Image via Complex
We're one week away from the Oscar ceremony and one month into the year, and it looks like we're back to enjoying television and movies again. It helps when solid pieces of cinema and scripted TV are dropping. HBO's The Outsider continues to pull the curtain back on this metaphysical mystery, while USA's Dare Me found new ways to tell the same story. Also, if you're in the Big Apple and want to take in a Scorsese musical from the '70s starring Liza Minelli and Robert De Niro, we've even got that for you.
You know how it goes; scroll down, peep our picks, yadda yadda. Thank us later.
The Outsider - “Que Viene el Coco” (Season 1, Episode 4)
Where to Watch: HBO Now
Four episodes into the series, The Outsider is moving beyond the Terry Maitland case and exploring the supernatural roots of its universe. The investigation is now seen through Holly’s lens, as she tracks down an employee of the nursing home that Terry Maitland’s father lives in and where Heath Hofstetter, the imprisoned man from the previous episode, used to work. Holly is initially accosted with pepper spray but the employee reluctantly cooperates and gives her more of a background on Heath—noting that the last time she saw him was when he unexpectedly came to work while claiming to be on vacation. He had a vacant look and wasn’t himself. He also was involved in an incident with Terry in which they both slipped on the floor of the nursing home, with Terry being left with a cut. From here, we sense two things: that Heath had a doppelgänger and that the cases between the two men were not only linked but also possibly transferred. A bartender, somewhat conveniently, posits to Holly to think of murder as a virus. It’s a hypothetical that can’t escape Holly’s mind, and she starts tracking Terry’s case in a backwards trajectory by going back to Heath’s murder case.
In addition to the striking similarities in the murder cases between the two men (contradictory sets of alibis and DNA evidence), we learn that Heath’s brother overdosed and his mother subsequently commits suicide via speeding in her car into a light pole. It’s a sequence of events that mimics the deaths of the Peterson family. Holly’s ability to acknowledge the unexplainable gives us, as an audience, the permission to accept that something more sinister is haunting not only the men but also the families involved. She also finds the same pattern with yet another murder case connected to a woman who met Heath while in New York. A woman observes Holly and educates her about how we’ve collectively made fairytales out of real things, such as The Boogey Man, Baba Yaga, or El Coco. But she also tells Holly about El Glotón Para Dolor, or “The Grief Eater” in which the “child [that it murders] is its meal, then the suffering of the family is its dessert.”
Outside of Holly’s investigation, we see Jack still being tortured by this unknowable force, with the burn on his neck spreading. He seems to be its servant and is clearly at the point of committing something terrible. We also go back to the teenager who stole the van that witnesses saw Terry Maitland driving – the teen tells Ralph about the horrifically burned figure as the one who actually took the van, sending the investigation into resolve even more tangled questions. The episode ends with Holly, in a tub, searching for images of the mythological El Coco. She recognizes the very real force behind these chaotic events and slowly submerges herself into the tub, overwhelmed by the impossibility of stopping such a forceful being. —Andie Park
'Dare Me' - "Parallel Trenches" (Season 1, Episode 5)
Where to Watch: USA Network
While Frazier and I only just spoke on Dare Me on this week's episode of Watch Less, the new USA series, which kicked off right before the ball dropped, has been something of an obsession. The series—which stars Willa Fitzgerald, Herizen Guardiola, and Marlo Kelly—felt like the cheerleader aspect of Euphoria turned into a show; I may have even playfully called it Euphoria-lite based on the colors and eye make-up in the trailer. For that, I wanna apologize.
The series started with the ending (or at least, as close to the climax of whatever the show is leading to), and slowly has taken us to the beginning of this high school cheerleader squad's smalltown American insanity. A pair of young, devious ladies (Guardiola and Kelly) lead the pack; they feel like they've always led the pack, but with a new coach (Fitzgerald) shaking things up, things take a turn for the worse. This week's episode, which has been heralded by some sites as the best episode of television in 2020 so far (which, sure?), turned the narrative on its ear, giving us three points of view in one gruesome accident during a pep rally. Like "teeth being kicked out of someone's mouth" gruesome. That's not even the crux of it, though; we're dealing with a serious look at how someone dealing with a sexual assault can be perceived if you really take in their presence (or, in some cases, don't acknowledge it at all). Kelly's portrayal of Beth has been something I've been back-and-forth within the previous four episodes; while she's definitely giving it her all, I wasn't sure if I actually liked the character. Being able to really hone in on her (which was helped by tight camera shots that stayed on her for what felt like minutes) in the aftermath of a motel party gone wrong has done wonders not just for Kelly's acting, but the full totality of Beth and why she is the way she is.
Is Dare Me one of the best shows of 2020? So far, it's definitely got my attention. If it can continue to subvert TV norms while giving us a darker look at cheerleader life gone terribly wrong, it will hold my attention. Also, I learned something: if my teeth get kicked out of my mouth, I hope someone has some milk handy. —khal
'New York, New York'
Where to Watch: The Metrograph (until Thursday, February 6)
While Marty's latest three-hour opus competes for Best Picture, for a limited one-week run you can go see one of his more cult-classic labors of love on the big screen at New York's own Metrograph. The story behind New York, New York is interesting to read within the context of Scorsese's recent interviews and comments about struggling with the studio system over budgets and runtimes. Essentially: he's always been this way. New York, New York was a box office brick, so much so that the studio (United Artists) shaved a whole 20 minutes off Marty's theatrical cut, while the man himself sank into a dark depressive period following the response.
Well, 43 years later, Metrograph is showing a cut that runs even longer than what hit theaters back in 1977. And all 163 minutes are worth your time (and if the extra 20 minutes actually account for the truly bonkers play-within-the-film sequence as reported, then WORTH IT). New York was, for Scorsese, a bald bid to Eurostep away from the gritty realism he'd already come to be known for, lest he find himself trapped in that box forever. Even today, a '70s flick that harkens back to the musical productions of old, '40s Hollywood stands out as a stark outlier in his oeuvre, but a fun one nonetheless.
De Niro is far from what you'd expect from him in a film with Marty behind the camera: his perennially hustling Jimmy Doyle is a slick talker sure, but far from a successful one, and with an undercurrent of off-kilter, weirdo loser energy, almost creepy. Too creepy for Liza Minelli's Francine to credibly take him seriously, which was my main concern watching the movie for the first time a few weeks ago. But then, their volatility and doomed tragedy is the point.
Their love affair begins at a raucous V-J Day celebration and spans years as the two pursue musical careers at times parallel, at times in direct conflict, as Jimmy's toxic cocktail of entitlement, jealousy and insecurity threatens to bring the whole thing crashing down. Along the way, De Niro gets some of his most vibrant fits off second-only to Casino; Scorsese composes some of his most beautifully lit and framed shots and Liza Minelli absolutely blacks with a stunning, climactic crown jewel performance of the "New York, New York" theme that would somewhat unfairly come to be more closely identified with Sinatra instead. In a way, with the heartrending musical renditions, jazz, longing glances and love lost, it's the proto-La La Land. And when it comes to the question of Damien Chazelle versus a young Marty bent off ambition and a bag of blow, well...get your shine box Dame. —Frazier Tharpe