Streaming: Netflix's version of Marvel's DAREDEVIL proves noirish, nifty stuff

After the big-nothing that comprised the earlier version of twelve years ago, the new DAREDEVIL that debuted last week via the Netflix streaming service provides just about everything that the former dud lacked -- from the noirish and dank cityscape, in which bad things keep happening to good people, to the dark, monochromatic outfit our hero wears to hide his identity, to the wonderfully indeterminate time frame in which this story seems to exist.  (Is all this taking place it now, in the recent past, or maybe the near future? We can't really tell nor does it much matter. The place exists as a kind of ever-current depiction of the "big, scary, hugely corrupted city.")

TrustMovies is only now into the fourth episode of the thirteen that incorporate Daredevil's first season, each one coming in between 48 and 59 minutes. The tale -- of a boy, blinded in an accident in which he saved the life of an old man, now grown into a young man who has honed his other senses to their keenest levels so that he has become a lawyer by day (above, left, with his partner, played by Elden Henson) and vigilante by night, working out of Hell's Kitchen in the kind of uber-corrupt city that New York is always threatening to become -- seems a fine one for the episodic-yet-connected sort of series that Daredevil appears to be, at least at this point in its unfurling.

Bingers will probably do the entire first season in a day or weekend. It will most likely take me at least one week, given my episode-or-two-per-day approach. But I'm already hooked -- especially by the casting of Charlie Cox as Matt Murdock, a great "everyman" hero whose open, welcoming face and more-than-fit body makes him seem surprisingly real, but just a little more handsome and sexy (and a lot more alert) than your everyday "everyman." This is a the kind of character, coupled to a performance by the actor, that audiences will root for -- big-time.

Created by Drew Goddard (shown at right), the series makes clear from the outset that we will be fed Matt's backstory, in which his father figures most prominently, in bits and pieces, as is appropriate. The action scenes, of which there are plenty, are done extremely well -- cleverly straddling the line between real and just a little more than that -- while the casting of the female leads, Deborah Ann Wohl (below, right) and Rosario Dawson (at bottom, right) in the initial episodes, provides strength, smarts and pulchritude.

Best of all, perhaps, there are almost none of the increasingly leaden and over-used "special effects" that have rendered the Iron Man and Captain America franchises, for any vaguely intelligent audience, more and more difficult to sit through. Dardevil instead counts on smart plot mechanics, great action, and a top cast of professionals to hold us fast.

The writing (those first two episodes are by Mr. Goddard) is fine for this kind of show -- sharp and intelligent but in a quiet, economical, almost underhanded manner. And the direction of the first two episodes by Phil Abraham (Mad Men and The Sopranos) provides everything we need to become immediately involved and very well entertained.

There is simply so much of what they now call "content" available to view these days, that having the opportunity to see yet another series from yet another provider may not seem like anything special. If Daredevil adheres to the interest, pace and style of these first few episodes, I'd call it a keeper, for sure.

DAREDEVIL addendum

Having now watched into episode six of this new Netflix series, I better understand its huge pull on audiences (it's currently rated 9.2 on the IMDB by more than 38,000 viewers).

Episode five deals in part with the problems of wretched, venal, corrupt, big-city landlords and their tactics in removing unwanted tenants. Having been involved in the activities of one such a group back in the 1970s on a particular block of West 77th Street in Manhattan, and then reading an article in New York Magazine only a bit more than year ago about how this family is still at it, I found myself grabbed all over again by the subject via this particular Daredevil episode.

The series' concern with the downtrodden is not only commendable but handled in such a way that we're made to learn of the despicable tactics of these landlords and what this does to their working-poor tenants, and thus we root all the more strongly for the success of the little group led by lawyer/vigilante Murdock (shown above in the latter guise; below, left, in the former). And if you wonder why some of us look to our entertainment to offer an understanding of what is going on across our country policed by too many cops who are dirty in too many ways, it's because we can find little hope in the reality around us. (For yet another devastating example, read today's report on the TruthOut site about police accountability in Chicago.)

The introduction, at the end of episode three, of Wilson Fisk, in the larger-than-life persona of Vincent D'Onofrio (shown from the rear, below), is inspired -- offering up the major villain of the piece as a lost little boy, suddenly falling in love with both a piece of modern art and the woman from whom he is purchasing that art. Soon enough we see Fisk in another kind of action, as a murderous thug dispensing with an underling in one of the more grotesque killing scenes we've witnessed (yes, this series is way too violent for children).

But for adults ready to be entertained and provoked by the subject of how the increasing combination of money, power, corporations and criminals (you might even think of them as Republicans and/or Libertarians) are taking control of our country, Daredevil is a sure bet. (Ayn Rand would have loathed a show like this.) One of the best individual reasons to subscribe to Netflix, it can be found by clicking here. 

THE AUTOMATIC HATE--Justin Lerner's family dram-com is one nifty little zinger of a movie

My only experience with a movie made by writer/director Justin Lerner is the oddball 2011 film, Girlfriend, so I am happy to declare that his new endeavor, THE AUTOMATIC HATE, is an enormous improvement over that earlier work. Beginning with a look at an unsettled couple, followed by a mysterious unknown woman, a fractured family, a smart and funny college class in Behavioral Development, and a grandfather scene that takes its place in the canon -- all of this beautifully edited (by Jeffrey L. Castellucco) into a crisp and enticing 15-minute mystery having to do with a missing relative -- the movie finds a near-perfect melding of tone and theme via the excellent writing, direction and acting of its very fine ensemble.

That blend of tone and theme, by the way, is something rare in movies these days, and it makes workable a story that could easily go off the tracks. Instead, thanks in good part to Mr. Lerner (shown, left), it manages to stay oddly centered and surprisingly believable throughout. More than anything else, the movie is a mystery about what divided this particular family several decades previous. Clearly, whatever it was must have been pretty fucked-up. What brings it back together, as one character points out, is equally fucked-up. The answer to the mystery, when we finally get it, is a humdinger that makes immediate sense on a couple of levels.

The ensemble of performers gathered to bring this family to life could hardly have been chosen better, beginning with Joseph Cross (above) as the pivotal son and Adelaide Clemens (below) as an equally pivotal daughter.

Their fathers, two brothers who've not spoken nor acknowledged each other for years, are played in fine form by the always fascinating Ricky Jay (below, right) and Richard Schiff  (below, left) both of whose performances add further mystery and luster to the proceedings.

The fifth wheel here, the girlfriend of Mr. Cross' character, is brought to quivering and sympathetic life by Daredevil's Deborah Ann Wohl, below. Supporting roles -- wives and other children -- are handled equally well so that we don't doubt for a moment that these strange people we're viewing are indeed connected by nature and nurture (which is another theme the movie tackles quite well).

How this all plays out -- including one scene of family violence that manages to be both shocking and hilarious -- proves riveting and entertaining, finally serving up a visual and verbal definition of cowardice that seems spot-on.

The Automatic Hate does not easily compare to much else we've seen, with performances, writing and direction all straddling that line between believability and exaggeration, the real and the mythic. With just a little push in one direction the movie might have toppled into camp, or in the other direction into Greek tragedy. Instead, thankfully, it works its wonders by standing strong and tall -- if also quite alone.

From Film Movement and running 98 minutes, the movie opens this Friday, March 11, in Los Angeles at Laemmle's Monica Film Center, in Santa Barbara on March 16 at the Plaza del Oro, and in Chicago at Facets Cinematheque and the Four Star in San Francisco on March 18. To see further screening dates, click here and scroll down. DVD and digital streaming will surely happen soon, as well.

Pierre Morel's PEPPERMINT: revenge, blood, explosions, nonsense -- and a modicum of fun

What do you do when you're a witness to the murder of your husband and daughter, and then the justice system completely lets you down?  If you're Riley North (Jennifer Garner, still trying to atone for that Daredevil movie), you disappear for a few months, get skilled in martial arts and firearms, and then return to destroy literally every bad guy involved in the event -- from the murderers' sleazy defense attorney to the bought-off judge, crooked cops and the drug dealer and his (far too many) henchmen responsible for it all.

Director Pierre Morel (shown at left), who some years back gave us the better film, Taken, still has some talent and a few tricks up his sleeve. One of these is to not have to dish up every single killing of every single bad guy. No, some of these we just hear about via police chatter or TV breaking news. This speeds things up a bit -- though not quite fast enough:
The movie is still ten minutes too long for its own good. The massacre of the drug dealer's many henchmen -- really, wouldn't one dozen, rather than 24, have been enough of a body count? -- seems to go on for-fucking-ever.

On the plus side is a nice, if nasty, surprise toward the conclusion, and the film's final shot proves witty, concise perfection that drew both a deserved laugh and applause from the preview audience.

Ms Garner (shown above, in her "homeless bag lady" disguise) acquits herself as well as an actress could manage, given the ridiculousness of what she is asked to do (and what we are asked to buy into). She is pretty and game, and she makes the movie more fun that it might have been.

As written by Chad St. John, the film is full of the standard "vengeance" tropes that the genre provides -- the courtroom scene, above, in which the murderers laugh at Riley's anger and disbelief when they are summarily acquitted is a typical example; her revenge on the sleazy judge, below) is another -- PEPPERMINT does not lack for genre clichés.

But the pacing overall is fairly strong, so these clichés go by relatively quickly. As the two policemen working most closely on the case, John Gallagher Jr., and John Ortiz (the latter is shown below, center) provide decent support,

while the leading drug-dealing villain, Juan Pablo Raba (at center, below) does just about everything a villian should -- except twirl his mustache (it's simply not long enough).

With explosions and a very high body count, Peppermint -- does that odd title refer to the kind of ice cream chosen by our heroine's daughter (below, with dad and mom), just prior to her demise? That's the only reason for it that I could come up with  -- should please action/revenge fans enough to make it profitable, if not anything close to either a sleeper or blockbuster.

From STX Entertainment and running 102 minutes, the movie opens tomorrow -- Friday, September 7 -- pretty much nationwide, I think.

Amazon streaming: MOZART IN THE JUNGLE -- a loose, lovable and very smart little series

For several years now Netflix has been hailed as the new "content provider" that -- in addition to offering its usual DVD and Blu-ray discs for rental, as well as tons of movies and TV series to stream -- is creating its own first-rate series such as House of Cards, Orange is the New Black, and the recent and brilliant Daredevil. Lately, however, Amazon,  the behemoth we all love to hate, is making its own inroads into original content, with the award-winning Transparent and a bunch of other new, how-did-these-get-here-so-fast? series, among which MOZART IN THE JUNGLE is most definitely worth your time. (A recent issue of New York magazine profiled Amazon's sudden explosion into original series with an excellent article you might want to read -- if you haven't already.)

Having found Transparent a wonderfully rich example of original, unusual dramedy, TrustMovies moved on recently to this newer series and was very quickly hooked. Mozart in the Jungle seems to me an almost perfect example of what Amazon Studios (the "content" arm of the behemoth) seems intent on providing: original content that, while nowhere near close to blockbuster/ mainstream level, will give a certain smaller segment of sophisticated television viewers exactly the kind of thing for which they're always searching.

Mozart... offers up a smart plot situated in a venue that neither TV, movies nor practically any source from which we get our "drama" has cared to go -- that of the big-city symphony orchestra: that "jungle" of the title. The brain-child of a most creative threesome: Roman Coppola, (above, left), Jason Schwartzman (above, right) and Alex Timbers (shown at right) (based on the book by Blair Tindall, Mozart in the Jungle: Sex, Drugs and Classical Music), the series should be a shoo-in for anyone who's ever been involved in the classical music scene.

Yours truly worked at New York City's Philharmonic Hall -- now Avery Fisher Hall -- for several years back in the 1960s. But even if you have never been involved with symphonies and the like, the series is well-executed enough to pull you in. Watching it made me realize, among many other things, that despite how much has changed in the intervening decades, much remains the same.

Prime amongst those things that never seem to change is the necessity of fundraising -- above almost everything else. Wait: forget "almost." Fundraising is all. The person responsible for this on Mozart... is Gloria Windsor, played by Broadway veteran Bernadette Peters (above, left), who -- as do literally all the actors on the show -- turns her character into a multifaceted surprise and delight.

Mozart's creators understand quite well how conducting, performing in and running a symphony orchestra is full of compromise, no matter how dedicated to "art" are the people involved. These would include especially the symphony's new conductor, Rodrigo, a role just about perfect for the charismatic Mexican actor Gabriel García Bernal, who here gives maybe his best performance yet, as the bizarre-but-fully-dedicated enfant terrible who wants to take this orchestra to a new plateau.

Rodrigo's relationship to the conductor he is replacing (a marvelous turn by Malcolm McDowell, above) is a complicated one, and as the series progresses, this becomes more focused, specific, funny and moving.

The orchestra itself is composed of a raft of smart and talented actors -- from Mark Blum and Deborah Monk to Saffron Burrows (at right) as the crack violist and Lola Kirke (below) as a young oboist hoping to break into the ranks of the anointed. How the latter achieves this -- and then doesn't -- provides some of the surprise and believa-bility, coupled to the kind of charm and entertainment that makes for the series' great success. As befits a show brought to life by the likes of Mr. Schwartzman, Mozart... is above all loose and lively, never underscor-ing its points nor pushing too hard.

Mozart in the Jungle treats its characters -- virtually all of them -- as living, breathing, complicated human beings, whose needs and desires often conflict with those of their nearest and dearest -- not to mention with what they themselves sometimes want.

The series also addresses class and economics, and while it comes down firmly on the side of the underdogs and "art" over the wealthy and corporate, it never handles this in the usual obvious and stupidly facile fashon. Mozart's creators understand the complications of living in the real world and what this means to the idea of creation and compromise.

Victory, as is only sometimes (and not often enough) the case, goes to those who can best roll with the punches -- a scenario beautifully demonstrated by the final episode in this first season.

The show is also unafraid to introduce an oddball new character for a one-time appearance -- Wallace Shawn (above) is one example -- or offer up a memorable supporting turn from another who appears only now and again, such as the beautiful and charismatic Nora Arnezeder (below: remember Paris 36?).

Shows like Mozart... don't set the world afire. That's not their job. Rather they appeal to to those of us who want something different but of high quality in both its artistic ambitions and entertainment quotient. This series delivers on both levels. It's streamable now, only via Amazon, where Prime members can watch it free.

Eskil Vogt's startling and original new film takes us far and fiercely into the mind of the BLIND

What an unusual -- and unusually intelligent and psychologically astute -- movie is BLIND, the first full-length film to be directed by Eskil Vogt, the fellow who earlier co-wrote two other highly-regarded Norwegian films, Reprise and Oslo, August 31. Most films about the blind use this handicap for purposes of thrilling us (Wait Until Dark), plucking our heartstrings (At First Sight) or, more lately, showing us how the loss of one valuable sense only leads to the heightening of all the others (Netflix's brilliant new comic book-based series, Daredevil).

What interests Mr. Vogt, shown at left, is something else entirely: the state -- mental, physical, sexual, spiritual -- of being blind and what this can do to the suddenly no-longer sighted. That's a big order. What makes Blind even more impressive is how quietly and intelligently the filmmaker manages this. He allows his heroine, Ingrid, (Ellen Dorrit Petersen, shown below) to narrate, bringing us into her life in her own quiet manner, and we're of course with her all the way. Poor girl.

The key, she tells us, lies is in remembering things correctly. Such as the dog -- a German Shepherd -- or a department store. And so she remembers both. But wait: What is the dog doing inside the department store? Oh, yes -- and the poor girl's husband: addicted to porn web sites and voyeurism! The first fifteen minutes of the film, in fact, are practically a voyeur's delight. What with all the porn we see, and that sleaze of a hubby.

And then there's the neighbor (Vera Vitali, above) -- a divorced mom with a young son to care for. Wait a minute: I'm wrong. She has a daughter. And about that husband: there are actually two of them, one portrayed by that excellent actor, Henrick Rafaelsen (of The Almost Man), below, left, and the other by Marius Kolbenstvedt, below right, and also first-rate. There is so much going on here, but Mr. Vogt juggles it all quite snazzily, with superb visual flair underpinned by psychological realism and performances that make the bizarre seem almost credible.

Fantasies abound -- of being watched, of being highly sexual, of being another person entirely -- and the movie offers a surprising amount of humor, too. (Does that device for sorting laundry when you're blind actually exist? If not, someone should invent it!) And because the characters here are cultured and au courant, there are references aplenty for us to latch onto (the director's cut of Mask figures in rather prominently).

Oddly, as the movie grows weirder and crazier, it also becomes clearer what is going on. This juxtaposition works with surprising brilliance, finally offering up a film that is about as original a look at the world of one very particular blind person as you are likely to encounter.

From KimStim and Fandor, Blind opens this Friday, September 4, in New York City (at the IFC Center) and next Friday, September 11, in Los Angeles (at the Cinefamily), simultaneous with its debut on Fandor.
However you choose to see it, do.