The Killing – Season 2 Finale

“What I Know”

So after 26 days, The Killing finally revealed what really happened on the night of Rosie Larsen’s murder. Major spoilers will follow.

The second part of the season finale picked up where it is highly insinuated that Jamie was the murderer. During a scene where Jamie wheels Richmond back to the campaign offices, he admits to dealing with some sketchy business between Nicole Jackson and Michael Ames. Their meeting took place on the 10th floor of the casino and while each of them left individually, Jamie found Rosie as her cell phone went off.

Afraid that Rosie overheard their meeting, Jamie panicked and punched Rosie, knocking her out unconscious when her head hit the floor. Still in a state of shock, Jamie put Rosie’s body in his car and drove to the woods. Thinking she was dead, Rosie was able to escape temporarily until Jamie caught up with her and knocked her out for a second time. In distress, Jamie demands Ames to come and clean up the mess.

The reveal came to a shocking end when Jamie points his gun at Linden, causing Holder to shoot Jamie down with one shot. This left a sobbing Gwen and a speechless Richmond in their campaign office. But wait, that was only the first fifteen minutes of the episode. You didn’t actually expect The Killing to avoid throwing in another twist, did you?

Linden and Holder aren’t satisfied with Jamie’s involvement in Rosie Larsen’s killing. They believe that there is something they’re missing that has to do with either Nicole Jackson or Michael Ames and the taxi he took to the lake the evening of the murder. The case seemed to be shut until the detectives went to give the news to the Larsen’s and Linden discovered a busted tail-light on Terry’s car. Uh oh.

The big revelation was that while Jamie knocked out Rosie and dumped her into the trunk of his campaign car, she was still alive, kicking and screaming. Jamie told Ames to clean up the mess, that this is the best way since he’s skipping town to start a new life by leaving his wife for Terry, but Ames backs out and says he’s not leaving his wife. Quietly upset, Terry tries to prove her worth and commitment to Ames by putting the car into drive and rolling it into the lake.

Jamie Anne Allman gives one of the series’ best performances as she actually makes us, and her sister Mitch, sympathize with the terrible thing that she has done. But what’s done is done and the fact is that she was the one solely responsible for killing Rosie Larsen.

If you thought The Killing couldn’t be more of a downer, in its final scenes we see Richmond meeting with Nicole Jackson and Michael Ames, seemingly going forward with the corrupt business Jamie started. And at the end when the detectives get a call about a body found near the airport, Linden leaves the car, unwilling to pursue another case so soon. Holder understands and drives away, leaving Linden to walk the streets of a rare, dry day in Seattle.

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So as The Killing has come to an end, I can just guess that there won’t be a third season. The way they ended it left the possibility up in the air, but there seems to be way too much of a backlash and too much negative criticism to keep the show going on AMC, who has secured themselves as a network of quality programming. I’m not saying The Killing was the best show of all-time, but I must disagree with all of the people with such hatred towards the series because they have missed the entire point.

The Killing was a series about tone and style, and one that broke the tradition of police investigation shows that we’ve made ourselves familiar with. People were outraged when The Killing didn’t solve the murder mystery in its first season, but so what? I was fully engaged in the rich characters and the deliberate pacing that I was happy to hear the investigation would continue for another thirteen episodes.

As the Season 2 finale ended, I was fully satisfied with everything that The Killing had done. Sure, there were loose ends here and there, but that didn’t cause people to pull out their pitchforks and march towards the Lost creators’ houses (and that was the most scrutinized show of all-time). The Killing had a lot of bad press after the first season and no one gave it the light of day during the sophomore season. But for those who did give it a shot, we were rewarded with a realistic drama of a family losing a loved one and an intriguing detective pair that shouldered the show through to the end.

Review: Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)

Snow White and the Huntsman (2012)
127 minutes
Rated PG-13
Directed by Rupert Sanders
Starring: Kristen Stewart, Charlize Theron, Chris Hemsworth

Grade:  C+

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While many are inevitably comparing the two Snow White films in their reviews, I don’t think there should be any comparison made at all. Both films are about the story of Snow White, but told in very different perspectives. Here, the heroine is wielding a sword and the villain is sucking the youth from her victims. There are no singing dwarfs in this action/adventure.

After a brief history of Snow White (Stewart), the film picks up when Ravenna (Theron) marries White’s father, only to kill him, rule the kingdom, and lock away Snow White in the castle. Only when Ravenna’s mirror declares Snow White as the “fairest of them all” does she have an interest in her stepdaughter. She can have eternal youth by ripping out Snow White’s heart, but fortunately White escapes.

Enter the Huntsman (Hemsworth). As Snow White runs into the dark forest, the Huntsman is ordered by Ravenna to bring her back, but his good heart chooses to help her escape rather than feed her to the very hungry villain. Once it’s realized how important Snow White is to end the dark era of Ravenna, everyone jumps on board to rebel, including some feisty dwarfs.

Though Show White and the Huntsman is ambitious, it falls flat on almost every level. The main positive from the entire film was the well-shot action sequences that lived up to the incredible action scenes of past epic/fantasy films. The sound mixing and editing were impressive, too. I loved the sound of shattering glass whenever a knight sliced one of Ravenna’s warriors in half.

To me, the acting fell short of launching this film into the realm of other fantasy/epic films. Kristen Stewart plays the wounded and pure warrior princess to her best ability, but even that isn’t far away from her ability to play a broken teenager in Adventureland or swooning over mythical creatures in Twilight. Charlize Theron was very one-dimensional as the evil queen, turning the majority of her dialogue into a screaming match against herself. And Chris Hemsworth is his charismatic self, flexing his muscle while swinging an axe and becoming protective over the vulnerable girl.

In addition, the film is too serious for its own good. Without many cracks or even a smile, the two-hour-plus movie feels slow and overly heavy at moments without any comic relief that all summer blockbusters have. The dwarfs were supposed to provide some sort of chuckles, but instead they were annoying, very unfunny side-characters that I’d rather see beheaded than telling stories around a fire.

There is no doubt that this film is just another hit to add to Stewart’s impressive resume. Is she the new money-making gal on the block? When dealing with this sort of genre, there are no questions asked. But she still has competition with Emma Stone and Jennifer Lawrence to really be taken seriously instead of just being a pretty face on the screen.

Review: Prometheus (2012)

Prometheus (2012)
124 minutes
Rated – R
Directed by Ridley Scott
Starring: Noomi Rapace, Michael Fassbender, Logan Marshall-Green, Charlize Theron

Grade: B

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Ridley Scott returns to the sci-fi genre with this epic, out-of-this-world tale of human explorers traveling to an alien world to find answers. The year is 2093, but flamethrowers and iPods are still useful enough to carry along on the journey. There is a lot going on in Prometheus, which is a burden and a blessing simultaneously. Sometimes, Prometheus is too big for its own good and there are plot points that just don’t work. On the other hand, the ideas the film explores are so big that it remains on your mind long after the credits roll.

The leaders of this mission are Elizabeth Shaw (Rapace) and Charlie Holloway (Marshall-Green). The two have been researching cave paintings and have come to the conclusion that humanity’s creators, or as they like to call them “Engineers,” are inviting them to make contact on a distant moon. The assembled team, which includes an android named David, land on the moon and explore a large structure. The scientists soon discover that the aliens aren’t in the mood to sit down and have a conversation.

There are a lot of things that stood out to me in the form of excellence, the most glaring one being how Scott mastered the use of 3-D technology to present us an entire world in the way Avatar did in 2009. It avoided the common mistake of a dark 3-D film because even with the glasses on, Prometheus was bright and crisp to the very end.

The film wasn’t perfect though and the biggest problem was its screenplay. For a film with such high concepts circling every frame, the characters sure were one-dimensional. The acting was as good as it could be with a strong cast, but the screenplay barely provided them with material to show off their chops. Fassbender plays an alien that doesn’t feel emotion, so don’t expect anything spectacular from him. Theron remains cold and fierce, not budging from the single note whether she’s being hit on or sprinting from an aggressive alien.

The star of the film was Noomi Rapace, who made her presence known in the Swedish adaptations of The Girl with the Dragon Tattoo series. Here, she has the most depth of every character, which isn’t saying much. But she runs with the film and exploits the strong, female heroine in the face of danger. I’m sure we’ve only seen the beginning of a very promising career.

Even though Prometheus has its shortcomings, it’s a very thrilling film that presents plenty of questions about the origin of human beings and life in outer space. In typical horror fashion, there are a lot of deaths and gore in the film, but none that we really care about since there is hardly a moment we learn anything about the characters. Despite this, Prometheus is beautifully shot and should keep the fans of sci-fi and horror at the edge of their seat, screaming for more. That’s good because you can expect at least one sequel following in the near future.