My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e09 – Staying Mum

This season of “My Life Is Murder” has had several outstanding mysteries; with one episode to go, I’m pretty confident giving the prize to this episode, though. The script, credited to Kate McDermott, effortlessly keeps the show’s almost ensemble cast involved (except for Joe Naufahu, who’s occasionally around) while unfolding a windy murder investigation. The episode does make a feint at character development for lead Lucy Lawless, leading to maybe Ebony Vagulans best performance on the show outside a suspense sequence, but it doesn’t go anywhere.

Maybe next episode.

Probably not.

Anyway.

The mystery this episode is dead male nanny Alex Walker. Ostensibly beloved by all, he went out into a thunderstorm and got struck by lightning. Only copper Rawiri Jobe (who’s got to be upset he’s gone nowhere as a character this season) doesn’t think so. Lawless is in a great position to investigate because her newly revealed (to audience and characters alike) niece, Nell Fisher, goes to the same fancy private school as Walker’s charge.

There’s the current set of parents, Melanie Vallejo and Jared Turner—both great—the jealous former boss, Tania Nolan, and the rival nanny, Sinead Fitzgerald. Some of the episode’s success in casting these supporting parts well. All of them are good, and most have a character arc playing out through their various reveals.

But then having Fisher at the school lets the episode bring in Tatum Warren-Ngata as her fake nanny, while Vagulans can concentrate on computer hacking and that unexpected character development arc. Of course, because that arc doesn’t go anywhere with Lawless, Vagulans gets stalled out too, but it’s a lovely way of integrating the sidekicks.

Playing up the ensemble aspect is Lawless, Fisher, and Fisher’s dad, Martin Henderson, having their family thing going on too.

It’s just a supremely well-balanced episode with exceedingly solid direction from Mike Smith. I’ve been hopeful for at least another season just in general, but I wasn’t expecting to want it for the procedurals. The show’s stalled out on Lawless’s character development; while this episode acknowledges matters unresolved, it still doesn’t do anything about them. They can probably get away with it for one more ten episode season.

Otherwise, they’ll have to address some things. Like what happened with Lawless and Jobe’s season two, “are they or aren’t they” becoming a season three “did they ever?”

But they can easily get through another season with just these excellent mysteries and delightful ensemble. And Lawless, of course.

See How They Run (2022, Tom George)

Sam Rockwell can do an English accent. See How They Run occasionally has him use it but mostly has him stone-face while sidekick Saoirse Ronan amiably chatters away. The movie only asks Rockwell to act once or twice; he can do it with the accent. He’s not really a stunt cast because the movie doesn’t have him do anything, so it doesn’t get anything from him. He and Ronan are fine together. She’s the one who acts, he reacts, so their scenes all work off her momentum. For a while, it seems like the film’s building towards them as a duo, which works.

Sadly, it doesn’t end up going there, instead taking an ill-advised diversion involving a big-time Shining nod (though Amanda McArthur’s production design sets it up, lots of red carpets), where detective Rockwell talks to the murder victim at an art deco bar. It’s part of the second red herring suspect—as narrator Adrien Brody (an American film director in London adapting a stage play) would say, comes with the territory in a whodunit. See How They Run constantly reminds it’s a genre piece and shouldn’t be judged too harshly. Usually to modest but satisfactory effect. The problem with the second red herring suspect isn’t the red herring; it’s the lack of a third. They just go right into the finish, which involves bringing in the supporting cast and putting Rockwell and Ronan in a charming but pointless driving montage.

Because once the film inexplicably gives up on Ronan and Rockwell as a duo, it becomes a relatively engaging Agatha Christie spoof. Ronan and Rockwell were just diversions. Though then, the movie ditches the suspect pool to a fantastic cameo and an elaborate in-joke involving Brody’s film director before finally settling on being an unofficial advertisement for the Mousetrap, the longest-running play in the world.

See How They Run is set in 1953, during the first cast’s run, meaning someone is playing Richard Attenborough—Harris Dickinson. Dickinson is 6’1” and change. Attenborough was infamously shorter; pretty sure it was a plot point in at least one picture, if not more (he was 5’7”). The problem with Dickinson is he’s never a suspect. Neither he nor wife Pearl Chanda. It wouldn’t matter except the movie’s short murder suspects.

The first prime suspect is screenwriter David Oyelowo, who doesn’t get along with the victim. He doesn’t get along with the victim, Brody, his boyfriend Jacob Fortune-Lloyd, or anyone else. Oyelowo gets the film’s “and” credit; he’s the closest thing to a stunt cast.

And he’s not up for the task. He’s okay, but never anything more, once too often less. It’s an adequate performance, nothing more. Ruth Wilson and Brody are the other supporting cast members with the most to do. Brody’s amusing as the unlikable American, while Wilson’s only around to fill in backstory for other suspects.

Director George often uses a split screen device to show different characters’ perspectives. It’s almost good once, but it’s a padding gimmick. Run’s artificially enthusiastic.

Luckily, the cast and production are enough to get it through. It’s not a good star vehicle for Ronan, but she’s definitely the star in it. Until the third act, anyway. The third act’s a mess.

See How They Run’s fine. Affable, likable, engaging, disposable, which puts it ahead of the Mousetrap play if the samples are any indication.

Red Room: Trigger Warnings (2022) #4

Trigger4

Creator Ed Piskor ends Trigger Warnings with his most impressive writing on Red Room so far, and there’s been a lot of excellent writing. He does the issue as an anthology, skipping around an assortment of characters. Some are returnees, like Levee, the hacker from the first series. Before the narrator (the Cryptokeeper, who I’ve missed, it turns out) gets to the next story, setting up the anthology format, it seems like the whole issue will be about Levee’s coding difficulties. So like a procedural issue.

Only Piskor’s not interested in the technical details. When Levee’s around, it’s mostly about him since last series. The most obvious change is in his marriage. Between Levee’s issue last series and this issue, he and his wife have broken up. Only since he kicked her out over her Red Room obsession, it’s not like he can tell the cops. She still wants to reconcile, but she also can’t stop watching.

Then there are some surprise returning characters from Trigger Warnings, who Piskor uses for some contrast and tension, but also to establish (or maybe partially deny) Red Room’s timeline. We’re assuming when things are taking place, something Piskor hasn’t dissuaded, but now time definitely affects things.

Two of the new characters are celebrity analogs; first, the wife of a prominent wealthy guy aerospace designer, but she plays like she’s married to Bill Gates. The husband’s name is even Billy. She’s an evil rich white lady who watches torture exhibits. The big streamer this issue is Mr. NFT, who poses corpses in grotesque ways.

Then there’s a Mr. Rogers stand-in, which is maybe the only time I’ve ever felt like Piskor crossed a line with the commentary about the rich and powerful. Mr. Rogers being a snuff film enthusiast isn’t a good punchline. Piskor confuses the matter–seemingly intentionally—by naming the character “Mr. Gump” and instead bringing Tom Hanks to mind.

Though Tom Hanks played Mr. Rogers too.

It’s a masterful issue, just great, imaginative, horrifying work from Piskor page after page. The last story feels like a final issue for the whole series; only Piskor’s doing more, which is fantastic news.

My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e08 – Gaslight Sonata

This episode seems to be setting up “My Life Is Murder: Season Four,” with Lucy Lawless unexpectedly getting an adorable niece played by Nell Fisher, who is apparently not related to anyone in “Murder” but is appearing in the next Evil Dead movie.

Lawless is married to one of the producers or executive producers or whatever. Rob Tapert. Is there a story? Maybe. Does it matter? No, because Fisher’s perfectly good. She’s ten years old and able to cyberstalk already, plus she’s sarcastic, so she’s just what Lawless needs in a protege. Fisher is Lawless’s brother Martin Henderson’s previously unknown little kid, whose mother wants to share custody now Henderson’s out of jail.

Fisher and Lawless have a great scene talking about Henderson. The show’s such an interestingly balanced ensemble this season, though Tatum Warren-Ngata has to sit this one out (to make room for Fisher, perhaps), and Rawiri Jobe again gets very little. Though Fisher does ask for a relationship update on Jobe and Lawless, which is maybe the first time this season they’ve remembered it was a thing.

While Lawless is hanging out with Fisher and doing acerbic but heartfelt bonding, Ebony Vagulans leads the field investigation. There’s a stretch of a camera brooch so Lawless can watch along, but the whole mystery feels stretched this episode. It’s too bad because Chris Hawkshaw, who wrote last episode, has a co-writer credit here with Stephen J. Campbell. The previous episode had a great mystery. This episode has similar trappings—all the suspects live in the same building, so Vagulans can quickly get from interview to interview—but the mystery’s not as good.

I think the death even involves another car.

Last episode, it was a car too. If Campbell wrote the Fisher stuff and they rushed Hawkshaw on a mystery… the episode makes a lot more sense.

Fisher’s a fine addition to the recurring cast; everybody—Lawless, Jobe, Vagulans, Naufahu–will be cute with a kid around. And Henderson’s struggling to do better ex-con makes for a nice character arc.

Really good direction from Kiel McNaughton, regardless of the pat procedural. However, the finale’s very tense, like Hawkshaw wanted to do a Rear Window homage, but there just wasn’t time. They couldn’t set it up and introduce Fisher.

So. Ho hum mystery, engaging characters; it’s a good episode for Vagulans and, of course, Lawless.

All Creatures Great and Small (2020) s03e06 – For Whom the Bell Tolls

In the way it has come for so many British television shows, movies, radio plays, and so on, war has come to “All Creatures Great and Small,” specifically the beginning of World War II. Or at least the King’s Speech beginning of World War II. The family gathers around the radio and everyone gets their demo reel clip. It’s exceptionally well-done. This episode is director Stewart Svaasand’s first “Creatures,” and it’s setting a high bar.

While everyone’s been worrying about the European conflict since the end of last season—with Nicholas Ralph moping about not getting to sign up for a few episodes, forced deferred because he’s a vet—it becomes real for everyone here. Great scenes for Samuel West and Anna Madeley, who get this quietly devastating arc about an abandoned dog. Someone drops him off at the vet’s, presumably on his way to enlist, and, while West is sympathetic as all hell, he doesn’t want people overloading them with abandoned pets.

Then Ralph and Rachel Shenton have a one-two gut-punch arc with the war coming, but also Shenton’s cattle coming in positive for tuberculosis. Not great, considering Shenton’s dad, Tony Pitts, was the one who vouched for the testing in the first place (and doesn’t have savings to get through a quarantine). Imogen Clawson’s around too, but entirely support for Pitts’s arc. Some excellent moments for Shenton throughout, especially an unexpectedly dramatic paperwork subplot.

Callum Woodhouse has the two fun arcs, obviously with significant caveats. He goes to dinner at girlfriend Sophie Khan Levy’s house and finds her father, Kris’s Dosanjh, not the villainous vet he’s been led to believe. Charming family dinner scene, setting Woodhouse up for his big reaction to the war arc. But first, he’s got to visit Patricia Hodge, who’s getting her house ready for the county to utilize in wartime. Adorable cameo from Tricki Woo (wonderfully essayed, as ever, by Derek), but he’s not the focus.

Adrian Rawlins (Ralph’s hard-nosed TB testing supervisor) and Will Thorp (Madeley’s not-romantic but romantic male friend) have great scenes.

It’s all very British and very good–script credit to Jamie Crichton.

Red Room: Trigger Warnings (2022) #3

Red Room Trigger Warnings 3

Technically, this issue’s outstanding. Creator Ed Piskor takes Trigger Warnings somewhere unpredictable and incredibly thoroughly realizes it.

But as a story, it’s all about the punchline, and it’s a long, long time to get to the punchline, going through an entirely unnecessary flashback to a supporting character. Now, the supporting character’s essential, the comic opens with him—specifically with the protagonist killing him. See, the supporting guy—Dustin—has a flash drive worth $400 million, and the protagonist, Rex, is ostensibly going to help him get it unlocked.

It’s a BitCoin thing. Dustin was a pizza store clerk who comped a customer pies in exchange for the BitCoins back when it wasn’t worth anything. Then he lost the password and can’t be a hundred millionaire without it. Enter Rex, who says he’ll help Dustin decrypt it; they just need to go on his yacht to a tropical island where his former business partner lives.

Piskor takes an engaging stroll through BitCoin culture (and its effects on the greater culture). Still, since the issue opens with Rex blowing Dustin away… it seems like Dustin-related flashbacks might not be too crucial to the overall story. Especially not once it turns out Rex’s friend, Satoshi, rules the tropical island as a man-god, like a late nineteenth-century British daydream. Satoshi and his followers don’t need BitCoins the way Rex thinks they do, especially not since they stream their human sacrifices to a Red Room.

Where commenters are impressed with the production values of the ancient Polynesian temples.

The story’s more “set in the Red Room universe” than a Red Room story (at least how Piskor’s defined them over the last six issues), and he makes lots of off-hand remarks about big things, but since they’re one-liners, he doesn’t take any responsibility for them. It’s the first time he’s tried to be buzzy with Red Room. Hard pass.

It’s a solid issue, obviously. Piskor’s really good at his job. It’s just not the level he usually reaches. And the ending’s funny, just slight.

My Life Is Murder (2019) s03e07 – Breaking Bread

Dollars to sourdough loaves (it’ll make sense), I think this episode of “My Life Is Murder” is the best-plotted mystery of the season. So far, obviously, but I think it’ll go the distance. It’s an outstanding whodunit, plus Lucy Lawless gets to be petty about her baking.

The episode opens with Ebony Vagulans and Joseph Naufahu watching a YouTube food influencer review Naufahu’s cafe, including Lawless’s sourdough bread. The influencer, played by Mirabai Pease, gives it an okay but unenthusiastic rating, which does not make Lawless happy. Especially not when Rawiri Jobe’s next case involves two rival bread shops. Pease rated Lawless’s bread in seventh, and these two shops are one and two; Auckland’s apparently got a competitive, vindictive bread market.

Star bakers Aidee Walker and Rick Donald were once a married team, but their legendary bickering eventually divorced them. Messily. They owned Donald’s family business together, and when they split, Walker got some of the intellectual property (the heirloom sourdough starter). So Donald opened a spite bakery a few doors down from the original, trying to confuse the customers (the businesses have the same name). It’s hilarious and petty, with Lawless immediately disliking Donald but then not warming to Walker, either.

See, Walker got a new fiancé, and then he died. He drove into a lake while on an early morning delivery run, but something doesn’t add up.

In order to solve the mystery, Lawless will have to buddy up with unlikely allies, bite her tongue about her bread baking, and put up with the unsophisticated bread palates of Jobe and Vagulans.

Because, thank goodness, bread plays into the solution.

Chris Hawkshaw gets the script credit; again, it’s phenomenal. Not just the mystery—but also the mystery. Lawless has great grating chemistry with all the guest stars; she’s got a fellow baker thing with Walker, but Walker’s kind of a dick, Donald condescends to her, she suspects pastry chef Greg Johnson, and then there’s the animosity with Pease. Donald can’t keep up with Lawless, which is the joke, but Walker and Pease return barbs. It’s fun. It’s a fun, good episode.

Even if a recurring guest star only seems to be in the episode to give Lawless her eureka moment. It has to come from somewhere, but the guest star makes it seem shoehorned. But it again pays off.

Nice direction from Kiel McNaughton, too; great timing for the cast, and the limited locations help. There are enough to keep Lawless busy, but they’re constrained enough to be familiar.

It’s a strong episode for Lawless too. Not all that heart she’s been showing this season, just the acerbic capability.

Good stuff.

Halloween Ends (2022, David Gordon Green)

While I had some expectations about Halloween Ends’s plot going in, based on the previous entry, the franchise, and behind-the-scenes scuttlebutt, nothing prepared me for a soft remake of Nightmare on Elm Street II.

Halloween Ends is not about Jamie Lee Curtis getting out the butcher knife granddaughter Andi Matichak gave her in the last movie to kill Michael Myers (once again James Jude Courtney and Nick Castle) with Will Patton helping like they’re an adorable old couple hunting serial killers. It’s about local boy Rohan Campbell who accidentally killed a little kid he was babysitting a year after the last movie’s events. On Halloween, obviously. So, Ends’s opening kill is a child’s graphic, accidental death.

It’s incredibly manipulative but also really compelling.

The action then moves ahead three more years. Curtis has given up the prepper life (which seems entirely unlikely given Ends would then take place in 2022, post-Covid—but just like with its immortal septuagenarian spree killers, it doesn’t take place in the real world). She and granddaughter Matichak live together in a charming house where Curtis works on her true crime memoir. Matichak’s a nurse, so she didn’t slow down with college after her entire life was destroyed. Despite being Matichak’s best performance in the series, she and Curtis still don’t have a rewarding cinematic relationship. They’re just too slasher movie broken for it to work, and the movie doesn’t even try.

Curtis happens across Campbell in the present—some high school seniors in the marching band are bullying him—and introduces him to Matichak, who’s apparently been dating a bunch of dudes since Courtney murdered her boyfriend last movie. Her most recent beau is a shitty cop—shitty even for cops—Jesse C. Boyd. Luckily for Matichak, thanks to the bullying, Campbell’s about to snap and has no qualms about picking fights with a cop. Not when he’s a bad boy who zooms around town real fast on the motorcycle he’s fixed up.

Ends fearlessly rides a motorcycle over its shark tank, no qualms about all the eighties horror movie tropes it implements (in addition to Nightmare II, Boyd also does a Christine-esque transformation). It’s shameless, which works for it. Especially since Matichak finds her newest Bonnie in Campbell, and they have eighties teen movie montages riding around on his bike, trying to escape their respective traumas.

The movie pays a lot of lip service to trauma and recovering from it. Curtis has a bunch of narration about it, including narrating clips from the other Halloween movies. It’s a little weird to have a forty-year-old franchise, but they’re only using the clips from the first one, H40, and Kills. They should’ve CGI’ed something else together for it. There’s not a lot of flash in Ends, all things considered. It’s a muted finale.

Albeit one with some bizarre plot decisions. Like having everyone in town hate Curtis for the 2018 massacre—she spent her life bullying a man with brain damage, what did she think would happen—or Patton basically being a cameo. If it weren’t this Halloween series with its deceptive opening titles vise a vie cast importance, he’d be unbilled.

Best music of the H40 trilogy from Cody Carpenter, John Carpenter, and Daniel A. Davies. Solid photography from Michael Simmonds and especially editing from Timothy Alverson. Green’s direction is fine. He’s not mimicking the original movie anymore, not with Campbell as the new protagonist, which helps.

It’s not good or successful, but it’s also not terrible, and it’s definitely the most engaging of the H40 series.

Clerks III (2022, Kevin Smith)

Clerks III starts as a series of vignettes reintroducing the characters. It’s been fifteen years since the previous entry; since then, spoiler alert, one of them has become a widower, and neither has done anything with their lives. For the first time, Jeff Anderson gets a little more to do than Brian O’Halloran, though only in the third act.

Until then, the movie’s a quick setup—Anderson has a heart attack and decides to make a movie about his life at the Quick Stop—with the actors doing their familiar banter routines, just updated a little more the times. Trevor Fehrman, also returning from II, now has his own sidekick, Austin Zajur. Director Smith reprises as Silent Bob, Jason Mewes is Jay. Everyone’s back, including ex-girlfriends Rosario Dawson, Marilyn Ghigliotti, and Jennifer Schwalbach Smith.

Many of the actors—besides Dawson, obviously, whose performance is visibly effortless compared to her costars—haven’t been in a movie since a Clerks and it shows. Schwalbach Smith is so bad I was able to identify her as the director’s wife just by her performance. No other way she’d have gotten the gig. Ghigliotti gets back into the groove quickly, though.

The funniest section of the film is while they’re making the movie. In addition to Anderson and O’Halloran, Mewes and Fehrman are around to cause hijinks, and III brings back all the actors from the first movie to play their “scenes.” It’s kind of lovely, actually, getting the same bit players back, thirty years on. The film doesn’t get sentimental about it, which is good because it goes off the rails with sentiment. The third act’s sincere, almost successful—successful to the point it saves the movie—ultimately a fail. Smith doesn’t just fumble the ending; he intentionally smashes it.

Besides that section, the second act is almost entirely scenes or montages set to modern folk rock. The first act is all nineties soundalikes (or nineties songs, I guess, I didn’t Shazam), which makes sense since the whole movie starts as an homage to that era. That soundtrack at least fits; the folk-rock? They should’ve just done a musical. Especially since there are great cameos from Melissa Benoist and Chris Wood auditioning for the movie-in-the-movie, and they both want to do it musical theater.

The other cameos are hot and cold. Amy Sedaris has a lengthy cameo where Anderson can’t shut up about “The Mandalorian,” a show she stars in, but the bits aren’t funny because Anderson’s not a nineties Star Wars nerd anymore; he’s just a regular white guy fifty-year-old. And Sedaris is bad. Justin Long’s also bad. Luckily they’re only in it for a bit.

Anderson’s good until he’s got to “come to Buddy Christ,” and then it’s not his fault. Smith can’t figure out how to write it, so it’s another montage, not even a sensical one. O’Halloran seems nervous, disinterested, and miserable to be making another Clerks for two-thirds of the movie, then has a breakout scene, but then the movie’s over.

Clerks III is, of course, a very long shot, but even as a miss, it showcases why it could’ve been a hit.

Maybe Smith’ll figure it out by IV.

She-Hulk: Attorney at Law (2022) s01e09 – Whose Show Is This?

“She-Hulk” does not end with a second season announcement, which is—possibly reasonably, possibly not—heartbreaking. Especially since the mid-credit sequence erases one of the episode’s “wins.”

Because even though “She-Hulk” is a Marvel show in an MCU, the show and its star—Tatiana Maslany (She-Hulk gets significantly less to do this episode)—would rather be a superhero legal comedy than set up Planet Hulk for 2033 or whenever. And Maslany tells the head honcho at Marvel Studios as much after she does a major wall break to plead the show’s case.

There are a handful of surprise guest stars, several twists, and another good subplot for Ginger Gonzaga and Josh Segarra. The show does a rapid-fire cliffhanger resolution, with Maslany ending up back at home with parents Mark Linn-Baker and Tess Malis Kincaid. Kincaid’s finally distinct, opposite Gonzaga; there’s potential there. There’s potential all over the place for “She-Hulk,” including a move to New York City or at least a guest appearance in a sequel to a particular Netflix Marvel show. Not to mention the big MCU reveal, stealing Maslany’s last scene from her like it’s a Robert Downey Jr. cameo.

The episode starts with some inspired franchise homage, then destroys the fourth wall to save Maslany from having to do just another Marvel movie resolution, only to leave her in limbo. The episode wraps things up, including some solidly acerbic observations about the Marvel Studios creative process, but it doesn’t take the show anywhere new. It just doesn’t take it anywhere old.

And if “She-Hulk” doesn’t continue, if Maslany just gets wrapped into the occasional guest spot, it won’t get to go anywhere. The second season tag would at least acknowledge they know what they’ve got here. The show’s incredibly aware of what it’s done, what it’s accomplished, and what it’s whiffed on, but it also says those things might not matter.

The finale’s not disappointing or even underwhelming. It’s also not the home run I’d been hoping for.

If they don’t do a season two, I hope they’ve better plans for Maslany than costarring in Fantastic Four and guesting on “Daredevil” as the love interest. I feel like “She-Hulk” knows better, but does Marvel?

The season’s an incredible success for Maslany, who took the show over from big-name guest stars and CGI twerking, and there have been some excellent scripts throughout the season.

I want more “She-Hulk.” I’m glad we got any at all. I hope we get some more.