Tag Archives: mystery

Defending The Killing

The KillingOver the weekend I finished watching the first season of AMC’s series, The Killing. I’m about a year behind, as the second season recently completed, so I still have some catching up to do. In the meanwhile, I want to talk a little bit about why I like the show and why I disagree with the criticism of the series in its first year.

For those who don’t know, The Killing is based on a Danish television show called Forbrydelsen. Unfortunately Forbrydelsen is not available on DVD in the United States — though it can be had by other means, as you might expect — and so I can’t comment on how faithful of an adaptation The Killing is, but I can speak to The Killing as a standalone entity. I will try not to spoil anything involving the central mystery, though I do plan to talk about a couple of plot points, so if you haven’t seen the show, but want to, I suggest you not read on unless that sort of thing doesn’t bother you.

Forbrydelsen was a huge hit in its native country and during its first season The Killing averaged about two million viewers an episode which by network standards isn’t great, but is respectable in the realm of original cable programming. The Killing actually outdrew Mad Men, AMC’s flagship show, so clearly there was something about The Killing that people responded to. The show is about a murder and its investigation, the familiar beats of a television procedural paced out over many episodes, thus allowing for more false starts and dead ends and general mystery-type stuff. It also allows for us to get to know its main characters better, which is a plus for me.

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[REVIEW] Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows

Sherlock Holmes: A Game of ShadowsIt’s probably pretty safe to say that 2009′s Sherlock Holmes was something of a delightful surprise for most people. A few critics had unkind things to say about it, but by and large the reception to this reimagining of the Sherlock Holmes character was positive. I thought it was terrific, and when a sequel was announced I was quite pleased.

I think what interests me most about the negative aspects of the Sherlock Holmes reaction was how self-described purists of the character took issue with its portrayal of the master detective as a sometimes slovenly, two-fisted fighter who also happens to be a super-genius. Interestingly enough, there’s not much in the film’s take on Holmes that’s different from what Sir Arthur Conan Doyle wrote. We know from the literature that Sherlock Holmes was a habitual drug user, was only happy when he was working a case and was able to throw down with the best of them if the need arose. Maybe Holmes as written didn’t lay the smack down with the regularity as Sherlock Holmes depicted, but he did beat the hell out of Professor Moriarty at Reichenbach Falls, just to name one incident.

Detractors of the first film also don’t give enough credit to the performances of the leads, Robert Downey, Jr. and Jude Law. Downey in particular is spectacular in the role of Holmes, bringing a real sense of grounded, good-humored character to what can be a very tweedy part. I love Basil Rathbone as Sherlock Holmes, but I think Downey may actually come close edging out Rathbone for the title. Jude Law also got to shine in a refigured Watson role that made a good deal more sense than Nigel Bruce’s buffoon — though I like that, too — given that Watson was supposed to be a decorated veteran with combat experience. Add to this some clever turns by supporting cast members and inspired direction by Guy Ritchie and you have something very special. Of course you can always read my review of the original if you want more detail, though I tended to write much shorter reviews back in 2010 than I do now.

So where do we go from here? Onward to the sequel!

If you want to stop reading after this sentence, you can, because I will sum up the next 600 words for you thusly: if you liked Sherlock Holmes, you’re going to like Sherlock Holmes: A Game of Shadows. Enough said, really, though I will say more.

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[REVIEW] The Thin Man

The Thin ManI feel like my filmic education is incomplete when I haven’t seen a movie like The Thin Man. When it comes to horror and comedy films of the ’30s and ’40s (and some of the ’50s), I have a fairly extensive knowledge thanks to repeated airings of these pictures on Sunday afternoons in my hometown during my childhood. Whole generations have come up since then who have no idea about movies from that era. Ask me about Ma and Pa Kettle sometime and I’ll give you an earful. Mention Ma and Pa Kettle to someone in their 20s and you’ll get a blank stare. Heck, ask someone in their 30s and you’ll likely get the same response. We lose touch with the pop culture of yesteryear the further we get from it and that’s kind of sad.

Not everything that was made a long time ago is a heartbreaking work of staggering genius. Just like today, Hollywood put out a lot of junk relative to the amount of good stuff and things that were popular in the ’30s, like The Thin Man, rub shoulders with other pop-culture artifacts that haven’t aged well at all. There is something timeless about a good movie, though, and that’s why something from 1934 can still speak to us with a fresh voice after the stars and the director and the writer and everyone else involved in the film are long dead.

In case it isn’t obvious by now, I liked The Thin Man. The first of six(!) movies about socialite detectives Nick and Nora Charles — and their wire-haired terrier, Asta, let us not forget — The Thin Man is a charming, breezy mystery story with standout performances, sharp comedic elements and a smart plot. While it does flirt with cliché at the very end — “Someone in this room is a murderer!” — that is barely a dent in what is an excellent bit of moviemaking.

Based on a novel by Dashiell Hammet that I sadly have not read, The Thin Man concerns itself with the sleuthing of the aforementioned Nick and Nora Charles. Nick, played with just the right amount of glibness by William Powell, is a former police detective who married extremely well. Nora (Myrna Loy), his wife, inherited a great deal of money, property and business from her late father and has no problem supporting her husband in a life that includes fancy hotel suites, parties and lots and lots of booze. One thing that The Thin Man has a lot of: drinking. There’s so much drinking that it’s part of the joke, with Nick charging up with alcohol while he’s still in his pajamas in the morning and Nora not far behind him. You will likely never see such a celebration of adult beverages as you get in The Thin Man unless, as I assume, the joke continues into the many sequels.

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[REVIEW] The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)

The Hound of the Baskervilles (1959)Considering that I like the character of Sherlock Holmes so much, it may come as some surprise that I’ve never read a word of Sir Arthur Conan Doyle’s original stories. My first, and most extensive, contact with Sherlock Holmes comes from the films starring Basil Rathbone as the world’s greatest detective and Nigel Bruce as Dr. Watson. I’m aware that the performances these two gave, and the stories they were involved in, varied (sometimes greatly) from the source material, but I like them all the same.

Because I’m so familiar with the Basil Rathbone versions, it’s always interesting when I get to see another actor’s take on Holmes and another set of filmmakers’ approach to the same basic material. Consequently, when the Hammer Films version of The Hound of the Baskervilles aired on MGM HD — an almost, but not quite, variation on Turner Classic Movies — I jumped at the chance. I happen to have a fondness for Hammer productions, so this was a two-fer.

Hammer is known primarily for its horror output (all those Dracula movies foremost among them), so The Hound of the Baskervilles is something different. It still has a quasi-Gothic feel to it — it takes place primarily in a manor house on a moor, after all — so it’s not as divergent from Hammer’s usual product as all that, but it lacks any supernatural elements and is, basically, a straight-up Sherlock Holmes movie with a few Hammer touches.

The Hound of the Baskervilles has been made into a movie 24 times, so I’m going to lay odds you’ve seen at least one version at some time in your life. Accuracy to the source material varies, I’m sure, so arguments can be made about which is more faithful, but for me these kinds of things boil down to who’s playing Sherlock Holmes and Dr. Watson. I’ve already told you that I favor Basil Rathbone and Nigel Bruce, but in this film we have Peter Cushing and André Morell.

First a quick word about Peter Cushing. I have seen him in other things, most notably as various Van Helsings and Frankensteins in Hammer Films’ other type of movies. Despite all this, the very first thing I think of when I see Peter Cushing is Star Wars. I know it’s unfair to boil an actor down to a single role like that, and it’s equally unfair to Alec Guinness, who likewise had a long and varied career, but Peter Cushing equals Grand Moff Tarkin in my mind. As a result, he had a tough row to hoe when it came to winning me over as Holmes. It may surprise you that it didn’t take long.

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