Parks and Recreation: Season Four (2012)

Showrunner: Michael Schur

 I'm not exaggerating at all when I say that currently Parks and Recreation is the best political show on television, and by the end of its run if it continues at this level, it will be known as one of the great television shows about politics ever. This season saw Leslie Knope running for a city council position. The city council race allowed the writers to do very important things at the same time. First it enabled them to comment on political campaign and elections in general using Pawnee as a microcosm of American politics, something they do frequently and effectively. We saw unrealistic campaign promises, an uneducated electorate, the importance of photo opportunities, and much more.

The second thing the city council race did was enable the audience to learn so much more about Knope. We know her as an optimistic, idealistic, and ambitious politician who actually believes in her job and genuinely wants to make an impact in the world, but in the election we see her struggle much more than we've seen in the past. Impressively, even throughout the struggles she continues to be idealistic. Rarely do we see this type of idealistic politician character on TV actually work without coming off as naive and annoying. But the characters on this show, and especially Knope, are all charming people who want to do good, and because they are in a parks and recreation department of a small town they can do so. I can't imagine a more perfect setting for a genuinely idealistic political show. The higher up you go in the political arena, the harder it is to get what you want done, and so in a comparatively low stakes setting like in Parks and Recreation, idealism works because individuals and small groups have the power to make big impacts on a small city by doing something as small as fixing water fountains. This show is not just as good as The Office when it was at its best, but probably even better. It's not just hilarious and smart, but it can also be deeply emotional sometimes, and that emotion is honestly the most impressive quality it has.

Grade: A-

The Office: Season Eight (2012)

Showrunner: Paul Lieberstein

 I think by now it's pretty much a universally accepted idea that the Michael Scott send-off episode, "Goodbye Michael," from last season should have been the series finale of this show. The first post-Michael season has been so unambitious and left a mild taste in my mouth. I didn't hate it, because I have a connection with these characters and can always watch them, but nor did I come close to loving it. This is because there was nothing to love. The writers of this show know how to write jokes and the actors know how to deliver them consistently, but the writers have no idea how (or have no desire) to write compelling story lines for these fabulous characters.

I think the failure of this season to have any real stakes is mostly just laziness on the part of the writers. They've been at it for eight seasons, and lot of them were on their way out (like Mindy Kaling and Paul Lieberstein). So it feels like the writers are just doing the motions instead of actually flexing their creative and artistic muscles. One example is the Andy and Erin relationship. The writers tried to recycle the Pam and Jim relationship because that worked out well for them, and so the natural inclination for a business is to repeat successful strategies. It feels like the writers are making sure they save their best material for their next jobs. So the writers are getting lazy, and the actors are moving on. I guess the death of The Office is now official.

Grade: C-

Community: Season Three (2012)

Showrunner: Dan Harmon

 There's a lot of talk about how Community is so experimental and how that prevents it from gaining anything more than a niche audience, but it's really not all that experimental. It may be experimental with its form sometimes, but the characters and their relationships are pretty populist and fairly easy to digest. There may be a few times when the show has done something unexpected with the character relationships, but most often the show is pretty optimistic and "feel-good" when it comes to how the group interacts. But at the same time, the experimental form and frequent references to pop culture (including references to past episodes of the show itself) are what make this show so special and inventive.

I wouldn't say this show is particularly meaningful in anyway, even if it does try sometimes, but what it does best is take advantage of the form. This season we saw musicals, characters as video games, a horror story anthology, and more. But easily the best of the season was "Remedial Chaos Theory," an episode which presents multiple alternate realities and shows us how the group would work without certain characters. It's a brilliant episode and the fact that they fit all of that in 22 minutes is incredibly impressive. The episode represents the best of what Community can do. While this season has its fair share of great episodes, it also has many forgettable episodes and lacks a satisfying season-long arc, something I always look for in a worthwhile TV show. As fun and unique as this show is, there is actually room for improvement, and this season highlighted some of that.

Grade: B+

The Proposition (2005)

Director: John Hillcoat

 When we think of a western, we usually think of the old American west, but this great western is set in the barren lands of old Australia. The landscape is similar to the landscape of American westerns, but instead of Native Americans roaming around, you have Australian aboriginals. The best westerns are always the ones that manage to capture the desolate landscape and the effect the never-ending land and its savagery can have on people (last years Meek's Cutoff is the most recent film to capture this successfully). John Hillcoat directs this film paying close attention to larger thematics and dilemmas instead of focusing primarily on screenplay, which could have easily been made into a by-the-numbers action-western by another director.

Guy Pearce's character has a moral dilemma, and that is whether or not he will kill his wanted older brother for the sheriff in order to save his wanted younger brother who has been captured by the police from death. The film never takes a side morally. Even though Pearce's character and his brothers were involved in a horrible massacre of an innocent family, it's not easy to root against them because we see that the colonial police can be just as brutal. Flies, the insect, fly all over the place when we see the police, perhaps to symbolize that the "good guys" are just as "dirty" as the criminals. On top of all that, Nick Cave's music (he is also the screenwriter) makes the movie meditative when it needs to be and extremely exciting it when it needs to be as well. The music combined with the brilliant cinematography and Guy Pearce's great performance makes for a movie that's more of an experience than anything e lse. The screenplay is good, but it's simple. Hillcoat then takes the simple story and creates an emotional and even exciting film.

Grade: A-

The Dictator (2012)

Director: Larry Charles

Sacha Baron Cohen's film Borat is one of the best comedies of the last 10 years. It not only was hilarious but it revealed the stereotypes that people in America hold against foreigners and the subconscious racism that still permeates parts of our society. Because of the edgy but politically and sociologically revealing jokes of Borat the audience should have some expectation of what Cohen is going for in The Dictator. Unfortunately those expectations for me, were not met. My biggest problem with The Dictator is that it is wildly inconsistent. There are some scenes that are absolutely hilarious, some scenes that highlight stereotypes about Muslims/Arabs brilliantly, some jokes that take on some easy pop culture target and fall completely flat, and some jokes that are just too unrealistic to have any effect.

The movie is really more of a sketch comedy where the sketches have been half-heartedly put together with some barebones story. There are many scenes that don't even seem to be a part of the overall story and are just sketches that Cohen wanted to do with this character. It seems like Cohen found this character to be a great opportunity to make have some fun with tyrannical and horrible dictators. But it's not rooted enough in reality to actually make that much of an impact. I look at Four Lions as an example of what Cohen probably wanted to do but failed at. That film takes people universally accepted as not good and makes them out to be complete idiots, kind of what Cohen is going for here, but that film is funny because it is so close to what a terrorist plan might actually be so when it all goes awry it's hilarious and a great subtle statement on the stupidity of would-be suicide bombers. The Dictator though has a story in which a leader of a nation loses his identity and has to work in some alternative hippy co-op, it's all comes across as fantasy. I will say that Cohen does manage to include some good political commentary at times, including the great speech at the end, but the potential hinted at by those flashes of brilliance are what make this film ultimately disappointing.

Grade: C

The Beat That My Heart Skipped (2005)

Director: Jacques Audiard

 A French crime film that happens to be a remake of little-known American film from the 1970's, when a movie has that description, it's bound to be at least worth a watch. This is the film Jacques Audiard made before A Prophet, a film I believe to be a masterpiece, and it's obvious after watching this film that A Prophet represented Audiard reaching the top of the potential he shows in The Beat That My Heart Skipped. The movie is very well-made, there is some raw filmmaking and also some very raw acting by Romain Durais. Both Durais and Audiard are the ones who deserve credit for creating such a raw and gritty film that really works, despite the fairly standard and sentimental story.

The story is right out of The Godfather, a young man whose family is involved with crime would like to get out of the criminal world but his responsibility to family ends up making it difficult to do so. In this film it's made even more obvious and sentimental because our protagonist wants to be a piano player, the complete opposite of a guy who hurts people for money (it's a little too on the nose). The issue of filial responsibility is what is most interesting in the film. It's been done before, but this film adds an interesting aspect with the introduction of the debt concept. Your parents took care of you, you have to take care of them, and that's even if they get into hurting people for not paying them back. You can see the irony and that the theme of debt is quite clear. Even though the ideas in the film are not very unique, the film is well done enough to make it a quality piece of art.

Grade: B

Justified: Season Three (2012)

Showrunner: Graham Yost

The same thing is true of every season of Justified, the first 10-12 episodes are pretty good but not great, but then the last couple episodes are flat-out outstanding and make the rest of the season better in hindsight. In the case of the third season, it's really just the final episode (final scene if you want to get specific) that crosses the "great television" threshold. As great as that final episode is, it's not enough to retroactively make the whole season great, though I certainly have a better opinion of the other episodes now. The third season is not quite as good as the second, but maybe a bit better than the first. It's uneven, but it's wildly entertaining.

The main villain of the season, Quarles, was a bit too cartoonish sometimes for my taste, but he provided some great Tarantino-esque moments that made the show all the more easier and fun to watch.  It's really at the end of the season that we find some meaningful information about him that connects him to the overall theme of fatherhood and specifically the shadows a father casts over their son. The reason the show has been faltering a bit in my view has been the lack of focus on its main character, Raylan Givens. There are many supporting characters on the show now, and it has all now become about them, rather than Raylan. Like the great pilot episode in the first season, the final episode this season was about Raylan, and that is why the episode was great. If more of the show involved Raylan's issues with his family, his work, and his temperament and including them in the main plot, the show would be much better. As it stands, the show has never failed to be entertaining, and so I cannot deny its quality.

Grade: B-

The Raid: Redemption (2012)

Director: Gareth Evans

Martial arts movies are a cult genre. There are certain martial arts movie that a certain group of people love, but most people haven't heard of. The Raid is notable because it has achieved a bit more recognition and acclaim than your average martial arts movie. If you do consider yourself a fan of martial arts movies (if you've seen and loved Ip Man and Tony Jaa movies) and I would not include myself in that category, then you will probably love this movie. It features a whole lot of violence and some fantastic fight choreography and that's really all what most martial arts movie fans need. There are also some very memorable imaginative moments in the fight scenes (the last two thirds of the movie is just one fight scene really)

The directing by Gareth Evans is the main reason the fighting is memorable in any way. The scenes are chaotic but not indecipherable, which is unlike most other action films nowadays. But if you are looking for more than just badass fight choreography and violence, you won't find much here. This is a movie purely for those looking for action. The filmmakers probably came up with the story in a couple hours at most and is very obviously at the service of the action. It's an enjoyable and entertaining film, and one that has a refreshingly modern sensibility that's quite visceral when it comes to action and martial arts, but it's just violence all the way through with a barebones story that will have no emotional or intellectual impact on the audience.

Grade: C+

Valley of Saints (2012)

Director: Musa Syeed

 The setting of this movie is immensely important, but not for the reasons you might expect. It's set in Kashmir, a disputed region between India and Pakistan, a place of heavy political conflict. But it's not the political conflict that is the main "issue" of this film, instead it is a lake, a lake that is being slowly dirtied and destroyed. The politics that make Kashmir such a dangerous place to live are seen not only as a problem because of the obvious reasons, but also because the politics are distracting us from the real problem at hand, which is the degradation of the area environment.

It's an incredibly refreshing message. But the film only succeeds at making it ring true because of the neo-realist style. Taking a lot of influence from the neo-realists of post-war Italian directors, the film has a documentary feel to it, but is not afraid to include poetic and lyrical moments that just add to the audiences affection for the characters and the environment. The region of Kashmir, and especially the lake that is at the center of the story, is captured with so much beauty by Syeed's camera. It's important to remember that this is not a movie that has beauty for beauty's sake. Capturing the mountains and lakes of Kashmir in all of their natural beauty is important because if no one takes any action, this footage might be some of the last we see of this place of beauty.

Grade: B+

The Last Days of Disco (1998)

Director: Whit Stillman

Whit Stillman doesn't parody, criticize, or even celebrate the WASP/yuppy subculture, he just depicts it. It's an easy subculture to criticize, but Stillman finds a way to sympathize with them while also making statements about society in general. The other great thing that comes with Stillman's familiarity with the subculture is his ability to write some really witty and entertaining dialogue that is so relatable yet so foreign at the same time. Both of these qualities are in full display in The Last Days of Disco, though it is not quite as interesting as his previous two brilliant films Metropolitan and Barcelona.

This film feels a bit more scattered and formless than the last two, and so the emotional power is lessened. But the movie does succeed in not being the exact same as the first two in the sense that while the characters in the movie are yuppie types, the setting is the disco era, and so the culture we see is one that is quite distinct. The movie actually looks at the end of this era, a time of promiscuity and fun. It's a time in which people can break the set of rules at night that they abide by during the day. It's certainly fascinating to see the end of this era, the end of the disco years, and how the difficulties of change affect some of the characters, especially with relationships. The Last Days of Disco is a film about precisely that, the last days of disco.

Grade: B

Total Recall (1990)

Director: Paul Verhoeven

 Though this film was released in 1990, it is clearly a 1980's Hollywood action film. It's got all the cliche's, including horribly cheesy dialogue, gross-out special effects, and Arnold Schwarzenegger. The story is also a fairly standard hero's journey. But the somehow movie still works. This is because the theme of knowing what's real and what is not is never forgotten by the filmmakers, and that's what makes the movie thought-provoking despite all the sub-standard aspects.

Because of just one scene towards the beginning that has our protagonist talking about a fantasy in which he is a government spy who is saving humanity, the studio gets the easily digestible action picture they want, and Paul Verhoeven gets the thought-provoking film that questions the state of reality that he probably wants. Now obviously I prefer the latter, and if the movie fully committed to advancing the reality theme, the movie would have been much better. But regardless, I am positive about this film because of how this type of movie being thought-provoking is usually an unlikely concept. There are still large sections of the movie that are just action movie cliche after action movie cliche, and even if they're not real or whatever, they're still not fun to sit through. But because the filmmakers never forget the point of the story, a movie that could have been unbearable to sit through, becomes worth watching.

Grade: C+ 

The Avengers (2012)

Director: Joss Whedon

Regardless of the quality, I feel like the fact that this movie was even made is enough for me to like it at least a little bit. Making four movies based on previously existing characters, and then bringing all of those stories together, including most of the same actors, is a big accomplishment. Even though this movie won't be my favorite movie of the year, it is still impressive just based on the fact that it's as enjoyable as it is. When comparing The Avengers to other superhero movies, it's definitely one of the most fun ones yet. And if I was talking about this film from a business perspective, it's even more impressive (but I'm not).

The best part of this movie is most definitely the relationships between the main characters and the humor that comes from that. Joss Whedon does a great job at making sure the film never takes itself too seriously. This is important because the plot of the movie is honestly horrible. If I just gave you a quick rundown of the plot, it would sound incredibly substandard. While this movie is really good for a superhero movie, it is still plagued with many of the same issues the genre of superhero movies face, which are plot issues, tonal issues, and plausibility issues. This is a still a very silly movie that is impossible to take seriously at all. Thankfully Whedon seems to know this, and while I do wish he would have taken a bit more time with the story, the humor and the action scenes are good enough so it's possible to enjoy the film even with the disappointing plot.

Grade: B-