REVIEW: Mistress America

Noah Baumbach has once again proved himself to be the greatest living director making films about New York City, bar none. Many have made the Woody Allen comparison, which is fair - both utilise seemingly incidental conversation to map out subtle nuances of character and story, all the while being sweet, well-meaning and, above all, very, very funny. But Baumbach is perhaps even more unapologetic with his characters, unafraid to make them openly grating or obnoxious, forcing the audience to work harder to find the honesty and vulnerability behind their middle-class foibles.

It doesn't always work, as we saw with the insufferably annoying Greenberg, but, more often than not, it does, against all odds - and the key to his success is a good, compatible performer. It is here, then, that I believe Baumbach has won the lottery in the form of Greta Gerwig, who may be one of the greatest acting talents of her generation. She was astonishingly good in Frances Ha, which could have so easily slipped into the more pretentious side of mumblecore territory; instead, we had a near-perfect portrait of what it means to be young and alone and scared about the future in New York City, all the while trying to hold on to a desperately fragile sense of identity.

We're on similar ground with Mistress America, though the riffs on the theme are as enjoyable as ever. In fact, it's a bit of a hybrid between Frances and his last effort, While We're Young; the focus of the story is on a young millennial Tracy (Lola Kirke), who's feeling scared and alone at college. The details of this section are spot-on: her campus is entirely made up of exclusive cliques and impersonal study groups, and it seems like everyone else is having a better time than you.

It is this that drives Tracy to look up Brooke (Gerwig), who is set to become her step-sister after their parents marry. The two meet, and instantly there is a spark, a connection. Brooke takes her on a whirlwind tour of New York where we see the identity she has formed for herself: she visits bars and dances on stage, she tweets relentlessly, she is constantly switching between trains of thought mid-conversation. She's endearingly annoying, too, in that hipster-bohemian sort of way: when someone takes a photo of her kissing a bassist she says, "Must we document our lives all the time? Must we?"

The secret to Baumbach and Gerwig's success in films like these is that the audience is not invited to judge Brooke too harshly. She is clearly vulnerable, if unable to express it clearly - she complains about her best friend stealing her fiancé and cats, and jarringly announces, mid-dance, that her mother died when she was younger. She is also, as Tracy discovers, insatiable fun to be around - the picture comes alive whenever she is on-screen, and sags ever-so-slightly whenever she is absent.

There is also much in the film itself dedicated to the very act of judging character. While spending time with Brooke, Tracy writes a short story entitled "Mistress America", where she writes half-formed observations about her that appear on the voiceover: "Her youth had died and she was now dragging around the decaying corpse." Yet the tables turn when her story is discovered and read by Brooke - and a group of her friends - who become angry with Tracy for trying to re-purpose her experiences into something that will earn her entry into a superior literary club. We are almost equally guilty of thinking we knew Brooke after spending little over an hour with her. Much is left unsaid: the most important moment in the film comes when her fiancé, Dylan (Michael Chernus) asks her if she's doing okay and she responds, "No... I'm not..." before being interrupted.

It is not a perfect film. The third act in Connecticut is a swerve in tone; Brooke and the gang go to persuade her rich fiancé to finance her restaurant idea, and the film becomes a stage-like comedy of errors that could have easily come from a different film. It also lacks some of the raw, infectious energy of Frances Ha, even if the result is ultimately more polished. But this is still a very fine film - one of the best comedies of the year, I suspect - that, once again, proves Baumbach and Gerwig are a real force to be reckoned with.

★★★★

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 8

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

* * * * *

Everything ends.

Or does it? Well, yes, it does. Unless you're a Kardashian, or the showrunner behind EastEnders, you can pretty much guarantee that your television show will have to reach a conclusion at some point. It doesn't matter whether it's good, bad, middling, dull, funny, vastly over or under-rated: your show will come to an end, your characters will cease to exist outside of lunchboxes and coffee mugs, so you'd better get used to it. Some shows are so bad they immediately get the chop, some shows are bad but continue to survive for a long time anyway, some shows start strong then lose their way, and some shows only begin to hit their stride as they are cut short by a group of satanic studio executives, left for a small enclave of nerds to obsess over on the internet for time immemorial.

I've been thinking about it for a few days, and I still can't decide where True Detective falls on that spectrum. If encompassing the first season, then we might categorise it as a show that lost its way. Yet that doesn't do justice to the gulf in critical reception between the two; it would be more accurate to say that, if Season One was a impressive Range Rover of ambition, Season Two was a beaten up Toyota that punctured four of its tires, hit a deer, swerved off the road and did ten front-flips before sinking into a river. Or at least, that's what Todd VanDerWerff thought.

But I think writing True Detective off by this point would be a mistake. As I've said in these weekly blog entries, the show's had its good bits, and - aside from some truly inexcusable writing - has gotten better over time, given way to something that Nic Pizzolatto had in his head all along, though something he might have struggled to get on paper. I'd draw specific focus to the massive sex orgy scene of Episode 6 as an example of an effectively modern, hellish realisation of Los Angeles noir tropes of the 40s and 50s, seamlessly bringing character development, atmosphere and story together. And while it doesn't hold a candle to Cary Fukunaga's famous six-minute tracking shot, the shootout in Episode 4 was as exciting and grisly as any Hollywood movie.

Anyway, let's talk about the episode itself. "Omega Station" promised itself as an event, a feature length finale that would wrap up everything and quell any doubts held about the progression of the series. It isn't, and it doesn't, but this ending feels perfectly fine - almost as if Pizzolatto started there and worked his way backwards. We rejoin Ani and Ray after they've slept together, completely oblivious to Paul's demise. (Though as Ray admits later in the episode, they were never that close anyway.) It comes across as a bit Don't Look Now, as each one spills their guts while the camera cuts to them getting dressed, smoking, using the toilet, etc.. When creepy cop Burris rings them up, though, they know that they're reaching some kind of end game, even if it won't be pretty.

It should come as no surprise that the people responsible for Caspar's death were, in fact, the orphans from the jewel store robbery - after all, they were the only loose ends in this whole mess. Ani and Ray find the girl tied up, saying her crazy set-photographer brother tortured Caspar to death and put his body on the park bench for a laugh. He's also the one responsible for shooting Ray with the rock salt shotgun while wearing a bird mask - though why he didn't kill him in the first place isn't really explained.

In fact, not very much is explained about our afterthought of a killer. When Ray finds him at the titular train station, he might as well be wearing a Nine Inch Nails t-shirt: his hair's died black and at one point he spouts, "I am the blade and the bullet." God. Is this really the guy? I feel like we could have done better. Anyway, he's only there to draw out the final dirty cops (the black guy survived being repeatedly bashed in the head, apparently) and, after a chaotic shootout, Ray and Ani are set to leave for Venezuela with Frank, where they can have drinks on the beach, give each other a group hug and say "We are the TRUEST detectives!"

Or not. Frank's got a few more things to clear up, and not all of it goes his way. After one final, dreadful conversation between him and his wife ("That was a fuckin' big diamond!"), he teams up with Ray and shoots the hell out of a hideout that Blofeld would be ashamed to call his own, even getting some nice revenge on that Russian guy he didn't like so much. Only problem is, Frank forgot about another ethnic minority group - the Mexicans - who take him on one of those blasted Rides Into the Desert™. When they try and take his suit, Frank - in an act that is part pride, part financially motivated by the diamonds in the pocket - hits a guy, who promptly stabs him. The Mexicans leave him for dead, and Frank determinedly (and fruitlessly) tries to walk back into the city. It's perhaps a too heavy-handed and obvious resolution for his irritating character, made worse by the clichéd use of ghosts and flashbacks on his journey. But it's one that just about works. I hated Frank's stupid catchphrases as much as the next guy, but even I was a little sad to see his promise of wearing "a red rose" come bloodily realised, moments before he collapsed for good.

Another death that takes its toll is Ray's, which is, again, very obvious, but effectively realised. After being unable to resist the urge to say goodbye to his son - who respects him in spite of everything - he finds a tracker on his car, and realises his time's up. His dream prophecy was true to the letter, as a sling-wearing Burris chases him into the trees to his death. While dodgy phone signal will ensure that his son will never hear his farewell message (seriously Ray, why run into the forest for better signal?) it's still something that draws his character to a satisfying, tragic close: "I'm sorry for the man I became, for the father I was ... I hope you've got no doubt how much I love you, son. You're better than me. If I'd been stronger, I'd have been more like you."

Everything ends, but in this story good doesn't quite triumph. After a montage showing that Vinci is more corrupt than ever, the final few minutes of True Detective end with Ani talking to a reporter, finishing her story. (So wait, she was narrating the entire time? Maybe that's why nothing made sense: she's a lousy storyteller.) She's teamed up with Jordan - along with what must be Ray's baby - and both seem ready to take on the world, albeit wary of danger that could come at any time. Is it the best ending True Detective could have hoped for? Maybe. It's at least consistent with what came before it, which is reinforced by another Lera Lynn dirge over the ending. (Seriously, buy her a fucking ABBA album or something.) The series hasn't changed, for better or worse. But in this case, I might have been receptive to a bit of flexibility, to a bit of power taken away from someone who is clearly an interesting but heavily flawed storyteller. Oh well. There's always next season.

     STRAYS:

• I have to admit, the more I thought about it, the more the logic of this episode didn't quite hold together. How did Ray, a messy alcoholic, manage to kill a bunch of elite force operatives? Why wasn't Ani, an independent, sex-focused individual, using birth control? Why did emo orphan torch that car while wearing a plate on his face? What happened to Ani's father and sister?
• Maybe Leonard Cohen was right: "Nevermind..."
• Sorry if this review came across as a bit snarky. I tried not to be snarky at the start of this series blog but, over time, a lot of things about the show began to annoy me. It's mostly been out of frustration - the clunky dialogue, mostly - but I've never thought this series was bad, just nowhere near as brilliant as it could have been. Hopefully the negative critical reaction will influence Pizzolatto to go back to the drawing board and rediscover what made that first series so great.

SERIES BLOG: True Detective - Season 2, Episode 7

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

* * * * *

After I'd been watching this episode for five minutes, I knew that, by the end of the episode, either one of our true detectives would be dead or two of them would start nobbing each other. I didn't expect both. And I didn't anticipate that gay ol' Paul would be the one biting the dust - with all the references to trees at the start, I fully expected Ray to meet his maker at the hands of some literal and figurative demons, as his fatherly vision predicted four weeks ago. But I suppose it makes sense that Paul would be the first to drop. He's the one with the most to lose, what with the fiancé and the baby and all - plus, he's the one who's developed some of the most true-y detective instincts out of all the true detectives, which - save for being black - ticks all the right boxes for "cop show cannon fodder."

Anyway, first things first. After the glorious clusterfuck that was last week's episode, the gang have holed up in a room with the world's worst wallpaper. Ani's a bit panicky after her bad trip - at one point she clambers into Ray's lap in search of some, um, therapeutic love. He refuses, and she blames it on the drugs, but we all know better - the two have a bit of an awkward chemistry that's hard to shake. (They both like to mumble things and don't like talking about their feelings which, in Pizzolatto's world, is about as romantic as it gets.) Meanwhile, someone texts Paul photo proof of his illicit hookup with the army dude. This means that a) people know Paul's secret, and b) they know that he was at the party where the all-important contract was stolen, and can now blackmail him over it.

What is it with Paul and his sexuality, anyway? Unless Vinci is stuck in a time warp in the seventeenth century, why would anyone in the world care if a random cop was gay? I suppose it's all about image and delusion: he hasn't exactly had the most healthy upbringing. Though he still ensures that, as he feels the threats building toward him, his mother is hidden away safely in a hotel room (along with his reluctant fiancé, who she forces to watch Splendor In The Grass).

In fact, much of this episode is occupied with family, clearly building towards something terrible. After dealing with the girl she rescued from the party - who turns out to be a bit of a brat - Ani has an emotional moment with her father, revealing that the man she hallucinated at the party as, "The man who took me away" as a child. Throughout we've always been able to see some kind of trauma bubbling away beneath her surface, but this is the closest Ani's been to outwardly vulnerable all season. She even gives out three hugs! (Which, as her police friend jokes, must be a record for her.)

It's no surprise, then, when Ray and Ani, in a moment of shared loneliness, end up shacking up in the lodge. The scene where it happens proves to be quite effective, and I think it's because there's an almost total absence of trademark True Detective goofy dialogue. A fire burns in the background; they look at each other, longingly; we cut to close-ups of them, then their hands, intertwined; a riff on the Blade Runner "Love Theme" plays in the background; and then they go at it, without so much as an analogy about wildebeest.

Another good scene came when Frank beat the shit out of his subordinate. It's another one of those brutal interrogations the show is so fond of - though this time, there's slow-mo! He finds out about a big conspiracy to cheat him out of money and business, a movement even Caspar himself was a part of (though still, no-one really knows who killed him). And after a decisive murder, Frank finally comes up with a good plan, an endgame to uncover the truth and sever ties with those who cheated him. (The first part begins, as most good plans do, with gasoline and matches.)

This is really the best Season 2 has ever been. It's a shame it took so long, but I always knew that we'd start to see some satisfying pay-off around this point, even if we did have to sit through a few "blue balls in your heart" lines to get there. When Paul ends up in the tunnels beneath the city, we were finally able to make the connections we thought we'd never make, pinpoint the baddies that had previously only been vague names and references, and finally engage in a thrilling end-sequence that saw Paul running for his life.

And I'd also like to say that I FUCKING CALLED IT. You all forgot about Lieutenant Kevin Burris, didn't you? WELL, I DIDN'T. I may not understand about 80% of the plot, but even I thought that dude was suspicious from the get go. And poor Paul. I think I can safely say that we were all rooting for him to reach that gun in time, yet in the back of our minds was the knowledge that he had to die for the story to be any good. He'll never be able to get back on his bike, and it's unlikely that next week will be all sunshine-and-lollipops. But it should, hopefully, be some satisfying closure to this sporadic, bumpy ride that is finally finding its groove - albeit a touch too late. See you then!

     STRAYS:

• It's that time again where I list some of the goofiest lines offered up to us this week. Here are some of my favourites:
• FRANK: "In the midst of being gang banged by forces unseen, I figure I'd drill a new orifice, go on and fuck myself for a change."
• ANI: "Maybe you were put on earth for more than fucking.
  BRATTY GIRL: "Everything is fucking."
• FRANK: "Guy's been around less the last few months than my wife's period."
• RAY: "Dixon... He was just a regular dick."
• FRANK: "You might say my ship's come in."
  RUSSIAN DUDE: "And who sails this ship?"
  FRANK: "I'm a regular fucking Captain Ahab, I just got too many white whales to harpoon." (Alright, I made that last bit up.)
• South Park was right: people do shit themselves when they die.
• Has Frank ever met a Jewish person before? He treated them like a self-service machine at the bank.
• 90 MINUTE FINALE HYYYPE

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.