The Better Sister: A Better Who Dunnit

My wife and I binged The Better Sister on Amazon Prime the past few nights, and we really enjoyed it. Here's why:

• Top-notch cast:  I mean, you can't go wrong with Jessica Biel (a sister) and Kim Dickens (a police detective).  And Elizabeth Banks (Love and Mercy!) as the other sister was superb.  (She was also in an hilarious episode of Curb Your Enthusiasm -- actually all its episodes are.) It was great to see Gloria Reuben (playing a lawyer) back on the screen, and Michael Harney (NYPD Blue!) playing Doorman Arty.  Also Corey Stoll and Matthew Modine with less time on the screen, were memorable too.
• The story was pretty strong, too.  I did guess who did the killing pretty early on.  But that's just me, and it was fun to see the story unfold.
• The title itself was good, because it invites you to think about who the better sister is, as the plot unfolds.
• It takes place mostly in New York -- in both the Hamptons and NYC -- always a plus with me.
• It's a summer story, with lots of swimming, that plays all kinds of roles.
• And The Better Sister moves quickly, in a stylish way that avoids swagger. 

All of this based on a 2019 single novel by Alafair Burke, herself the daughter of crime novelist James Lee Burke, and she's also a professor of law at Hofstra University in Hempstead, NY (where I used to teach before coming to Fordham) a little over an hour west of the Hamptons.

Will there be a second season?  No current plans for one, but I certainly hope there is one.

The Many Saints of Newark: You'll Enjoy It Immensely

After all of these years -- 21 or 14, depending on whether you count from the beginning or the end -- The Sopranos is arguably still the best series ever on any kind of television screen.  What's beyond argument is that The Sopranos started it all, and opened the gates, paved the way, for all the great television that ensued on cable and streaming screens.

It certainly changed my life, all for the better, not only as a viewer but a media scholar thinking and writing about television.  The late David Lavery asked me to write an essay about The Sopranos just a few years into the series for an anthology he was putting together.  The result was "Naked Bodies, Three Showings a Week, No Commercials: The Sopranos as a Nuts-and-Bolts Triumph of Non-Network TV" in This Thing of Ours: Investigating The Sopranos published by Columbia University Press and Wallflower Press in 2002.   His next good idea was to organize a conference on The Sopranos, which I did at Fordham University with David and Douglas Howard's help in 2008.  Lots of important things came out of that conference, including a nice long interview with Dominic Chianese, and another anthology, The Essential Sopranos, chock full of essays, including my "The Sopranos and the Closure Junkies," published by University of Kentucky Press in 2011.  And just for good measure, I was interviewed for "Defining a Landmark," a documentary on The Sopranos included in The Sopranos: The Complete Series, brought out by HBO on blu-ray in 2014.

So now that we've got my creds out of the way, what about the movie?

Well, with The Many Saints of Newark, just up on HBO Max for the month of October, that 2014 package is no longer complete.  The two-hour movie thus had everything to lose for David Chase, if it didn't live up to the extraordinary series to which it has the temerity of being a prequel.  Anything short of loving it would have made it a disappointment.

And I just saw it, and I loved it.  For lots of reasons.

One of the great joys in seeing a prequel is getting to know the younger selves of characters you came to know and prize in their primary presentations.  Michael Gandolfini was an inspired choice to play Tony Soprano as a teenager.  Not only did he look and sound like the adult Tony played by his father James, Michael had a perfect presentation of lines, the mix of mischief and disappointment, and the beginning of that short fuse to anger that animated his father.

And Michael Gandolfini is by no means the only actor who delivered memorably recognizable performances in The Many Saints of Newark.  Among my favorites are John Magaro, whose young Silvio not only had the toupe (of course, and preceded by a comb over for his even younger self) but had the scowl and literally walked the walk as well as talked the talk.  The same for Corey Stoll as Uncle Jun, not the toupe (of course) but in every way the bespectacled uncle of Tony.  And Vera Farmiga was so convincing as Livia -- the intensity of her gaze, the angle of her head -- she was recognizable as Tony's mother before anyone spoke her name.

And there was great work in this movie as well by actors playing characters who weren't in the original series.  My favorite of these was Alessandro Nivola, who did a stand-out job as Dickie Moltisanti, Christopher's father.

Now as to the plot.  It was strong, believable, and fleshed out in classic Sopranos detail.  And there's a stunning revelation at the end, which I won't say anything about except it was thoroughly plausible given what we know of the character in later life on The Sopranos.   

I'll also mention that the movie was studded with gems of fine touches, like baby Christopher Moltisanti crying when he sees Tony as a pouty young boy (William Ludwig), and an old biddy remarking that some people think that newborns have knowledge of "the other side" (as Christopher in a narration from the grave reminds us earlier in the film, Tony killed him).  It was also a nice touch saving the iconic "Woke Up This Morning" for the closing rather than the opening of the movie, since the song was an entree to The Sopranos.

So here's my recommendation: If you've seen The Sopranos, see The Many Saints of Newark, you'll enjoy it immensely.  If you haven't seen The Sopranos, see the entire series, then see the prequel movie.  You'll enjoy it immensely.

The Deuce 3.2: The First Amendment!

Abby easily had the best line in tonight's episode 3.2 of The Deuce, when she explains that if you don't use the First Amendment to protect porn movies, "it's not gonna be there for the ideas".   The geniuses on the Supreme Court didn't get this in 1915, when they decreed in Mutual Film v. Ohio that film was not protected by the First Amendment, since it was a form of entertainment not an expression of ideas.   It wasn't until Burstyn v. Wilson in 1952 that this was overturned.  Good to see that Abby got the full gist of this in 1985.

Otherwise, almost no one, including Abby, is very happy in tonight's episode.  Abby loses her friend.  Lori in California objects to a stalk of corn being used in her porn scene.  Neither Vincent nor Frankie are too thrilled in their separate proceedings, though they do give us a good scene together face-to-face, nice trick photography.

But there is more good news on the fringes.   Looks like Candy may be on the way to finding true love or at least pretty good love with Corey Stoll's character Hank.  And Bobby doesn't have AIDS.  All of which says there's room for at least some happy endings on The Deuce.

Given that this its final season, whatever endings we get this year will be the final words on the series.   I'm hoping that, at very least, both twin brothers are thriving, as are Candy and Lori.  But I'm an optimist, and The Deuce has always been about unvarnished not rose-colored reality.   You know what, I still hope those characters and even a few others survive.

See also The Deuce 3.1: 1985

And see also The Deuce Is Back - Still Without Cellphones, and that's a Good Thing ... The Deuce 2.2: Fairytales Can Come True ... The Deuce 2.3: The Price ... The Deuce 2.4: The Ad-Lib ... The Deuce 2.6: "Bad Bad Larry Brown" ... The Deuce 2.9: Armand, Southern Accents, and an Ending ... The Deuce Season 2 Finale: The Video Revolution

And see also The Deuce: NYC 1971 By Way of The Wire and "Working with Marshall McLuhan" ... Marilyn Monroe on the Deuce 1.7 ... The Deuce Season 1 Finale: Hitchcock and Truffaut 

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ..

The Romanoffs 1.2: The Royal We: A Walk on the Dark Side

Well, The Romanoffs 1.2, entitled The Royal We, takes a darker, nastier, murderous turn, with none of the comedy of the first episode (The Violet Hour), unless you find dwarfs acting as the royal family Romanoffs (Romanovs) on a cruise to celebrate the family, funny.

But the evil stuff was pretty compelling.  Michael Romanoff (exceptional acting by Corey Stoll) has no happiness in his life, including with his wife Shelly, though that's for no want of her trying.  He finds himself on a jury for a murder trial, obligating Shelly to go on the cruise she booked for the two of them on her own.   Michael seems to hit pay dirt on the jury.  A beautiful former ballet dancer, Michelle (excellent work Janet Montgomery), is on it, too.  He's instantly smitten.  He deliberately extends the deliberations by refusing to find the obviously guilty defendant guilty.  He soon contrives to meet with the dancer when the jury takes a break for the weekend - they're not sequestered - and manages to sleep with her after she more or less seduces him.  Meanwhile, in contrast, Shelly says no to handsome Ivan, in a corridor near the door of her room on the boat, after they kiss and he clearly indicates his intentions.

She returns to a powder keg of Michael wanting to see more of Michelle, and she demurring (she's married, too).  I won't tell you anymore lest I give too much away, but the intensity of what happens is reminiscent of both The Sopranos and Mad Men and Heather, the Totality in different ways.  Weiner is not only a master of societal foibles, but the ugliest, harrowing facets of human nature.

With two episodes of The Romanoffs now on the screen, we can see that they're as different as day and night.  What Weiner is really after in this new anthology is telling very different stories, with no connection to one another whatsoever, except for the Romanoff label. 

Which makes me wonder about the subsequent episodes even more, and want to see them.  I'll be back here next Friday with a review of #3.

See also: The Romanoffs 1.1: The Violet Hour: Compelling, Anti-Binge Watchable Comedy of Manners  ... The Romanoffs 1.3: House of Special Purpose: Meta Ghost Story... The Romanoffs 1.4: Expectation: Unfulfilled .... The Romanoffs 1.5: Bright and High Circle: Music and Abuse ... The Romanoffs 1.6: Panorama: The Royal Disease ... The Romanoffs 1.7: End of the Line: The Adoption Racket ... The Romanoffs 1.8:  The One that Holds Everything: Writer on a Train

  
It all starts in the hot summer of 1960, when Marilyn walks off the set
of The Misfits and begins to hear a haunting song in her head,
"Goodbye Norma Jean" ...