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Friday, May 27, 2016

Cosmopolis (2012)

Director: David Cronenberg
Writer(s): Cronenberg, based on the novel by Don DeLillo
Starring: Robert Pattinson, Juliette Binoche, Sarah Gadon, and Paul Giamatti




My initial response to sitting through David Cronenberg’s Cosmopolis was so overwhelming, that I had to sleep on it and let it marinate in my mind before I could even attempt to write about it. That plan backfired when, by the next morning, I had very nearly forgotten that I’d even seen it. Ladies and gentleman, this is a movie so extraordinarily dull that my initial disinterest eventually grew into a seething hatred, and then eventually rounded the corner into actual pity. That’s right, by the end of the movie I just felt sorry for everyone involved, to the point that I literally could not hate it. I cannot remember the last time that happened to me during a movie.

Now keep in mind, I don’t like it at all; not even a little bit. If ever there was a movie created to serve only as background noise, this would be it. It’s a movie about a completely uninteresting billionaire (Robert Pattinson) who merely wants to go across town to his longtime barber just to get his haircut. Only the president happens to be in town, and so what would normally be a mercilessly quick film is elongated to agonizing lengths.

Anyway, that’s the whole plot, but whereas that might sound misleadingly exciting, let me assure you it is not. All that happens is that he talks to people; lots of people, one right after another. Most of the conversations take place from within his own limo, as random characters climb in, converse with him, and then leave. Occasionally, we’re treated to discussions that take place out on a street, or in bookstores, just to break up the monotony…if we’re really lucky (and “lucky” isn’t the right word), we may even get to experience the occasional sex scene, which seem to be inserted at calculated intervals to ensure the viewer doesn’t fall asleep (although they are so awkwardly choreographed that they still manage to be unarousing).

The dialogue is painfully stilted, with a couple lines that made me burst out in a chuckle; how Pattinson managed to deliver any of them without laughing should automatically make him a national hero, but after starring in the Twilight franchise, he probably thought this writing was of a higher quality. As much as I’d love to crucify his performance, which is pretty artificial, it sadly becomes evident that he is merely doing what Cronenberg asked him to do; that’s merely to have all the charm and charisma of a third-rate thespian. But that fits well with the writing, which seems to equate constant rambling monologues with Shakespeare, as long as said speech is teeming with big words.

Yeah, I get it, the whole movie is supposedly a satirical send-up of the soullessness of the ultra-rich; just because it has a point to make doesn’t mean it makes it. If that’s the basic gist of this whole affair, well then this is like turning an idea into a six-panel cartoon, when one would have sufficed.

The worst thing about it is that the name “Cronenberg” is attached; while many of his movies contain philosophical dialogue (and usually blend it with graphic images of bodily mutations), this is the first one that seems to solely be driven by it. It’s every bit as repulsive and unnecessary as it sounds. You will know within ten minutes whether this is the movie for you, and if you’re not engaged by then, stop watching, because you’ve experienced everything there is to experience.

Maybe I’m just too stupid to fully understand it, or maybe I simply didn’t immerse myself into the film as much as I should have. On the other hand, maybe Cosmopolis’ biggest failure is that its simply not nearly as smart as it thinks it is.

RECAP: If ever there was a movie capable of reducing an audience's intelligence, it would be Cosmopolis. It looks good, much in the way all Hollywood pictures should given their ample budgets, but its problem is that it has nothing to say, something it does for nearly two hours. It’s an empty film, almost un-cinematic in that it strives to remove any entertainment out of the art form, instead replacing it with a cold dullness that’s every bit as uninteresting as the characters it generalizes. If you’re still not sure this movie is right for you, and don’t want to waste time, watch the first ten minutes—if you’re not impressed by that point, you won’t be at all.

RATING: 2/10.

TRAILER



Friday, May 20, 2016

Turbo Kid (2015)

Director: François Simard, Anouk Whissell, and Yoann-Karl Whissell
Writer(s): Simard, Whissell, and Whissell (sounds like a law firm!)
Starring: Munro Chambers, Laurence Leboeuf, Michael Ironside, and Edwin Wright




Let me preface this review by stating that I have a soft spot for low-budget films. They’ve always functioned as the antithesis to Hollywood blockbusters, those stale, watered-down, half-baked cinematic “experiences” that are manufactured only to put people in theater seats. Thankfully, I outgrew those in my teen years, when I realized that forced jokes, superhero movies, and computer-generated effects just didn’t do anything for me. They still don’t.

But while such independent films have always been labors of love, the stakes feel even higher now, when mainstream movie budgets continue to rise at alarming rates (in between talking heads crying foul over movie pirating that threatens to dismantle the movie and music industries…something about that doesn’t add up). In other words, as much as I loved Peter Jackson before he grew into the record-breaking creator of the Lord of the Rings trilogy (a series I succumbed to halfway through out of pure boredom), I enjoy them even more now. One would argue that the Internet has soured the market, and indeed a quick search on YouTube can yield thousands of low-budget shows and movies and clips--things that should never have been made (or at the very least, uploaded). But to me, that just makes finding a good little low-budgeter all the more rewarding.

Enter Turbo Kid, an ingenious ode to kids and action movies from the ‘80s. How is it that a movie constrained to such a small budget has infinite more imagination than almost all Hollywood films, which actually have the monetary means to create anything that they could possibly envision? This movie was clearly a labor of love, created by a group of three directors (two guys and a gal, all of whom also appear in bit parts throughout the movie) who work well within their budgetary limitations, delivering an exciting, surprisingly bloody, and comedic trip through an apocalyptic wasteland.

Munro Chambers plays a character known simply as “The Kid”, a boy whose parents are killed by an evil water tycoon, unsubtly referred to as Zeus (Michael Ironside). You see, in this futuristic society, all of the Earth’s water is tainted, with Zeus controlling all of the freshwater supplies, and when he discovers that The Kid’s parents were hording a stash for themselves, he didn’t take too kindly to that. And so The Kid has spent the last decade of his life wandering the barren landscape, collecting trinkets that he finds, and trading them in for necessary survival supplies with Bagu (Romano Orzari), a local shop owner.

Life gets pretty lonely for The Kid, at least until he meets the acquaintance of Apple, an endlessly cheery gal who proceeds to follow him around, courtesy of a tracking bracelet she places on him. At first, The Kid is off-put by her creepy charms, but of course he is eventually won over…just in time for her to be kidnapped by one of Zeus’ henchmen. Zeus isn’t just content with having the monopoly on clean water, and an endless supply of wealth—he also enjoys staging Coliseum-style fights between commoners and his own henchmen, fights that don’t end well for the commoners.

Meanwhile, The Kid stumbles on a secret underground lair where he finds the costume to Turbo Rider, his favorite comic book character. A playing video informs him that he is the last hope for humanity, and must don the outfit to continue Turbo Rider’s fight against evil. He accepts the mission and shows up to Zeus’ castle, where he must fight his way through several of his henchmen in order to save the girl that he loves.

One of the critiques that I’ve read is that the film never puts Turbo Kid in any apparent, immediate danger, which lessens the impact of excitement for the viewer, but I disagree wholeheartedly. The entire movie has a quality of “dreaminess” to it, and so I take it as a film that more or less takes place inside the head of a child. What kid hasn’t dreamed of being a superhero at one point or another, or dreamed of saving the life a girl that’s rejected him, if only to win her heart? I’ve never been much of a superhero fan, but even I would daydream about scenarios like that during elementary school (and probably even through high school). I can also assure you in those instances, the bad guys never even came close to winning. While this viewpoint is never directly stated, or really even implied, just the whole superhero subgenre itself feeds into this mindset, and relies upon this level of escapism. Maybe I’m putting words in its mouth that weren’t actually there, but regardless of the danger a main character is put in in a film like this, we already know he’s going to make it out alive anyway, which kind of lessens the argument.

Anyway, despite its lack of funds, this is a movie that looks straight out of the ‘80s, from the hilariously cheesy Turbo Glove blaster effect, to the main title screen, to bicycles as every character’s main mode of transportation, and even on down to the pitch-perfect, synth-heavy score. We can see its budget lovingly rendered on the screen, in the form of delightfully cheesy CGI effects (of which I am hugely against, but which really work in this kind of intentionally-campy romp), and ridiculously bloody deaths that recall the arterial sprays of the Lone Wolf and Cub series of samurai films.

Yes, despite its name, this is not a film for children. But it is a film for adults who may be children at heart, and who may be disillusioned by the recent spate of unending Hollywood superhero extravaganzas. Above all, despite the practical effects and gallons of gore, Turbo Kid is also a movie with a surprising amount of heart, something the mainstream won’t be able to touch until they either allow quality writers to write their films, or invest billions of dollars in a technological advancement that would allow the addition of synthetic feelings and emotions in their films. Sadly, of those two scenarios, it’s the second one that has the greater odds of coming true.

RECAP: This loving homage to kid and action films from the ‘80s features a shocking amount of blood, and a few slapstick bits of gore humor that wouldn’t feel out of place in an old Peter Jackson film. But grue aside, this film also has a freewheeling, wacky inventiveness and confident go-for-broke style that transcends its budgetary constraints. There’s also a surprising amount of heart that manages to be charming, without ever feeling strained. It’s not perfect—there are some slight pacing issues throughout, with the main story taking a little too long to get going—but for those that grew up on ‘80s kids films, you owe it to yourself to track this one down.

RATING: 8/10

TRAILER



Wednesday, May 18, 2016

Series Outro: Cop Rock



Well it might have only been eleven episodes, but “Cop Rock” felt like an incredibly-long journey: it took me over two months to watch them, with up to three weeks between some episodes because--and this is neither a joke, nor hyperbole--I was dreading it. There were times when I literally had to force myself to sit down to a viewing, just so I could make some forward progress. Seriously. Add to that the startling reality that all the episodes that filled my heart with fear were the first few (and by “few“ I mean half-dozen, which is more than half the total number), and it’s no wonder that it was axed when it was, after just eleven episodes.

I even mentioned in an episode review that, as the season wore on and I found myself warming up to the idea, I couldn’t tell if the show was legitimately getting better, or if it had just pummeled me into a reluctant acceptance of its idea. Aside from the last two episodes, which are actually very good (especially in comparison to the rest), this is a critique that I still maintain. Having a standard set of five songs per episode, which according to an Entertainment Weekly article from before its premiere, take up a whopping 12 minutes (out of approximately 47) per episode; about a quarter of an episode's total allotted length, didn't give much time to pursue actual storylines. It certainly gave the songwriters a legitimate enough workload to earn their paychecks, but the sheer number forced the music department into taking some real risks, in terms of the subjects it deemed worthy of being the focus of a song. It is no doubt thanks to the five-song standard that we were treated to such misguided duds as “Baby Merchant”, in which a man who sells babies (?) assures a couple (who happen to be undercover cops) that he will get them exactly the kind of baby they ask for; and “Lament of the Line-up Guys”, an aptly-titled, yet dud of a song in which a line-up of Latino men rap about being targeted by the police simply because of their race. I could keep going on and on, like the ditty with Chief Kendrick singing a country-themed tune while riding through the streets on a horse, or the many sung from the perspectives of pathetic characters, but I realized that I have just opened a can of worms, because the bad songs vastly outnumber the good ones.

"LAMENT OF THE LINE UP GUYS"

At the same time, the inclusion of musical numbers becomes a catch 22, because removing them would simply leave your standard cop show. While much of the blame can be laid at the feet of co-creator Stephen Bochco (yeah, THAT Stephen Bochco, he of “Hill Street Blues” fame before, and “NYPD Blue” fame ahead), I have to commend him for at least trying something new with the endless goodwill he had built up from the network. He could have just rested on his laurels and presented another straightforward police procedural, which I guess history maintains he still should have done, but he didn’t, and instead used his pull to create something that no one else would have been able to get greenlit. The one thing I learned that makes me respect Mr. Bochco even more, despite my overall dislike of this series, is his absolute dedication to the material: he helped write or co-write every episode (except for, curiously, the final one), and even balked at the network’s offer to continue the show without the musical numbers, something that almost certainly would have bought it at least one more season. Instead, he chose to take the high road, refused to sell out his co-vision (he created the series along with William M. Finkelstein), and watched it sputter and fail to attract an audience to the bitter end. Granted, an argument could be made that his clout was so great, he didn’t need to rely on its success to know that he would be afforded another chance (so admired was he that CBS offered him a job as president of the entertainment division; had he not turned it down, he would have been in charge of every show on the network, with the exception of news and sports), but even by that logic, this show couldn’t have possibly been made by anyone else. The network only attempted it given Bochcho’s name being attached to it, and even before the first episode aired, acknowledged that it was a huge risk. So any way you dice it, this is a show that lived and died on its own terms.

"I ACHE TO HEAR THE DOHGIES SING AGAIN"




I don’t watch much television at all, so I am far from any sort of reliable source on the medium, but the one thing I will give it is that its standing as one of the worst shows ever made feels pretty misguided. There’s no denying that I hated the first few episodes, and was ready to throw in the towel after number three, but the second half did pick up quite a bit. The problem is that it’s such an easy target: a show that couldn’t tell if it wanted to attract viewers with its grittiness, or with lighthearted comedic bits, or with its music. It was a constant push-and-pull, with some scenes that tried to wallow in all three bits at once, to expectedly disastrous results. Maybe I just have a different set of criteria than most, but I would take an epic, intriguing failure over a lazy, dull, uninspired bomb any day of the week; if you can’t at least acknowledge that “Cop Rock” is “intriguing”, then it wasn’t anywhere close to being down your alley to begin with.

I can’t really recommend this show to anyone, but if you think you might possibly like it, I will still urge you to check it out. I mean, just the awkward blend of drop-dead serious plot points focusing on racism and homophobia, paired with the frequently-bizarre songs will be enough to make even the most ardent fans of musical theater cringe; I shouldn’t have to mention what that same pairing will do to fans of gritty police shows. I can’t even say that this is a show ahead of its time, which is usually a classic argument for risky older shows that fail to catch on and find viewers, because if kept within the same format as it was back then, I would argue that it would somehow manage to be an even bigger bomb today. Still, there are enough people out there in the world that odds are somewhere around 100% that this ugly combination might actually work for some.

"HE'S GUILTY"




Right as I’m posting this, the series has been quietly released to DVD (by Shout! Factory), so now there is a legal (and widely available) way to view them. There were a couple low-quality copies available on YouTube (which is how I viewed them), but those have since been taken down, probably by the studio to force you into buying their product. I find this to be a rather shortsighted attempt on their part, as the copies available on YouTube were of terrible quality, but at least the songs remain viewable online, so you can get a taste of what the series is like before you pony up to buy the discs. While we’re at it, props to Shout! for delivering an obviously very niche product to the masses. Who knows, maybe it will take off so much, we’ll be seeing a “Cop Rock” remake within the next few years, though I would hope that we’ll see Armageddon before that…

(Also, for the sake of a full disclaimer, I am in no way, shape, or form affiliated with Shout! Factory or their forthcoming DVD.)

SERIES RATING: 4/10

"COP ROCK" PROMO


"COP ROCK" PROMO 2

Tuesday, May 17, 2016

Cop Rock S1, E11: Bang the Potts Slowly



Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Paul McCrane as Det. Bob McIntire
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Jeffrey Alan Chandler as Ray Rodbart
Teri Austin as Trish Vaughn
Dennis Lipscomb as Sidney Weitz


Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Toni Graphia and John Romano
Directed by: Fred Gerber

Well here it is at last: the final episode of “Cop Rock”. I’m going to have a separate article detailing my overall impressions of the show and summarizing all my thoughts now that I have waded through all eleven episodes, so this will be business as usual as we take a look at episode eleven specifically.

In a minor note, this is the first episode that has started off with a recap of what’s already happened in the series. It’s kind of pointless, because it basically recaps the entire series in around two minutes, so if you hadn’t seen an episode up to this point, you still wouldn’t understand a whole lot of what’s going on.

From here, we get a new storyline, which is rather bizarre for a show to do in its final episode; a serial rapist is on the loose. The episode opens to a victim describing her ordeal with her attacker: he grabbed her, forced her into some brush, threatened her with a straight razor, and then cut off her clothes with said sharp object before sexually assaulting her. This is just one of a string of such attacks, which have targeted many sorority-type college girls over the span of the last two weeks (it is kind of bizarre, then, that the victim reciting the details doesn’t really seem to be college-age, nor a sorority type, but I suppose that’s just a minor quibble; after all, a crime is a crime).

Now we’re treated to our pre-credits song, which is sung by a bunch of female officers and focuses on how they want to catch the rapist. It’s a kind of bizarre little number, featuring such lines as “Hey, I got something for you/Come on, come and get it”, which is obviously a reference to them luring the subject to them, presumably using their bodies. I think that’s the gist of the song; unless I feel like a song is well-placed and “necessary”, I generally use the musical interludes as time to get caught up on my social media. In the grand scheme of things, though, this song wasn’t atrocious, nor was it anything even remotely resembling “good”; we’ll just say it’s slightly below-average and leave it at that.

"CHOOSE ME, BABY"




In an as-of-now unrelated plotline, Detective Bob McIntire, who I believe has top billing in every episode despite only appearing in a small handful and being one of the main focuses in only one, leads a team comprised of Vicki Quinn and her new partner, Officer Stillman, to shut down an alleged “chop shop” operating within the city. Remember, Stillman is a sexist who doesn’t feel like women should be allowed to be cops; ironically, this aspect of his character isn’t even touched upon in this episode, which merely focuses on how he’s an idiot.

As it’s explained to all participating officers beforehand, the chop shop is run by a guy known as Bruckner, who operates it out of an extension of his own home. Thus, his house, and the alleged chop shop, have two separate addresses. This little bit of vital information seems to be lost on Stillman who, desperate to find some kind of evidence to pin on Bruckner after nothing illegal is found in an initial search, heads into the house to see if he can find anything there. Out in the open, in a little case, is a white-handled straight razor, just like the one the rape victim mentioned seeing on her attacker! He presents this to the other officers, who get pissed because it’s inadmissible evidence; remember the whole different address thing? Well they only have a search warrant for the alleged chop shop and not the house. Uh oh, Stillman!

Meanwhile, Captain Hollander doesn’t want to let Bruckner get away, so he consults with some guy from some kind of legal counsel, who keeps shooting down Hollander’s suggestions for allowing the evidence to stick. Basically, since the razor was found during an illegal search, it’s inadmissible in court, and can’t even be used to apprehend him. According to the smart legal guy, the only way they can grab him is if one of his victims happens to identify him without the use of any of the evidence found illegally. It’s a tough order, but the Captain feels like Officers Frank Rose and Joseph Gaines are the perfect guys for the job.

They arrest Bruckner without just cause, making up a variety of “offenses” that are actually humorous (having right-hand tread on a left-side tire, floormats that aren’t “attached” to the floor, and an open box of tissues) and haul him into the station. There, Captain Hollander immediately requests that they let him go, to which Bruckner is thankful. Only, the rape victim is there, going over more details of the crime, and oblivious to their ultimate plan. Rose and Gaines lead Bruckner toward an exit through the offices, and once the victim sees Bruckner, she immediately breaks down and identifies him as the attacker. Way to go, guys!

Next, Campo talks to Quinn, who reveals to him that she and Ralph are getting divorced. Campo offers to be there for her, but she’s too upset to care what he has to say, and walks off. And oddly, just like that, that is Campo’s send-off from the show; he doesn’t appear again (well, until the finale, but we’ll have more on that later). The next time we see Vicki, she’s at home packing up; Ralph seems depressed about the whole situation that he has created by asking for a divorce, and keeps offering to help Vicki carry her bags out. Vicki keeps asking him to reconsider, but Ralph has no interest in that. It’s kind of a weird scene, made all the more weird by the ensuing song that Vicki sings about her feelings (“How do you make your feelings lay down and die/how do you say goodbye?”), which has an ‘80s pop feel. With that, Ralph is done.


"HOW DO YOU SAY GOODBYE?"




In the obligatory Mayor Louise Plank storyline, she is looking to get elected into the Senate, and even though the election is more than a year away, her close advisers feel that it’s never too early to get a head start. So they set about making some commercials for her, which end up angering the elderly actors, who start to revolt because the shooting schedule is affecting the time of their meals. It’s kind of a stupid, unnecessary development here, and it doesn’t come off as very funny, but oh well.

In one of the few songs that do make sense within the context of the show, they do produce a singing campaign advertisement for her, which feature locals singing and dancing to show their support for Mayor Plank (“She knows just what to do, so vote for her in 1992”). As we see this dance routine, it’s also being played for Louise, her assistant Ray, Eliot and Michael Weinstein (close advisers and the directors that pissed off the elderly people earlier), and Barney Rhoades, a distinguished man who has some kind of political connection to Louise, though I’m not sure what it is. He feels that she is ready for the Senate and will win a seat, which is the curious spot where this story ends.


I'LL CLEAN IT UP


Lastly, Chief Kendrick and his assistant Ozzie hold a meeting with Captain Hollander informing him that Detective LaRusso will essentially have his old job back. Hollander doesn’t want to be in charge of a man he views as a loose cannon, but he’s not given any kind of option. Everyone involved is against it, but the politics of the case (if they fire him, he will sue and have a good chance of winning, while also making the department look like they are out to get him) require this solution. Hollander eventually agrees, under the stipulation that he will treat LaRusso the way he sees fit, and the Chief, and the rest of the upper brass, have to back him up. Everyone agrees.

Hollander is also given the unenviable task of having to tell Potts that his former partner, who he was urged to testify against, will be coming back to the force. Potts handles this about as well as you would expect him to, going off on the Captain for encouraging him to testify and putting him in this predicament in the first place. Hollander and Ozzie offer to relocate him, or even put his name in for a promotion, but he’s not interested in any of that stuff; his concern is that, no matter where he goes or what he does, the cops will hate him for what he did. That’s probably a good point.

And in the final story arc, LaRusso is given some potential money-making options by his attorney, Sidney Weitz (paid speeches, optioning his story for movies, etc.), but all he wants to do is go back to being a cop. Oddly, Weitz temporarily becomes a bad guy, reminding him that if he had charged him what he would have charged anyone else for accepting his case, LaRusso would owe him $250,000. LaRusso just tells him to bill him and he’ll pay it off as he gets the money. Weitz retorts that neither of them have that much time remaining; LaRusso eventually storms out. Oddly, Trish (the attorney he had a fling with, and even tried to get pregnant in the previous episode) is also in the room, but says nothing the entire time, which is a weird way to send her off. Did she ever get pregnant? Is there any kind of a future at all between the two? We’ll never know; it’s also frustrating since the two were kind of set up in earlier episodes as a potential “odd couple”, so I’m surprised that whole thing was completely abandoned the way it was.

When LaRusso finally returns, he’s given a hero’s welcome (via a bad song) by a large group of the guys; Potts and Hollander are not amused. LaRusso then visits Hollander, which is merely to report for duty. The whole meeting here is cold, but that’s mainly because of Hollander…you can feel the tension in the room. For his part, LaRusso actually handles it pretty well, so maybe the whole situation he has gone through has matured him a bit after all, and opened his eyes to the fact that his actions can have dire consequences. But Hollander and LaRusso agree to just put the past behind them and move on as best that they can.

LaRusso then meets with Potts, who’s packing up his stuff. He tries getting Potts to be his partner again, but Potts doesn’t seem even remotely open to that possibility; the conversation reaches a head when LaRusso has the nerve to tell Potts he forgives him (for testifying against him), to which Potts responds by punching him in the face and storming off. LaRusso is absolutely pissed after that…that would have been a storyline to watch had the series continued, but that’s the way it ends. We can only assume Potts went through with his plan to quit the force after all.

Then that takes us to a scene where Kendrick and Ozzie are having a conversation in his office. Kendrick starts, “I can’t believe they canceled us,” to which Ozzie replies, “I know, I only got to sing one song.” It’s a smart, somewhat audacious breaking of the fourth wall, from a show that, by this point, literally had nothing else to lose. After arguing about who got to sing how many songs for a bit, Kendrick continues with: “I loved my character. I’m going to miss the people.” Then out comes every single one of the main characters, to sing a final song entitled “We’ll Rise Again.” It’s a very fun, laid-back musical number in which all of them are singing as their real-life counterparts, rather than their characters; but it’s also smart in that it’s brimming with an honesty and self-awareness (David Gianapolous, who played Andy Campo, sings “Lately we’ve been nervous, when the telephone rings,” an obvious reference to the cast and crew fearing the inevitable news of cancellation) that was missing from a lot of the stereotype-y lyrics (there‘s also a reference made to “ABC“, by Chief Kendrick‘s Ronny Cox, but I can‘t make out the line before it to see if it‘s playful or an attack).

Honestly, this is probably the best way the show could have ended, with everyone looking relieved and appearing to have an honest-to-God good time. The show might not have always known if it wanted to play it straight or go tongue-in-cheek, to often abysmal results that I have noted in several reviews, but it at least went out on its own terms, and hit all the right notes in the process. Overall, this was a good episode on its own, but the ending number really sealed the deal, making this far and away the best one of the entire series. It’s great that the series managed to get better as the season went on, and I’m happy that the series was able to end the way it did.

EPISODE RATING: 8/10


"WE'LL RIDE AGAIN" (FINAL SONG)



Friday, May 13, 2016

Vanishing Point (1971)

Director: Richard C. Sarafian
Writer(s): Guillermo Cabrera Infante, from a story outline by Malcolm Hart
Starring: Barry Newman, Clevon Little, Dean Jagger, and Victoria Medlin


When it comes to cars, I am not your typical male.  That is to say, I don’t get hard-ons from car magazines, I couldn’t care less about old models and their value, and I wouldn’t know the first thing about fixing one.  I appreciate that they get me from point A to point B, I don’t mind driving them, but that’s the extent of my relationship with vehicles.

With this in mind, a movie like Vanishing Point probably would have never ended up on my radar had it not been the focal point of Audioslave’s music video for “Show Me How To Live”.  While also not a fan of popular music or anything on the radio, I loved Audioslave—created out of three parts Rage Against the Machine and one part Soundgarden (Chris Cornell, one of the best rock vocalists of all time)—and still find them to be an underrated band, with Rage fans scoffing that they weren’t heavy enough, and Soundgarden fans missing the complexity inherent in that band’s work.

But this review isn’t about them—this is about Kowalski, a former police officer and race car driver who bets a drug dealer that he can make a delivery from Denver to San Francisco in 15 hours; if he “wins”, he gets free drugs.  If he loses, then the next bet is “double or nothing”.  This bet occurs about five minutes in, he hits the road, and that is pretty much the entire plot, which then becomes one ridiculously long car chase, as the police desperately try to catch the speeding, reckless Kowalski.

Wisely, the filmmakers do manage to break up the action with little snippets here and there—we flash back to Kowalski’s past as a race car driver, where we get a glimpse of his need for speed, and in a separate and unrelated flashback, also watch him as he stops a fellow police officer from raping a young girl, an event that got him kicked off the force—but for the vast majority of Vanishing Point’s duration, it’s him outrunning cops, or making fools of people that dare to race him.

And honestly, it’s pretty damn brilliant—a refreshingly simple film that provides many genuine scenes of pure excitement.  Of course, the focus is on the car chases and various stunts, which are convincingly pulled off, but the film also succeeds as an ode to hippie culture, with many civilians cheering Kowalski to succeed, and booing the cops that are trying to put him away. The whole film has a pretty strong anti-authority slant, which makes it both an interesting time capsule look into the moment in time in which it was made, and an effective protest film for current times, with the increasing hostility and distrust civilians have of a militarizing police force; one that constantly gets away with the murder of the unarmed.

Vanishing Point was made in the early ‘70s, and it seems to embrace this time period: There’s a topless woman on a motorcycle (with a boyfriend nearby) offering Kowalski sex, a man that trades snakes for sugar, coffee, and “lots and lots of beans”, and a blind radio DJ that monitors police radio frequencies and keeps him one step ahead of the pigs.  This is almost just as much an ode to freewheeling hippie culture as it is an extended car chase.  And you know what?  It works;  I found myself siding with Kowalski as well, and agreeing with most of the citizens in the film—he never hurt anyone, so why such an aggressive campaign to stop him?

Regardless of your thoughts on the underlying politics, Vanishing Point functions as an overlong, yet consistently thrilling, car chase that rarely lets up, and assuming you’re in the vast majority of people that haven’t ever heard of this, one that should shoot toward the top of your list of movies to check out.

RECAP: Vanishing Point is basically a car chase elongated to feature length, with a driver named Kowalski betting a drug dealer that he can drive from Denver to San Francisco to make a delivery in 15 hours.  Some of it feels dated now, with some obvious odes to the hippie and drug cultures of the time period, but it’s never less than fascinating, while its freewheeling, anti-authority and anti-establishment attitudes are a breath of fresh air from the norm.  It almost feels like a punk album in coherent video form, and when it sticks to the action sequences, it’s a rousing, adrenaline-pumping success.  For fans of car chases or action films, this has you covered; for fans of both, this should be considered required viewing.


RATING: 7.5/10

(NOTE: For conspiracy theorists, or those just interested in unsolved mysteries, Victoria Medlin, the actress who plays Vera Thornton, supposedly died on February 27th, 1978.  Very little is known about her life and death, and her filmography consists of three movies.  Rumors persist that she dated Paul Stanley from KISS, and that she committed suicide after their breakup in his father's furniture store on the above date, with the band's management desperate to cover it up, but nothing has been corroborated.  It's simultaneously fascinating and sad that, even in the Internet age, with so much information freely available, that someone's life can just completely fall through the cracks.)

Tuesday, May 10, 2016

Cop Rock S1, E10: No Noose is Good Noose



Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Jeffrey Alan Chandler as Ray Rodbart
Teri Austin as Trish Vaughn
Dennis Lipscomb as Sidney Weitz


Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and Toni Graphia and John Romano
Directed by: Michael M. Robin

Who comes up with these damned titles?  I’ve complained about them before, but they really kind of help to cheapen the mood of the episode, as this one actually has a couple of bombs to drop.  They’re not all entirely unexpected, but I have to say this has by far been the best episode yet, and with only one episode to go, it will be interesting to see how they all pan out (and answering my question from the previous review, it would appear that they do tie up all the main storylines).

In the first one, LaRusso is being treated to a birthday party at a bar, which of course comes with a stripper!  He sings a song about how he’s becoming a “household name” when all he wants to do is be left alone.  It’s a jazzy number, but it doesn’t really work all that well; probably because seeing a “tough-as-nails” guy like LaRusso singing a song just seems so counter to his character.  It doesn’t matter how much he winces or what kinds of faces he makes, his whole allure just goes down the drain.

"TO LIVE AND DIE A COP"


But there are more pressing matters at hand for LaRusso in this episode, and for the latest, we will be taking you to the coutroom.  A weapons expert testifies that it would, in fact, be possible for a man with his hands cuffed behind his back to get his hands on a weapon and pull the trigger.  Despite prosecuting attorney Phalen’s (CCH Pounder) protests to the contrary, the judge allows the expert to prove his statements to the jury.  The expert, with his hands cuffed behind him, is facing a man with free hands, while two guns sit on a table within reach from both.  Sure enough, the weapons expert draws his weapon first and even has time to aim, thus winning a perceived point for LaRusso’s side.

In the next bit, Captain Hollander takes the stand, with Weitz out to prove that the Captain more or less coerced the witnesses to testify against LaRusso because of a personal vendetta against him.  I mean, all that is essentially true, and once again Weitz does a good job of presenting the facts.  He does get into trouble for rambling on a couple times, which also happened in the last one, but for the most part he hits all the right notes.  I am pretty impressed with the balance in the testimony…for the most part, none of the witnesses are made to look like bumbling idiots, so it’s sometimes hard to tell whose points are hitting the jury harder at any given time, which really makes it feel pretty realistic.  It also helps that, both wisely and curiously, there are no songs sung in the courtroom.  Gee, is it a coincidence that the best part of the show so far is music-free?

Next, LaRusso himself testifies, where he sticks to his story that he acted in self-defense, then has to withstand Phalen’s cross examination.  Her biggest point hinges on why his partner, Donnie Potts, would testify that LaRusso flat-out murdered Tyrone Powers if it wasn’t true.  LaRusso counters that he can’t know for sure, because he’s not Potts, but that he believes Potts was scared, which plays into Weitz’s earlier argument against Hollander.  Phalen gets the last word here, insinuating that he pulled the trigger because he knew he could lie his way out, so we’ll see what sticks with the jury.  Both sides state their closing arguments and all that’s left to do is wait for the verdict.

In a rather unexpected and bizarre setup, LaRusso tells his attorney, Trish, who he had a fling with in an earlier episode, that he wants to get her pregnant in case they find him guilty and he’s put away for a substantial amount of time.  He wants to know that there’s an extension of him on the outside, while he wastes away.  Oddly, she agrees, though we’re thankfully spared the sight of the baby’s conception.

Apparently, all the witnesses have testified and we’re just waiting on the verdict.  I have to admit that I was pretty nervous leading up to this…I had a feeling that I knew which way it was going to go, but there was no way that I could be sure.  The biggest misstep of this whole part, though, is taking a peak into the jury deliberation, where they’re arguing their cases, with the general consensus seeming to be that he is guilty.  Leave it to a black woman from the very same streets Tyrone was raised on to sing a song about how she believes there’s reasonable doubt, because people like Tyrone are everywhere out there and don’t deserve respect.  I really wish they would have left this part out, because after seeing this generic “12 Angry Men” scenario, I was pretty sure what way it was going to go.  It would have been a lot more effective had they left it out.

"JURY'S SONG"


The verdict is in!  And LaRusso is….

Andy Campo only gets about thirty seconds of screen time here, and it’s simply to announce that he has a new partner.  And of course, she’s hot.  And of course his former partner, Vicki Quinn, sees her and is jealous.  But Vicki has way more pressing issues than Campo’s new colleague: she has started marriage counseling with Ralph.  The first session doesn’t go too well, with Vicki admitting that she is sexually attracted to Andy, yet maintaining that nothing ever happened.  This doesn’t sit well with Ralph, who storms out; when Vicki accuses him of running away from his problems, he tells her that if he stays, he would get physical with her.  Ouch.

The next session doesn’t go any better, and that’s where the second-biggest bombshell is dropped, because Ralph announces that he doesn’t want to go through any of this.  Yes, that’s right, he wants a divorce!  On the one hand, I’m not very surprised, because I assumed the endgame of this plotline was always to get Campo and Quinn together, and with one episode left, there just isn’t any time for them to try to work anything out.  But on the other hand, for him to give up so easily is a little bizarre, especially since there is no way he’ll be able to ever land anyone as attractive as Vicki.  Wow.

Chief Kendrick, as usual, has the dumbest story of the episode: His assistant, Ozzie, prepares a statement for him to address the media in regards to his perceived racism.  The Chief refuses to do it, instead opting to show up during a drug sweep in a poor, African-American neighborhood to show the “blacks” that he’s willing to get his hands dirty, too.  He blows his cover because he’s an idiot, inviting all the poor passersby to come take a look at all the drugs and weapons they found and are taking off the street.  By calling attention to the scene, he also is calling direct attention to himself, and a couple people in the crowd call him out for being a racist.  Nervous, he flees.

This leads to a stupid nightmare he has in which his assistant Ozzie, who is black, tries him for “racial prejudice” in a courtroom made up entirely of African-Americans.  They immediately find him guilty, at which point they all start chanting “Hang him!” before breaking out into song.  They lead him up to the gallows and flip the switch, at which point he wakes up. Turns out, he was taking a nap in his office.  Anyway, he has a heart-to-heart with Ozzie, who feels like he’s not racist toward blacks so much as he just doesn’t understand them.

"YOUR NUMBER'S UP"


As I said earlier, this is far and away the best episode of the series so far.  With only one episode left, unless the final one is the greatest hour of television in history, this show is still going to go down as a misfire, and a justified cancellation, but at the very least it seems to be going out on an upward trajectory, something I had pretty much written off earlier in the series.  The songs here are pretty tolerable, save for a weird little section involving undercover hookers who sing about capturing bad guys, and then later, a man that’s caught soliciting one singing about how all he wants is attention and tenderness, that’s every bit as cringe-worthy as it sounds.  But as I said earlier, the decision to leave songs out of the courtroom make those scenes as engrossing as anything this show has ever done.  In the grand scheme of things, that might just be a small victory, but I’m sure it’ll take anything it can get.

EPISODE RATING: 6.5/10

NOTE: As expected, the release of the DVD has lead to full episodes being taken off YouTube, which, in my opinion, is a terrible call.  But business is business, I suppose!




Friday, May 6, 2016

The Raid 2: Berendal (2014)

Director: Gareth Evans
Writer(s): Evans
Starring: Iko Uwais, Yayan Ruhian, Arifin Putra, and Tio Pakusadewo


I remember all the hype that surrounded The Raid: Redemption when it first came out.  It was impossible not to notice; I broke a longstanding boycott from going to the theater just to experience it on the big screen, paying God-knows-how-much per ticket, and then was immediately reminded why I do not see movies in the theater.  A movie that’s wall-to-wall action sounded like my wet dream, but I discovered that you can only watch people beat the crap out of each other for so long before it gets pretty tiresome.  Still, I admired what the filmmakers were able to accomplish on such a small budget.

If The Raid 2 was in the same vein as the first, I probably would have just let it disappear off my radar.  Yet early reports said the fights were more varied, and there was a little bit more story to break everything up.  And so I let myself get suckered in, making the decision to wait until it arrived on video so that I could save a few bucks in case it was as disappointing as the first.  I wish I could build a time machine, because this is the one I should have seen in the theater.

This is hands down, without even the slightest shadow-of-a-doubt, one of the greatest action movies ever made, firmly entrenching itself in my #2 spot, just behind John Woo’s The Killer, and ahead of the original Die Hard.  What makes it even more impressive is that it was accomplished on a budget of just $4.5 million.  To put that into perspective, the average Hollywood movie had a budget of $106 million—back in 2007.  We can only imagine that has doubled in the years since then, during a time when studios like to blame piracy on dwindling sales and interest, without looking at the unsustainability of rising costs and uninspired ideas (but “scaling back” has never been a phrase uttered in an industry known for glamour and excess).

It’s obvious that not a single penny went toward stroking the ego of a narcissistic cast member, and instead actually went toward production costs (what a novel idea!), because everything in here is on par with the big boys:  The photography is imaginative, with several shots that will make your jaw drop from sheer ingenuity; there are no words yet created in the English language that can accurately summarize just how incredible the fight sequences are; and the soundtrack does what any soundtrack should do, by highlighting the action without ever overpowering the images on screen.

I mentioned there was more of a story here, but for fans of the first one, don’t let that discourage you—while it goes a little more in depth, the plot is used mainly as a way to break up the action scenes, a decision that was sorely missing from the first one.  The events of The Raid 2 begin a mere fifteen minutes after the events of the first film, yet span over two years after that time.  Rama, the “good guy” of the original, is offered immunity for his family, in exchange for going undercover to provide evidence of corruption within the local police organization.

In order to gain access to this information, Rama attacks the son of a politician who was in opposition of the Bangun family.  The Bangun family is one of the two major mob families within the city (the other one being the Goto clan), and this method is chosen because it will put Rama in prison for a few months, where Bangun’s son Uco is serving time.  While in prison, Rama (who uses the name “Yuda” in the big house) saves Uco’s life, and as thanks, Bangun hires him when he gets out of the slammer, a whopping two years later.

Then we have a fairly typical “yakuza” story: Uco thinks he’s ready to become the boss, his father disagrees, so Uco makes plans with rival gangs to start an all-out war.  His idea is that he can prove his worth to his father—but of course things don’t work out that easily.  So as Rama scrambles to gather evidence, he is torn between his undercover allegiance to Uco, as well as his actual allegiance to the man that gave him the undercover job.

At the end of the day, though, let’s be real here:  The whole plot is merely an excuse to throw as much action on screen as possible.  And it works.  Just when you think writer/director Gareth Huw Evans has run out of ideas, or used up all his budget, he throws another stunt, or fight move at you that will completely blow your mind.  When it comes to action films, Evans just might be the next John Woo—we can just hope Hollywood doesn’t chew him up and spit him out like they did with Woo.

The only complaint I can find, besides the lulls in action which might bore some that loved the first one, and the unnecessary addition of computer-generated blood, is more a warning: This movie is incredibly violent.  And I’m not talking in the typical “gunshots and punches” way all action movies are.  I’m talking about NC-17 level violence: there’s one scene in particular involving a point-blank shotgun blast to the head that alone could push it beyond R-rated territory.  How this movie was saddled with an R is not only beyond me, but it proves what we already knew: that the MPAA is one of the most worthless, inconsistent organizations ever assembled.  I’m not mentioning this as a knock—I can stomach a large quantity of simulated blood and gore, and so I was actually squealing in sadistic glee over all of it—but for those action fans with weak stomachs (an oxymoron?), let this be a fair warning to you.

In the end, though, The Raid 2 not only vastly improves upon the original, but marks a huge step forward in the evolution of Gareth Evans, who proves that he can also toss in a little story with his action.  At this rate, along with his announcement that the third will not be released before 2018, it will be truly exciting to see how he decides to push the envelope with The Raid 3.

RECAP: One of the greatest action movies of all time, The Raid 2 picks up fifteen minutes after the events of the first one end.  Instead of modeling this after the first one, and featuring one agonizingly long and repetitive fight scene, writer/director Gareth Huw Evans actually allows some story to shine through—while basic, it provides the perfect break-up from the stunning action sequences.  A word of warning: This movie is incredibly bloody and violent, so the squeamish need not apply.  But for iron-stomached fans of action films, this is hands down one of the best ever made.


RATING: 10/10

Wednesday, May 4, 2016

Cop Rock S1, E9: Marital Blitz



Starring:
Anne Bobby as Off. Vicki Quinn
Barbara Bosson as Mayor Louise Plank
Vondie Curtis-Hall as Det. Warren Osborne
Ronny Cox as Chief Roger Kendrick
David Gianopoulos as Off. Andy Campo
Larry Joshua as Capt. John Hollander
James McDaniel as Off. Franklin Rose
Ron McLarty as Ralph Ruskin
Mick Murray as Det. Joseph Gaines
Peter Onorati as Det. Vincent LaRusso
Jeffrey Alan Chandler as Ray Rodbart
Teri Austin as Trish Vaughn
Dennis Lipscomb as Sidney Weitz


Written by: William M. Finkelstein and Stephen Bochco and Toni Graphia and John Romano
Directed by: Gilbert M. Shilton

This show has done something that I can’t recall many, if any, other shows or movies doing to me over the course of my life, and that’s to completely confuse me as to what’s “good” or “bad”.  If you’ve been following my reviews for this series as I’ve been posting them, then you’d know that I hated the first few episodes, but have given the couple since higher marks; the marks are still fairly low, but they represent more “average” fare, rather than the nearly “bottom-of-the-barrel” scores from earlier episodes.

But has the show really gotten any better?  Or has forcing myself to sit down and continue to watch it, long after my interest has waned, merely desensitized my emotions to the point that I no longer feel a strong hatred towards it, but instead a dulled acceptance?  Or was I maybe being a little too harsh on it at the beginning, have opened my mind to the idea a bit more, and now realize that it is, in fact, mediocre rather than an abject failure?  I honestly can’t say for sure, but “Marital Blitz” continues the trajectory of the previous episodes, firmly implanting the series in “average” territory, and digging itself out of the early hole I found it in.

It begins, as it always does, with a song: in this case, the setting is some auditorium somewhere, where Chief Kendrick is awarding several officers with a Medal of Valor.  Rather than merely walking to the podium and accepting the award, as people would normally do, the recipients all take turns singing about how they may be heroes, but so is everyone else that wears the blue and a badge (“You honor us with glory/we’re glad to heed the call/but if one of us is a hero, then we’re heroes all.”)  Lyrically, it’s really kind of a gag-inducing number, which relies on clichés and stereotypes (as many of these songs seem to do), but it does get some help from the theatrical stage lighting, which illuminates each cop as it’s their turn to sing.  This is common in theater, and I think this show has even done it before, but it works to good effect here.

"IF ONE OF US IS A HERO"


After the credits (God, what a terrible credit sequence and a joke of a theme) we continue with Chief Kendrick, who is bombarded by the press after leaving the medal ceremony, for his anti-gay and anti-Semitic remarks to the press in a previous episode.  He also faces more questions about his beliefs that Detective LaRusso is innocent, which he continues to defend, even though we know facts to the contrary.  Once again, he faces some backlash in the press for voicing his opinions, even though the criminal trial is currently ongoing.  When will he ever learn?

The latest outrage once again angers Mayor Louise Plank (who Kendrick is dating), who is disappointed in the way he carries himself and always seems to lose his cool when facing reporters.  So to start “mending fences” with the press before things get out of hand, the Mayor decides to have an apology speech prepared for him that he will recite at a press conference.  Right after excusing him from her office, she asks her assistant, the homosexual Ray Rodbart (sexual preference mentioned only as a reference to a forthcoming lame joke) if she was too hard on him, something she has done before.  He assures her that she wasn’t.  Her attention quickly shifts to his forthcoming birthday, and after discussing with Ray possible gift options, it is Ray (of course) who comes up with the idea to get him something “leather”.  The Mayor thinks this is a great idea, and decides to get him a saddle, for his horse.  After deciding on a color and style, of course that’s when Ray has to chime in with: “Would you like to see matching chap or spur options?”  Oh, where would we be without stereotypical gay jokes?

Anyway, the whole thing unfolds as it often does in television shows: Kendrick awkwardly and disinterestedly delivers his pre-written speech to the press, and when his sincerity is questioned, launches into an impassioned speech about how he may occasionally let his emotions get the best of him and misspeak, but at the end of the day he’s as human as everyone else.  Now I guess we’re all supposed to stand up and cheer for him and his honesty.  The conference doesn’t quite go entirely smooth: he gets so worked up that he ends it by calling the gathered reporters “left-wing media jackals.”  Uh-oh.  But in true television fashion, this part doesn’t anger the Mayor…instead it turns her on (but then again, what doesn’t seem to?)

In Vicki news, she is keeping her promise from the end of the previous episode, and it is in this one that she informs her partner, Andy Campo, that she has put in for a new partner.  Of course, Andy is devastated and angry, but really has no choice but to accept it, which he reluctantly does.  She then goes to tell Captain Hollander, who, somewhat surprisingly, is in complete agreement with her, “given the situation.”  It’s good to see that he’s largely been a likable guy lately, rather than the heartless asshole he was portrayed as in the first couple episodes.

In predictable fashion, their new partners arrive the same day, and would you believe that both of them prove to be complete opposites from what they are used to?  Campo gets Officer Petrovich (I think this is her name; she is only credited as “cop”), a manly-looking woman who likes to highlight her masculine side.  But she comes undone after a stupid confrontation in a fast-food chicken restaurant requires her to use physical force, at which point she forces herself on Campo, and forces us to hear her sing a terrible, terrible song about how intense situations turn her on.  Okay.  Meanwhile Vicki’s new partner, Officer Stillman, just happens to be a sexist pig to openly tells her on their first shift together that he doesn’t think women should grow up to be officers.  Yawn.

"I WANNA GO BUMPTY BUMPTY"


Campo tells the Captain about his awkward experience of nearly being raped by his partner, and after Hollander initially accuses his hesitance to accept his new partner as sexism (even though he worked with Vicki Quinn for the previous three years, so it's an argument that holds no weight), eventually agrees to see what he can do.  Stillman enters the office a short while later, offering his complaint that he wasn’t expecting to be with a woman.  Hollander is having no part of this complaint and tells him that Vicki is twice the cop that he is, and will probably ever be, in another melodramatic, obligatory scene that we’re supposed to stand up and applaud.  This is where these parallel stories stop for now, so I’m kind of interested to see how they play out in the next episode.

And in the last bit of narrative, we find that the creators didn’t think it was enough to have part cop show and part musical…now they have added part courtroom drama into the mix!  Vincent LaRusso’s trial is finally underway.  Things get off to an interesting start when, in the middle of the hearing, a black man stands up and causes disorder in the courtroom by accusing LaRusso of being a “racist assassin”, apparently based on the testimony he had heard up to that point.  The judge orders him excused, and then grants a recess for everyone to clear their mind, which leads LaRusso to confront the man out in the hallway, as he sounds off to the gathered media.  In a rare bit of restraint, LaRusso handles himself well, sticking to words instead of losing his cool and wailing on the guy, which I thought was going to be the outcome.  Also unexpected is that the ensuing song, sung from the reporters’ points of view and titled “For the Record“, is actually kind of good.  It falls into the same trap that “Cop Rock” frequently does, and that’s that it relies on stereotypes and never really brings anything new to the table, but I guess that’s the standard confines of network television.  “For the Record” is about how the media focuses on sensationalism and public interest rather than actual news stories; the final shot of the reporters suddenly leaving, as if moving on to the next big story, thus leaving LaRusso and his accuser alone in the hallway is as strong--and complex--an image that this show has ever presented us.

After this, it’s back into the courtroom, free from interruption, musical or otherwise, as the trial continues.  Officers Gaines and Potts, as well as Detective Lieutenant Ralph Ruskin, all testify against LaRusso, with LaRusso’s defense attorney, Sidney Weitz, focusing on their ever-changing stories, and calling their characters into question.  These scenes don’t have much impact, because we already know what happened and whether or not he‘s guilty; to me, it’s a rather curious decision that the writers focused so much on the courtroom aspects.

In between the testimony, LaRusso has an uncharacteristically weak moment: he busts into the office of Trish, his attorney, and tells her that he’s going to skip town because he’s sure that he will be convicted.  He even goes so far as to inform her that he has a fake passport and identification already prepared, ensuring that he can skip town at any moment.  He is short on one thing, however: cash.  The ridiculousness of this situation is that it becomes clear that he’s hoping Trish would be his financier.  Why would she risk getting caught aiding a known fugitive if he were to run away?  Thankfully, she talks him down and assures him that once all the witnesses have spoken, the jury will take their side.  LaRusso doesn’t seem too confident in this assessment, but it’s enough to get him to halt his escape plans…at least for now.

The episode ends during Potts’ testimony. After he admits to Weitz that he changed his story (like the rest), tells him that he changed his story to clear his conscience (like the rest), and then faces a question involving possible bribery from Captain Hollander (like the rest), he goes on a verbal tirade about how, if he was truly doing this only to look out for his best interests, he could have just kept his mouth shut and there wouldn’t have been a trial.  He then discusses how he used to love being a cop, but because of his decision to testify, cops have turned on him and he, and his family, are in constant fear of their lives.  But despite this, his family is proud of him for deciding to do it, all because he‘s doing the right thing.  There’s a quick shot of LaRusso staring intently at him, though what emotion is running through him is kind of hard to read--anger? respect?--before we fade out on Potts’ dedicated, intense stare.

The songs in this one ranged from absolutely cringe-inducing (the terribly-named “I Wanna Go Bumpty Bumpty”, where ‘bumpty bumpty’ is a euphemism for sex), to somewhat palatable, with “For the Record” emerging as the best one.  Somehow, and despite the awful number, this episode still happens to be one of the better ones in terms of overall musical quality, and if someone (anyone!) could have had the presence of mind to pull the plug on “Bumpty”, it could have been even stronger.

The whole Chief Kendrick and Mayor Plank subplot seems to be running around in circles and going nowhere, but at least the remaining stories appear to be picking up some steam.  With only two episodes left (and, according to an article I found online, the network’s statement of cancellation announced over a month before the final episode aired), it will be interesting to see if they had time to alter storylines so that all the loose ends are tied up: if that’s the case, then the next episode should have them move toward a clear resolve.  Either way, it’s a ride that I certainly won’t be sad to see end when the time comes, despite the (perception of) gradual improvement here in the home stretch.

EPISODE RATING: 5/10

FULL EPISODE