Psycho (1960): A Review

PSYCHO (1960)

With Bates Motel over, I thought it would be nice to look over the history of the Psycho phenomenon, and what better way to begin than with the original.  Shocking when it was released, and still shocking today, it is interesting that while many people might think that Psycho began the glut of graphically violent films, the movie itself is actually quite restrained when it comes to what is actually there.

History has proven that Psycho was not a cheap slasher film (let alone the genesis of the genre), but among the best-crafted films of the 20th Century.

Marion Crane (Janet Leigh) is a good and honest person, though her love life is a bit chaotic.  Her lover, Sam Loomis (John Gavin), has many debts and an ex-wife, which is why he won't marry her.  Marion wants to help Sam and find a way to be together, willing even to move from her home in Phoenix to his small hardware store in Fairvale, California.

Things take an unexpected turn when $40,000 almost literally falls in her lap, a cash payment by a wealthy real estate client.  Her boss is uncomfortable with so much cash at the office and asks Marion to deposit it in the bank.  Marion decides to make a run for it.

Her nerves get the better of her, as she finds herself quietly pursued by a police officer who finds her very suspicious, more so when she trades in her car for another.  Eventually, she drives to the Bates Motel, having accidentally gotten off the highway.  She seeks shelter from the storm, and the hotel owner, Norman Bates (Anthony Perkins) offers both shelter and a good ear.  He also has a mother, who constantly shouts at him but who is, in his own words, incapacitated.

Marion then decides to clean up her act, deciding in her own mind to go back and face the music.  She also decides to take a shower, and it's here where all hell breaks loose.

Marion Crane is stabbed to death in the shower.

Shortly afterwards, Marion's sister Lila (Vera Miles) goes to Sam's to find her, but Sam doesn't know anything.  Unbeknown to either, there's someone else looking for Marion: private detective Milton Arbogast (Martin Balsam).  He wants to know what happened to Marion, and the $40,000.  His investigative work leads him to the Bates Motel, where he finds a very nervous Norman.  He also finds that Norman will not let him see Mrs. Bates.

When Arbogast doesn't contact Lila and Sam, they decide to investigate themselves.  This leads to the shocking discovery of the truth of Norman and Mrs. Bates, as well as a long explanation by a psychiatrist (Simon Oakland).  The truth about Marion's murder and Norman Bates leaves everyone in disbelief.

Psycho has become a byword for 'crazy', but the film is anything but.  It still is shocking in so many ways.  First, screenwriter Joseph Stefano (adapting Robert Bloch's novel) and Hitchcock give us a major twist in killing off what the audience believes to be the main character.  The film has you believe that this will be Marion's story, but about halfway through the film, we see her slashed to death.  Having our 'main' character killed off, particularly in that manner, upends audiences' expectations, leaving them off-kilter and unsure of what will happen.

It's not a spoiler to say that Marion Crane was murdered: the shower scene having become iconic.  Those who have not seen Psycho are aware of it: it's been reference and parodied countless times.  What might be surprising to people is that the shower scene is both very brief (probably under two minutes at the most) and surprisingly not violent.

The shower scene has been analyzed and studied and dissected in many film classes, and I don't think I need to go over every frame of it.  Instead, I can tell you what I saw, and this is something that has been commented on by others.  The shock and horror that comes from it is not directly related to what is actually shown (there was probably one very quick shot of the knife near the body, but from my perspective it didn't look like it had actually entered the body).

The shock and horror comes from the impressions it leaves.  Everything in the shower scene works to give an illusion of rapid, out-of-control, frenzied violence on an almost unimaginable scale.

Bernard Herrmann's score at this scene have a stabbing-like sound: the violin strings repeating the same note in short, rapid succession, with a controlled frenzy backing it up.
George Tomasini's quick cutting where things again show a frenzy and fury, the knife appearing to come almost closer and closer to us as it 'cuts' through the water.
Janet Leigh's screams of terror as she desperately fights off her attacker.
Hitchcock putting all this together seamlessly.

We even get a touch of pathos after her killing.  Accidentally or not, a couple of the shower water drops almost appear to form 'tears' from Marion's eyes, as if metaphorically she is crying that now she will never get a chance to redeem herself when she had made the decision to return to Phoenix and try to make right what she did wrong.

It adds a touch of sadness after the perceived violence, for if one looks at the shower scene, we see that the blood and gruesome nature of it comes from our imagination, not what is literally on screen.

Psycho's brilliance also comes from the non-verbal cues the film gives us.  Herrmann's score is among the greatest for film (shockingly overlooked come Oscar time, which didn't even bother nominating it), but the use of silences in Psycho is also quite incredible.  Hitchcock allows us to fill in information without having to tell us.  When Marion decides to run off with the money, we not only see how she's gone from light to dark (in her romp with Sam, she wears white underwear, when planning to leave, it becomes black), but see the camera shift from her, to the envelope with the money, to a suitcase.

In those three movements, we know all there is to know. 

Again and again Hitchcock shows us rather than tells us things to give us the subtext: the constant mentions of marriage to Marion (whose one desire is to marry Sam), the stuffed birds looking over Norman (a bird of prey seeking out its hunt), even the name Crane.  The subtlety of Psycho is something that perhaps should be more noted.

Even when dialogue is used, sometimes it can be to dark humor's use.  After Marion is killed, Lila comes to Sam's, wanting to help her sister before, in her words, "she gets in this too deeply," an unintentionally gruesome comment given how just earlier we saw Marion's body sink into a swamp when Norman pushed her car into it.

Janet Leigh was nominated for Best Supporting Actress, and it was well-earned.  Her Marion was sympathetic, and often she had to act with voices going through her head.  Leigh had to express emotions with her eyes and face, and she did it beautifully.

In his short turn as the detective, Balsam is also extraordinary: sharp, shrewd, determined.

Anthony Perkins became forever typecast as a troubled, mentally unstable man after Psycho (so much so that despite working on other films, he found his best work recreating the character in three sequels).  Despite the trouble Psycho would bring to his career, Perkins' performance is iconic and brilliant.  His hesitancy, his nervousness coupled with what appears his sincerity and kindness makes Norman Bates a figure of sympathy and revulsion.

The great flaw in Psycho to many is the psychiatrist's long and ponderous wrapping up, as if the audience needed some rationalization for the insanity of the past two hours.  I never found it a dealbreaker but I can see why so many found it rather much, even in 1960.  A minor flaw might be in some shots that make it a bit dated, but the technology just wasn't there to make it as effective as it might have been today.  Still, minor points.

Psycho still, after a half-century plus, still can shock us again and again.  Exceptionally acted, extraordinarily directed, with an iconic musical score, the film remains a high mark in cinema history.

It's a tough act to follow, let alone duplicate.  However, that's for another time.

DECISION: A+

PSYCHO FILM SERIES

Psycho II

Psycho III

Psycho (1998)

PSYCHO TELEVISION SERIES

Psycho IV: The Beginning

Bates Motel (The Television Movie)

Bates Motel (The Television Series)

Bates Motel: The Complete Fifth and Final Season Overview

BATES MOTEL: THE COMPLETE 

FIFTH SEASON

A lot of television shows should take a page from Bates Motel: know when to quit.  Bates Motel: The Fifth Season actually went a bit past the events of Psycho (and even changed some of them), and had a definitive ending.  A good thing too, as I found this final season a bit weak, where things ended not with a bang, but with a whimper.

I don't think I've been as disappointed in a series finale as I have been with Bates Motel, at least not since the debacle known as Twin Peaks (though perhaps the revival will redeem it).  Looking over the reviews, I find that Seasons 1 to 4 averaged a very respectable 8/10, but Season 5 eked out a 7.8.  Yes, rounding up makes it another 8/10, but it also has six episodes that were 6 and lower (with The Cord being the lowest of them all at a 3/10).  The lowest-ranked Bates Motel episode for me was the series finale, and it wasn't because I was sad to see it go, but because I thought it gave people a false ending.

I found that this season, there were good things still rattling around (who would have thought Rihanna would turn out to be a respectable actress), but there were other things that I thought bordered on the ludicrous.

I was thrilled to see Chick killed as I loathed him pretty much from the get-go.  However, when he got killed, having him hit the typewriter with his head and ending it with the 'ding' was not funny.  It was stupid.  Seeing Romero turn into some sort of superman where he can survive getting shot repeatedly was also silly.

Perhaps worse, from my perspective, is seeing that in a sense, Norman Bates got a happy ending.  Psycho didn't give him a happy ending: he was locked up in an insane asylum, where he needed to be, and if not for the sequels he would have spent the rest of his life there, completely given over to 'Mother'.  Instead, Bates Motel opted for a metaphysical reunion, where Norman could spend time and all eternity happily with Norma.

This just didn't seem fair to me on many levels.  It didn't seem fair to the many people he killed, for they never got true justice.  It didn't seem fair to me as a viewer, who found the idea of a serial killer going to a form of Heaven almost blasphemous.  It just seemed a very easy way out for him: to have his psychologically tortured half-brother/uncle take care of things.

Even that seemed a bit unfair, to have Dylan be the instrument of retribution. He was the only person who genuinely cared for Norman, and perhaps the writers thought it would be great drama to have him be his executioner.  Still, something about that just didn't sit right with me.

We'll also never get a definitive answer to what ever happened to Dr. Edwards.  We get a great moment where Norman accidentally bumps into him (echoing a scene in Psycho, curiously enough), and Dr. Edwards gives a great insight to Norman about his true mental state.  We then get a great twist when we hear that Dr. Edwards has actually been missing for over a year, but we never learn what actually happened to him.

It's probable that Norman killed Dr. Edwards too, but how, and why?  Did Dr. Edwards find Norman in drag?  Did they perhaps meet at the gay bar Norman as 'Norma' went to (remember, Dr. Edwards was openly gay and it's doubtful he wouldn't have gone to the bar at least once)?  Did the good doctor take advantage of the situation, or was he an innocent bystander?  Did Norman break into Pineview to get at the doctor?  How and why Dr. Edwards may have been killed is something the show will never bother to explain.

Almost seems unfair to bring it up then, doesn't it, if you're not going to give an answer.  Why couldn't the sheriff have found Edwards' body too, giving us closure?

Let's also touch briefly on the change to the original story.  Part of me understands the rationale for not killing Marion off as she was in the film (they wanted to not be a carbon copy of Psycho).  Fine, I get that.  From me perspective though, it felt like a big tease or a bait-and-switch (or is it Bates-and-switch): bringing  her in just to say, 'nope, sorry, just kidding'.

Then again, you can't kill off Ri-Ri.

Instead, we get Sam Loomis killed off in the shower, with Norman not in drag as 'Norma', but as himself.  Part of me, again, understands what we've been told is the rationale behind it, but again, I just never felt it was a good idea.  Wouldn't Sam, a much stronger man than Norman, been better able to defend himself?  Yes, he was stabbed, but he still could have had enough strength to overpower the thin kid.

After all, Romero managed to survive multiple gunshots, and he was older than our adulterous Sammy.

A lot of Loomis' murder just felt off.  Worse though was the idea of Bates Motel producers who decided to have Norman do the killing because seeing him in drag killing people might be offensive to transgender people.

Whatever one might think of transgenderism, this politically correct motivation, while well-intentioned, is erroneous.  Norman never thought he should have been born a woman a la Laverne Cox or Caitlyn Jenner.  He was always conscious of being male, down to being horrified when he found he had inadvertently been having sex with other men.  He never saw himself as a woman, but as one particular woman (his mother, Norma) and those times he was in a blackout stage.  That is not a transgender person.

Norman was and has never been transgender, and I doubt the audience would ever mistake him for one.  To alter a major plot point to satisfy a sense of social justice is silly, especially given that by this point most if not all Bates Motel fans understand that Norman sees himself as Norma Bates, a specific person, not as a woman per se (and even then, only at certain times, not all the time as would an actual transgender individual).

Transgenderism would not have crossed my mind when and if the show had stuck to Psycho. I don't even think the concept of transgenderism existed in 1960 (note I said the concept, not actual transgender people.  There is a difference). Bates Motel, if they changed the killing to placate certain social views, is selling its audience very short.

I wasn't thrilled they made major changes to the Psycho story.  I wasn't overwhelmed with how the show ended.  I was highly impressed by Freddie Highmore as Norman Bates, who now took center stage after Vera Farmiga's Norma was killed off.  I even thought better of Max Thieriot as Dylan, someone who I constantly went back and forth on.

Still, Bates Motel Season Five was a disappointment to me.  I feel we could have had a stronger ending, and especially not a happy-type one for our deranged serial killer.

And that damn 'ding' when Chick was killed.

So close, and yet...

Bates Motel: The Final Thoughts

Feud: Bette and Joan. The Complete First Season

FEUD: BETTE AND JOAN

Television now has allowed itself to tell one story, briefly, without a desire to go on for several seasons.  Feud: Bette and Joan is in the tradition of another Ryan Murphy production, American Horror Story, in that every season will tackle another subject (next season, it will be the feud between His Royal Highness Charles, Prince of Wales, and his first wife, the late Lady Diana Spencer.  Still no plans as of this writing to tackle Olivia de Havilland/Joan Fontaine feud.  All's the pity).

Bette and Joan chronicles the war between Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon) and Joan Crawford (Murphy muse Jessica Lange) primarily centered around the making of the only film they made together: What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?. We see how these two divas undercut each other in ways large and small, both during the production and the follow-up, Hush...Hush, Sweet Charlotte (which Crawford pulled out of through less-than-straightforward, unable to endure another round with Davis). It's a well-produced limited series, with standout performances by Lange, Sarandon, Alfred Molina as director Robert Aldrich, Stanley Tucci as Warner Brothers head Jack Warner, and Judy Davis as gossip maven Hedda Hopper.

Curiously enough, the war between Hopper and her fellow gossip maven Louella Parsons might make for a good Feud season, their rivalry already covered in a television movie, Malice in Wonderland.

I say well acted, which it was, but I also was not convinced by Lange's portrayal of Crawford.  Physically, Lange and the make-up crew did wonders to capture the Crawford look.  Vocally, in all eight episodes of Bette and Joan, Lange never sounded like Crawford.  There was a soft, breathy tone to her voice that didn't come close to what I remember of the real Crawford. 

Much better was Sarandon as Davis.  It wasn't an impersonation, but Sarandon got the short, clipped manner to Davis.  Molina was a delight as the forever put-upon Aldrich, having to deal with power-mad moguls and temperamental divas making his life eternally miserable. Davis was all acid as Hopper, frenemy to Crawford.  I think Tucci wasn't spot-on as the tyrannical Warner, the last of the great movie moguls, but when it came to Hollywood, Feud really is more about how it is today than how it was yesterday.

Feud is not just a tale of two women locked in a lifelong war that went on beyond the grave (Davis, outliving Crawford by more than a decade, still bitched about her long after Joan's body was a-moldering in the grave).  It's also about the relatively low position women have in Hollywood.  Warner at first doesn't want to hire Crawford and/or Davis for anything.  First, both of them gave him endless trouble when working for Warner Brothers (Davis more than Crawford, but both insufferable to him).  Second, he considers both of them, women in their fifties, would appeal to audiences.

Warner coldly dismissed them both due to their ability to arouse him sexually.

There's more than poetry in that idea, as today very few actresses past forty have both box office and 'sex' appeal.  Meryl Streep is a rare example, but today's Hollywood, like the one that saw Crawford and Davis relegated to has-beens, does not go out of its way to hire actresses of a certain age.  As I've pointed out, in the past decade the Best Actress Oscar winner has been on the young side (ironically, Streep pushes the average age up), while the Best Actor winner tends to be older.  The youngest Best Actor winner this decade is actually older or the same age as five Best Actress winners.

Older actresses (say 50+) are not given major parts in big films.  It is more than ageism, though that cannot be dismissed.  It is because Hollywood today is reluctant to make films that would require older actresses.  Today's Hollywood is more focused on comic book adaptations, franchise building, and the foreign market (particularly the Chinese market) to care about Sharon Stone, Julia Roberts, or Meg Ryan.

Think on that versus older actors like Jeff Bridges or Kurt Russell, who still appear in blockbusters.

In More, Or Less, we saw what was true then is true now: behind the scenes, it has not improved.  Female directors are still rare, female writers still struggle harder.  One character speculated that by the 1970s, studios would be forced to hire more female directors and writers because there would be more women. What was not seen was that the studio would respond to population growth, but not that of women, but of young boys.

If women were the economic powerhouse that it was thought they might be, would we really have the Marvel Cinematic Universe or its poor relation, the DC Extended Universe? Would we have The Fast & The Furious franchise (which came about virtually by accident)?  Perhaps the latter: F&F has wide appeal through all races and genders, but it is more male-centered than female.

Even in more female-centric films and television, they tend to be closer to what might appeal to men: gone are the days of Loretta Young, sweeping in wearing elegant gowns on her anthology show.  Now it's women like Chelsea Handler and Amy Schumer, women who've built their careers on being as raunchy, even vulgar as any of their male counterparts might be.  

I doubt anyone who watches Handler, Schumer, or Samantha Bee would imagine them wearing gowns and reveling in the glories of femininity.  Part of it is the change in society, which equates equality with similarity.  I've long argued that men and women are equal, but are not the same.  As such, things that might have mattered to Davis and especially Crawford: good parts where they could be strong women without being female versions of men, do not matter to those who are now en vogue in Hollywood.

Women are still not employed in larger numbers as directors or writers, let alone in the business office. So long as this continues, films will continue to go where the market is, and the market is in two places: China and the boys middle-school locker room.

Feud, in a sharp way, uses the past to illustrate the present.  Women in front of the camera still struggle to get parts if they are past their child-bearing years (will people like Jennifer Lawrence or Emma Stone really go on to play Chekov on film once they get to be Sharon Stone's age?).  The desire a woman may have to write and/or direct will still face a harder struggle than a man might.

Even if a man did get his film done, like Aldrich he might find himself having to constantly battle with studios who won't back his own vision and want to 'improve' on things, usually but not always with disastrous results.

The more things change...

Feud: Bette and Joan has so much going for it.  It has great acting, writing and directing.  It has nods to other projects like the Crawford biopic Mommie Dearest.  It gives us sometimes sympathetic portraits of Davis and Crawford, two women who despite protests to the contrary were far more similar than different.  It also has much to say, in a subtle way, about how things are now versus how things were then: the gimmicks, the struggles for things large (Oscar campaigns) and small (order of billing).   It's not a bitchy slap-fest of two old broads (though we have good old-fashioned sniping), but a well-crafted production about how something unique emerged out of a lifelong antagonism between two legendary actresses.

Feud: You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? Review

FEUD: YOU MEAN ALL THIS TIME WE COULD HAVE BEEN FRIENDS?

Feud is a tragedy.  Not in terms of production, for it's a well-created, well-crafted limited series. Instead, it's a tragedy in that we see how Joan Crawford and Bette Davis, at the center of the first season, ended: sad, relatively lonely, and with little to show for their decades-long rivalry. You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? wraps up this sad and sordid story of these two divas, who hopefully will be remembered more for their work onscreen than their wickedness off screen.

The episode, longer than most, first goes into chronicling Joan Crawford (Jessica Lange).  Facing serious health issues (including deteriorating teeth due to surgery to further her career), Crawford keeps drinking as she suffers from the poorly-funded filming of Trog, her final film.  She is genuinely appalled at how low the production is, and isn't too thrilled whenever people ask her about What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, even when promoting her lifestyle book.

In a lengthy sequence, as she slips into hallucinations in the final week of her life due to cancer, she imagines a lavish yet intimate dinner party with her frenemy Hedda Hopper (Judy Davis), her difficult boss Jack Warner (Stanley Tucci), and even Bette Davis (Susan Sarandon).  While everyone there bemoans how low Hollywood has gotten, the two bitter rivals at this dinner appear to finally bury the hatchet, but not for long, as Mamacita (Jackie Hoffman), who has returned on a part-time basis, leads the disoriented Crawford back to bed, and in essence, to eternity.

Davis' career isn't going well either, having appeared in a series of failed pilots.  Her old friend Victor Buono (Dominic Burgess) tells Davis that Crawford is dying and urges her to make peace, telling her that Crawford is the only one who knows what Davis is going through.  He further points out that both have had parallel lives: struggles in their careers, ungrateful children.  Davis does call Crawford, but cannot bring herself to speak.

We finally go back to the Academy Awards of 1978, which have been the framework for Feud.  We learn that all these interviews of people like Joan Blondell (Kathy Bates) and Olivia de Havilland (Catherine Zeta-Jones) were for a documentary, one that Davis stubbornly will not participate in.  They, along with Pauline Jamison (Alison Wright), the assistant who found new life working on documentaries, watch the In Memoriam of the Oscars.  Blondell notes sadly that fifty years career were reduced to two seconds as Crawford's photograph is included in the montage.

We end with speculation about the first day's shooting of What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?, and we see that Crawford and Davis actually got along quite well, laughing like two old chums, before they head out to their separate dressing rooms.  Another montage tells us of the real people involved in this Feud.

The episode I think gets why this story is a tragedy, particularly for Crawford.  We see the indignities she went through with Trog, her final film, how bad pictures of her and her friend Rosalind Russell made her a recluse, how the stories in her daughter Christina's book Mommie Dearest privately devastated her, and how she died a lonely woman.  For Davis, we see how she kept working but in projects that did not fit her talent, how one of her few rivals (Katherine Hepburn) rejected her (in essence inflicting the same haughtiness on her that she inflicted on Crawford), and how her own daughter ended up rejecting her.

A scene between Davis and her daughter B.D. Hyman (Kiernan Shipka) reveals the resentment the latter had and how she disapproved of her mother as both mother and daughter.  The coldness Hyman has would be a preview of the devastating turn of events when Hyman wrote her own memoir, My Mother's Keeper.  However, unlike Crawford, who died before Mommie Dearest was published but was aware of its contents, Davis was very much alive when My Mother's Keeper came out (though disabled by a series of strokes and recovering from cancer).  Davis never again spoke to her daughter.

Despite all their hatred, the two did indeed have parallel lives.

There is a sense of tragedy in You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?, and the double meaning of the title (a line from What Ever Happened to Baby Jane?) rings true. The tragedy runs throughout the episode, from Mamacita's sad observation that people came when Crawford died but not when she needed them to Davis' discovery of someone she ended up hating more: Faye Dunaway, whom she worked with in a television movie and found more intolerable than Crawford (who at least was always professional on the set). The fact that Crawford had praised Dunaway and said she would be the only person who could play Crawford probably made things more maddening for Davis.

While the episode slips into fantasy (the extended dinner sequence and the first day shooting scene, the latter still a point of debate about its reality), it does draw you in.  We are aware that the whole thing is in Crawford's head, but knowing that she is days from death makes the whole scene, where the mixture of bitterness and elegance brings them a sense of peace.  Crawford in her dementia is allowed a moment of bliss and catharsis, and that seems poignant.

Davis talks about losing her 'high standards' in order to keep working, but fortunately Feud didn't.  Even in their smaller roles, Davis and Tucci were wonderful as the acid-tongued Hopper and the unapologetic Warner.  In her one scene, Shipka was cold and effective as B.D., forever angry. 

As for the two leads, You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends? is more Lange's hour-plus as the dying Crawford.  While I question just how unhappy she was in making Trog (by all accounts, she was aware it was bad but remained the professional), Lange made Crawford a person, hurt and lonely, desperate to hold on to the one thing that gave her reason to live: her career.  Even if it cost her a set of teeth or suffered indignity upon indignity, Lange's Crawford kept going, rarely letting cracks appear.  When they did, like when her daughter Cathy (Audrey Moore) comes to visit with her own children, we see the vulnerability and pain of her final years.

Sarandon keeps that haughty demeanor to her Davis, but she also has regrets, particularly when she cannot bring herself to speak on the phone with Crawford.  The bitterness will not go away, and it makes it again, all the more tragic.

Again, sometimes the musical choices are a little too on the nose (playing The Doors' The End as Crawford films Trog is a bit too much), and proves a bit distracting.  I also question whether the episode had to be as long as it was.  However, these are minor complaints.  As an elegy to Crawford and Davis, to the end of their Hollywood, and to how Hollywood as an industry still can't do right with women (especially of a certain age), we see the present reflected in the past.

You Mean All This Time We Could Have Been Friends?  Yes, they could have, but chose not to.

Bette Davis: 1908-1989
Joan Crawford: 1904-1977

8/10

Next: The Complete First Season

Bates Motel: The Cord Review

BATES MOTEL: THE CORD

...but the Mother and Child Reunion is only a murder away...

Somehow, I figure that would have been a better title for the series finale of Bates Motel, though The Cord does bring everything full circle from the premiere episode.  Here we had to wrap up everything, and somehow for me things did not end particularly well.  It felt a bit unfair, a bit underwhelming given everything that has come before.  For me, The Cord was probably the worst Bates Motel episode, and given that it's the last one, it ended on a weak note.

Sheriff Alex Romero (Nestor Carbonell) has forced his nemesis, Norman Bates (Freddie Highmore) to take him to the body of his late wife, Norma.  Norman, still as sarcastic as ever (referring to his former stepfather as "Sheriff Lonelyhearts") does so.  A devastated Romero beats Norman within an inch of his life, then stops to cradle the body.  Bad move, as this distraction is enough for Norman to get a rock, beat Romero with it, then shoot him dead.

Despite having been shot multiple times, even in the head if memory serves right, Romero STILL lives (a latter-day Rasputin), telling Norman that he is a sick man for murdering his own mother.

Sheriff Jane Greene (Brooke Smith) doesn't care what happens to Norman, but she is extremely worried about what could happen to her deputy, Regina (who was also taken by Romero).  This lack of empathy angers and worries Norman's half-brother/uncle Dylan Massett (Max Thieriot), who is desperate to get Norman the help he so desperately needs. 

Unbeknown to anyone, Norman casually gets Norma's body and drives back to the hotel, where even more surprisingly he manages to get a guest and her two sons to check in.  More than likely this situation would have continued, perhaps completely unknown if not for the fact that Norman calls Dylan to invite him to dinner.  Dylan is shocked at all this, especially since he realizes that Norman is so far gone he thinks he's basically started over and that what has happened in the past five-odd years hasn't.

Dylan, against the advise of his wife Emma (Olivia Cooke) goes to the house and doesn't tell the police.  There, Dylan finds Norman completely divorced from reality, making dinner while their mother's corpse sits there, causing Dylan to vomit in horror.  Dylan really tries hard to tell Norman that Mother is dead, that none of this is real, and that he needs to get help; Norman won't hear this, and gets a knife.  Dylan has come with a gun courtesy of his old friend Remo, and is forced to shoot his brother.

Norman whispers a soft 'thank you' while Dylan tearfully cradles his brother in his arms.  We see Norman and Norma 'reunited' joyfully in some ethereal world, and Dylan, Emma, and their daughter are now happy in a sunny Seattle.

Somehow, a lot of The Cord rang false for me.  Of particular irritant was the idea that Norman and Norma would reunite happily in the afterlife.  Now, as someone who does believe in an afterlife, I don't object to that per se.  I object to the idea that Norman should get a happy ending.  Yes, he was disturbed, with serious mental issues.  He was also pretty cold-blooded, selfish, and unrepentant.  He wasn't under Norma's control when he killed Sam Loomis or Sheriff Romero.  That was all Norman. 

Why then am I supposed to accept that he can get a happy ending?  That just didn't sit right with me.

I also had a hard time believing that there would be no checking at the Bates Motel itself by the police, or that Norman could just waltz back to the hotel and open it up, or that some woman who happened to stumble into the hotel would believe some random person that knocked on her door and told her to get out because the nice young man that checked her in is really bonkers, or that a man who has been shot more than once could still find time for a final monologue.

That whole Romero business was something else that never sat well with me.  Why didn't Romero just shoot Norman, or at least tie him up or put him in the trunk of the car while he mourned?  And again, after getting shot again (having made a near-miraculous recovery from the last time he was shot), he still has enough within him to taunt Norman with his Joker-like look?

Why didn't Emma call the police if Dylan refused to?  Norman, even in a state of delusion, killed her mother, so it isn't as if she was going to be particularly sympathetic to him.

No, a lot of The Cord felt as if things just had to be wrapped up.  There were ten episodes to set up a good, proper ending.  Somehow, I felt it wasn't a good and proper ending (even with Norman finally dead and buried: 1995-2017). 

I can't say much in terms of performances except that Highmore and Thieriot were good: typical for the former, slightly atypical for the latter. 

Somehow, I was disappointed by The Cord.  It just didn't feel like an ending, but a finish, a way to just close out a series because you had to.  Good thing too, because if it hadn't been the final season, I probably would have stopped watching after this episode.

3/10

Bates Motel: The Complete Fifth & Final Season

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk: A Review

BILLY LYNN'S LONG HALFTIME WALK

I have not read Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, and like many people, skipped it when it was released in theaters.  It's surprising given how BLLHW was essentially touted as some great Oscar-winning epic.  It had a high pedigree, a topical subject, and a great polish.  However, it ends up being a film that thinks it has a lot to say, and it says a lot, but it never says anything worth our time.

Covering one day in the life of our titular hero (Thanksgiving Day 2004), BLLHW tells us of our nineteen-year-old Texas veteran, Private William Lynn (Joe Alwyn).  He was cajoled into joining the Army to help pay for medical treatment for his abused sister (Kristen Stewart) and found himself in Iraq.  There, he is mentored by two officers: the metaphysical Shroom (Vin Diesel), who quotes Hindu scripture and believes that if you are meant to die on the battlefield, 'the bullet's already been fired', and the more blunt Dime (Garrett Hedlund), who has no problem telling off everyone he meets if they don't meet with his approval.  Due to what is perceived as his bravery in battle (fortuitously captured on video), Lynn, along with his company, the Bravos, are held up as great figures for a disillusioned nation tiring of the Iraq Intervention.

The Bravos are feted at the Thanksgiving Day football game in Dallas (though the film can't use the name "Dallas Cowboys" and almost goes out of its way to not suggest that's who the team is, we pretty much know it is).  There, they have two forces they must endure: Albert (Chris Tucker) a fast-talking agent who is working hard to get the Bravos a good movie deal (at one point bragging that Hillary Swank was on board to play Billy), and the "not Jerry Jones" owner of the "not Dallas Cowboys", Norman Oglesby (Steve Martin).  Oglesby is delighted to use the Bravos as props, I mean, honor our brave men in uniform.

He gets them special seats.  He has them over in the posh dining area of the "not AT&T Stadium", here named the Valero Dome (probably after the gas station company).  They're featured in not one, not two, but at least three events.  There's a pre-game shout-out.  There's a press conference where Billy imagines how his fellow troops would answer if given a chance to give real answers (ex.: how do you spend your free time? Answer: masturbate).  Here is where he meets Faison (Mackenzie Leigh), a "not Dallas Cowboys cheerleader" who is both Christian and wildly hot for Billy (who at nineteen is still a virgin...the shame).  They get to pose for pictures with Oglesby and the "not Dallas Cowboys cheerleaders".

Eventually, we get to the third or fourth use of the Bravos: the fabled halftime show, here featuring Destiny's Child.  Despite having no rehearsal time or clear idea of what to do (or even the right outfits, they being told to quickly change from their dress uniforms to the camouflage ones which they happen to have), the Bravos find themselves in the middle of an overblown production, mixing leering looks at Beyoncé with confusion, even terror of the explosions and pyrotechnics.

While being made to participate in this spectacle, Lynn has flashbacks of what really happened in Iraq and his guilt over it.  Before you know it, the production is over, and the Bravos don't take kindly to having roadies tell them to move to clear the field for the second half.  Eventually, struggling with himself, Billy Lynn decides to go against his sister's wishes and return to battle.  He does also find Faison still eager to be with him, and there's even a fight when they are taken by surprise by those roadies.

All in the day of Billy Lynn.

Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk strikes me as the type of film that thinks it has something deep and profound to say about war, about those who fight it, about the reality versus the illusion of it all.  It just doesn't get about to say anything because it throws in a lot of things that either don't make sense or that seem very forced.

No matter what anti-war/pro-soldier message was either in the film or in Ben Fountain's novel, the movie had me think that key events, particularly the halftime show, simply would not have happened.  No matter how rah-rah uber-patriotic a spectacle the halftime show was meant to be, there is no way that a group of untrained, unrehearsed men would just be thrown in there (or that this group would agree to make fools out of themselves on national television).  There had to have been rehearsals and perfectly timed practices.

Sometime during the game, the soldiers are harassed by a clearly drunk individual, questioning them about 'don't ask, don't tell'.  One of the Bravos then proceeds to put a sleeper choke hold on this rowdy person to where he almost kills him, and the drunk guy's frightened group quickly takes him away.  Two things struck me as wrong here: one, I figure soldiers would be more professional that that, and two, no matter how brave the soldiers were in battle, they wouldn't be allowed to almost kill a civilian without any kind of retribution.  

Lest we forget, General George S. Patton was severely reprimanded for slapping a soldier.  Anyone think that a simple trooper who almost killed someone in front of dozens of people would get less severe treatment?

I can get that BLLHW is meant to be more symbolic: the image of war versus the actual cost of it to these men, how their actions (which they struggle with) are used by others for reasons of their own (money, publicity, what have you).  Still, when you start questioning the logic of certain things, you forget all about the deep meanings behind them.

It got so bad that when one of the Bravos says that there are no Asian or Latino football players, I just said "Gonzalez, Archuleta, Polamalu, Dat Nguyen (who played for the Cowboys)".

It's interesting that BLLHW has a host of good actors doing pretty bad work.  Diesel at least is branching out from purely action films, but his Shroom came across as a bore, forever quoting obscure New Age-type ideas.  Not that Hedlund's Dime was any better: forever crabby and gruff, he didn't have anything interesting.  I think that pretty much would be how the Bravos were in BLLHW: one-note (the traumatized one, the funny one, the one who wants to get away). Steve Martin, who has been underused in drama, somehow failed here: his Oglesby was so obviously insincere, or worse, was sincere and it just looked insincere.

The only good performance was Alwyn as Lynn.  His face says more than his words, and there is a realness to him, making Lynn a real person, one who is haunted but still able to find joy in things.  Alwyn is so good you would never tell he was British and not American: not once does his accent slip or sound unconvincing.  This is a standout performance and one that in a better film would have really been a knockout debut.

Alwyn is the only reason to see Billy Lynn's Long Halftime Walk, a film that is more shallow than a real halftime show and less entertaining.

DECISION: D-

Live By Night: A Review (Review #907)

LIVE BY NIGHT

Live By Night had a lot of hallmarks into being yet another Oscar-winning film from Ben Affleck.  Affleck directs, and he's had a good track record when he's behind the camera (Gone Baby Gone, The Town, Argo).  Just as with Gone Baby Gone, Affleck goes to a Dennis Lehane novel to mine it for potential recognition.  Unlike Gone Baby Gone or any of his other films, Live By Night is dull, long, confused, rambling, almost incoherent and frankly full of itself, a pompous indulgence that had a lousy screenwriter, a weak director, and a terrible actor.

And each of those was all one and the same.

Joe Coughlin (Affleck) is a sad World War I veteran who returns to his hometown of Boston and become in his own voice-over, an outlaw.  He's a bit forlorn in his outlook but still a criminal, working to stay out of the turf war between Irish mobster Albert White (Robert Glenister) and Italian mobster Maso Pescatore (Remo Girone).  Joe does fool around with White's moll, the Irish girl Emma Gould (Sienna Miller).  Despite warnings from his cop father Thomas (Brendan Gleeson), Joe continues fooling around with Emma, until she's forced to betray him to an angry White. 

Joe would have been killed, but a chance accident has saved him, though the cops arrest him for murdering other officers during his last bank heist.  Thomas, with some influence and pressure, helps his boy get a much lighter sentence, and after his release Joe goes to Pescatore to join him in revenge for Emma, who is presumed dead. 

Pescatore sends Joe to Florida, where he is to muscle out White in the illegal rum business (it is Prohibition at this time) and expand to narcotics and women.  Joe has no problem working with Cubans, and soon he begins a passionate affair with Graciela (Zoe Saldana), an Afro-Cuban who is in the rum-running business with her brother.

After this, well, the film kind of lurches from one thing to another, as if working hard to stuff its two-hour running time.  Joe deals with a very dysfunctional family, the Figgis family.  Sheriff Irving Figgis (Chris Cooper) is pretty happy to not interfere so long as they don't cause trouble (and to be fair, he isn't on the take), but everyone else connected to him at one point or another makes life hard for old Joe. 

First is Sheriff Figgis' brother-in-law,  RD Pruitt (Matthew Maher, apparently auditioning for the Truman Capote story).  Pruitt is a member of the Ku Klux Klan, who isn't keen on Joe's Catholicism or his interracial romance but who is willing to forsake white purity for a 60% share of the illegal trade.  An offer of 15% is first taken, then violently declined.  There's a gang war between the mob and the Klan, with the latter losing.

Next comes the Sheriff's daughter Loretta (Elle Fanning).  We meet her once, when she heads off to Hollywood to become a star, only to end up a heroin-addicted whore.  Joe gets hold of pictures showing her in this sad condition and puts the squeeze on Figgis to serve his brother-in-law on a silver platter, but now Loretta is back.  She's evolved into some white-clad almost looney charismatic preacheress, speaking against all sorts of vice, including gambling.  This puts a damper on Joe's plans to build a casino in Sarasota once Prohibition ends, which Joe sees coming.

Good thing for Joe that Loretta decides to kill herself, leaving a devastated Figgis alone, repeating one word over and over again, "Repent".  Graciela and Joe have even more issues: they're in love and want to marry, but Joe spots a photo that might be of Emma, who may still be alive.  Pescatore also comes to Florida to settle business with Joe, and Joe finds he's been set up as Pescatore and White have made an unholy union.  Joe, however, has a few tricks up his sleeve, and he triumphs over White, Pescatore, and Pescatore's dimwitted son Digger (Max Casella, barely recognizable).  He finds Emma, who declares herself free of everything. 

Joe, Graciela, and their son appear happy, until a deranged Figgis shows up, shouting "REPENT!" and firing his gun into their house.  Joe manages to kill Figgis, but not before in the melee Figgis manages to his Graciela.  A devastated Joe buries her in Cuba, and he spends his life caring for their son.

Live By Night, I figure, wants to be taken seriously, but this is just the starting point of where it goes so terribly wrong.  Affleck's tone, from the visuals to his idiotic voice-over (a bane of my cinematic experience), is so serious that it comes across not as somber but as self-important.  Even the opening voice-over monologue of how the war taught him he'd never let others be in charge of him made him sound almost pompous in his own self-worth.

Things go by so slowly, and yet despite this most of the characters are essentially unknown.  Joe is rather opaque, Affleck's almost perpetual forlorn expression trying to pass itself off as moving or emotional.  It does not help that Affleck still can't act, even in voice-over (something that I can't quite say about his brother Casey, who might have been a more interesting choice for the role).  Affleck never showed that Joe was a good man to begin with: he was a criminal, he was screwing a woman he knew he shouldn't have been screwing, and if he had any great conflict within it got lost in how somber he tried to be.

When he tried to be 'a good man', Affleck was trying too hard.  When he tried to be menacing and gangster-like, it was slightly amusing.  Ben Affleck is as threatening as a turkey sandwich in Live By Night.

Everyone else pretty much faded into the unintentional hilarity of the self-serious project.  Cooper was a bit comical as Figgis, again unintentionally so.  I hope his final scene, screaming "REPENT!" as he flays about the front yard of the Coughlins' home doesn't come back to haunt him.  Bless him, for he tried to work with the script (also by Affleck) but it did nothing for him.  Maher as Figgis' racist brother-in-law was equally hilarious.  He really should use clips from Live By Night if they ever have another Truman Capote biopic, because his voice and mannerisms all channeled the diminutive writer. 

Saldana was probably the best of the lot, but her role didn't give her much to do apart from looking lovingly at the beauty that is Ben Affleck. 

Affleck is really a top-notch director, which makes Live By Night all the more puzzling and frustrating.  He was clearly aiming for a serious crime drama, but there is such a thing as too serious to where it is almost if not actually self-conscious about how serious everything should be.  There's no life, there's no real emotion in Live By Night.  It's too wrapped up in being serious it failed to be entertaining, let alone good.

Affleck was just lost in every aspect of filmmaking.  He isn't an actor, and Live By Night shows it (despite his claims, there was no evolution to his character).  His screenwriting was disastrous: such clunky lines as "The king and pawn end up in the same box in the end," is what passes for wit.  Adding more problems, the overall story goes from one thing to another without a real sense of cohesion.  The mobsters get in a war with the Klan, and once that's over, we go to another foil: this reformed drug addict (whom we barely know and is apparently spanked into preaching the Word).  We see her for less than two minutes the first time, then when she returns (with only photographs to indicate her fall from grace), she's suddenly the Aimee Semple McPherson of northern Florida.  Then she confesses to Affleck that her faith isn't as strong as she suggests, and kills herself off camera.

I truly wonder if Affleck would not have been better served to have essentially cut out the first twenty minutes or so, the entire Boston sequences, and started with his arrival in Florida, allowing us a blank slate with some flashbacks indicating his fall to the good man gone bad he wanted to portray.  It would have allowed us more time to show these other characters who pop in and out, to flesh them out more instead of hitting them every so often.

For the longest time, what I thought would be a major plot point (Joe's revenge against White for Emma), was all but forgotten until it got thrown in at the end for a chance at a shoot-out.  So much time was lost on other things going hither and yon that being reminded of it came as a bit of a jolt.

The failure of Live By Night lies squarely on Ben Affleck's broad shoulders.  As an actor, he still hasn't shown promise.  As a director, he focused too much on the look and not much if any on the characters.  As a screenwriter he didn't know where to start or stop a story and just let it spin out this way and that.  Affleck is lost in the trappings of the Roaring 20s and took things way too seriously.  He was just lost, and due to that, so was the audience.    

DECISION: F