Swords of Anarchy: The Bastard Executioner

Don’t hold it up next to Game of Thrones. When sizing-up Kurt Sutter’s new series The Bastard Executioner, the familiar clang of swords may make it hard to avoid drawing comparisons – but that’s hardly fair, given the unique place Thrones occupies in the pop culture firmament. It’s better to look at Executioner for what it is – the next chapter in the pulpy universe of Sutter’s brand of outlaw standard-bearers. 

 

After seven seasons of Sons of Anarchy, you have to hand it to Sutter, to find the moxie and drive to jump headlong into an even more ambitious serial TV universe, the 14^th Century of King Edward III. With opening titles showcasing a stark montage of steely torture equipment, dripping blood, Sutter makes it clear he won’t be shying away from the brutality of the middle ages. 

 

Bastard Executioner is less focused on the familial schemes of Throne-ish aristocrats and more on the oppressive boot heel those in power grind down upon the peasants – in this case, Welsh villagers just trying to live simply and raise families. The plot owes some generous tips of the helm to Braveheart, a film that informs large swaths of Executioner’s inhabitants. The hero is Wilkin Brattle (Lee Jones), a former soldier who lay down his sword after a mystical near-death experience on the battlefield. Now he’s found love and looks forward to his lovely wife’s delivery of their first child. Braveheart and Josie Wales fans know where this is headed. 

 

The local Lord of the land, Baron Ventris (Brían F. O'Byrne of Oz) is taxing the locals through the nose, abetted by Stephen Moyer (True Blood) in Sheriff of Nottingham mode. When Wilkin and some aspiring rebels decide to stick it to the Ventris tax collector, the aristocrats respond as expected. Katey Sagal is back in her hubby’s universe, this time as a witch with a Slavic accent that’s full Maria Ouspenskaya in The Wolf Man: “Whoever ees beetin by a Verevolf and leevs, becomes a Verevolf heemself.”

 

Nearly the entire enterprise rests squarely on the shoulders of Australian newcomer Lee Jones, as Wilkin Brattle – a deliberately named character of the same bodice-ripping evocation as Hell on Wheels’ Cullen Bohannan – those names! Jones is beefy and energetic and has great physicality – his arc in the pilot swings as wildly as his broadsword, and for me, the jury is still out on his acting chops – and where his character’s potential lies given the masquerade role he quickly comes to adopt. 

 

While the pilot is all over the map, it’s never boring. There are frequent moments of genuinely shocking violence, and FX has clearly given Sutter free rein to appeal to the legions of Anarchy fans who they hope will follow him. Sutter has a great sense of pulp, and likes to set up the audience for big reveals, dealing out the plot like a ferocious soap opera. He’s traded one family of outlaws for another, and he’s making no bones about the fact this story is set in a cruel, cruel age. The pilot had its share of clunky moments, but I’m definitely intrigued enough to see what kind of medieval outlawry Sutter has up his bloody sleeves.

Deakins + Villeneuve = Blade Runner Sequel Excitement

I was a massive fan of Denis Villeneuve's Prisoners, a staggering thriller with the ever-surprising Jake Gyllenhaal. One of its biggest assets was the mesmerizing cinematography of the great Roger Deakins.

Well, the Toronto International Film Festival is unspooling this week, and there's plenty of love for Villeneuve's latest film, Sicario, a drug cartel thriller starring Emily Blunt - also lensed by Deakins. Sicaro just showed up in the #1 spot on Entertainment Weekly's Must List: "If you enjoy stunning cinematography," is the opening line of their rave. It's also the director's third R-rated film in a row.

Why is this doubly exciting? Because these two cats are rolling up their sleeves to tackle the Blade Runner sequel, that's why. They are both clearly at the top of their games, and with the enthusiasm we've been hearing about the script, I think we're in for a visually stunning, hard-edged chapter in the long-awaited Replicant saga that's actually fit for adults.

Now I've just got to get around to watching Enemy...

The Desperate Hours: Nightcrawler

There once was the great tarnished golden age of the antihero – it was called the seventies.

Clockwork Orange, One Flew Over the Cuckoo’s Nest, Dog Day Afternoon, Serpico, The French Connection, and of course, Taxi Driver. 

We don’t get them too often these days, but when we do, they tend to make an impact. I’d put Fight Club on that list, and Breaking Bad. 

I’d also put Nightcrawler. And if you’re misty for those edgy bygone days, thinking they don’t make ‘em like that anymore, you owe it to yourself to give Nightcrawler a spin.

 

Jake Gyllenhaal is Louis Bloom, a desperate loner living in his car, who’s created an elaborate internal architecture of himself as focused entrepreneur. He’s just not sure what of. 

Fate has him stumble into a late night accident being filmed by an independent news photographer – whose key skill seems to be a willingness to cross lines and keep filming, no matter what. Bloom, a natural at unblinking fixation, quickly realizes, “I can do that.” He’s found his calling. Grabbing a cheap video camera and police scanner, he starts trolling nocturnal Los Angeles looking for the near aftermath of accidents – or crimes – anything where the whiff of violence and blood still lingers in the air. Fresh video can be a commodity – the more shocking the better. It gets ratings, and Bloom is obsessively determined to shoehorn a place for himself in the video underbelly of local TV news. He’s figured out the formula: footage is king – and there’s nothing he won’t do to get it.

 

Gyllenhaal reaches a whole other level here, disappearing into Louis Bloom. It’s a hypnotic, disturbing performance. He’s in virtually every scene, and it’s insane that he wasn’t nominated for an Oscar. He’s like a driven David Cronenberg character and Gyllenhaal has created one of the most unsettling and single-minded film characters in American film since De Niro gave us Travis Bickle. 

 

Writer Dan Gilroy (The Bourne Legacy, Real Steel) takes the director’s chair for the first time here, and knocks the cover off the ball. Gilroy’s family breathes movies – his brother Dan directed Michael Clayton, and his father is Frank D. Gilroy, Pulitzer Prize winner for The Subject Was Roses. Gilroy’s wife, Rene Russo, co-stars in the film as the local news producer that Bloom zeroes-in on. Conspiring with editor (brother) John Gilroy and the great cinematographer Robert Elswit (Boogie Nights, There Will Be Blood, Mission: Impossible – Rogue Nation) Gilroy serves up one of the most visually arresting and heart-pumping films I’ve seen in a while. Made for less than $10 million, Nightcrawler looks astonishing and establishes an unforgettable atmosphere of wee-hours stillness, where things happen in a heartbeat that very few are up and moving to witness. 

In this age of increasing hypnotic devotion to our screens and news entities that know blood entrances, Nightcrawler has plenty to say about our culture of unblinking voyeurism, about crime, law enforcement, and the increasingly blurry line between observer and participant. In a culture that has its sociopathic moments, is the unhinged loner still an aberration? Nightcrawler is unmissable cinema. You’re going to need a long hot shower afterwards, but it’s a stupendous modern film, that wears its tarnish well.

It Follows peels out...then runs out of gas

It Follows has built up a considerable rep. I kept hearing it mentioned in the same breath as The Babadook and The Guest, both of which I loved. So I had to take the plunge.

Written and directed by David Robert Mitchell, It Follows is a twist on the long cinematic horror history of the bad things that happen after teenagers have sex. Jay (Maika Monroe, of The Guest, coincidentally) has a consensual sexual encounter, only to find herself stalked by an unknown supernatural force.

It's an interesting premise, and Mitchell does a phenomenal job of creating a really unique mood. The era is intangible - modern here and distinctly retro there. Old thrillers play on tube TVs like Laurie Strode's house in Halloween. Though what sets It Follows apart is the notion of possession as a metaphor for sexually transmitted disease. Jay and her friends are believable, naturalistic characters, and Mitchell does a great job of shooting in the bombed-out wasteland of Detroit, the abandoned neighborhoods creating a near documentary atmosphere of paranoia and dread. The performances are great and the opening scene is a doozy.

But as great as the elements are, the film didn't sustain for me, and really lost me in the third act. I was pretty well hooked, but the "rules" of Mitchell's horror conception weren't consistent and got sketchier as the finale grew more protracted. He's definitely got director's chops, and made a hell of a nice, fresh horror thriller for a paltry $2 million (and grossed around $15 mil). You can't help but champion his resourceful inventiveness and I'm definitely anxious to see what he does next.

I just wish It Follows had spent more time on the script - and on delivering a satisfying climax that felt worthy of its fresh premise.