Reptile: Like a Season of True Detective in a Movie

I saw Reptile on Netflix last night, a movie with touches of Body Heat and Blue Velvet.  But it's most like True Detective, the anthology (new characters every season) but brilliant HBO series coming back with a new season in January 2024.

Meanwhile, Reptile has its grit and mix of painfully honest and corrupt detectives, investigating a lurid murder case.  The victim is a real estate agent, in a less than happy relationship with her boyfriend, and--

[Spoilers ahead ... ]

It looks like the boyfriend didn't do it.  But it turns out he did, and with a vicious vengeance.  And when I say corrupt detectives, it turns out just about everyone working above or on the same level as lead detective Tom Nichols is running or turning a blind eye to a drug ring that Summer, a real estate agent and the murder victim, was unknowingly involved in.  If this sounds complicated and little difficult to follow, it is.  But the movie is lifted by some great music -- a new version of "Angel of the Morning" by Evie Sands Courtesy at the beginning and in the middle, and Dylan's "Knocking on Heaven's Door" at the end.  And some superb acting.

Benicio Del Toro is always memorable on the screen, but he's better than ever in Reptile as Tom Nichols. Eric Bogosian, Domenick Lombardozzi, and Mike Pniewski are effective as Tom's varyingly corrupt superiors, Ato Essandoh is good as Nichols' junior and devoted partner Dan Cleary, and so is Alicia Silverstone as Tom's wife.  Meanwhile, Justin Timberlake is just perfect as Summer's boyfriend Will Grady, though for some reason his excellent performances in just about every movie he's in continue to surprise me.

Del Toro, by the way, co-wrote the screenplay for Reptile, which has some fine film noir dialogue, with Grant Singer and Benjamin Brewer, and those two also wrote the story.  Singer directed the movie.  So a lot of talent went in to making this movie, and I'd say the movie amply reflects it.  Indeed, I'll predict that Reptile will become something of a classic in the years to come.

Away: Relationships and Reality in Space

My wife and I just finished binge-watching Away, a 10-episode series, on Netflix. I can't recall a better movie or television series about missions to Mars or early human settlements on Mars, and that includes contenders like The Martian, The Martian Chronicles, and Total Recall.

The great strength of Away, that puts it in a class of its own, is its attention to families and loved ones of astronauts back on Earth, and relationships among the five space travelers in the Atlas.   These include Hilary Swank in one of the best performances of her career as U. S. Commander Emma Green and Mark Ivanir, whom I don't think I've seen before, as the Russian cosmonaut Misha with the most previous experience in space.  Vivian Wu as Lu (Chinese), Ray Panthaki as Ram (from India), and Ato Essandoh as Kwesi (from Africa, and devoutly Jewish, which adds a religious dimension to the story) round out the international crew.  Each one of has a special combination of talents, and powerful personalities which are often abrasive, vulnerable, and usually devoted to the mission, which makes for a compelling tableau of a first mission to Mars narrative with humans aboard.

Missions to any world off this planet are inherently perilous just about every moment, and Away conveys these dangers unsparingly and harrowingly.  Fortunately, The Good Wife's Josh Charles plays Emma's husband Matt, who is good at both taking care of their understandably very worried teenaged daughter Alexis (well-played by Talitha Eliana Bateman) and coming up with some ingenious solutions to the Atlas's problems in space.  But none of these solutions are easily implemented, and to watch the ten episodes of Away is to be treated to a continuing set of close encounters with failure and death, often stunningly presented, and making you feel that you're in a front-row seat somehow somewhere in space or on the ship, watching the incredible events unfold.

Two minor quibbles.  One, MSNBC's Rachel Maddow puts in an appearance as herself early on, and she looks exactly as I just saw her last night on MSNBC.  Since Away must be taking place at least a decade or two in the future, what did Rachel do, drink some immortality tonic in the next year or so?  Second, the Atlas crew talk to people back on Earth via instant smartphones for the first half of the journey, and then normal phone conversations become impossible.  In reality, the capacity to have a conversation should have deteriorated gradually and continually throughout the voyage to Mars.

But there are small quibbles indeed, and I very much hope there's another season.

my Summer 2015 interview with John  Glenn