Justified S6E6

TV

Alive Day

Somehow I missed recapping episode 6 the week it aired, so let me fill the void real quick.

Raylan swings by Boyd and Ava’s home to inquire about the where abouts of Dewey, something Boyd isn’t too keen on answering. He tells Raylan to go bug Avery about it and Raylan leaves without getting anything that can help him. He does bug Boyd with his presence though, he doesn’t like Raylan around Ava alone. He gets Earl to babysit her.

We get to hear a bit about Ava’s father and her past from her Uncle Zachariah in a nice conversation on the front porch before he goes off to the mine with Boyd. Knowing full well that Zach is about as shady as they come (and the bad blood between him and Boyd) she talks to Boyd about if he can really trust him. Boyd is confident he can, but later he nearly falls to his death in the mine. Zach helps him up and convinces Boyd to take the rest of the day off after the near death experience. With Boyd gone, Pig notices that it looks like the planks Boyd fell through were cut, not rotted out. With Zach’s trap exposed, he shoves Pig down the hole head first and yells for Carl to come to help.

Onto the side story. Avery proposes to Hale and asks her if she was the snitch that got him and her late husband arrest years ago. She denies it. She later tells Duffy about it and he asks her the same question. She denies it. The plan to kill Avery still goes ahead (Hale is looking forward to it). Art, board with being sidelined at home pokes around the office to get info on who the informant was in that Hale case. It’s not known for sure, but Hale’s name sure does come up a lot.

The big run for this episode was the fallout from Choo Choo killing Calhoun. It turns out that Avery’s mercs, ” know killing, but they don’t know crime.” These idiots did the bare minimum at hiding the murder. Calhoun’s body was quickly discovered with knuckle marks on his temple and Raylan’s business card on his person. This points them directly to Avery and Choo Choo. Ty and Seabass have tried to hide this info from Avery, so when Raylan shows up at the pizza place, Avery rightfully plays dumb about the news. Ty has a lot of explaining to do when Raylan leaves.

Pissed that they have another body on their hands due to ineptitude, Avery wants Choo Choo finished. Ty pleads his case, but when he gets a phone call from Choo about not killing Chalhoun’s girl, Caprice, he realizes Avery is right. Choo Choo is all liability. My favorite new character this season has made too many mistakes and everyone pays for it. Raylan and Tim followed the mercs to Choo Choo in the woods who has Caprice tied to a tree. To his credit, Choo argues as best as he can to keep her alive. “She shouldn’t have to die for my mistake.” When Raylan and Tim pop into the conversation, things go south real quick. One merc is shot and killed, Choo Choo gets hit multiple times and flees and Ty gets one in the gut and manages to escape too. Few shows do shootouts as well as Justified.

With all these guys in the wind, Avery has some serious issues on his hands and he doesn’t even know about the Hale/Duffy/Boyd plan.

At the very end, Ellistin Limehouse gives Boyd a call. He drops a dime on Ava as a “good faith gesture.” The cat is out of the bag, Boyd is living with a snitch.

Justified S6E7

TV

The Hunt

This week we got to see Raylan take a break from the case (a very rare occasion). He puts in some quality time in with Winona and his baby girl for the first time in months. Seeing Raylan carrying around a baby instead of a gun is something we never get to see. It brought out a different side to him…for once it looked like he’s actually thinking about his future. It’s something that Winona has been thinking about too and before he goes back to chasing Boyd and what’s left of Avery’s squad of hired guns, confesses that she misses him being in her life. She wants to give their life together another shot. It looked like Raylan thought this was a pretty good idea.

With Raylan’s domestic life on the upswing, Ty Walker is fighting to stay alive and keep from getting caught and after Avery convinced Seabass to leave him in wind, he really is on his own now. Ty makes some military moves, throwing a data trail away from him to keep the feds away and patches himself up in a bathroom as best as he can. But a busted car puts him back on the map and with two more bodies on his wrap sheet. It doesn’t look like Ty has much longer.

Zachariah, still down in the mine, did his best to keep Carl from calling Boyd about the “accident.” It didn’t exactly work, but I think Zach is still in good shape. He should be able to sell the “loose ground” story to Boyd without making him suspicious and come up with a new way to kill him. Time isn’t on his side though and Carl’s days are probably numbered too.

After receiving the tip of Ava’s movements, Boyd gets Ava alone in the woods. Really reminded me of The Sopranos as we (and Ava) were waiting for Boyd to pull the trigger from the moment he told her they were going to the family’s cabin. She’s on pins and needles the whole trip and he wakes her up before the sun comes up to go hunting. That doesn’t end well for many people (on TV and movies anyway).

Finally, it all comes up. Ava confesses and Boyd actually takes it pretty well. While Boyd has done a lot of terrible things, he always manages to keep his wits about him so he doesn’t do anything rash and stupid. Ava does have a good mark on him though, he completely left her in lurch when she was in prison. Their bond and loyalty together took a major hit. Acknowledging that, he had to know if she really betrayed him. Seeing Raylan alone in their house with her made him angrier than finding out she was a CI. When Ava tells him they didn’t sleep together, he;s relieved. He finds solace knowing that she is still his girl, he still has someone to turn to in this world. With that list getting smaller and smaller, that’s really important for Boyd.

Shameless S5E7

TV

Tell Me You Fucking Need Me

The needs of the family! Let’s run the gauntlet with our favorite broken people.

So happy Fiona has made the first good relationship decision in (possibly) her life. Even if she didn’t smell Jimmy’s (Jake!) last lie, she finally put her foot down and chose to formally end her relationship with him. She got all the conformation she could ever need just moments later from Angela. What was once a ghostly noose hanging above her head is now a rotten piece of rope laying in a gutter. Hopefully she can patch things up with Gus.

Fiona’s going to need all the support she an get as Ian is…well, it’s early. More sedated than anything else, it’s going to be a small miracle for him to be level headed in just 72 hours. If he can get some good treatment and come back to a safe home, he may have a chance. Mickey is rightfully scared shitless. He doesn’t know who he just went to visit and it’s sent him down a rough path. Svetlana isn’t helping things….

Which brings us up into V and Kevin’s business. Officially separated, V is still being an ass and her mother tried to talk some sense into her. Hard to tell what could flip her back to the right side. Svetlana crashing the scene and trolling old flames on Facebook certainly isn’t going to help them.

Debbie finally kicks one through the goal posts! A real boyfriend, it’s great to see her happy, it’s been a long time.

Carl’s third time in sixth grade! Kid knows how to make the best of a situation at least. His idea to get Chuckie as his gofer is brilliant. Shades of his dad right there.

Speaking of Frank, he manages to make Sammi completely crack. This has been a long time coming and was a riot to watch. We’ve seen some meltdowns on the show before, but her pulling a gun on him is some epic Gallagher insanity. It worked though. Can’t wait to see how their new dynamic works next week.

Last but not least, Lip. Tuition trouble due to some bumbling family ignorance forces him to keep a closer eye on his own responsibilities. Another sobering step to him breaking away. Another step that no one else in his family has noticed. I’m wondering what’s in store for him at the end of this season. I could see him getting a place with Amanda at the very least.

Kingsman: The Secret Service

Movies

kingsman

Kingsman: The Secret Service is a fun take on the action spy genre. It recognizes the greats (like Bond, Bourne and U.N.C.L.E) and respects them while stretching its legs across the line with new material and a good dose insanity.

Kingsman is an old British Secret Service with only a few active agents (referred to as Knights). When one is killed in action, the recruitment process starts to find a replacement. So begins the movie (and the recruitment) when “Lancelot” is killed on a rescue mission. Turns out, his mission reveals a population culling plot by technology billionaire Richmond Valentine.

Unbeknownst to Gary “Eggsy” Unwin, his father was a Kingsman, killed when Eggsy was a very young boy. Harry Hart (codename: Galahad) has kept tabs on Eggsy due to his father saving his life. Their paths cross at a crucial time in the now twenty-something year olds life, and Harry thinks Eggsy has what it takes to join the service.

So we have all the check marks for a spy movie. Cool and classy heroes, awesome tech/spy gear, hidden bases, double crosses and a villain with a high death toll plot that has to be stopped.  Mix this all together and you have one of the most enjoyable action movies I’ve seen in awhile.

I found a lot to like in Kingsman. Great characters to start. Colin Firth as Harry does a wonderful job as a suave badass and a great father figure to Eggsy. Eggsy (Taron Egerton) is really likable right from the start and gets better as his character grows on screen. He’s a good kid given a tough hand whose world is blown open when he hears the truth about his dad. Not only are we watching a spy being made, but a gentleman as well (the wardrobe in this movie is legit impressive).

Samuel L Jackson has fun being Valentine and I appreciate the thought behind him and his plot (also like the nods and discussions about spies and their nemesis’). His right hand woman, Gazelle (Sofia Boutella), is completely awesome. She’s got prosthetic legs that she uses as weapons (adding a new level of lethal to Thai kickboxing) and is a joy to watch whenever she is on screen.

Talking about Gazelle brings me to the action. Kingsman is based on the comic book, The Secret Service. by Mark Millar and Dave Gibbons. As such, the fights and violence are completely over the top. Crazy fight choreography with all manners of destruction. When someone gets shot or stabbed, you see it. There is a set piece that takes place in a church that is one long take of what can only be described as carnage. It’s a hold on for your dear life kind of presentation that enjoys its mayhem, but wisely curbs the uber violence in favor for a more stylized choice (heads explode in this movie, but it’s not gross).

Director  Matthew Vaughn and his crew have made a love letter to one of cinemas favorite genres. It’s smart, funny, sexy and rated R for good reason. If you’re looking for a wild and goofy time at the movies, I say go for Kingsman (please do, I want to see another one)!

As Above So Below

Movies

AOSB

What a fun horror movie! As Above So Below turned out to be way better than I thought it was going to be. We go along on a expedition underneath Paris into the catacombs where the remains of 6 million people lay arranged in macabre shrines or otherwise stacked like long forgotten debris. While it’s the perfect setting for a horror movie, why would anyone go wandering around down there alone?

Treasure! More specifically, the Philosopher’s Stone, the legendary holy grail of alchemy. The Stone is said to be able to turn base metals into gold and has incredible powers of rejuvenation, including immortality. I love alchemist lore from watching Full Metal Alchemist, so having that hook turned out to be a real draw for me.

Scarlett is obsessed with finding the Philosopher’s Stone to finish her late father’s work. She gets a young man named Benji to document the last leg of the journey and finds an old flame (George) to help her translate a major piece of the puzzle that she nearly died to get her hands on. Soon, they believe they have found where Nicolas Flemel put the stone, in a hidden section of the catacombs under Paris. With three guides who say they know their way around, they go in together. It isn’t long before things get weird. And then crazy dangerous. There’s a reason this thing was hidden away hundreds of feet below ground generations ago.

This journey to the outer rim of hell is presented as footage captured from the cameras the characters brought with them. While in the  “found footage” genre, the movie doesn’t stick to any presentation rule. It’s more like you’re going with them and jumping from camera to camera to get the best view of what’s going on as it’s happening. It’s kind of like being a character and a omnipresent observer at the same time. I think it works well, as once the movie goes underground, you’re crammed in with this group feeling like if they don’t get out, neither will you. There’s a Dante’s Inferno tilt to the movie mixed into the lore of the Philosopher’s Stone that I think worked really well together.

The darkness, weird audio and the unrelenting claustrophobia really sell the tension and fear. There are some crazy good ideas in As Above So Below, the creativity was a blast to watch (kudos to the special effects work) and direction is often great (absolutely loved the last shot).  I liked all the characters and aside from them reacting to the early crazy stuff too calmly (and continuity problems with people getting wet and dry), it all felt believable.

The Descent (2009) is the easiest comparison to this movie, but I think that’s much more of a monster movie than this. The motivation and history used for As Above So Below make it stand on it’s own and totally worth checking out. Of the horror movies I’ve seen recently, I dug this as much as Afflicted and VHS 2. Remember, the only way out is down!

Justified S6 E5

Movies

Sounding

Hale gave Ava a much bigger scare last week than I thought. Thinking her cover was about to blown to Boyd, Ava tried to pull a runner. With just a few bucks and no real plan, she tried to get a new car from Ellstin Limehouse. Frantic to get things back in order, Raylan gets Constable Bob Sweeny to track her down before she can get too far and ensures that Albert Fekus isn’t going to reveal that Ava is a CI to Duffy and Hale. Boyd is still gung-ho on breaking into the vault and looks for help in a rather risky person, Avery is now more than annoyed that he can’t buy up anymore property thanks to some meddling. That fortunately puts Calhoun in the cross hairs for giving out information he shouldn’t have.

The three moving pieces of the show have been spinning like tops right next to each other for a few episodes now. I can almost taste the tension in the air. With seven episodes left, I can’t really see how this is going to pan out yet. It feels like the collision is happening really soon, but if it happens in the next 2 episodes, what’s left to explore? And if it doesn’t, the build up may feel like it’s going too long. We keep bumping into the same walls. Ava feels like jumping ship everyday, Duffy and Hale are swooping around like vultures and Boyd is slowly trying to get a working plan in order. With Avery being poked so much by Raylan, it can’t be much longer before he acts to take some people out. Raylan just wants to finally catch Boyd, but he’s really on a timer to get it done now.

Shameless S5 E6

TV

Crazy Love

Not a fan of this episode.

I don’t like what they’re doing with Jimmy. He kept a lot of secrets, but he always remained like able. He broke the law in much the same ways as the Gallagher family, but he wasn’t a scumbag. He and Fiona were a good match until he was forced to leave do to his shady deals.  Now, he shows up out of no where and won’t explain anything. Angela has been floating around for awhile and it sounds like she’s basically his keep keeper. Jimmy seduces Fiona away for a night (not a surprise) but his almost manic need/desire to get back with her makes him a very different person. Is it no more than wanting to move in with her so he doesn’t have to take off with Angela again? How could that be an out to whatever he’s involved in? I hope they give us some much needed answers so his angle makes some sense. After the train wreck of their last coupling, some major work needs to be done. It was incredibly uncomfortable to watch and puts an incredibly negative light on them even being in the same room together now. I guess it’s up to Fiona now…if she gets Gus involved, would it make things (Jimmy) go away, or will it break their relationship? Cheating usually doesn’t end well.

Frank’s back to the bottom of his yo-yo life style. He either takes care of himself or he dies. Everyone’s made it pretty clear that he’s the least of their problems.

With no place to live, Sammi and Chuckie moved into the house. Sammi is trying to plant her flag down as a mother figure to get a bit of shelter security and so far it seems to be working. Debbie is now swimming in the High School pool, so it’s an all new social game she has to figure out. Being internet famous for fighting girls may or may not go in her favor.

Very brief update on Kevin and V…they’re separating and it’s a V’s fault. I’ve got Kevin’s back on this one.

Again, the Ian and Mickey plot is the best of the show. We follow Ian around with his non-plan of kidnapping Ian’s son until he makes a decision so bad it brings heat on him. If there is every a test for a relationship, it’s with mental disorders. Mickey’s concern (and understanding) for Ian was something to watch unfold. That mix of love and anger is hard to pull off, but Noel Fisher keeps knocking it out of the park. Ian recognizes he’s hit a new and scary low and agrees to get help. They’re all lucky things didn’t go even worse or Ian would be going to jail for a really long time. His life would be over, there is no way he’d get the help he needs in the prison system.

Seeing Lip race back home for his family was great too. He wants to get out and move on, but he still has his heart. His relationship with Fiona is now much more mature, but Fiona has been pulled so far from the family to her own world that I’m afraid something horrible is going to happen because of her again soon. I expect a lot to happen in episode 7.

The Purge: Anarchy

Movies

purge2

The first Purge movie left little mark on me. I wrote two sentences about it. It was made for next to nothing and pulled in nearly $100 million at the box office worldwide, so it managed to get a sequel. I have no idea how The Purge did so well, I can’t believe word of mouth didn’t kill it. But here we are and as all the buzz I heard about it said, Anarchy is a much better movie.

The Purge: Anarchy is what the first movie should have been. Way more interesting, way more engaging. It’s the exact same premise as the first (once a year, from 7pm to 7am, all crimes including murder are legal in America. The Purge is a holiday), but it follows three groups of people who’s paths intersect.

“Sergeant” is a man armed to the teeth with a kitted out car to accomplish his mission. Eva and Cali, mother and daughter, get pulled out of their home by an organized group wearing combat gear. Shane and Liz are a couple who get stranded downtown by a different group of organized masked men who seem to be abducting instead of killing as well.

With these characters, they each come from different areas and circumstances. There’s a lot more meat to this movie than the first. Anarchy takes a bigger picture exploring the wealth disparity and class warfare that is growing in the US. The reasons, effects and new mutations of the Purge come to light. While there is a significant amount of murder and mayhem in this movie, the most disturbing part is thinking that something like this actually happening doesn’t seem all that far fetched. Now that I think of it, The Purge is the American take of Battle Royale.

The Purge is this crazy system put in place by those that are supposed to know what’s best for the country (and they were voted into government). One of my favorite parts of this movie is that rational people are starting to fight back. This Purge is the 6th one to happen and the growing dissent is taking an active approach to stopping the madness. A revolution from those being crushed must happen to change the system. The set up for the third movie is an exciting one.

I can’t think of many movies that their sequel was so much better than the original. The Purge is a good idea on paper, it just didn’t come together right. Anarchy is the execution matching the idea. By all means, skip watching the first. You won’t miss a thing. In fact, it’s really easy to just forget the first exists, just call Anarchy the first Purge movie.

Shameless S5 E5

TV

Rite of Passage

Starting with my main complaint from last week, Sammi and Chuckie appear to show they are alive and well. The explosion at Sheila’s was way smaller than it looked like when it happened. The only visible damage shown is scorch marks on Sammi’s trailer, the house actually looks fine. No word on the dead man or Sheila.

Sammi’s problem now is that the person who owns the lot she’s got her trailer on is selling, so she’s getting kicked out. Frank promised her a new trailer with the insurance money, but it’s gone and Sammi still isn’t wise to how much her father actually lies. She does at the end though.

With Sheila gone and no money, Frank has no place to stay. He hatches an idea to use Wade’s weakness about his son’s death (Frank has his liver) to crash at his place. It almost works until Wade’s wife veto’s the growing insanity…until she pulls out her own crazy card.

Fiona and Gus make plans to tell Fiona’s family about their marriage, but when Jackie OD’s, that puts the plans on the back burner. Despite being surrounded by drugs her entire life (and the worst they have to offer) it makes Fiona fear for her future.

A big part of Shameless is how no one talks to each other. They keep things to themselves until it’s often too late. Everyone is off doing their own things and getting in trouble. It isn’t until the law catches wind when it blows back on everyone and it can’t be ignored. Fiona  and Lip finally find themselves time to actually talk, where Lip says he going back to school early. Working a horrible construction job and realizing that his hometown life is one of a circle of misery he realizes his only way to take really take care of himself and his family is to get out. It started right when he got home talking to his old friends and solidified with the stunt with Mickey (hope that AK doesn’t get dusted for prints, you shmuck). If anyone has a chance to get out, it’s Lip. Here’s hoping.

Carl is awful at math so he’s still awful at selling drugs. Debbie is going all out to be a prize fighter to impress her crush. Brother and sister to join forces to make money filming cat fights. This is not going to go well, Debbie is going to meet the wrong girl and get dropped.

Kevin and V’s side story continues to push them apart. Everything V says and does is stupid and giving the go ahead for Kevin to take off. Her last line to Kevin was pretty shocking (despite being a small part of the show, both actors do great work with what they are given).

Mickey and Ian are straight up broken now. Ian’s mind pushes him into unsafe decisions that freak out Mickey so bad he tells Ian he has to see a doctor. It’s been building every single episode and the ultimatum finally came. Ian bolts with Mickey’s son and now there is no telling what’s going to happen. Who can Mickey turn to? No way he’s going to call the cops. He didn’t know how to handle Ian before now, kidnapping is a whole new level. Ian is now a danger to others.

Let’s see, what else? Oh, Jimmy is back! Enjoy handling that monkey wrench Fiona!

Justified S6 E4

Movies

The Trash and the Snake

This episode turned out to be more set up than any major moves. Raylan has put things together: Avery is buying up land for potential marjiuana farms. He’s betting on the future legalization and wants to have the land to grow huge crops. By out the folks for cheap->profit. He’s going for it at all costs, if an owner says no too many times, they get into a rather horrific accident. So Raylan, being the good guy, isn’t going to stand for this guy stomping on his hometown for profit at any cost. He has a fantastic confrontation with him at Loretta McCready’s house. Huge bonus points for getting Dickie Bennett back, even if it was for only a short scene.

Ava spent the day with Hale, who is basically the combination of a pit viper and a bloodhound. She’s a complete nut with an ax to grind so she’s super dangerous. Hale implied that she knows about Ava’s arrangement with Raylan which Ava (rightfully) freaks out about. She’s managed to keep it together with Boyd, but this new angle of pressure isn’t going to  help any.

Boyd is still on the path to rip off Avery with Hale and Duffy. He knows where and what kind of safe he needs to break into, but he needs a new demolition source since his was shut down last episode. He find one through Duffy and…they gotta find another one. Don’t do drugs folks, it can make you absent minded when you really need to be paying attention.

That leaves us with the heist still being in the early planning stages and Raylan making it clear to Avery that he’s not going to get what he wants (for the first time in his life?). Hale might be swooping around Ava, but I think Raylan has the biggest target on him right now.

The Walking Dead

TV

The walkers return from their mid-season hiatus in spectacular form. One of the most cinematic episodes of the series and a shocking final episode for a great character. Beth’s death in episode 8 was a brutal hit to the group and I didn’t think we’d see another one being taken so quickly.

The show is never up-beat per se, but things are looking crazy bleak right now. It’s been a long time since anything positive has happened and it now feels like death is closer to them all now. They’ve been on the road for a long time now and it’s grinding them into the dirt like chalk underneath a boot.

There was a lot of nice foreshadowing this episode, director and all around special FX wizard Greg Nicotero really cranked up the visual story telling. Red hearings for the funeral, bits in the beginning come back to make sense and the overall spiritual and reflective tone worked well despite all the surrounding carnage. There was a lot of shady things about what happened to that neighborhood (the wall being knocked down from the outside, the oddly mutilated walkers all over the place) which means some real psychopaths are close by. Really great touches to raise the anxiety level.

Great return for the show, it’s keeping up the run of this overall great season. Really looking forward to what’s coming next.

John Wick

Movies

JohnWick

John Wick is about as straight forward of an action flick as you can get. Someone crosses a line and bodies start stacking up for the next hour and twenty minutes. Retired assassin John Wick crosses paths with Iosef Tarasov shortly after his beloved wife has died. Iosef is the maniac and blithering idiot son of Viggo Tarasov, who was one of Wick’s employers. Iosef doesn’t know who John Wick is (or was) when he meets him at a gas station and after feeling slighted, follows him home. Iosef and his hired muscle go on to quite possibly do the worst things you could do to a man. Big mistake. Revenge drives Wick to come at Iosef like the grim reaper while Viggo does everything he can to try and save his son’s life.

While the movie is about as simple as they come and everything is laid out in 15 minutes, sometimes that’s all you need. John Wick just wants to be an action movie, it isn’t concerned with being anything else. The sides are drawn right away, those on Wick’s side are cool, everyone else is dead. Once he gets into gear, we go from location to location with another great action set piece.

The director, Chad Stahelski, has been in the movie stuntman game since 1991 and it shows (check out his resume, it’s stacked. He’s got a long history working with Keanu Reeves).  There is some downright phenomenal stunt work, fight choreography and action direction on display. Guns, blades, multiple martial art styles, car chases, it’s all here and it isn’t shot and edited together like the crew was trapped in a three month long fever dream. You can see everything, the framing and continuity all flows together with long, wide takes. It’s easy to see and understand what’s going on (and to who) when mayhem breaks out. Keanu did most of his own stunt work and teaming up with many of the Matrix team really shows in his comfort and execution. Really impressive stuff. One of the things that really stuck out to me is that when cars crash, they don’t explode. I’m so used to Michael Bay style fireworks and gas bombs for everything that it was rather refreshing to see a car just smash up.

John Wick is a grounded action movie (aside from a comic book style hotel that caters to assassins) like the old Die Hard movies. It seems plausible, the hero takes a beating and at the end we all feel better knowing that justice has been dished out to scum bags. Looking for a solid action movie? Take a ride with Mr. Wick.