#Curtain call movie imdb series
#Curtain call movie imdb tv

Maybe Kelley (the season’s writer, with a story co-credit for Moriarty) will find layers in Mary Louise. I find little people to be untrustworthy.” “You’re very short,” she says upon meeting Madeline (Reese Witherspoon).

#Curtain call movie imdb series

In a series that stood out for seeing complications in even its least sympathetic characters, she is a straightforward nightmare: sanctimonious, moralizing, devious and rude to the point that it suggests a social disorder. Mary Louise is the worst and best thing about the early part of the season. She has shown up to “help” Celeste - which is to say, to dispense sunshiny, catty judgment, undermine her at home, perform her grief loudly and drop suspicious questions about her sainted (to her) son’s passing. He is reanimated most directly, and his function as antagonist taken over by, his mother, Mary Louise (Meryl Streep). He is a corpse that will not stay buried. He remains present in flashbacks, in the confused mourning of Celeste’s two sons (and their increasingly aggressive acting-out), in the hold he still has on Celeste and in the guilt and pained memories of the friends, now known as the “Monterey Five,” who are keeping that night’s secret, especially Bonnie (Zoë Kravitz). (Whether what happened was actually a “murder” is legally questionable, since it played out as an accidental killing in self-defense.) The victim, so called, was Perry (Alexander Skarsgard), killed in a group melee with the series’s five central women, including his wife, Celeste (Nicole Kidman), whom he abused, and their neighbor Jane (Shailene Woodley), whom he raped. Death was the hook for a story about parenting, marriage and the million species of guilt and judgment visited upon mothers in luminous, money-drenched Monterey, Calif. Kelley used a murder investigation as a delivery device for an empathetic, class-conscious and acidly funny drama. In that first, seemingly self-contained season, based on a novel by Liane Moriarty, the creator David E.

“Big Little Lies” continues to offer the sharp, dark-comedic observations that made the first season one of the great thrills of 2017. Here’s the good news: It worked a lot better than I feared. The first season seemed to finish as definitively as the death it ended on, and I was doubtful the show could be shocked back to life. The latest seemingly concluded series to un-conclude itself is HBO’s “Big Little Lies,” arriving this Sunday.

#Curtain call movie imdb tv

To watch TV these days can be like going to a movie, sitting through the credits and finding, not a surprise post-credits scene, but an entire additional film. “Leave ’em wanting more” is not a concept familiar to television’s current business model. “The End of the _ing World,” apparently, was just the beginning. “13 Reasons Why” found reason to slog on.

“The Handmaid’s Tale” moved beyond Margaret Atwood’s novel, first audaciously, then bludgeoningly, now tiringly. “Barry” and “Killing Eve” continued what might have been stunning limited series with entertaining second seasons that nonetheless labored to spin out their premises. The supporting cast - led expertly by Stanton’s old buddy and director David Lynch, who plays his tortoise-loving friend Howard - capture perfectly the town’s frustration with, and its fondness for, this singular old man.We are living in a golden age of TV series that build to big finishes and then just … stick around. His song in SpanishĪt a friend’s fiesta, when he embraces a broader friendship, will bring a lump to your throat. When Lucky’s self-sufficiency is challenged by a fall, and fear of the end creeps into his life, Stanton softens his character, bringing down his guard to reveal his frailty.

And yet such is Stanton’s nuance and the depth of his proficiency, we, like the townsfolk he eschews, can’t help but welcome him into our hearts. Lucky is a man as prickly as a saguaro cactus and as unforgiving as the landscape they furnish. Not surprisingly, it brims with vim and vigour, much like Lucky himself, the comedy and tragedy etched upon that sandblasted visage, each moment written in the lines that gouge his face like desert ravines. There is no major drama - a tortoise is lost, someone has a party, Lucky wants to smoke indoors - so the film lives or dies by Stanton’s performance. This is a slender narrative, a story defined by conversations and introspection. It's a fitting curtain call for one of America's great character actors.Īnd what an actor.