Surface season 1: Deeply Engaging

I saw that Apple TV+ recently signed on for a second season of Surface, and since I hadn't seen the first season (which was on Apple TV+ this past summer), I figured I should.  And I'm very glad that I did.  It's rare that I watch a whodunnit aka mystery story with so many pieces that fit together so well in retrospect but I haven't been able to work out when they -- the characters and the situations -- first come into play.  But Surface did just that, and I'm eagerly awaiting more in the second season.

[Inevitably, some spoilers ahead ... ]

The story starts with Sophie and her almost total amnesia, the result, most people think, of her attempted suicide, as she jumps off a bridge into the deep waters near the Golden Gate Bridge in San Francisco.  Except Sophie can't quite believe she tried to take her own life, and has a feeling she was pushed. 

By whom?

Her husband seems truly loving, but he's apparently caught up in some big money business deal which went bad.  And he is sleeping with Sophie's best friend.  Meanwhile, Sophie discovers that she was having an even more tempestuous affair with an undercover narcotics detective.  He loves Sophie, and strongly suspects that she was indeed pushed overboard -- by her husband.

I won't tell you anything more about the plot, in case you haven't seen the series, which you should.  I will say that even the secondary characters are excellent, ranging from the husband's best friend to a senior detective in the SFPD.  And the acting is excellent, too, with a tour-de-force performance by Gugu Mbatha-Raw as Sophie, and memorable jobs by Oliver Jackson-Cohen as her husband, Stephan James as her narcotics detective, and Marianne Jean-Baptiste as her shrink.

And, as I said, the amazing thing about this complex puzzle of a story is that just about everything fits together in the end.  Indeed, my only big question now is why did Apple TV+ wait so long to renew this gem of a series?

Motherless Brooklyn: Go Down Moses and Black Lives Matter

The wife and I just saw Motherless Brooklyn on HBO.  It's billed as an Edward Norton movie - he also starred in it - based on the Jonathan Lethem novel.  I didn't read the novel (I was busy writing the sequel to The Silk Code when Lethem's novel was first published in 1999).  But it's just as well.  As readers of my reviews in this blog may know, I like reviewing movies and TV series on their own terms, not on how they compare with the novels or short stories on which they may have been based.  I will say that my wife mentioned that she saw that the Norton movie departed from the Lethem novel in many major ways.

The story in the movie is about Robert Moses, the controversial, legendary builder, responsible for any number of highways in and around New York City (including the Long Island Expressway), bridges, and even Jones Beach. Moses was controversial because it was claimed he ran roughshod over and failed to provide for the poor communities near or over which he erected his great structures.  This accords with the focus and expansion of Black Lives Matter now, at long last happening, though Lethem's novel and even Norton's movie were created long before this happened.

In the movie, Robert Moses is renamed Moses Randolph, and unsurprisingly very well played by Alec Baldwin.  His antagonist is Lionel (nicknamed Brooklyn and long without a mother, hence the title).  Lionel is a detective whose boss is killed, likely because he crossed Randolph in some big way.  Also, Lionel has Tourettes, which makes for an especially memorable character, and gives Norton the opportunity to deliver an Oscar-worthy performance, which he does.  Gugu Mbatha-Raw plays Laura Rose, a pivotal character to Lionel and the movie, and she puts in a winning performance, too.

I also liked the less leading characters.  My favorite was The Wire's Michael Kenneth Williams, who plays a Mile Davis-type character (identified only as "The Trumpet Man") who uses his trumpet in more ways than one. Also, The Trumpet Man and Brooklyn have a conversation about the shared basis of extreme musical talent and Tourettes that is itself worth price of admission.

I should mention that The Wire is in my view sometimes the best series ever on television, and always in contention for that position, and one of the reasons is that its cast was so stellar.   But back to Motherless Brooklyn, it's a satisfying and altogether excellent movie, and I highly recommend it.

 

The Cloverfield Paradox: Fringe Meets Star Trek

Well, there really wasn't any paradox in it (things going very wrong does not equate to paradox), and the story was at least much horror as science fiction, but The Cloverfield Paradox on Netflix was pretty good science fiction of the alternate-reality variety anyway.

Earth in the future is in the throws of a grievous energy crisis.  Hope is placed in a new particle accelerator, to be tested in the Cloverfield space station.  A slightly nutty scientist or sooth-sayer warns that the energies that will be released in this test could rip reality apart and unleash untold monsters.  Of course, no one pays him any heed.

But indeed the tests do rip reality apart, or at least bring it into interactive smashing contact with another reality.  This is manifested by a woman who shows up in the metalwork of the station - literally - and a guy who loses his arm to the other reality (the arm comes back and writes our crew vital information), and you get the picture.  This is what I meant by Fringe (the Star Trek part comes from the crew in space).  The Cloverfield Paradox somehow mixes horror and humor in a way that only J. J. Abrams, one of the producers, can do it (hey, maybe that's the paradox).

There are good surprises, double-crosses, and breathtaking scenes throughout.  The protagonist, Ava (well played by Gugu Mbatha-Raw, pictured above) is given the choice of reuniting with the family she lost in her/our reality - she can do this by going to the alternate reality - or saving our reality.   I won't tell what she does.

I will say that the changes unleashed by the particle accelerator usher in all kinds of horrors not only in space, but Earth as well.  Enjoy.

more alternate reality - "flat-out fantastic" - Scifi and Scary