SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 6

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

Right. Have you ever been on one of those pendulum rollercoasters? The ones that swing back and forth, round and round, going upside-down, then backwards, then rock back-and-forth? Well, that's a bit like my experience with this season of True Detective. At first I was trying to convince myself that it was all fine, that I wasn't really about to throw up the fairground fish-and-chips I'd scoffed five minutes before because I'd be feeling the rush of zero gravity soon, and then I'd be having FUN, god dammit, isn't that why I came? But then the roller-coaster would do something weird, like change directions suddenly and slam me right in the coccyx, and I'd have to admit that, yes, I wasn't having the best time. In fact, I was having a rather shitty time. But THEN, it would change directions again and... oh, forget it. This metaphor's getting away from me.

In those early days, I was hoping True Detective was biding its time. I was hoping it was withholding its hand from the viewers, making them doubt whether the show knew what is was doing and then, suddenly, showing it knew exactly what it was doing all along, that these frustrations would feed into the experience of watching the show itself. You know, like the fourth season of The Sopranos. I don't think True Detective is anywhere near the same level as that, as last week's dismal episode shows, but I do think that things are finally, finally, finally coming together and beginning to make at least a modicum of sense.

I mean, if nothing else, the writing's a hell of a lot less goofy this week. (Ray threatens to kill someone with a cheese grater and Ani's sister describes something as "Fuck-a-roo", but that's about it.) We pick up where we left off, with a tense encounter between Ray and Frank. They need to iron out their differences, for sure, but neither one of them really wants to do that with bullets - though Ray can't let that business with the rapist slide if Frank really did lie to him. Neither one kills one another, which is to be expected, although a tiny part of me was hoping Ray might just shoot Frank and get it over with.

Instead, Ray goes to see the rapist in prison. Then he has a tremendously awkward visit from his son (and social worker) which prompts a bit of a man-panic. (It's like a normal panic, but more manly.) He snorts a bunch of coke and trashes the place, but ends up calling his ex-wife and agreeing that he'll leave the kid alone if she never tells him about who his real father might be. It's the best resolution Ray can hope for, and it all feels quite realistically drawn. Plus, Colin Farrell acts his butt off. His character might be a terrible detective, but he's easily the most human out of the entire bunch, and this may well be the climax of his emotional arc...

Elsewhere, Paul and Ani emerge from the Twin Peaks-y lodge in the middle of nowhere to be told an old chestnut of detective speak - they're acting "outside their jurisdiction." Nevertheless, the two begin to make real progress in the case. Paul tracks down the origin of the crucially important diamonds Caspar had in his possession, whereas Ani hatches a plan with her sister to attend one the deviant sex-parties that the guy used to frequent. Her knives skills are on-point, too - her sister is understandably put off by her frenzied stabbing of a wooden board while they try and have a chat, but it all pays off later when Ani finds undercover work to be significantly more challenging than she expected. And Frank takes one step forward, two steps back in his own investigation. He connects a missing girl to the Mexican drug dealers he had to deal with a few episodes ago, but when he arrives at their meeting to see her throat slit, he sees first-hand how much his power has diminished.

If anything, this episode is defined by clarity (at long last). People actually explain stuff to each other, like they do in most TV dramas - you can see why they started doing it in the first place. And by the time we get around to the gloriously effective final twenty minutes, it's like we're watching a different show. The party Ani infiltrates is effectively hellish, a Venice Beach Gomorrah, and it doesn't help that she's made woozy by the unwelcome drugs she's given - a production effect that, in lesser hands, could have been cheesy, but just about works given the setting. In between being groped by an old man and slicing up a security guard, Ani finds one of the missing girls - just as Paul and Ray eavesdrop on a revealing conversation between some familiar faces, and happen to nab some documents that threaten to blow open the case.

The whole "infiltrating a fancy party" thing is a bit of a cliché, but oddly enough, I think I'd rather have a True Detective that did those things than one that tries to be different and smart-arsed - just because we've seen how that usually goes. All in all, a good episode. And one that, hopefully, should lead to some real answers.

     STRAYS:

• The bit with Colin Farrell and his kid shouldn't have made me laugh so much. But when he just said "'Kay" to Ray's declaration of fatherly love I just lost it. The way he said it was just too funny.
• YOU'RE PURE GOLD, JERRY! GOLD!
• Was Ani molested by the man in her vision? He had a definite "Bob" vibe about him...
• Someone said that one of the guys involved was a cop - my money's on Lieutenant Kevin Burris, a.k.a. the guy who keeps showing up at crime scenes too early.
• Great music this week, a real biblical vibe - it's Part II of Harmonielehre, "The Anfortas Wound" by modern composer John Adams.

REVIEW: Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation

Tom Cruise has got to be one of our maddest actors. Actually, one of our maddest human beings, period. Seriously. I think he should be locked up. And I think the first video you should play at his trial would be the first five minutes of this film, where he hangs off a plane. Even before I'd seen the film, I'd seen a behind the scenes featurette about how it really is Tom Cruise hanging off a plane. No green screen, no CGI plane, nothing. Even the stunt men call him insane for hanging off a plane - and these are the guys who volunteer to be set on fire.

He is also, in his own way, brilliant. He couldn't make a film any other way, and his presence enlivens the dullest of thrillers. When given free reign, he isn't just in the film, he is the film. Without Tom Cruise, Mission: Impossible - Rogue Nation would only be adequate, a well-made if convoluted thriller that cheerfully dispenses with any notions of realism in favour of going directly for the fun-jugular. But with Tom Cruise, the film plays to a different register of entertainment, and the film becomes significantly better as a result.

The story - well, you know the story, even if you don't know the story. The secret task force IMF (which might as well stand for Insane Mother F'ers) is threatened by the emergence of a rival organisation, inventively named The Syndicate. They quickly kick off things by gassing Ethan Hunt and dragging him to their underground lair, where he's threatened by a guy named "The Bone Doctor". Unsurprisingly, he prescribes a treatment of his own hacksaw-branded medicine. But before he can get around to business he's taken out by one of his own, Ilsa (Rebecca Ferguson). She frees Hunt, but disappears as quickly as she emerges, and he's left to puzzle over why her accent sounded so British and M-I6-y. (It really does take him half the film to work it out.)

Meanwhile, the IMF is swallowed up by the pesky CIA - helmed by a straight-laced Alec Baldwin - who won't stop at anything to capture Hunt and bring him to justice, once and for all. He's even repurposed Hunt's old buddies, Benji (Simon Pegg) and William (Jeremy Renner) - though it's not long before the crew's reunited and saving the world again. (The slightly dull Paula Patton has been replaced by the reliable Ving Rhames.)

The plot doesn't make much sense, though it does have an amusingly British spin on things - I don't think we were supposed to laugh when a plot to kidnap the Prime Minister of Britain was announced. But it doesn't matter. We're watching to see Tom Cruise do barmy things. We want to see him navigate machinery while holding his breath underwater, we want him to travel at 100 mph on a motorbike through the streets of Morocco, we even want to see him dangle upside-down in an opera theatre in Vienna, and slide down a rope to his escape. It's bizarre how well it works, but it does, namely because it is knowingly ridiculous. (The rules of physics take a hit - it's ludicrous how many people survive horrendous car-crashes in this film.) Cruise and his team have struck upon a winning formula, and while not all of it always works - Ferguson's character is periodically fetishised, and the villain's nothing to write home about - it's still a film that knows how to deliver its crowd-pleasing punches effectively.

★★★

REVIEW: Inside Out

Pixar is undoubtedly back on form with this sparkling animated tale, that will appeal to adults and children alike - though with the studio's history of emotional stories about children, you suspect it might resonate more strongly with the former. Inside Out's brilliant conceit takes us into the mind of a young child, Riley. Her mind is governed by five emotions - Joy (Amy Poehler), Fear (Bill Hader), Anger (Lewis Black), Disgust (Mindy Kaling), and Sadness (Phyllis Smith), who are all in charge of creating miniature, multicoloured balls of memory. For the most part, Joy takes the lead, but each emotion has a role to play - Fear stops Riley from tripping over extension cords, for instance, whereas Disgust ensures that poisonous broccoli doesn't enter their ecosystem. Only Sadness is left out in the cold, unsure of what to do except despair at life's horrors, typically while lying flat on her face.

After a terrific, funny opening sequence - where the foundations for personality are literally constructed before our very eyes - we move into chaos, as Riley is relocated to San Francisco by her parents. Her emotions are thrown all out of whack, and during her first day of school a conflict over some core memories (the memories that define Riley's very personality) lead Joy and Sadness to be accidentally ejected out into the wasteland of long-term memory. They must then navigate the wonders - and horrors - of the Id to return home, lest Riley's life be furthermore dictated by Fear, Anger and Disgust. (I can think of a few candidates who might suffer from this condition.)

The story is superb, a highly imaginative adventure through the most colourful recesses of the human soul, its realisation really pushing the limits of the medium. Abstract thought transforms the characters into angular misshapes; a "dream" factory is realised as a bureaucratic Hollywood studio; and the subconscious is an engulfing cavern, housing all of a child's innermost fears. The colour-coordinated characters are great, too, and I'm sure they'll go down as some of Pixar's most enduring creations. It's as if the studio has distilled its storytelling to a base level - so it shouldn't come as a surprise that both Joy and Sadness take centre stage, a reflection of the fact that, in almost all of Pixar's greatest works there is a careful line-treading between the two, ensuring that a mostly joyous experience is augmented by the acceptance that a little sadness in life is necessary to make the reward all the sweeter.

Amy Poehler's performance as Joy is integral here, as her relentlessly upbeat persona gradually gives way to something more heartfelt and realistic - as they encounter set-back after set-back while traversing Riley's mind, she begins to see past Sadness' stereotypically dumpy outward appearance and realise her core value. (Again, it's all about growing up.) There's also the typically sensible decision to fill out most of the roles with talented character actors, including Richard Kind as the heartfelt imaginary friend, Bing Bong, whose sad story is sure to break a million hearts. And the inclusion of comic pedigree like Bill Hader and Mindy Kaling ensures that the film never stops being rollicking entertainment, even in its smartest or saddest moments.

It's all you'd expect from one of the world's most reputable animation studios, and maybe a little more. You really get the sense that, not only do these guys understand children, but they understand the emotional arc of parentage as well - so their ability to completely capture both and turn them, hey, inside out should be praised. Let's hope they can keep it up.

★★★★

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 5

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

Oh, True Detective. I had such high hopes for you. When all the critics started a pissing match to declare what they hated about you the most after the first episode aired, I said, "Wait! It's just a set-up for the good stuff!" Then the third episode rolled around, and I began to feel vindicated. "You see? Nic Pizzolatto DOES know what he's doing! That was pretty good!" And yet, and yet...

Even by this point, I still can't decide if this second season is any good or not. It certainly has the elements, the production values, the star power of a good show. Yet the niggles in the writing haven't evaporated - if anything, they've gotten worse as the show's gone on, built up into an overpowering mass of ridiculous one-liners and exasperated characterisation.

Maybe I should stop waiting for True Detective to change and just accept it for who it is. It's not you baby, it's me. Then again, this episode really tries my patience. We've leapt forward in time since that horrific shootout last week - known on the news as the 'Vinci Massacre' - though how long, exactly, is somewhat unclear. (The show doesn't bloody tell us.) All we know is, Ray's lost his glorious moustache, which means he's beginning to look a bit like pretty boy Colin Farrell again. He's also become a security enforcer for Frank - though he doesn't quite have the mean edge he needs to threaten a group of starving immigrants who haven't paid their rent. Oh, and his ex-wife is still battling for custody. She wants to take a paternity test over their son, though why she needs that is beyond me - he's a fat ginger kid, of course he isn't Sonny Crockett's son. Seriously, these people...

Meanwhile, Ani is taking a sexual harassment course with a group of misogynist men. I'm going to list all the ridiculous lines I heard during the episode in a minute, but the first comes when she sarcastically describes her fondness for "big dicks" - she says something about them being "too big to handcuff". Has Nic Pizzolatto ever actually talked to a woman? The scene stinks of something that only a writer would imagine. Then Paul - well, Paul is still the same as ever, surprise surprise. Still repressing his homosexuality, still pretending he's happy with his upcoming marriage (though with the help of a few strong rum-and-cokes), still arguing with his shitty excuse of a mother. And Frank - Jesus, Frank - is STILL having dull-as-bricks conversations with his wife about children, though they seem to have cleared up any manner of conflict by the end of this episode. Hooray.

Now for the stupid writing. In a conversation with Ray, Frank suggests, "It's like blue balls in my heart." When recording a memo for his son, Ray philosophises, "It's only people who get exhausted." (I know from a documentary about wildebeest that this simply isn't true.) Frank walks into the backroom of his club, and his wife academically analogises, "We're in backslide city, Frank." NOBODY TALKS LIKE THIS. The whole reason this style worked with Rust Cohle was that people treated him like a kid who'd been sniffing too much glue, but Vinci is just populated by thousands of Rust Cohles - no wonder it's such a terrible place to live.

And despite jumping forward however many weeks or months or even years, for all I care, nobody has actually changed. I really need to stop bringing this up, but that was the beauty of Season One - we saw, bit by bit, how these characters changed over the years, how they broke out of their rut of a situation, went above and beyond the call of duty to fulfil their promise of becoming great detectives. But here, even though the police trio form a secret unit dedicated to finding the guy who killed Ben Caspar, their characters are just so static that I can't bring myself to care about them that much.

And the worst worst WORST thing about this series is that I STILL CAN'T STOP WATCHING IT. I get annoyed with it, and I'm all but ready to give up - but then something interesting happens that makes progress on the case, like Ray's brutal interrogation of Rick Springfield's creepy plastic surgeon, or Ani and Paul's discovery of a blood-soaked shed, that all but guarantees I'll tune in next week. You're toying with my emotions, True Detective. God, how did this all get so complicated?

     STRAYS:

• Some people on the internet have started #SeymonSays, i.e. ridiculous lines Frank might say. Here are some of the best:
• "I'm so up to my neck in shit, I'm thinking about ordering a snorkel."
• "Never lost my keys. Never even had a fucking keychain."
• "You think adoption is the answer? Every last one of us is an orphan, just takes some of us a lifetime to figure it out."
• [Frank on his impotence:] "Sometimes it's not the milk that's bad, it's the cereal."
• That bar could probably be quite nice if they turned up the lights and fired Lera Lynn. Or at least let her take requests.
• What are the practicalities of handcuffing a large penis?
• Having trashed this episode, I do have to concede that Colin Farrell actually gave a really great performance, particularly when he heard the truth about the rapist. And I admit that things are starting to come together, plot-wise.

REVIEW: Ant-Man

This new superhero film has committed the cardinal sin of being boring - or at least, much more boring than it should have been. Originally helmed by Edgar Wright, but ousted by Marvel executives in favour of Yes Man director Peyton Reed, the troubled transition has sucked most of the wit and charm from the project, leaving only a plethora of special effects and the occasional joke that feels laboured on delivery. Paul Rudd is Scott Lang, a burglar recruited by Michael Douglas' surprisingly flat mad scientist Hank Pym, who has developed a suit that will shrink Lang down to a minuscule size - one might say, to the size of an ant. This gives him a bit of super-strength (as is par for the course in these things) and he uses his magic to break into a laboratory run by the one-dimensionally evil warmonger Darren Cross (Corey Stoll), who has developed a suit of his own. There are flashes of brilliance in its script - Michael Peña's monologues, an imaginative climax in a child's bedroom - and Paul Rudd is fine, but Reed has little ability to effectively deliver the material, so it mostly comes off as bland and uninspired. If anything, it's too American, too cooperate - it needed that British spark of self-depreciation to really come alive. A shame, really.

★★

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 4

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

I have to confess: I don't really know what's going on. I mean, I know the basics - bad men are still doing bad things, blah blah blah - and I can still appreciate the Raymond Chandler-esque charm of the production, the setting, the characters, but as for who killed Ben Casper? No clue.

After chasing the masked figure through Vinci's underbelly, Ray and Ani sheepishly hand in their ruined cop car. Who torched it? Who knows. Ray mumbles something about the mayor, who seems to be gunning for Ani's stripes. They visit his daughter later, who confirms that he's a BAD MAN, but... that's about it. He might or might not have had something to do with a sexual harassment case against Ani that gets her suspended from the police department, a department where she seems to have slept with everyone in arm's reach. Though Ani does seem to be the Clarice Sterling of True Detective's warped world - she mostly spends her time in rooms full of leering men - and the gambling and the sex seem closer to coping mechanisms than hobbies.

Frank, meanwhile, vents his anger at some avocado trees. Then at his wife. Then at some drug dealers, then at a Mexican guy, then at his own staff. He marches about like a glowering dentist, trying to be Tony Soprano but coming across as more like AJ, whining and sulking when he can't get his way. I suspect much of this boils down to Vince Vaughn, who has proved to be a poor investment - we were hoping for a Matthew McConaughey-style acting revelation, a guy who could make even the most unintelligible dialogue sound convincing, but Vaughn's just flat, particularly in scenes with the much more competent Kelly Reilly. (She is, unfortunately, still a walking cliché.)

There's a bit of good stuff emerging from Taylor Kitsch at least. After spending a drunken night with the man he forcefully rebuffed last week he crawls into the street and, in a fit of rage, lets loose a barrage of expletives. He gets quite emotional in the car with Ray, too. (Is this the first time they've met?) "I just don't know how to be out in world, man," he says. "Look out that window. Look at me. Nobody does," replies Ray.

Are all detectives this neurotic? I suppose that's the thing about Pizzolatto's universe - it's a kind of hyper-reality, where people don't talk like normal people talk, instead mumbling dime-store philosophies about the nature of good and bad and light and dark and the like. It can be really frustrating at times, even unbearable - yet I can't look away for fear that I might miss something. After fumbling between gears throughout this episode it finally sticks with an exciting climactic shoot-out between the police and a gang of pimps - aside from a ropey explosion effect, the confrontation is both slick and brutal, and it ends on a nicely downbeat, sickening note as the detectives are trapped in a frozen tableau of despair. This season is undeniably worse than its predecessor, the writing far more grating - but moments like this show that True Detective can still deliver the goods when it wants to. Let's just hope it starts to make sense soon.

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 3

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

Finally, True Detective is getting its shit together. Not that it's been bad up to now, it's just that we've had little reason to really get invested in the mystery - I know I shouldn't bring up Season 1 at this point, but we could really hook on to the mystery behind a guy called "The Yellow King". We're still a way off being that engaged, but a guy in a crow's mask shooting Collin Farrell with some rubber bullets is something, at least.

Yes, rubber bullets. I said Ray wouldn't be killed off yet and I was right which, while still a bit of a cop-out (heh), is a relief. His brink-of-insanity alcoholic is the closest the series has to a beating heart. We open with a dream sequence that gives off some serious Sopranos vibes, as a guy dressed up as Conway Twitty croons "The Rose" in an empty, blue-tinged bar. There's even a guy who looks a bit like David Lynch sitting opposite Ray. He turns out to be his father, a man who is clearly responsible for passing on the chromosomes for "violent" and "cop", and who Ray visits later in the episode out of... what, guilt? Fatherly guidance? Not likely.

He spouts off some familiar stuff about "the badge" not meaning what it used to be and despairs at a new generation of cops. But it's not just clichéd garbage - the series seems to have its characters mired in cliché itself, aware of its toxic proliferation into their environment, and the ways the characters both live up to and muddy the stereotypes they embody is one of series' greatest strengths. Consider Frank this episode. His staging of a violent encounter in order to assert his dominance to those below him could have come straight out of Goodfellas - he even pulls out a guy's teeth. But earlier on he has an argument with his wife, who blames his "limp dick" for their marital problems - out of the two scenarios, it's clearly the latter that affects him most, and feeds into the cool anger he exhibits while trying to climb out from under a pile of mounting pressure.

He also does a much better job at trying to find Caspar's killer than two entire police departments, who clearly have their interests invested more heavily in politics. I don't know who the "truest" detective in this series is, but Frank may well be true-er than both Ray and Ani this week, who are urged to undermine each other in return for a promotion. Again, they find themselves reluctant to do so - both of them suspect something suspicious is afoot, which isn't exactly helped by the rubber bullets being the same ones riot police use, or Lieutenant Burris of the Vinci PD showing up at a crime scene a bit too early.

Chasing the mask-wearing vigilantes leads them to investigate the ties between Caspar and a post-apocalyptic movie production (so hot right now) where we discover some stuff about a company called Catalyst. We also discover he was in deep with Mayor Chessani, whose coke-smeared party mansion gets checked out by Ani and Paul, and seems to be inhabited by a more broadly comedic version of the cast from Eastern Promises. Finally, they start to trawl through the city's prostitution circles, where we really start to get the idea that Caspar had enough enemies to shake a stick at. That one's helmed by Paul, who has some interesting developments this week - after an encounter with an old army buddy, his rumoured sexuality is all but confirmed, yet despite his general reluctance to admit anything he's able to check out Caspar's club, Lux Infinitum, through some remarkably helpful gay prostitutes. As Ani says, it probably helps that he's pretty.

The characters all move in interesting directions, but there needs to be a stronger sense of unity or interplay between the key players. (Have Ray and Paul even said hello to each other?) Maybe Pizzolatto is still more of a novelist, in that he wants to develop the broader narrative strokes instead of easing audiences in with more self-contained episodic development. Although having said that, when we finally break into action by the episode's end it's thrilling - Ray and Ani's chase of a masked suspect through a homeless park is brought to life by its production values, the sense of a hellish underbelly sporadically underscored by sudden bursts of flames. Some of the writing is still a little goofy - one figure is described as "half anaconda, half great white" (what does that even mean) - but at least we're going somewhere.

     STRAYS:

• What has everyone got against e-cigarettes?
• I mentioned Lynch, and this series has been extra-Lynchian so far - particularly films like Mulholland Dr. and Inland Empire, which were set in a nightmarish Hollywood landscape.
• I would welcome any speculation on what Ani's disgusting sex act was that prompted the "mommy's boy" of a cop to confront her.
• R.I.P Stan, you were our favourite henchman who made no impression.
• WHEN OH WHEN WILL PAUL BE ABLE TO GET BACK ON HIS BIKE

REVIEW: Amy

I'm already calling Amy as one of the best films of the year. It is a riveting document of fame and misfortune, of a vulnerable flame of talent snuffed out by the demons of addiction and an excess of public attention. Asif Kapadia, the fantastic filmmaker behind Senna, has poured three years of his life into chronicling the true story - or as close to a "true story" as he can get - of the late Amy Winehouse, and it shows. He expertly maps her tragic life trajectory, from a mouthy, charismatic north London jazz singer to the damaged shell of alcoholism and drug addiction, whose final moments in life were repeatedly splashed across the tabloids.

Moreover, he draws together a disparate map of connections to bring out the underlying tensions of his story, which includes attributing blame to those who failed to help save her from herself, or who inadvertently fostered the uninhabitable environment Amy found herself in. The biggest offender is, by far, her then-husband, Blake Fielder, who introduced her to both a toxic co-dependent relationship and hard drugs themselves - there was an audible ripple of discontent that went through the audience when an anecdote was told about him smuggling heroin into her rehab centre - though also in the crosshairs lie her melancholy father, Mitch, and her manager, Raye Cosbert, who were keen to incorporate rehab treatment into her tour schedule. Those who made cheap jokes at her expense are also revealed, including Frankie Boyle, the despicable Jay Leno, and even our very own Graham Norton - though crucially, we also see the audience laugh and cheer, as if Kapadia is implicating everyone in the terrible media circus that accompanied her every move.

The only ones who escape such judgement in this overwhelming web of data are her early colleagues who kept trying to help her, only to lose her to more insistent outside forces. Her early manager, Nick Shymansky, forms the backbone of the tale, and his video camera footage of him trying to film a shy 16-year-old Winehouse, hiding behind a pillow and refusing to show her face, take on disturbing connotations as the film progresses. Her lifelong friends also contribute, who despaired at the loss of her sanity and frequently threat to break down into tears over the voiceover. (Kapadia avoids the usual talking head setup in favour of a brilliantly edited collage of archive footage.) Though one friend found themselves privileged to one of the more remarkable aspects of the story - the happy outlier of the depressing second half of the film comes during Winehouse's Grammy win, yet she confesses that she wasn't enjoying the event without drugs. Also responsible for delivering an emotional gut-punch is the revelation that one friend received an apologetic phone call from Winehouse just days before her death, where she saw her fate with terrible clarity.

It's a heart-breaking watch that, with every flash of a paparazzi bulb, becomes progressively more difficult to watch - even though you know how the tale ends, you keep hoping for a different outcome, keep hoping that this flawed but brilliant and warm person will find their way out of the darkness. Yet the film's entire purpose is to be incendiary, and to eschew lazy chronicle in favour of posing difficult questions about our relationship with the celebrity. We're shown a person who was memorialised, much like James Dean or Jimi Hendrix, by their untimely death - but one who deserved fame not because of this, rather the power of her incredible voice, which the film is unafraid to show in all its spine-tingling glory. I wasn't sure about Kapadia's decision to have the lyrics pop up on-screen while she sings, though I think it's important to really listen to the lyrics of Winehouse's songs - their poetry reveals more about her than anyone else can. The high point of the film comes during the recording of Back to Black, where the background music is absent, and we are left only with her vocals. It roars back in for the chorus, but suddenly cuts out when she croons those haunting final notes. Unquestionably a masterpiece, and by the film's end there won't be a dry eye in the house.

★★★★★

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 2

Season 2, Episode 1: The Western Book of the Dead

Season 2, Episode 2: Night Finds You

Season 2, Episode 3: Maybe Tomorrow

Season 2, Episode 4: Down Will Come

Season 2, Episode 5: Other Lives

Season 2, Episode 6: Church in Ruins

Season 2, Episode 7: Black Maps and Motel Rooms

Season 2, Episode 8: Omega Station

* * * * *

True Detective's second series marches on, and it isn't waiting for you to catch up. A few critics have been lambasting the decline of a once great show, uses phrases like "off-the-rails" and "lost cause". But their criticism seems to come off as hollow - the series has always been one characterised by dense plotting and weird, self-important philosophical digressions, it's just that there's no hand-holding this time. You're either in, or you're out.

After last week's hour of characterisation, it seems we finally have a mystery on our hands, though we're still moving at a glacial pace. Ben Caspar's eyes have been hollowed out with acid and his groin has been decapitated by a shotgun blast. (Yes, we get a nice close-up of that.) Ray, Ani and Paul have been forced into an unholy alliance, though their strings are being pulled by their respective higher-ups - and as a result, it's a partnership that doesn't quite gel, though in an interesting, layered way. Paul is stuck with a wheezing waste of space in an aircraft bunker, looking at a sparse corkboard, and doesn't seem that keen to, you know, detect - this is left up to Ray and Ani who, in a nice call back to Season One, ride in a car together and have some tense conversations while trawling through the murky waters of Caspar's back catalogue of dodgy connections. Though it's difficult to say if anyone actually wants them to solve the case...

"Murky" might be putting it lightly. Nic Pizzolatto really has a talent for infecting every scene, every location with sleaze and nastiness, something that's heightened by the noirish jazz riffs on the soundtrack and Lera Lynn's dirgeful ballads. It's just as well Vinci is a fictional city, otherwise its tourism board might have something to say; it makes Detroit look like Dubai. Most of this comes through in Frank Semyon's scenes, as he drifts through bars and nightclubs in an attempt to salvage his crumbling life. He's curiously separate from everyone else, and I'm still not entirely convinced Vince Vaughn can pull off the role - though his opening monologue about rats in a cellar was suitably haunting.

It's all quite engaging, if not revelatory. We chip away at the characters a little more, and we see something that surprises us, or muddies our perception of them. Ray reveals he has a sense of humour when he likens using an e-cigarette to "sucking on a robot's dick"; Ani reveals she likes to watch hardcore bondage pornography, and carries knives around in case she gets in fights with men (I'm still not entirely convinced Pizzolatto can write for women, though McAdams is fine in the role); and Paul reveals he has a leery, trailer-trash mother who likes to rub his muscles and call him pretty. And he might be gay. Maybe this explains why Taylor Kitsch always looks like he's about to start crying.

All of this leads up to a shocking ending, which sees Ray get shot in the stomach by a masked shotgun-wielding baddie. I'm not entirely convinced that Farrell's character is really dead - there's a lot of unseen stuff from the teaser trailers - but it's a terrific cliffhanger, and it's confirmed my suspicion that Pizzolatto has some of the biggest, brassiest balls on the planet. It's a big gamble, jettisoning everything people loved about your show, and it could all go to hackneyed shit. But if it doesn't then, oh boy, we might really have something here.