TV Shows I'm Watching - Lost (Episode 3.11)

It’s time to catch up on all those Lost reviews I’ve been putting off for the last month. Here's the first one with a few plot points you might not want to know about.

Episode 3.11 – Enter 77

Main Story – **1/2 out of 4 - As Kate, Sayid, Locke, and Rousseau begin their search for Jack, they stumble across a house in the middle of the jungle. After a brief struggle with the owner, it is revealed that the eye patch man from The Cost of Living is holed up here on his own. Following the utterly useless “Hurley finds a van” episode from the previous week, Enter 77 dives headfirst into the mythology of the island.

This is both the episode’s best point, but also its weakness. It’s nice to get a chunk of exposition and learn a thing or two about the Others, but as the episode continues it’s revealed that most of Eye Patch Man’s statements are lies. Normally I’m fine when the writers keep the mysteries going, but for once I felt like this episode had a bit too much winking and nodding at the audience. Whereas most episodes seem to have organic twists and turns, stemming naturally come characters’ actions, this one felt like I was being manipulated by the writers. In fact, by the end I felt like Enter 77 was primarily a big inside joke responding to the bitter fan reaction Lost has met this season.

Not only do the writer’s provide a lengthy false monologue, but they fill the basement of the hut with hundreds of books explaining the reason behind the Dharma Initiative. All Kate, Sayid, and Locke have to do is sit down for a few minutes and read. The Lost secrets will be revealed….but of course that can’t happen. Miss Klugh (remember her from last season) is hiding amidst the files which causes a whole bunch of problems. And then Locke enters 77 into a secret Dharma chess game and well….the files vanish just as quickly as they appeared.

Even the story back at the island seems a little too tongue in cheek. Sawyer mouths most Lost fans’ reactions to Nikki by asking “Who the Hell are you”, Paulo once again gets involved in washroom related antics, and everyone finally has enough of Sawyer’s nicknames. Sure it’s funny, but I prefer it when I am completely immersed in the story, and can only vaguely sense the writer’s diabolically laughing about their scripts.

At least this episode does move the story forward, and by the end, even though much more could have been explained, I was excited to see what would happen next.

Flashback - *** out of 4 – Sayid gets a simple, and emotional flashback about forgiveness. While working in France, Sayid is confronted by a restaurant owner who has a surprise for him. His wife was one of the people Sayid tortured when he was in Iraq, and it’s time for revenge.

Since Sayid has been on the sidelines for far too long in the world of Lost (I think the last time I was really invested in his character was when Henry Gale first came to camp), so it’s nice to see him back at the forefront of the story. The flashback doesn’t have a lot of fancy twists and turns, but it is emotional and Sayid’s final breakdown is pretty devastating.

What I Rented - Flags of Our Fathers

The Battle of Iwo Jima was the first Pacific battle of World War II fought on Japanese soil. By capturing the desolate island, the Americans would cut off an important way station for Japanese planes and ships, as well as procure an essential stepping stone toward the Japanese mainland. It was a brutal battle, resulting in thousands of deaths. Yet, one moment, the raising of an American flag atop a hill and the photograph that was taken of it, brought hope to millions. Flags of Our Fathers focuses on the events, and people, surrounding this famous photograph.

Clint Eastwood’s film is incredibly ambitious, but its unfocused narrative spends so much time shifting back and forth from multiple points of view and periods of time that the emotional throughway is hard to find.

The opening act of the film is brilliant though, as Eastwood shows the arrival on Iwo Jima and the moments leading up to the first attack. The narrative is straight forward, the characters easily identifiable and distinguishable from one another, and the tension mounts steadily. The first moments on Iwo Jima are among the very best in the entire film. The marines storm the beach and find it completely deserted. As they walk further inland, Eastwood slowly reveals that the Japanese soldiers are hiding in elaborate underground bunkers, armed, and waiting for the perfect moment to strike. The battle scene that follows is harrowing.

The power of this first scene overshadows the rest of the movie, especially since Eastwood moves back to the American mainland to explore the power of propaganda. After the picture of the flag raising is taken, the men involved with raising it are brought back to the States and sent on a public relations tour in order to raise money for the war effort. As the film shows, the three surviving men (three others subsequently died in further combat) have difficulty accepting their roles as heroes. It’s an interesting deconstruction of heroism and finding reality behind “written history”, but too many scenes show the same thing. The men are praised for their heroic efforts, they put on smiling faces in front of the crowds, and then fall apart when the cameras are taken away.

The performers all try their best to make this duality interesting, but the script just moves from one similar situation to another, so even the performances become tedious. As the film moves into its third act, it goes even further into the future, trying to explore how the horrors of war affect aging. Eastwood finds some great moments in this section, including a tearful hospital scene between a father and son, but it’s another movie entirely, suddenly becoming a tale of a son sorting through history.

The further away from the battle scenes Eastwood takes the audience, the further away he gets from telling the emotional truth of that fateful photograph. An important aspect of the movie is that the American public never got to know the real men behind the flag raising, and after the movie, I was still unclear on who two of those men were. As the focus keeps shifting, Flags of Our Fathers moves away from character driven drama and takes on a more ideological stance, criticizing the government for exploitation, or commenting on how history is rarely truthful. By the end, with so many ideas dangling, Flags of Our Fathers resorts to a constant barrage of voiceovers in order to piece everything together into a cohesive whole. The ideas are compelling, but they are spoon fed to the audience, turning what began as an immersive drama into a didactic essay.

Star Rating - **1/2 outof 4

TV Shows I'm Watching - Heroes (Episode 18)

Episode 18 – Parasite - *** out of 4

Sorry I haven’t written this review until now, but since the next episode frustratingly won’t be airing until the end of April I didn’t feel the urgency.

So, after the season’s best episode, Company Man, Heroes leaves sweeps season with a good, albeit slightly disappointing episode. Part of my problem is that Heroes tends to work best when it focuses on one or two storylines. Parasite is all over the map, incorporating every hero into multiple storylines.

The best story this week is between Suresh and Sylar. After weeks of Sylar posing as a friend, Suresh finally reveals that he has known about his true identity for quite some time, and turns the tables. It’s a nice twist, and finally shows that Suresh is a fairly smart guy, although later on when he lets his guard down, the episode really gets interesting.

The other interesting storyline relates to Claire’s Dad who wasn’t entirely determined to wipe away all memories of Claire’s escape. His wife has some shocking news for him, and it’s fun to see him struggle once again with his company ties and his fatherly role.

Moderately interesting is the Nathan Petrelli storyline. Finally, after a season of hinting the audience finally meets Linderman (a cool casting choice that is unfortunately ruined by the opening credits). Linderman makes Nathan an interesting deal that will hopefully play out in later episodes.

I have to admit that I have grown quite tired of Hiro’s quest of late. Stripping him of his powers on a mission to find a magic sword has just been an awful storyline, and I hope that this episode finally sees an end to it. It’s just painful to see the most interesting character get sidetracked by busy work while everyone else gets to have something to do with the big picture.

As for Peter and Isaac I was less than thrilled with how the Simone shooting wrapped up. I mean, show some emotion for Pete’s sake. I really got the feeling that both men kind of got over her way too quickly. Shouldn’t this make Isaac and Peter sworn enemies? Isn’t that how these things usually work? I got the feeling that Isaac was more interested in slapping Peter on the wrist than wreaking some kind of maniacal revenge. I hope I’m wrong.

The episode wrapped up with some nice surprises, including a particularly nasty predicament for Peter, more family secrets from Claire, and a journey through time for Hiro and Ando.

What I Rented - Stranger Than Fiction

Some mild plot points about the ending are in the following review.

Stranger Than Fiction could have gone the easy route, making quick, cheap jokes at the expense of its characters, but it instead chooses the more difficult, and interesting path, taking its premise seriously and allowing the characters to react to the extraordinary events. When a voice starts narrating IRS agent Harold Crick’s (Will Ferrell) life, insinuating that he will die imminently, Crick begins to re-evaluate his life. At the same time, Karen Eiffel (Emma Thompson), while writing a novel about Crick (not knowing that he is a real person), tries to figure out how to conquer her writer’s block and kill off her protagonist.

While the film initially relies a bit too much on gimmicks (the Sims style pop-ups are more distracting than anything else), Stranger Than Fiction quickly finds its groove when Ana Pascal (Maggie Gyllenhaal), a tax dodging baker, enters the movie and Crick, confused about his narrative situation, seeks advice from literary professor Jules Hilbert (Dustin Hoffman). Since his life is being narrated, Hilbert and Crick try to discover what kind of story is being told, a comedy or a tragedy. Some of the films most charming moments occur when Crick realizes Pascal is the pendulum in his life that can swing him towards a happy ending or a tragic one (an idea hilariously visualized when Crick has a conversation with her while sitting in the middle of an accordion bus).

The love story with Pascal is charming, a definite throwback to old-style romantic comedies, complete with grand romantic gestures (he gives her flours), and heartfelt speeches (is there anything greater in a movie than watching a timid character finally tell someone how they truly feel?). It’s material that could easily be corny, but Gyllenhaal and Ferrell find the right chemistry, adding sparks to the potentially clichéd relationship.

In fact, the movie keeps finding ways to circumvent clichés. Harold realizing that he hasn’t actually been living his life and has just been going through the motions is a story point used in many, many previous films. Here, the plot point becomes more complicated when Karen Eiffel realizes that she has the power to keep Harold alive or kill him, which becomes further complicated by the fact that the ending in which he dies could result in one of the best, most influential books of the twenty-first century. Does Harold fight for life, or sacrifice himself in order to ensure the survival of an important work of fiction? It’s all darkly funny, but oddly touching, and the film finds the right ending to wrap everything up.

My only true concern has to do with a tiny, but frustrating plot point. Harold’s death, as conceived by Karen Eiffel, revolves around two other people, a small boy and a bus driver. They are shown at various times in the film only for a few brief seconds, but it’s implied in the narrative that their stories are just as important as Crick’s, that somehow his death ties up three narratives. Unfortunately, the audience never knows anything about them, so it’s hard to get a true sense of why Harold’s death is so important or why Eiffel’s book has the potential to be so earth shattering. It’s a minor quibble, but I felt like I needed to know a bit more about these characters in order to understand the full gravitas of Harold’s final decision.

As it stands, Stranger Than Fiction is a charming, funny, moving movie with great performances, and a script that wonderfully dissects the intricate balance between reality and those moments in life that seem more rooted in fiction.

Star Rating ***1/2 out of 4

300

300 oozes with testosterone, throwing ripped muscles, gory decapitations, writhing women, and machismo speeches on screen with unrelenting frequency. Unfortunately, 300 offers little else, especially in the oh-so-important detail of providing interesting characters (everyone blends together into one big bearded army-aton), so after the first half hour it starts to feel like an exercise in excess, rather than a rollicking journey into depravity.

The story is quite simple, 300 Spartan warriors under the leadership of King Leonidas try to take on a vast number of Persian soldiers. Fighting ensues.

Visually, 300 is stunning (easily one of the most darkly beautiful movies I’ve seen in a while), but the images can’t do anything to save an emotionally one note script. The Spartans live solely to fight honourably. Nothing they do throughout the entire course of the movie disputes that fact, and the characters rarely drop their warrior facades. The filmmakers love the textures, and the colours of this world, but they don’t love the people.

The battle scenes have moments of inspiration (watching the soldiers use real Spartan fighting techniques is cool), but ultimately they blend together into an emotionless block of time where horrible things happen to characters I couldn’t care less about.

An interesting subplot finally develops between Xerxes, the Persian Empire’s God complexing leader, and Leonidas, about what one would be willing to sacrifice in order to achieve amazing power. It brings up questions that I felt should have been explored, but weren’t, questions that at the very least would have provided Leonidas with an emotion other than anger. Why is Leonidas so intent on fighting the Persians without a full army, knowing full well that he is heading into a suicide mission? Why is Leonidas so loyal to his men when he hardly seems to know any of them? The movie chooses not to explore Leonidas’ obsessions or motivations at all, instead allowing every personality disorder to be explained with the line, “WE ARE SPARTANS!!!” Yes, yes, you are…….

Well… “I AM BORED!!!”

300, while breathtakingly rich in its imagery, feels as artificial as the computer generated backdrops.

Star Rating ** out of 4

Top Ten - Lost Episodes - Part Two

And to continue the previous list.....oh and don't read if you aren't up to date on your Lost watching - plot points are revealed.

5. Pilot – Season 1, Episode 1 and 2 – The opening of the Lost pilot is probably the closest television has ever gotten to recreating the epic, big budget special effects feeling of a movie. Jack wakes up in a forest on a mysterious island and before long finds himself saving lives as he walks right in the middle of a horrifying plane wreckage (that he somehow survived). If that weren’t enough, Lost quickly informs the audience that this isn’t Survivor – Fiction Edition, as loud animal noises, shaking trees, a rampaging polar bear, bizarre audio transmissions, and a pilot-eating creature quickly spook the survivors. Thankfully the writers introduce a group of interesting, and layered characters to ground the otherworldliness.

Favourite Moment – Sure the plane crash is spectacular, but for me, the show proved itself when Kate first meets Jack and has to stitch up one of his wounds. It’s easy to do chaos, but much more difficult to create real sparks between actors. The quiet moment between the two of them is very well written and economically introduces everything we need to know about both (for the time being).

4. The Cost of Living – Season 3, Episode 5 – Sure it was shocking in season two to kill off Ana Lucia and Libby, but they certainly weren’t fan favourites. Cut to season three, where Mr. Eko, the intriguing Drug Lord turned priest, spends an entire episode trying to deal with his past sins, only to be viciously killed by the smoke monster when he doesn’t apologize for his crimes (cause as we kind of learn, the smoke monster can take on corporeal form – it’s Lost, so sure). I didn’t see that one coming at all, not even a little bit. Of course the death would be meaningless without a good story to go behind it, and Eko’s flashback dealing with his religious struggle after the death of his brother is great (watching the vicious warlord emerge from his spiritual façade is one of the more shocking moments of this pretty shock-full episode).

Favourite Moment – I’m going with the obvious moment on this one. Seeing Eko pummeled around like a rag doll was just plain shocking.

3. Live Together, Die Alone – Season 2, Episode 22 – As season two comes to a close many plot threads that had been dangling since the pilot are capped off excellently. We learn why the plane crashed, how Desmond found his way into the Hatch, what happens when you don’t push the button, and what the deal is with Michael and Walt. It’s all much more satisfying than season one’s anticlimactic finale (All that and we don’t even go down the hatch!), and ends with a curious epilogue that has yet to be touched upon again. Desmond’s backstory is fascinating as we learn about the love of his life, Penelope, and his long stay in the Hatch. It’s as emotional as it is informative, and sets the stage wonderfully for the so far excellent third season.

Favourite Moment – Seeing the destruction of the hatch is great. I enjoyed the whole button pushing storyline, but after 22 episodes I was ready to see what happens when the button isn’t pushed. This episode doesn’t disappoint, as electromagnetic fields cause mass chaos across the island.

2. Man of Science, Man of Faith – Season 2, Episode 1 – Corey’s (that's me) Internal Dialogue for the first five minutes of this episode “That Hatch better have something good in it….oh crap…what’s this…some guy listening to Mama Cass, washing dishes, and cycling on an exercise bike. This is painful! Whose flashback are we watching now? Wait, that was a dynamite explosion! This isn’t a flashback at all, it’s the HATCH!!! We’re finally inside!!! Hurrah!!” The rest of the episode keeps that excitement level going as Jack ventures down into the subterranean world of the island. Personally though, the reason why this episode places so high on my list is that the flashback is equally strong telling the story of how Jack saved Sarah’s (his ex-wife) life. Jack’s scientific beliefs are put to the test when seemingly miraculous and connected events catch him offguard.

Favourite Moment – I’m going to cheat and choose two. For excitement value nothing beats Jack’s first steps into the Hatch. When Mama Cass blares again, and bright lights start flashing it’s easily Lost’s creepiest scene. For emotional value though, nothing tops Jack’s discovery that Sarah’s spinal surgery so that she can walk again, which Jack believes failed, was in fact a success. Matthew Fox has never been better than he is in this episode, and in this moment in particular.

1. Walkabout – Season 1, Episode – For me this isn’t just the best episode of Lost, but one of the best episodes of television I’ve ever seen. I liked the pilot a lot, but I wasn’t convinced that the show could convincingly blend deep emotionally rich stories with its fantastical premise until Walkabout. John Locke, a mysterious and quiet middle aged man, finally finds his calling when the survivors realize they need to hunt for food. As he takes out his arsenal of knives, he immediately lets everyone know that he is a true hunter. However, the flashbacks slowly start to paint another picture, tearing down the strong image of Locke by showing him as a weak, games obsessed employee at a box factory. His one goal in life is to go to Australia on a Walkabout in order to find his purpose in life. The ending is just amazing as the rug is pulled out from the audience and Locke’s true secret is finally revealed. It’s a twist that completely blindsided me, but adds so much to Locke’s character and his purpose on the island.

Favourite Moment – Locke’s revelation (“Don’t’ tell me what I can’t do”) mixed with Michael Giacchino’s music and that quick flashback blend together to create one heck of a final scene.

Zodiac

Zodiac is an exhausting movie, a nearly three hour crime film filled with volumes of information on one of the most bizarre serial killers of all time. It’s also continuously fascinating to watch, surviving a somewhat jarring second half leap forward in time by allowing the characters, along with the audience, to fully sink deeper and deeper into a never ending world of facts and statistics.

Zodiac tells the story of how police from many jurisdictions, several news reporters, a rogue cartoonist, handwriting experts, and many more trained professionals worked tirelessly (some more obsessively than others) to try and solve the psychological war of terror the Zodiac Killer declared on the San Francisco area in the late sixties and early seventies. Those expecting a suspense thriller will be very disappointed (although the scenes recreating Zodiac’s murders are disturbing). Instead this movie is more like one of Zodiac’s ciphers, a mystery hidden behind decades’ worth of clues and leads, that is slowly unlocked as the movie progresses.

Although the film is fascinated by procedure, it never feels clinical. Each actor manages to find subtle (or in Robert Downey Jr.’s case, not so subtle, but probably very relatable) ways of making their characters come to life. Mark Ruffalo and Jake Gyllenhaal anchor the movie with quiet, yet intense portrayals of the two men who can’t shake the Zodiac killer. The excitement that envelops them any time they make a connection or a realization is invigorating to watch.

My one big complaint in the film stems from the rather routine manner in which Chloe Sevigny’s character is handled. She plays Gyllenhaal’s long suffering wife who watches as he sinks further and further into the Zodiac mystery, but it’s tired material that is handled in an obvious and rather boring manner. Unfortunately, this storyline pops up in the second half of the movie, and drags the pacing down immensely.

For the majority of its running time though, Zodiac is enthralling, bringing to life a frustrating and unconventional investigation.

Star Rating ***1/2 out of 4

What I Rented - The Protector

It’s very difficult to review a movie like The Protector, where unbelievable and fantastic action sequences are undermined at every turn by a clichéd and overly plotted script focusing on the intimate relationship between man and elephant (no, you read that right). When Cam’s (Tony Jaa) sacred elephants are kidnapped by an evil crime syndicate, he must journey to Sydney, Australia in order to reclaim his beloved pachyderms. While there, he fights his way through numerous bad guys and uncovers a city wide criminal organization.

The character work and storyline are barely comprehensible (even in the uncut version I saw), but the action sequences are incredible (minus a sloppily filmed and edited boat chase). Tony Jaa’s fight choreography is easily the best I’ve seen in ages.

Take for instance a four minute long, one-take, fight extravaganza in which Jaa climbs up four floors and takes on at least thirty bad guys in a brothel/casino/restaurant complex.. It’s an unbelievable fusion of fighting and top quality camera work and should be included on lists of the best tracking shots of all time.

Or there’s the bone break orgy in which Jaa fights his way through fifty people by breaking close to a thousand bones. If that weren’t enough he then finds his way into a room with four hulking manbeasts (one guy hurtles a baby elephant through a glass pane!!) and a middle aged woman who suddenly becomes a whip mistress. To fight them off he chooses the only weapon available to him, elephant bones. It’s all wildly original, borderline insane, and thrilling.

Except, there’s no emotional weight behind any of it. The most fully developed relationship in the movie is between Tony Jaa and his elephant friend. Everyone else is just set dressing. So, if you just want to see some brilliant action scenes, The Protector will certainly serve that up in spades, but you want to see a great action film, you’ll have to wait until Jaa starts choosing better scripts.

Star Rating – Movie - ** out of 4
Action Scenes - **** out of 4