Hacks

One of the best comedy series of the past ten years is finally back for a third season, and while it doesn’t quite reach the heights of its near-perfect first and second seasons, it’s a lot funnier than anything on television right now. When we last left, Deborah Vance (Jean Smart) and Ava Daniels (Hannah Einbinder) split up after Deborah let her go as her writer. Deborah’s reasoning was so that Ava could find her voice and build her own thing, but it was primarily due to their character’s rivalry and Deborah’s deep-seated fear of attachment. This season begins with Deborah on top of the world and Ava as close to the top as she’s ever been. Deborah is America’s sweetheart, selling out venues and crushing shows, sometimes even without having to tell a single joke. Ava is writing for a good television show and dating an up-and-coming actress on a YA fantasy show. Both are bored, so Deborah brings Ava back into the fold, which has both positive and devastating effects on their lives.

The goal this season is for Deborah to take over The Late Show, and she needs her best writer to do it. Throughout nine well-paced episodes, they work together, bicker, and almost break up trying to achieve this goal. There’s not a weak episode in the bunch. Still, there are definitely some standouts, such as the golf trip episode where Deborah tries to grease a bunch of powerful executives that can get her closer to Late Night (and Ava almost gets peed on) and the Friar’s Club roast episode centering around Deborah’s daughter, played by the incredible Kaitlin Olsen (The Mick, It’s Always Sunny in Philadelphia), trying to write her own roast for her mom.

There are many reasons this show works so well, from the impressive roster of supporting and guest performances to the first-rate writing. However, the main reason this show works is Jean Smart. Adjectives aren’t strong enough to adequately explain what she brings to the table. I think it may be the greatest performance on television in quite some time. You sometimes really dislike this character, but you never don’t understand her. Grade: A- (Max)

The Sympathizer

This is a difficult review to write because I can’t totally put my finger on what exactly doesn’t add up about The Sympathizer, Park Chan-wook‘s new HBO miniseries about espionage. Based on a 2015 novel of the same name, the story surrounds a South Vietnamese communist spy infiltrating the North Vietnamese army during the waning days of the Vietnam War. He’s known simply as The Captain because that’s the rank he achieved undercover. When it looks like the North is going to lose the war, the Captain, along with his General and several other high-ranking North Vietnamese officials and their families, fly over to San Fransisco to seek refuge. This is because of a deal with the CIA they strike thanks to Claude, a quirky but ruthless CIA agent who takes The Captain under his wing. Does he know The Captain is a spy? The North Vietnamese General sure doesn’t; he’s a oafish, paranoid idiot on a power trip and the most entertaining part of the show. Throughout seven episodes, The Captain tries to uphold his communist mission of pretending to be a North Vietnamese soldier who is trying to make it seem like he’s becoming Americanized.

It’s a complicated set-up, yet The Sympathizer is missing some necessary plot momentum for something so racked with tension on a narrative level. It’s a slow burn, but that’s not to say it’s boring. Park Chan-wook, the Korean filmmaker behind Oldboy, Decision to Leave, and The Handmaiden, is one of the best visual storytellers living. He and other episode directors – City of God‘s Fernando Meirelles and English TV director Marc Munden – have created one of the coolest-looking and uniquely shot offerings of television or film this year that has a real kinetic motion to it. Park co-created/co-wrote the show with Canadian actor, filmmaker, and playwright Don McKellar, who you might recognize as Darren Nichols from the popular Canadian TV series Slings & Arrows, and they balance out the really dark material with inspired bits of absurdist humor. Not all of the jokes land, but most do, and I found myself laughing more than most straight-up sitcoms currently airing.

The real secret weapon of the series is the trio of performances at its center. Newcomer Hoa Xuande is simply remarkable as The Captain, and the fact that he has some of the most compelling eyes I’ve ever seen on an actor doesn’t hurt. It’s a compelling yet grounded performance wonderfully juxtaposed with Robert Downey, Jr.‘s quartet of goofy characters. He plays Claude, the CIA mentor, but also a flamboyant and problematic white Orientalist grad school professor, a bumbling ultra-conservative congressman, and best of all, an ambitious filmmaker patterned off of Francis Ford Coppola, who the Captain works with as technical advisor to a Vietnam movie that’s more or less Apocalypse Now. Downey won an Oscar this year for his most understated performance yet, but it’s nice to see him go big again. He’s one of the most entertaining actors working today. Even better and funnier than Downey is Toan Le as the General, a buffonish character that may have read as over-the-top if not for the nuance Le brings to the part. Unfortunately, the series drops the ball by underdeveloping Sandra Oh‘s character as the Captain’s co-worker/part-time lover, as well as his best friend and handler back in Vietnam, played by Duy Nguyen.

Overall, The Sympathizer is well worth watching, even if it’s frustrating solely on the basis of all its missed potential. It’s well-written, fantastically directed, and brilliantly acted, but it just doesn’t come together in a completely satisfying way. Grade: B+ (Max)

In a Violent Nature

An interesting premise that proves far less interesting in execution, Chris Nash‘s In A Violent Nature is a brutal slasher from the point-of-view of a personality-free slasher. This slasher does have a name, though – Johnny – and he’s a bulky zombie corpse that gets re-animated when a shit head teen steals his mother’s necklace and gives it to his girlfriend. You see, the necklace has some supernatural power to it, and it’s keeping the corpse of Johnny dead and underground. I have to give props to actor Ry Barrett, who delivers a fine physical performance as the mute killer, no doubt inspired by Kane Hodder‘s work in the Friday the 13th franchise, particularly Part VII. It’s an undoubtedly flat character, but Barrett does the most he can with it. The problem ends up being that by following Johnny the whole time, all potential suspense the movie would have otherwise had if shown from the traditional victims’ POV is wholly lost. I thought the film was less boring than some critics did, but I also found very little to care about. Like most slashers, the young adult victims here are shallowly written and for the most part, poorly performed. In A Violent Nature also features what is perhaps the most brutal and downright sickening kill I’ve ever seen in a slasher, one that caused me to audibly gasp and disturb the guy next to me by loudly exclaiming, “Fuck!” The film has been described as Terrence Malick‘s Friday the 13th and I find that a poor description because unlike The Tree of Life or The Thin Red Line, there’s nothing even remotely cerebral or introspective about this picture. Sure, it’s well-filmed and features some impressive shot set-ups like a Malick film, but ultimately, it has very little to say about anything. Grade: C+ (In Theaters)

Movie Pass, Movie Crash

This is going to be my shortest review. Movie Pass, Movie Crash is a very paint-by-numbers HBO documentary, but the story it tells is far more fascinating than what most people think when they remember Movie Pass. It’s basically about how two greedy old-boy network business guys who hijacked the vision of two black entrepreneurs just so they could party with celebrities all day. It’s interesting as a documentary, but it would make a far better scripted satiric comedy, a la Adam McKay, that would allow them to take liberties with the characters and behind-closed-doors conversations you just knew took place. It’s worth watching if you only know part of the story. Grade: B (Max)