Binge-r #262: Stumptown + Invasion
Portland Confidential: Cobie Smulders (Dex Parios) in Stumptown
STUMPTOWN S1
Streaming Service: Disney+
Availability: All 18 episodes now streaming
Cobie Smulders has a flinty vulnerability that is fascinating – her best performances have a forceful clarity that’s as much about her failings as her defiance. The American actor is best known for the sitcom How I Met Your Mother and playing Samuel L Jackson’s sidekick Maria Hill in multiple Marvel movies, but her signature roles often don’t allow for the complexity that Smulders can bring to a character. The 2015 independent romantic comedy Results most certainly does (it’s on Netflix – please watch it), and despite an entertaining sheen this now cancelled American television series, resurrected on Disney+, does likewise. High kicking and heartbreaking, Smulders reinvents the private detective genre for these times, playing a woman torn between trying to make a difference and turning her back. With their traditional 43 minute running time – there are cuts for the original broadcast adverts – these episodes are deftly entertaining while allowing for a satisfyingly nuanced portrayal.
Smulders plays Dex Parios, a former U.S. Marine who treats her heartbreak and PTSD with a mix of alcohol and equal opportunity one night stands. Sanguine about her own situation, but caring for her adult brother Ansel (Cole Sibus), a person with a disability, Dex avoids most of the anti-hero archetypes – her regret isn’t a hardened shell she projects to the world, but buried down behind the wisecracks, bad decisions, and bare-knuckle scraps. Smulders knows the point where flippancy suggests fatalism, and it’s just what this adaptation of Greg Rucka and Matthew Southworth’s graphic novel needs. Soaked up in the idiosyncrasies of Portland, Oregon, the one and only season of Stumptown offers case of the week twists that recall 1970s staples like The Rockford Files while advancing lengthier storylines.
Jason Richman’s show has an expressive supporting cast, starting with Jake Johnson (The New Guy) as Dex’s best friend, ex-con and bar owner Grey McConnell, and swiftly adding Michael Ealy (Sleeper Cell) as Portland police detective Michael Hoffman, who is torn between arresting Dex and recommending clients to her after she falls into the private eye game. Just like the network shows of old – but without The Love Boat-style introduction – there are familiar faces guesting for a single episode: Jay Duplass and Zosia Mamet give the second episode a quirky charm as a possibly star-crossed couple. I don’t want to oversell Stumptown, as it knows the limitations it’s operating under and is careful when to challenge them or the audience. But it it has a considerable charm and it showcases Cobie Smulders perfectly – right now I watch an instalment each night, and it caps the day’s viewing. Per Dex’s inclinations, it’s a tasty chaser to toss down.
Close Encounters: Sam Neill (Sheriff Tyson) in Invasion
INVASION (Apple TV+, all 10 episodes now streaming): Produced with Apple’s now trademark high-end production values, this series about how people around the globe deal with the dislocation of alien intruders has a remarkable patience. Told on the periphery of world-shaking events, it goes multiple episodes without establishing what is truly happening. Children get nosebleeds, phones fail, and things falls from the sky, but apart from a few inexplicable moments and sightings, it’s initially a drama about the already troubled individuals – including a Japanese communication specialist (Shiori Kutsuna), an American soldier in Afghanistan (Shamier Anderson), a sheriff on the cusp of retirement (Sam Neill), and an immigrant wife and mother with an adulterous husband (Golshifteh Farahani) – whose crises are not so much pushed aside as given an existential focus. Co-creator Simon Kinberg has written some incredibly blunt Hollywood films, but for all the minute-to-minute action (and occasional clichés, particularly in the Japanese sequences) as the story unfolds over a few days this is initially a layered drama. That is admirable, which is both a compliment and a query. The show is called Invasion, but it’s not an action ride.
NEWLY ADDED MOVIES
New on Netflix: Elizabeth Moss, with her acute emotional expression, is the perfect lead in Leigh Whannell’s The Invisible Man (2020, 124 minutes), a timely and terrifying update of H.G. Wells for the era of misogyny and gaslighting; Ridley Scott has zero interest in geopolitics, but Body of Lies (2008, 128 minutes) is an effective thriller for the Age of Terror with Leonardo DiCaprio as a field agent working under the control of Russell Crowe.
New on SBS on Demand: Michelle Pfeiffer is absolutely electrifying in Steve Kloves’ The Fabulous Baker Boys (1989, 110 minutes), playing a lounge singer who has clawed her way out of nothing and lights a fuse within one of her new collaborators, Jeff Bridges, in a music-soaked romantic drama that is imbued with atmosphere and two movie stars who absolutely amplified each other on the screen.
New on Stan: Paul Thomas Anderson’s Boogie Nights (1997, 156 minutes) remains a herculean paean to cinematic intoxication, a wunderkinder familial drama about a young porn star (Mark Wahlberg) who gets caught up in sex, celluloid, and cocaine; The Hangover (2009, 110 minutes) is a giddy, assertive bros in Vegas comedy with a crass cross-section of dudes – Bradley Cooper, Zach Galifianakis, and Ed Helms – stumbling through mishaps.
>> Missed the last BINGE-R? Click here to catch up on Binge’s domestic drama Scenes from a Marriage and Netflix’s detailed poverty tale Maid.
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