Master of None Review

Series created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang

Starring Aziz Ansari, Noel Wells, Kelvin Yu, Lena Waithe and Eric Wareheim

Age difference between romantic leads: 4 years. Boom.

Over the weekend I finished the series Master of None with my wife. It didn't take long to get through the series, seeing as there were only 10 episodes and it's an easy watch, but was shocked to see, upon a little further reading, that loads of people loved it. LOVED it. On Rotten Tomatoes, the review aggregator site, it holds an approval rating of 100%, and many critics have been superlative with praise. Indeed Jaime Lutz from TimeOut New York even called it the best TV show of 2015. I felt like I was getting a similar sense to when I watched Batman v Superman, disliked it, and yet found plenty of other people knocking around on the internet who declared it the greatest work of fiction since The Bible. And whilst I certainly didn't dislike Master of None, I didn't love it, and the disparity in opinion between myself and the critics gave me pause for thought.

As for the show, I thought it was good. The writing was sharp, if at times tonally uneven, mostly funny when it tried to be, and serious when it didn't. It looked gorgeous, providing a deliciously filmic look throughout. But this is a show let down by the performances. I was a big fan of Lena Waithe, and Eric Wareheim provided an enjoyably offbeat energy in his role as the weird friend. The rest of the performances left a lot to be desired, especially Aziz Ansari as Dev, the show's protagonist. I really like Ansari in Parks and Recreation as the shallow, pampered man-boy Tom Haverford, where his appeal lay in how ridiculous the character was. He didn't need nuance, he was playing it big and funny. In Master of None, his character is far more down to earth, much of the time playing the straight man to crazier side characters. He is the lead, which means the emotional heft of the series has to be carried by him. He is our focal point, and the reason we'll keep watching. Now maybe I've shot myself in the foot with that last argument, because I did keep watching, but I just do not think he is a good enough actor to carry a series like this. He can pull off the over the top, heightened dialogue that sounds lovely even if people don't talk like that in real life. I compare it to Richard Curtis dialogue, and whilst I think there are probably more accurate comparisons to be made out there, it's the same insofar as it's unrealistic but fun to listen to. It's what we wish we sounded like in real life, where everyone is verbose, and every other line is the setup to a joke that is always delivered. And the sections of the series that had that kind of dialogue, Ansari does very well. He inherently has a version of the boyish charm and energy that we saw in Parks and Rec. But for the more realistic dialogue, his delivery came off as stilted and forced, taking away the impact that the well-written dialogue deserved. Noel Wells, who plays his girlfriend through most of the episodes, has a similar problem. Both are comedians, with Ansari starting his career as a stand up and Wells in sketch comedy, and neither seem comfortable enough portraying real characters in real situations.

However, I loved the format of the show, and thought it demonstrated a real step forward in what serial comedy can be in the post-TV, streaming world. Each episode, although following on from each other, can be easily seen as a single 30 minute short film around a single story. There are occasional diversions in some episodes, but on the whole this is a show that focuses entirely on its central protagonist, and follows him exclusively through a single story strand. Side characters get very little, unless they're going on Dev's journey with him. That's unusual in sitcoms, and it works really nicely here. Similarly, the show doesn't feel too beholden to comedy. Obviously it's aim is to entertain and make its audience laugh, but if there is a serious point it wants to make, even to close out an episode, it isn't afraid to shun comedy altogether. Indeed Episode 9 has very little comedy in it at all, but shows a realistic portrayal of a non-TV-perfect relationship. It also exists as the strongest example of the show's willingness to play with the form and structure of traditional TV episodes. It takes place entirely in a single apartment, but rather than being a traditional bottle episode (a trope of TV shows where an episode is all set in a single set, often in 'real time', sometimes for budgetary reasons) the episode is comprised of a number of short scenes over the course of several months. It's different, and it's refreshing.

I think I'm being harsher on the show that I should be, and probably making it seem like I liked it less than I did. I thought it was a great show that had issues. But this morning I saw that it had won a Peabody Award, and I felt obliged to provide a dissenting voice to the almost unanimous and rapturous praise the show is receiving. Maybe that's a bad instinct, to want to criticise something more if everyone else loves it, but it's an instinct I have.

There has been a lot of talk about the show with regard to the buzzword of film and TV at the moment: diversity. Dev is Indian American. His group of friends is comprised of a Vietnamese American guy, a black lesbian and a white guy. It is something that is poked fun of in the show directly, but a TV show with multiple ethnicities in the main group of friends is unusual, to the point of being unprecedented. The situation didn't seem unusual to me, but as a white person it's possible that's because I've always had the luxury of seeing people with my skin tone in virtually every sitcom ever. I absolutely wouldn't go as far as to say that the success the show is receiving is down to the diversity of its cast, but the positive attention it's been receiving as a result has certainly, in this day and age, done nothing to harm it.

I think the awards and acclaim has more to do with the relatively low standard of new comedy shows at the moment than anything else. It's a good show, no doubt (although with a truly bizarre and inexplicable ending) but by no means a classic. Hopefully we'll be able to look back at the show in years to come however and hold it up as a pioneer of diversity, in terms of race, perspective, and narrative structure.

3 things out of 5

Steve Jobs Review

Directed by Danny Boyle

Written by Aaron Sorkin

Starring Michael Fassbender, Kate Winslet, Jeff Daniels, Seth Rogen, Katherine Waterston

Age difference between romantic leads: Even though they're not exactly romantic in the film, the only pairing are 3 years apart. Success!

Making a movie is all about intention. What do you hope to achieve by making this film? What do you want your audience to come away from your film thinking or feeling? You make an action film to thrill an audience, a comedy to make them laugh, and a documentary to teach people about a new area of life to be depressed about. When that movie is a biopic, the task becomes trickier still. You have the simple story that the director wants to tell, but then often there will be extra bits and pieces in there, things from that person's life that don't contribute to the central narrative and will simply be there because the director wants to show another aspect of the real life person's character. And then you get a film like Steve Jobs, which isn't really interested in telling a story at all.

This film is a peculiar beast. It centres on three separate product launches at Apple, across different time periods. Backstage, before the products are launched, Steve Jobs interacts with his ex-girlfriend, his daughter, employees, the co-founder of Apple, a marketing executive and the CEO of Apple. The stories that carry us through the film are flimsy for the most part, and the film ends up being 3 short plays, rather than 1 film. Had the script been written by anyone other than Aaron Sorkin (famed writer of the West Wing and most other things where people have long conversations whilst walking down corridors) I'm confident it never would have been made, both due to his stature and the trust and respect people have for him, and the fact that the dialogue is very well written and manages to keep the film entertaining.

The central performance of Michael Fassbender is terrific, giving us a somewhat sympathetic, but ultimately unlikeable character study of a man with iron-clad confidence in his ideas and visions. It's difficult to fault him for the work that he has done and the brand that he created, but it also adds credence to the belief that it's very difficult to be incredibly successful in business and not a dick. Seth Rogen and Jeff Daniels do well in parts that are comfortably within their respective comfort zones, and the often impressive Katherine Waterston manages to be unsympathetic whilst trying to get fair treatment for her daughter, without resorting to being a complete cartoon villain, which is not an easy task at all. Kate Winslet won a Golden Globe for her performance, which is... good without being spectacular, and features a Polish accent of varying severity (which is a small niggle, but one that I always find difficult to overlook).

Overall, this is a film that filmmaking teachers will be annoyed with, in that it breaks a lot of screenwriting rules, but still manages to be gripping. If the intention of the film was to tell the story of Steve Jobs' life, it fails. If the intention was to create a profile of the man, it succeeds admirably, and does so by being a testament to the power of great dialogue.

4 things out of 5

Kinky Boots review

Directed by Julian Jarrold

Written by Geoff Deane and Tim Firth

Starring, Chiwetel Ejiofor and Joel Edgerton

Age difference between romantic leads: 7 years initially, then 2 years. 2 sets of characters fitting within the 7 year limit? Huzzah! What a movie!

There's a sub-genre of movies that this movie falls into, that will tell you fairly quickly whether you'll like it or not.

-Group of people in bad situation (could be a failing business, failing sports team, group of people who desperately need money)

-One member of the group suggests a risky and unusual solution

-The rest of the group is opposed to the idea, being stuck in their ways

-It starts to go well, but then something terrible happens, setting the whole thing back

-Over time, the group have grown to embrace the new idea, rally round together, and save the day

Now I've looked on  TVTropes and I can't find a name for this trope but it's the case for Calendar Girls, Moneyball, probably others, and this film, Kinky Boots.

The struggling group is a men's shoe factory, the crazy idea is making boots for drag queens and transexuals, and if you're thinking in your head that there's probably a really butch guy working in the factory who has a big problem with the whole endeavour and then ultimately is the one that convinces everyone else that it's a good idea after a change of heart, you'd be goddamned right. I've read other reviews for this film that decry it's 'stereotypical brit-com' formula, but I disagree. Not that it has a predictable story, because it definitely does, but when that predictable story is done well, it can't help but make you feel happy. Along with watching two characters fall in love, or seeing a protagonist's heretofore unknown master plan be revealed to a befuddled villain, a group of people coming around to help out a previously downtrodden hero is one of my favourite things to watch in a film.

It helps that throughout the film Chiwetel Ejiofor is a fantastic presence. Funny, bold, outrageous, but showing enough vulnerability to make him a proper character and not just a cartoon tranny, he improves every scene he's in. Sarah-Jane Potts is another lovely presence, providing sweet positivity to our hero in the face of criticism from others. The love story crafted is believable, and cute, and super fun to watch. The only weak link is the lead. Joel Edgerton is an American, and this is not an American film. Now there are times when that isn't a problem, because some Americans can do breathtaking English accents. Joel is not one of them. It's not terrible, but it's not perfect either, and accents need to be perfect, to avoid taking you out of a story. And he has a tough job as well, with this being set Oop North (or the Midlands, as is pointed out in one of the best lines of the film) his accent should be a Northampton accent, and not a generic 'English'. That's a mild complaint though, and the rest of his performance is strong, showing boyish vulnerability, and a lack of confidence in what he's doing, which transforms into a desperation to save his company and his people from redundancy.

Overall, this is a film I enjoyed thoroughly, but would probably fall into the guilty pleasure category, rather than bona fide classic. But for me, the result is the same:

4 things out of 5

Are You There? Review

Written and directed by Matthew Wiener

Starring Owen Wilson, Zack Galifianakis and Amy Poehler

Age difference between romantic leads: Owen Wilson to Laura Ramsay is 14 years, and Ramsay to Zack Galifianakis is 13 years. So super bad on both counts. But it's kind of part of the plot, ish.

There was a version of the poster that I could only find in a tiny size that literally had the three faces of the above people, the title of the movie and the words 'Amy. Owen. Zack.' on it, and that really sums up why I watched this. 3 likeable actors, all having made lots of wonderful stuff before. Adding to the calibre is that this is written and directed by the chap who created Mad Men and wrote some of The Sopranos. Safe hands, right?

Do not be fooled. Do not enter forth. Save yourself.

This is a bad film. It is a film that pays little heed to story, or structure, or logical character developments. It is a film that has no interest in entertaining you.

So we've got Owen Wilson, who is a stoner layabout and yet also a womanizer and successful weather man. He is selfish, which is great, because it's enjoyable to watch a flawed character redeem themselves. He has a kooky best friend, played by Zack Galifianakis, who grows weed and has rich parents. The dad dies, and they go to his funeral, where they meet Zack's sister, played by Amy Poehler, who is uptight and controlling and doesn't like Owen Wilson. We also meet their dad's widow: a young, attractive hippy (who is unnecessarily naked for a lot of the film). And then at the Will reading, the late father leaves his entire estate, including a farm shop and farm, to Zack. Amy Poehler isn't happy, and vows to contest the Will. So you've got some strong characters set up, an interesting situation where Amy Poehler is the bad guy trying to wrestle the farm away from the zany Zack, who'll need his friend Owen to help him learn to be a responsible grown up to keep control of the farm. I'm on board.

But then there's a court hearing where the judge rules in Zack's favour, instantly killing that story, and we move on to other, weird developments, a bullshit love triangle between a man, his best friend and his dad's widow (yep), and the film just dries up into a flat, unfunny, uninteresting whimper. It annoyed me, how little the film seemed to make sense. You should never be halfway through a film's running time and be thinking 'what's the story here? What story am I being told?' It kind of makes some nice points about friendship, but doesn't commit to them enough to make them stick. It's possible that because Matthew Wiener comes from more of a TV background, that writing a film didn't come easy. It almost seems like a group of TV episodes stuck together, which doth not a good film make.

I always watch films to the end unless I'm falling asleep, but I was really tempted to give up on this one. My wife did, and I can't blame her at all. And you should give up on it as well! Give up before you even try! I only wish the leads, all of whom I like, had done that as well. I give this film:

1 thing out of 5

Preview Review: Dr Strange

A Dr Strange movie is one of those ideas that mid 90s Dan, or even mid 00s Dan would have scoffed at. This is a character who hadn't had a solo comic series since 1996 (aside from the one that started last year, once the movie was already well into production), so even the comic writers didn't have enough of a solo story for him. But this is the world we're living in now, where Dr Strange gets his own movie. Why not? Well, I'll get onto that, but for now, let's talk the trailer.

What we learn from the trailer is that Dr Stephen Strange (yep, not a title, that's his actual name) gets into what looks to be a car accident and is very badly knocked about. We see pins and casts on his arms that make it all look very nasty. Rather than go to regular doctors, he seeks help from elsewhere. Enter The Ancient One, played here by a bald Tilda Swinton. It's unclear how they find each other, as Strange states in the trailer that he's not exactly a believer in belief, but ultimately she shows him enough wacky stuff that he begs her to teach him. And teach him she shall. There are also brief looks at Mads Mikkelsen looking scary and Chiwetel Ejiofor (playing Baron Mordo) looking badass. The Far East sections have a strong Batman Begins vibe about them, which I like, because anything that reminds me of Batman Begins is a good thing. The comic book stories of Dr Strange (originally in an anthology comic called Strange Tales, although not named after our Steve), originally started in the 60s, had a mad, psychedelic vibe to it, with Spiderman co-creator Steve Ditko going nuts with crazy imagery and hellish mindscapes, and it seems as though the filmmakers are taking a lot of inspiration from these comics, with some Inception-style perversions of physics taking place.

Everything I see, I like, even Benedict Cumberbatch's deep, growly, House MD-esque American accent. The imagery is good, the setup is sparse but says enough, and the actors involved are all capable of wonderful things. I'm hoping the resulting film will be a superhero film told through a very trippy, metaphysical lens, tying into Marvel's tradition of giving a slightly different version of the tried and tested superhero film in each of its cinematic outings. It'll be very interesting to see how they handle magic, because this is a universe that so far has been staunchly 'real', with powers all coming from science, even if the technology is so far advanced that it appears to us to be magic. One of the big issues with Dr Strange in the comics, and one of the things that has made stories with him at the centre difficult to tell, is the unquantifiable nature of magic. It's difficult to convincingly put a character in perilous situations when they could feasibly come up with some kind of spell or rune or mystical sword that can solve the problem instantly.

However, none of my issues are with the trailer, which keeps it's storytelling brief, it's imagery exotic, and doesn't seem to have too much footage (if any) from the latter part of the movie. I'm sure that before the November release date we'll have at least one more, fuller trailer, but I'm hopeful I can remain strong to go into the cinema with only the information I have at this moment to guide me. Which means I have to say...

Thank you, preview!