Mr. Echolls, can I have a word?

The first thing you notice is how young she looks, how innocent. Kristen Bell is a beautiful woman and a superb actress, but I have to think the first thing Rob Thomas noticed in her is that she doesn't look capable of holding a taser, much less firing one. The men in the series are all more mature, tall and lean and surrounding her like wolves. They look at her and see prey, while we look and wonder if they're right. At the end, having watched sixty-four episodes and a movie, I'm still not sure.

I'm talking, of course, about Veronica Mars, the late and much lamented television show that ran for three seasons and the aforementioned, kickstartered movie. An old friend, someone whose tastes in these things run to mine, spent a solid ten minutes raving about the show into his beer while I pretended to listen. I should mention that this friend is six-foot three, a former college football star, and about as much of a prototypical dude as can be found walking this earth. How he became a marshmallow, I'm still not sure. Suppose you could call me one now as well. That's cool though. There are worse things. Now about the show….

I'm not one of those people who look down on CW television programming, of which Veronica Mars is absolutely a predecessor. That channel, for anyone who's paying attention, is on a giant hot streak (Arrow is one of the best things on TV). The shows do, however, have a certain pattern. Hot girls in thongs, attractively brooding boys with tragedy in their pasts, redemption arcs, soap, etc etc. VMars has every one of these qualities. But, it's all tempered by undercurrents of rage and anguish that run through Neptune like sewage. There's a lovely, wicked sense of humor in much of the dialogue, and the show is never afraid of melodrama, but when it goes dark, everything gets pitch-black in an awful hurry. Scenes of surfer frat-boys chasing girls are interspersed with investigations into rape, murder, possible incest, pedophilia and much more. As fun, funny, and wonderfully touching as this show is, what I find most admirable about it is that willingness to follow every story to a logical (internally logical, anyways) conclusion, no matter how horrifying it might be.

Consider a moment, late in the last episode the show would ever air. Logan Echolls, the bad-boy suitor played by Jason Dohring, has just seen a sex-tape involving the ex he still loves and her consummately useless new boyfriend. He's horrified, not by the sex but by the violation of her privacy. We can see him remembering the moment, two seasons prior, when Veronica told him she'd been raped. He snaps. Fists thud, blood drips, glass shatters, and so forth. That Logan targets the wrong person is regrettable but not nessecarily relevant. His anger is protective, not jealous. Soapy? Sure, but the scene is all about misunderstood motivations. Logan doesn't get Piz, and Veronica, sadly, doesn't get Logan. She thinks he's still the same lonely, furious, tortured little psycho. There's some of that, but the boy is becoming a man and she's too blind to see it. Logan isn't trying to possess her anymore. He knows it won't work. So, he fights to make her safe, knowing exactly what it will mean for their future. He's also wrong, but we don't get to find out about that for nine years.

It's a rare thing to find a work of noir produced in the past few decades that actually gets what noir is about. Rian Johnson managed it with Brick, but Rob Thomas did it first and better here. At the heart of the genre is a conviction that no, everything might not be ok. Modern fiction is rubberized. Bad things happen, but then there's a bounce and everything is back to normal, or better. Rob Thomas understands causality and consequences. Veronica is torn apart by the pain of losing Lilly, shredded by her rape, ground to dust by the ostracism of her father. All this before the series even begins. She's damaged, and too blind or too arrogant to see it. I'm fascinated by the way the series (and movie even more so) makes it clear the this life is terrible for Veronica. It endangers her life plenty of times, shatters relationships, and generally comes fairly close to costing her sanity. Maybe worst of all, it's stunting. Logan is a very different, and far better person at the end of S3. How much has our heroine changed?

I'd be remiss, in describing these character arcs, if I didn't touch on the acting. Some quick hits: Enrico Colantoni is the best thing about the show, and I'd happily watch him and Bell bounce off each other for fifty more movies. Francis Capra is unpolished, but plays sly and funny so brilliantly that I don't really care. Messr's Hansen, Dunn, and Daggs are all very acceptable and sometime truly great (Hansen in particular. Yes, really.). Harry Hamlin, that brilliant actors actor, is just simply fun to watch. One of my biggest quibbles with the show is that Aaron Echolls is probably the worst-written of all the major characters, but Hamlin is able to elevate the portrayal through raw charisma. And, of course, Tina Majorino and Amanda Seyfreid do beautiful things with two very different young women. I could go on, but these are the big ones. These are the characters who stick, the ones we miss when they're gone from the screen. Except, of course, for our two heros.

What to make of Jason Dohring? I don't know if you can call him a good actor. The ticks are too predictable. One too many shots of him staring into space, lip quivering, in place of actual recognizable emotion. But sometimes…. There's a genuine quicksilver wit in certain scenes, shot through with the rage that's his defining trait in the early going. Later, that anger turns to tenderness, fear. The ape recognizes mortality, hers much more than his own. In the scenes with Bell, crackling chemical energy. You watch and are perpetually amazed when they don't tear off each other's clothes. I wonder about Dohring. There's much of Brad Pitt in his performance, the young and sleekly dangerous version. I wonder why he hasn't been bigger. This is Logan's story as much as Veronica's, and the pain in his eyes in that cafeteria is something to behold.

But of course, there's pain everywhere in this world. So much failure. At least Logan has the sense to realize that, if he must fail as he trys to win Veronica back, he's going to give her a last gift before vanishing from her life. Veronica, you see, covers her ignorance and naivete with agression. She's so focused on controlling the world that she forgets to see what others can offer along the way. She's agressively unpleasant in that absurdly appealing way, striding dramatically through the endless California summer. That, really, is what's so special about the show. We want to hug Veronica and slap her all at the same time. She's messy. We see the very last scene of the final episode, as sad as it is with all her mistakes hurting the one man she's always been terrified of disappointing, and we just hope she'll learn. Spoiler alert: Doesn't happen.

The movie, made and set years later, is a very odd beast. Fan-funded on kickstarter, chock-full of every cameo and winking joke any Marshmallow could want, and so pitch-black I'm impressed Thomas actually had the balls to make it. The plot is fairly rote. Logan, dead girl, blackmail, murder. Etc. Rote and perfunctory. That doesn't matter. The movie is about an addict getting her first fix in a really long time, the rush hitting her veins along with the knowledge that she'll never, ever quit. And in case anyone thinks I'm reading in, just listen to Colantoni trying to reason his daughter back on that plane. The best moment is also the most telling, and it's exactly what you'd think. Logan and Veronica, speeding across a bridge, music blasting and lights flaring in the distance. Perfect. Too perfect. Too easy to fall back into it and never look up. That's where she goes wrong. So yes, the end of the film is exactly what everyone's always wanted. But it's not what anyone needs. Happy, yet tragic, just like life. Few creators would have had the courage to end things that way. Rob Thomas, take a bow.

The Counselor Will See You Now

What to make of Ridley Scott's nasty little bear-trap of an exploitation flick? It's a very beautiful movie, to be sure, all glowing sunsets and gleaming steel and endless horizons. The cast is as preposterously loaded (and overqualified) as any in recent memory. It features the screenwriting debut of the one and only Cormac McCarthy, a writer who, despite being somewhat overrated in this blogger's opinion, has earned his place among the luminaries of modern fiction. And yet…. And yet there's something missing.

Look, I'd never deny that McCarthy can string sentences together. At his best, there's a compelling, apocalyptic inevitability to the way his books unfold. I simply don't care for him as an author. Something about that nihilistic streak is just profoundly distasteful, but the man can write. I don't even find fault in the halting, ornate cadences of his dialogue being translated to the screen; The cast is good enough to overcome it, and it's fairly clear that we're watching a pitch-black parable rather than something meant to be taken as representative of reality. His words fit the diegetic world, which is about all you can ask. What I can wonder is the point of this film.

McCarthy seems to think he's saying something profound, even when I can't tell if he's saying anything at all. Is it that women can be every bit as cunning as men, and sometimes can manipulate situations using sex? Perhaps, but the sexual politics here are too muddled to carry a consistent message. Is it that smart men occasionally do stupid shit for which they're not remotely prepared? Again, yes, but that's pretty far from an insight. So why are we watching this particular story as it plays out, in fire and blood and unholy alloys? I honestly don't know.

McCarthy is an intriguing author, but what feels weighty on the page can be faintly absurd onscreen. He works best when translated by the perspectives of a director, or two, whose authorial voice is every bit as strong as his in the finished product. The Coens took No Country for Old Men in a different direction from the (very good, not great) book. That movie works because it's haunting, gorgeous, very funny in a coal-black way, and has much on its mind regarding the nature of greed and capitalism. This one is every bit as great a technical accomplishment as its predecessor, but the rambling monologues and portentous pronouncements go nowhere. Ruben Blades is one of the great character actors in cinema, and I'm always happy to hear him speak, but that last bit of dialogue could've been delivered in three words; "You're fucked, Counselor." Instead it stretches for minutes, all sound and fury, signifying nothing.

In a lot of ways, Michael Fassbender is the biggest problem with the film. Not that his performance is bad. It's actually much too good. The Counselor, as written, is an idiot. The first half of the film consists of a lot of people telling him not to do the thing he's contemplating. The second half is a lot of people telling him exactly how thoroughly he's buried himself. That, friends, is a very dumb character. Fassbender is too magnetic, too lethal, to ever be believable here. There's a certain razor-edged intensity to all his performances. This, though, with Ridley Scott shooting him like a Jaguar in one of those British villain commercials (all puns fully intended), is just plain wrong. I'd buy him in the Pitt role, or the Blades, or, Hell, swap him for Bardem and see what happens (it wouldn't be boring), but this doesn't work.

And now to you, Mr. Scott…. Ridley Scott is an odd one. He's made genuinely great films, truly awful films, and everything in between. His technical skill has, if anything, improved with age; Prometheus, for example, is a bad movie, but the negative reviews tend to ignore how f-ing gorgeous it is to look at. On the flispside, though, is the simple fact that his ear for dialogue, which was never good, has worsened dramatically. I suspect part of it is that, in his younger days, the studios tended to pair him with stronger writers who could temper some of his bad instincts. Now though, he's an industry legend, and his tendency towards a certain structural laziness is unchecked. On this film in particular, with the huge get of a screenwriter, he had no particular reason to pay attention to anything beyond shooting, at which he indisputably remains one of the very best.

And yes, The Counselor is fairly stunning visually. Metal gleams like sin, landscapes are vast and wild, and the hugely charismatic people striding across them look like Gods. Action, such as it is, is crisp and geometrically precise. This is also one of the most impeccably sound designed movies you'll ever hear. Notice, in a certain scene involving a gruesome type of necktie, the subliminally subtle rasping hum underneath various screams and profanities. That, of course, is the motor.

So what's missing? Still hard to say. This should be a great film. All the elements are neatly assembled. Actually, that might be it. There's something half-hearted about the whole thing. It's an exercise, not an eruption. Scott is too clinical, and McCarthy too damn long-winded. His speeches and digressions slow the film to a crawl. A lot of the actors are good but miscast (poor Cameron Diaz). Others are very good indeed but given too litlle to do. Yes, Mr. Pitt, we're looking at you (Quick digression of my own; Brad Pitt fascinates me onscreen. The force of his celebrity distracts from how great an actor the man really is. Yes, he's taken a lot of junky paycheck roles, usually in something big-budget that calls on him as a leading man. But go back and look at the character-actor parts. Notice the dangerous, I'm-the-smartest-motherfucker-here gleam in his eyes. You could swap him in for Fassbender in any movie and lose nothing in the switch.). It's weird to say about a movie this violent, but I feel like it's the safest, tamest possible version of the story. Remember that fables are often told by feeble old men sitting around campfires, remembering the days when they clashed like Gods.

Steroids! Lambos! Fireballs! Robots in Disguise!

Movie Gods, I have sinned. All the years, all those film studies classes, so much spent learning the intricacies of character, story, method acting, the visual language of film, all for naught. I have offended you, and I'm sorry. What is the crime? I like Michael Bay movies.

Ok, yes, the sentences above are a joke. The Godfather, now and forever, is my favorite movie. Character, story, and a certain sense of visual wit will always define the films I return to, year after year.  But…. But….. A few weeks ago I wrote a not-particularly-impassioned defense of Bay's latest, smallest feature, Pain and Gain. Basically, I thought it was a lot better than it needed to be, that the actors were having fun, and that Bay's signature - ahem - style was in service of the story instead of replacing it. Recently, I decided to take a look at his larger career, partly because I'm deeply twisted, partly to make sure my childhood epilepsy really has gone away, and mostly out of a certain odd curiosity. And, to my surprise, the movies really are worthy of a closer examination. So…..

We go to movies for a lot of reasons. Part of it, undoubtedly, is to observe gifted artists in action. Part is to have our minds enriched and our perspectives broadened. Remember, though, that the first cinematic image was of a speeding freight train. It was a thriller, designed to bring a certain spark of adrenalized tension into the audience. There's a lengthy, proud, artistically valid legacy of films seeking to achieve exactly that effect. Pure entertainment, delivered maximally to a perpetually juvenile part of our brains. In the 21st century, this is called a popcorn movie, and Michael Bay is among its foremost practitioners.

He's attained that status mostly through the act of being more. The movies exist in a kind of unfettered zen state, translated with shocking immediacy from Generalissimo Bay's brain. Revenge of the Fallen, in particular, is a really rather remarkable example of Id writ large. It's terrible by every concievable measure, but that's beside the point. The only sin, in Bay-world, is boredom. Revenge of the Fallen barely has a script, but it's never boring to look at. Bay's palette, visual craft, and general hyperactivity make every frame worthy of eyeballing, even as the more mature part of your brain processes the idiocy of the dialogue but oh look there's a model pracing upstairs with her ass hanging out. Etc etc.

Perhaps more importantly, there's a big part of me that thinks Bay is completely in on the joke. He's made fortunes, for himself and others, by becoming a laughingstock in the film critic community. The movies have a cheerful, self-aware ridiculousness. Consider, in Pain and Gain, that the dimwit body-builders essentially trust their maximalism to deliver the American dream. No further action is required on their part, simply attainment of that blessed state of being worthy. Is this starting to sound like anyone?