, as usual, it’s fun to get to see Davis face off with the Catholic Church. But not Nabout, rather priest Dennis Coard. The Deb Cox and Elizabeth Coleman script manages to maintain some humor despite dire circumstances. Oh, and Magrath’s excellent.

It’s one heck of a finish.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e12 – Murder in the Dark

It’s truly amazing what they’re able to get away with this episode in terms of red herrings, shoehorned subplots, shock tactics, exploitative tension, and so on. Director Daina Reid and writer Ysabelle Dean put everyone through the ringer—with a couple really obvious questions left open at the end—and grinds them flat.

The main plot itself is a bait and switch, starting with a murder at Miriam Margolyes’s estate. She’s lead Essie Davis’s aunt; Davis and sidekick Ashleigh Cummings are packing to go to a party at Margolyes’s—a costumed engagement party for Margoyles’s son, Felix Williamson—when Davis gets a call from her. Their planned lunch is off, but come anyway, there’s been a murder.

Davis calls the cops, who arrive just after she gets there and we’ve met Williamson, who isn’t exactly suspicious but isn’t exactly not. Then we meet his fiancée, Kate Jenkinson, who’s performatively risqué enough to shock Hugo Johnstone-Burt but not Nathan Page (who’s preoccupied with his divorce proceedings, information he only shares reluctantly and never, I don’t think, with Davis)—before getting to victim’s father, Ken Radley. Radley goes from being grieving parent to number one suspect rather quickly, with the episode taking a break to introduce John Lloyd Fillingham as Margolyes’s other son, who’s developmentally disabled.

Except we’ve already met Fillingham… he discovered the body and Margolyes covered it up.

Throw in a subplot about Davis bringing her household over to save the engagement party, complete with hash fudge, Margoyles flipping out over the communist cab drivers, and Ruby Rees discovering—by fault of the same name—Fillingham’s still traumatized over Davis’s sister’s disappearance years before.

Now, the episode’s so effective, it’s able to get over them seemingly contradicting the information we got about the sister’s disappearance last episode. Fillingham wasn’t just there as a kid, he also says the man who took the sister is back and he killed the victim.

Distracted Page chalks it up to Fillingham’s impairment while Davis starts freaking out thinking Nicholas Bell is after her family… while Cummings and Johnstone-Burt actually do the work and save the day.

If only they were a few moments sooner….

It’s a phenomenally paced episode. The last ten minutes increase the tension second-to-second. You just want the episode to end, even on a dreadful resolution or enraging cliffhanger, but to just stop and give you a break. It’s great.

Miss Fisher’s Murder Mysteries (2012) s01e11 – Blood & Circuses

It’s a very intense episode, with Phyrne (Essie Davis) in constant danger—whether she knows it or not, usually yes but not the extent of it—in addition to being in a very traumatic headspace. We finally find out what happens to her little sister (or at least as much as Davis knows) when Davis takes a case at a visiting circus. The half-woman/half-man (performance artist Moira Finucane in a bit part) is killed and her body revealed on stage during magician (and lover) Greg Stone’s act. The coppers are no use, so circus strong man Aaron Jeffery goes to old friend Davis, who doesn’t want to take the case because of the history.

Only when she takes Jeffrey to see Nathan Page, Page has got clearly crappy copper Joel Tobeck working it and has no time for the case.

Even though the episode itself is really good, Page’s place in it is very weird. See, he sends Hugo Johnstone-Burt to work with Tobeck (ostensibly to keep an eye on Tobeck’s progress with the case), but Johnstone-Burt just ends up taking on all of Tobeck’s bad habits, which pisses Page off. Only… not enough? It feels like Page needs a subplot to keep him occupied this episode—and eventually gets a little bit of one, once old acquaintance (and Page’s first ever arrest when he was a rookie) Gillian Jones ends up in the station needing a place to sober up. Page has to throw her in with the not very suspicious murder suspect, magician’s assistant Victoria Thaine. Tobeck and Johnstone-Burt collar Thaine with literally no investigation, which Page knows.

So, not a good episode for Page.

But Davis and Jeffrey at the circus? Great. Suspects include nasty snake lady Maude Davey, Stone, circus owner John Wood, and basically everyone else. The episode’s got a very romanticized vision of the circus, with Jeffrey constantly spouting emotionally rousing speeches about how its a place for everyone who can’t fit in to fit in and realize their inherent value. Sadly, the only other person who apparently felt so strongly about the circus as inclusive was Finucane, who was murdered by one of her colleagues.

It does give Jeffrey a nice tone though.

The case itself involves a lot of information being kept from everyone involved—problematically in one major instance—but is emotionally rending by the finale.

Davis does a fantastic job throughout the episode, haunted by the past (which shows up in flashback), but still pushing forward.

So her arc and the tension from the main case more than make up for Page’s distraction. Again, got to wonder if it’s the source novel or—oh, Shelley Birse’s previous episode was a disappointing one (for “Fisher” anyway). So, yeah, I’d guess adaptation issues.