BEFORE: Early September, but fresh TV is still going to take a while - since early August the networks have been pimping the fall return dates, but it's been all "New episodes start September 24" or "New Episodes coming October 15" so maybe I've got time to binge-watch one more streaming show before that. Maybe Season 4 of "Only Murders in the Building" is next on my list. I know how to read the signs that the universe is sending me. Then I can maybe think about "Ironheart" and "Ms. Marvel".
Mary Holland carries over from "Nightbitch".
THE PLOT: A New Mexico police chief investigates the bizarre murders of two women with the same name and unravels a web of small-town lies. He meets and quickly falls for Rita, a nosy neighbor who is eager to help solve the mystery.
AFTER: The first half of this film is an absolute mess, I could barely tell what was going on. Part of the problem was that somebody took a scene from the MIDDLE of the film and stuck it at the beginning in that splash-page fashion. "In Media Res", but that's not a great idea for a murder mystery type of movie. Naturally when one does this, they should pick the most exciting scene from the film, to get our attention and make us think the whole movie is going to be very exciting, which means that it probably ISN'T, and they're trying to trick us with that exciting scene to make us want to watch more. The problem is that in a murder mystery film, the most exciting scene is a murder, so right off the bat we get to see someone die, and we have no idea who that is - plus we get to see who killed her, which is meaningless because we don't know who anybody is just yet, and also ruins all the suspense because we start out knowing whodunnit, and the WHOLE POINT of a whodunnit is trying to figure out whodunnit. We are ROBBED of that joy of solving the puzzle when you put that scene from the middle at the beginning.
So there you go, movie ruined, and only five minutes have gone by, that's not really a great start. Over time we will witness two murders of two women with the same name, and the whole first half of the movie I was confused because when the police chief was talking about the murder, I wasn't sure which one he was talking about, and the first one (which is really the second one) hasn't even happened yet. You see the problem? He's talking about the first murder, which is the one that we see second, but it happened first and the scenes are out of order. Really, all through the movie I got the feeling that scenes were out of order, even if they weren't, because everything that happens is really so random and unlikely. So why are we even bothering with paying editors if we're not going to see things in an order that makes sense. I've said this before, ONLY Tarantino gets a pass on this, because he knows how to do it right. You can see the important bit first IF there is more information that isn't disclosed, and then by the time the first scene rolls around again in the middle of the film where it really belongs, we've got a whole different take on it because we've learned some background in the meantime that sheds some new light on the events in question. Like, go watch "Pulp Fiction" or "The Hateful Eight" again and you'll see a master of revealing game-changing information (but slowly) at work.
This film is NOT "Pulp Fiction", and it's not "Fargo" though it really wanted to be "Fargo", only set in New Mexico and not Minnesota and North Dakota. I've had the opportunity to re-watch "Fargo" because they've been playing it on cable late at night, in-between my movie and waiting for "TMZ" to make me sleepy, I've probably re-watched most of "Fargo" over the last two weeks. That's really the prime example of a crime film with quirky characters and shady villains and things going wrong when people try to commit crimes. And then the movie "Fargo" became the TV series "Fargo" and Jon Hamm was on the most recent season, so maybe that's also making me think about "Fargo" here. But "Fargo" didn't start with the kidnapping or the murders or even the wood-chipper scene, because then all movie we'd be thinking about how the film is going to be getting there, and really, it would have ruined a lot.
Instead we get Jon Hamm as police chief Jordan Sanders, who investigates the murders of TWO women named Maggie Moore, which there just HAVE to be astronomical odds against, right? But the police figure out pretty quickly that a more likely scenario is that somebody either killed the wrong Maggie Moore to begin with OR they killed the right Maggie Moore and then killed the wrong one just to make it LOOK like the first murder was the mistake. Yeah, the cops have really seen it all, probably, so they know something is up, it's just a matter of figuring out which of those scenarios is the case. I suppose the third possibility is that both murders were one-offs, and unconnected but that brings us back to those astronomical odds against that being the case.
It's possible that the cops are just a bit too clever here, like Sanders also spots the inconsistency with the products being sold in Mr. Moore's Castle Subs restaurant, like how did he KNOW that all the franchisees have to purchase product from the home office, and how did he KNOW after seeing just one box that somebody was not following the Castle Subs rules? Just because he's a cop, that doesn't mean he knows everything about everything. Of course, the sub shop isn't supposed to serve stale chips or moldy bread either, but it's where we find ourselves.
What really saved this film was the interaction between Sanders (who enjoys his police job, but really, he'd rather be a writer of some kind) and the first Mrs. Moore's neighbor, Rita, played by Tina Fey. I think she and Hamm have worked together quite a bit (they'll both be carrying over to tomorrow's film, for example) and they play well off of each other. OK, it's not the ideal romance (what is?) because she's still seeing her ex occasionally and he's still grieving his dead wife, but we sure hope that these crazy kids are going to work it out and get somewhere together. Assuming he can solve these murders and they can both survive and they can make space for each other in their hearts. Awwww.
It's not a drippy romance, though, it feels realistic because you can't really be with someone unless you're clear from the last entanglement you had, and if they're not in a place where they can forgive the new person's faults and overlook their quirks, really how far are they going to get as a couple? And if you can't get past the awkwardness of the sex you may as well just pack it in, you've got to practice, practice, practice.
Speaking of coincidences, there's someone who shops at the same comic shop in Manhattan that shares a birthday with me. I know because the store uses birthdays to track purchases for their reward system, and when I give them my birthday they have to choose the right one from two customers. Same month, day and year. I was joking with the staff last week that the other person must be my doppelganger, and if we were ever to meet in the store we might have to fight each other, or possibly we'd cancel each other out, like matter and anti-matter. But then last week the staff told me the other person with my birthday is a woman, yeah, that's a different story. We'd either hit it off, or maybe we would have to fight, like there could be only one.
I did talk to someone on the phone once with my same first and last name, and my name is pretty unusual, it's not like Brian Smith or Fred Jones, something you might expect to see duplicates of. But an older man called me from Arkansas once, years ago, because he was deleting an online account from CompuServe and saw there was another user with HIS name, which was also MY name. That was a bit of a weird conversation, but I guess it could happen, no matter what your name is.
Anyway, the film is loosely based on a couple of murders in Houston from the year 2000, a Mary L. Morris and a Mary M. Morris, who were killed just days apart. The difference is that the murders in real life were never solved, so nobody really knows if it was just random chance, or what.
Directed by John Slattery (director of "God's Pocket")
Also starring Jon Hamm (last heard in "Sid & Judy"), Tina Fey (last seen in "Yacht Rock: A Dockumentary"), Micah Stock (last seen in "Brittany Runs a Marathon"), Nick Mohammed (last heard in "Chicken Run: Dawn of the Nugget"), Happy Anderson (last seen in "The Bikeriders"), Nicholas Azarian (last seen in "Popstar: Never Stop Never Stopping"), Derek Basco (last seen in "The First Purge"), Louisa Krause (last seen in "Superman" (2025)), Christopher Denham (last seen in "Oppenheimer"), Bobbi Kitten, Tate Ellington (last seen in "Straight Outta Compton"), Allison Dunbar, Oona Roche, Kristin K. Berg (last seen in "Hell or High Water"), Christopher Kriesa (last seen in "Blonde"), Bryant Carroll (last seen in "Hit Man"), Sale Taylor, Richard Lippert, Gabriela Alicia Ortega, Denielle Fisher Johnson, Jodi Lynn Thomas, Roni Geva, Frederick Branch, John Forbes, Jeff Allen, Peter Diseth, Claire Hinkley, Lauren Poole (last seen in "10 Years"), Chance Eon Romero, Sewell Whitney (last seen in "To Leslie")
RATING: 5 out of 10 pre-paid "burner" phones
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