Three questions about Mindhunter‘s second season, which I’m in the middle of re-watching: (a) Which of the two seasons have struck you as the more involving, complex, haunting or whatever? And why?; (b) What are your feelings about the two absorbing but less-than-essential subplots (the creepy saga about Bill and Nancy Tench’s beastly son, and Wendy Carr‘s ill-fated love affair with Kay Mason); and (c) Damon Herriman‘s Charles Manson rant, which happens during his interview with Tench and Holden Ford, is so brilliantly written and performed that you can’t help but say to yourself, “Jeez, Quentin Tarantino had this guy on OUATIH and all he did has have him drop by the Polanski/Tate house and wave with a creepy smile?”

I really love how Mindhunter 2 focuses almost entirely upon the Atlanta Child Murders investigation over the last…what, five episodes? And on the eventual discovery of likely child-murderer Wayne Williams, and how the guy who plays Williams (still searching for his name) looks almost exactly like him. Ditto the actors who play Charles Manson (Damon Herriman) and David “Son of Sam” Berkowitz (Oliver Cooper).

In the below video Holt McAllany (who plays Bill Tench) explains how and why the resemblance is so precise.

I was completely riveted and I may even re-watch for good measure, but there are two things I wasn’t especially transported by.

One was the subplot about Tench’s malignant son, Brian, who says exactly four words (“Did the fish die?”) in the whole series and is clearly destined to become some kind of super-fiend when he grows up. Nothing happens, nothing develops…the kid is just a zombie from the get-go. Brian is adopted but what a nightmare regardless, and there’s no way out of it for poor Bill and his wife Nancy (Stacey Roca).

The other “what?” is the serious attention paid to the love affair between Anna Torv‘s Wendy Carr and Lauren Glazier‘s Kay Mason, a foxy divorced bartender. Their relationship is not without intrigue and the performances struck me as exactly right, but the whole subplot is just an aromatic sideshow. It has nothing whatsoever to do with serial killers, interviewing serial killers, finding Wayne Williams or the BTK killer, FBI politics or the BSU. Takeaway: Workaholics and obsessives aren’t that great at relationships, etc.

The night before last I was watching the first three episodes of the second season of David Fincher‘s Mindhunter. Not at home but on a large Hollywood Arclight screen, and it was quite the odd feeling — curious but so pleasurable — to watch a quietly chilling procedural that’s mostly about dialogue, dialogue and dialogue.

But always dry and succinct. Cunning and crafty and joined with a visual palette that tells you that something wicked will eventually this way come. Or is actually happening right now but hard to get the goods on, much less stop.

At first I was saying to myself “God, here I am in a mostly full theatre and we’re all just listening to razor sharp dialogue, and it’s so great to be doing this…to be part of what amounts to an almost surreal viewing experience by today’s standards.” Not just dialogue, of course, but Erik Messerschmidt‘s muted, shadowy cinematography along with some wonderfully fleet cutting by Kirk Baxter. But the talk is just wonderful — taut and crisp and on-point.

But the main element, as with season #1, is an inaudible hum of some kind…something strange and unsettling that you can’t quite put your finger on, but is there in spades every step of the way. It’s “normal” seeming but at the same time spooky. This is a signature Fincher thing, the same quietly throbbing undercurrent that made Zodiac such a deliciously creepy sit.

All nine episodes are currently watchable…binge-able, I mean…on Netlix as we speak. The first three were directed by Fincher, episodes #4 and #5 by Andrew Dominik, and #6, #7 #8 and #9 directed by Carl Franklin. The screenwriters vary from episode to episode, but the principals are Courtney Miles (credited with story or teleplay credits on seven out of nine episodes), Josh Donen (story credit on seven) and Liz Hannah (co-teleplay credit on #4, full teleplay on #6).

A Netflix rep just asked me what I thought. “Brilliant, haunting, masterful,” I replied. “Never poking or jolting viewers with conventional thriller or horror moves, but at the same time throbbing with a certain kind of under-the-surface tension.”

All you know for sure is that Fincher and colleagues won’t be resorting to the usual cops-vs.-serial killers razmatazz, and that you’ll believe absolutely everything they show and convey and fill your head with.

I love that Mindhunter #2 has been shot with a 2.2:1 aspect ratio (standard widescreen 70mm a.r., used for 70mm screenings of Apocalypse Now), and that the camera was a Red Xenomorph Dragon, and that it was shot in Dolby Vision 6K.

I love these episode summaries: (a) “The investigation zeroes in on a prime suspect who proves adept at manipulating a volatile situation to his advantage”, (b) “Bill’s devastating family situation spills over during his interview with Holden’s holy-grail subject: Charlie Manson. Wendy’s new romance heats up” and (c) “Hitting a dead end, Holden suggests a bold plan to draw the killer out. Bill’s family faces more scrutiny. Wendy chafes as her job begins to shift.” I eat this shit up.

Things begin almost immediately in the wake of season #1’s final episode, when Holden Ford (Jonathan Groff) lost his composure and possibly some of his mind in the too-creepy-for-words presence of serial killer Ed Kemper (Cameron Britton). This feeds into the threat of recurring anxiety attacks plus a new Xanax prescription, which leads into Holden’s Behavioral Science Unit partners, Bill Tench (Holt McCallany) and Wendy Carr (Anna Torv), quietly worrying about his ability to handle high-stress situations.

We learn early on that BSU boss Robert Shepard (Cotter Smith) is “retiring” under duress, and that his replacement Ted Gunn (Michael Cerveris) understands the methodology and is particularly supportive of Holden, who isn’t exactly a by-the-book type and is occasionally given to following his instincts.

Season 2 of David Fincher and Joe Penhall‘s Mindhunter series returns to Netflix on August 16th. Based upon or at least inspired by (I’m presuming) “Mindhunter: Inside the FBI’s Elite Serial Crime Unit” by John Douglas and Mark Olshaker. Season 1 was set in 1977. Season 2 is set two or three years later and covers the Atlanta murders of 1979–81. It also includes an encounter with Charles Manson, once again played by Once Upon A Time in Hollywood‘s Damon Herriman.

As with season 1, Fincher has directed four of season 2’s 10 episodes.

“Mindhunter Finality,” posted on 10.27.17:

I finally finished watching Netflix’s Mindhunter last night. All ten episodes. Wow. Precise, patient, unnerving, character-rich, exacting dialogue, blissfully intelligent. By far the most engrossing Netflix thing I’ve sat through this year, and that includes Okja, First They Killed My Father, Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories.

I’m really glad the second season has been approved as I couldn’t get enough of season #1. Really and truly riveted. A perfect thing to watch at the end of a long, vaguely depressing, anxiety-ridden day consumed by writing and researching and…you don’t want to know the rest.

Though Mindhunter I’ve come to know four…make that five actors I’ll never forget and want to engage with again — Jonathan Groff (Holden Ford), Holt McCallany (Bill Tench), Hannah Gross (Debbie Mitford), Anna Torv (Wendy Carr) and even Joe Tuttle, who plays God-fearing, goodie two-shoes FBI agent Gregg Smith, who ignominiously rats out Groff when he sends a Richard Speck interrogation tape to a pair of FBI internal affairs investigators.

I finally finished watching Netflix’s Mindhunter last night. All ten episodes. Wow. Precise, patient, unnerving, character-rich, exacting dialogue, blissfully intelligent. By far the most engrossing Netflix thing I’ve sat through this year, and that includes Okja, First They Killed My Father, Mudbound and The Meyerowitz Stories. I’m really glad the second season has been approved as I couldn’t get enough of season #1. Really and truly riveted. A perfect thing to watch at the end of a long, vaguely depressing, anxiety-ridden day consumed by writing and researching and…you don’t want to know the rest.

Though Mindhunter I’ve come to know four…make that five actors I’ll never forget and want to engage with again — Jonathan Groff (Holden Ford), Holt McCallany (Bill Tench), Hannah Gross (Debbie Mitford), Anna Torv (Wendy Carr) and even Joe Tuttle, who plays God-fearing, goodie two-shoes FBI agent Gregg Smith, who rats out Groff when he sends a Richard Speck interrogation tape to a pair of FBI internal affairs investigators.

An HE salute to producers David Fincher (who directed episodes #1, #2, #9 and #10), Charlize Theron, Josh Donen and Cean Chaffin.

For whatever reason I didn’t do my research until a week or so ago, and hadn’t realized that Holden Ford is based on former special agent John Douglas, who co-authored the same-titled book about his 25 year career with the FBI’s Investigative Support Unit.

I loved the Holden and Debbie breakup scene in episode #10. [After the jump.] Or rather the “Holden breaks up with himself” scene. Debbie is radiating that silent hostility thing that women love to radiate when so inclined, signalling everything and saying nothing. Holden calmly adds up the signs and indicators and comes to a conclusion that “you’re breaking up with me?” Yup, that’s what she’s doing but she’s making you do the work.

There are three things that a film has to do in order to qualify for eternal blue-ribbon, Mount Olympus status and the simultaneous allegiance of Joe and Jane Popcorn along with your elitist, dweeb-level, ivory-tower elites.

One, it has to deliver the plain, honest truth (or undercurrent of truth) about a given world or situation — along with a little entertainment value, okay, but without undue exaggeration, no shallow exploitation, not too much sugar or vinegar, and no blatant bullshit of any kind. (This requirement in itself leaves out at least 80% of commercial cinema.)

Two, it has to persuade audiences to emotionally invest in it — to trust what it’s doing and where it seems to be going.

Three and most importantly, it has to put you into a kind of alternate-reality mescaline dream state…a place that you want to stay in and never leave, or at least make you want to return to frequently — a realm that feels so inviting or stylistically transporting that you want to live in it, even if it seems a bit dangerous.

Yes, of course — all movies are dream states in a way. The better ones always lead to a certain primal feeling of alteration or discovery (the film has taken you to an entirely new but seemingly straightforward place) or emotional comfort and reassurance. But the ones that hit the jackpot are the ones that tell you what this or that slice of life on planet earth (or life aboard an intergalactic space cruiser) is basically like …how it really is…the full, honest, non-delusional truth of things.

Which of the 2024 Best Picture nominees did you want to literally move into and live in, or at least visit for a few weeks?

I hated the claustrophobic world of Oppenheimer…university classrooms, government inquisition rooms, meeting rooms, Los Alamos residential shacks. If a magical bearded wizard came up to me last summer and said “I can fix it so you can literally time-travel back to J. Robert Oppenheimer’s world…back to 1930s England, 1940s bomb-blast Los Alamos and 1950s paranoid America….would you like to go?”….I would scrunch my face up and say to that fucking wizard “are you fucking kidding me?”

I was mildly intrigued by the Oklahoma world of Killers of the Flower Moon during my first viewing, but the second viewing was hell…I was stuck in that godawful fucking world, watching and listening to those 1920s roadsters chugging along those muddy streets…those awful damp ditches where the bodies were dumped…studying Leonardo DiCaprio‘s dumbfuck facial expressions, stuck with Lily Gladstone‘s dreary, Native American passivity and Robert De Niro‘s pinched expressions and midwestern drawl…hate it, hate it…escape!

I loved visiting the trippy, furious-jumping, sound-stage world of Poor Things. but I didn’t want to actually live in it. Because it’s skewed and unreal and more than a bit arch — no offense.

I’m too much of an average, well-educated, moderate-minded white dude to want to live in the satirical, male-despising, super-feminized world of Barbie….sorry.

I felt completely comfortable with the 1970 realm of The Holdovers. If that same wizard offered me a chance to time-trip back to ’70, I would go if I could journey there as a young lad with twenty grand in my wallet…cool. I would love that.

The realm of American Fiction is a wise and intelligent one…my kind of place except all the whiteys are woke moron suck-ups. Not my cave, bruh.

I loved certain aspects of the dream-world of Maestro, but I hated the casual cruelties forced upon poor Carey Mulligan.

Past Lives was an under-energized drag, and it always will be — I would never want to hang with those three dull people.

Anatomy of a Fall? No thanks. I now associate Grenoble with stifling vibes and constipation

Would I want to live in the nicely tended home in The Zone of Interest, right next to the walls of Auschwitz? I need to answer this?

I will forgive a film for not being an inviting place to hang in or visit if it’s being relentlessly honest about itself and the world it’s depicting. But the best kind of film tells the truth and offers an extra-cool hang in terms of environment, style, vibes.

There is no bullshit and nothing but truth in The Bicycle Thief (notice that I didn’t call it The Bicycle Thieves), North by Northwest, East of Eden, Mean Streets, Repo Man, Election, The Hospital, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, David Fincher‘s Mindhunter series, Gunga Din, Some Like It Hot, Two Women, La Strada, Zero Dark Thirty, Vertigo, Fellini Satyricon, Manchester By The Sea, Paths of Glory, Vertigo, Nomadland, Only Angels Have Wings, Collateral and 12 Years A Slave.

Serial killer sagas have always been hot tickets. I’ve liked exactly five — Manhunter, Mindhunter, The Silence of the Lambs, Se7en and Zodiac — but then I’m an outlier.

Jett and Cait are big fans of serial killer “product.” Netflix’s idiotically titled Dahmer — Monster: The Jeffrey Dahmer Story is “the ninth most popular English-language TV show of all time, with 56 million households having viewed all 10 episodes.” Against my better judgment I watched three or four episodes…later.

A friend had told me that The Good Nurse, a stand-alone, fact-based drama about the hospital serial killer Charles Cullen, was quite good so I caught it the other night in Manhattan. I was underwhelmed. Mystified even. It’s one of those films that you manage to endure. It’s certainly nothing to write home about. I began losing patience around the 40-minute mark, and then I was stuck for another 80.

It’s one of the darkest and dreariest looking films I’ve seen in ages (obviously intentional and quite the contrast as the dp, Jody Lee Lipes, shot Trainwreck and Manchester By The Sea).

All through it I was asking myself “who could possibly care about this glum, plodding little film?” The answer, of course, is that tens of millions will become instant fans, no matter how flat or slow it is. Simply because Cullen (Eddie Redmayne) murdered at least 40 hospital patients and perhaps hundreds of others with injections of insulin and dejoxin, etc. That’s all they care about.

Redmayne’s Cullen is a kind of soft-voiced, good-natured dolt…dullness incarnate until the very end. Jessica Chastain is Amy Loughren, a nurse who’d been fairly friendly with Cullen but later helped detectives get the goods on him.

The Danish-born director, Tobias Lindholm (A War), shoots Krysty Wilson-Cairns‘ script (based on Charles Graeher’s same-titled 2013 book) in a dry, chilly, grim fashion.

A friend called The Good Nurse “Fincheresque” but David Fincher would never direct a film this dull.

By the way, what other film set in a hospital focused on an unstable man who surreptitiously kills patients with overdoses of insulin and dijoxin? Paddy Chayefsky’s The Hospital (‘71).

Friendo #2: “Although it might have been taking artistic license, if I had been brought in to punch up The Good Nurse I would have suggested the following: Chastain’s character agrees to help the police only because she’s convinced Redmayne is innocent and wants to prove it to them. She’s then doubly horrified to learn the truth.”

There are three things that a film has to do in order to qualify for eternal blue-ribbon, Mount Olympus status and the simultaneous allegiance of Joe and Jane Popcorn along with your elitist, dweeb-level, ivory-tower critics.

One, it has to deliver the plain, honest truth (or undercurrent of truth) about a given world or situation — along with a little entertainment value, okay, but without undue exaggeration, no shallow exploitation, not too much sugar or vinegar, and no blatant bullshit of any kind. (This requirement in itself leaves out at least 80% of commercial cinema.)

Two, it has to persuade audiences to emotionally invest in it — to trust what it’s doing and where it seems to be going.

And three, it has to put you into a kind of alternate-reality mescaline dream state that you want to stay in and never leave, or at least make you want to return to frequently — a realm that feels so inviting or stylistically transporting that you want to live in it, even if it seems a bit dangerous.

Yes, of course — all movies are dream states, in a way. The better ones always lead to a certain primal feeling of alteration or discovery (the film has taken you to an entirely new but seemingly straightforward place) or emotional comfort and reassurance. But the ones that hit the jackpot are the ones that tell you what this or that slice of life on planet earth (or life aboard an intergalactic space cruiser) is basically like …how it really is…the full, honest, non-delusional truth of things.

There is no bullshit and nothing but truth in The Bicycle Thief (notice that I didn’t call it The Bicycle Thieves), North by Northwest, East of Eden, Mean Streets, Repo Man, Election, The Hospital, Treasure of the Sierra Madre, David Fincher‘s Mindhunter series, Gunga Din, Some Like It Hot, Two Women, La Strada, Zero Dark Thirty, Vertigo, Fellini Satyricon, Manchester By The Sea, Paths of Glory, Vertigo, Nomadland, Only Angels Have Wings, Collateral and 12 Years A Slave.

Except I didn’t want to live in or even visit the Nomadland realm (bucket pooping, bald tires, borrowing money for van repairs, shooting the shit around campfires) so I guess it doesn’t qualify.

Let’s look at the 2021 Best Picture contenders and ask ourselves “which of these films did we actually want to live in, or at least frequently visit?” The general truth is nobody wanted to live in [most of] these films, and that’s one basic reason why nobody watched last month’s Oscar telecast.