Rachel McAdams

TRUE DETECTIVE: second season sooooo disappointingly lame

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Rachel McAdams in the second season of TRUE DETECTIVE
Rachel McAdams in the second season of TRUE DETECTIVE

So my friend Steve emailed me: “If you include the second season of True Detective in your top ten films of the year you should be required to walk around with a paper bag over your head for at least six months.” He was right – True Detective’s second season was disappointingly lame.

I had high hopes because I loved the first season, and creator Nic Pizolatto returned to write this year’s version. The cast seemed promising, too: the story revolved around three cops (Rachel McAdams, Colin Farrell, Taylor Kitsch) from different agencies investigating a corrupt Southern California city. Vince Vaughn played a shady – and once criminal – businessman, with Kelly Reilly as his wife.

But I never really cared about Kitch’s or Vaughn’s characters. The plot was disjointed and, at time, risible. Pizzolato tried to echo Chinatown’s water scandal with a wholly improbable High Speed Rail scheme. The Wife and I were constantly asking each other “Where are they now?” and “Who is that guy?”. There are many ridiculously impossible coincidence and the like, but I just don’t care enough about True Detective to list them.

Rachel McAdams, forced to wear perhaps this year’s worst hairdo, is very good. So is Farrell, who, as he ages, is more and more compelling in dissolute roles. I always appreciate the chance to see Kelly Reilly – she elevates (almost) everything she’s in.

But the 2015 True Detective is a stinker. Don’t waste your time.

DVD of the Week: Midnight in Paris

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With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters. It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.

Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s. Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein. He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.

Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue. McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson. She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.

As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast. Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances. Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali. Cotillard is luminous.

It makes my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Midnight in Paris: Woody’s best in a long, long time

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With Midnight in Paris, Woody Allen has made his best movie since 1986’s Hannah and Her Sisters.  It’s a funny and wistful exploration of the nostalgia for living in another time and place – all set in the most sumptuously photographed contemporary Paris.

Successful but disenchanted screenwriter and would be novelist Owen Wilson accompanies his mismatched fiancée Rachel McAdams to Paris, where he fantasizes about living in the artistically fertile Paris of the 1920s.  Indeed, at midnight, he happens upon a portal to that era, and finds himself hanging out with the likes of Hemingway, Fitzgerald and Stein.  He meets Marion Cotillard, a 1920s gal who is herself nostalgic for the 1890s.

Midnight in Paris shines because of the perfectly crafted dialogue.  McAdams’ every instinct is cringingly wrong for Wilson.  She is enraptured by the pretentious blowhard Michael Sheen, who couldn’t be more insufferable.

As usual, Allen has attracted an excellent cast.  Owen Wilson rises to the material and gives one of his best performances.  Corey Stoll is hilarious as Hemingway and Adrien Brody even funnier as Salvador Dali.  Cotillard is luminous.

It makes my list of Best Movies of 2011 – So Far.

Morning Glory

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If you’re looking for a light comedy with an appealing lead, then Morning Glory with Rachel McAdams will work for you.  McAdams is funny, cute and sympathetic.  There is promise in the setting – the achingly insipid world of morning television shows. And Diane Keaton nails her supporting role as a jaded but desperate TV anchor.

But Morning Glory would have been more successful if it trusted its source material and performers and didn’t TRY so hard to be funny.  Harrison Ford plays a wooden character woodenly.  There is no electricity in the thread about McAdams’ love interest with Patrick Wilson.  And – here’s a pet peeve of mine – there are two utterly random musical interludes.