Determinism: Devs vs. Westworld (Season 3)

Devs - d. Alex Garland, FX (8 episodes)
Westworld Season 3 - HBO (8 episodes)

It would seem that in the past two or three years writer-director Alex Garland and Westworld showrunners Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan read the same book about how the philosophical concept of determinism could potentially be validated, or even instituted, by the mighty power of artificial intelligence and big data.

I don't know for certain that there is even a book out there that explores that thesis, but given that two shows running at the same time are exploring the same subject from different approach vectors seems to at least intone that it's now part of the intellectual conversation.  Maybe it's a Ted talk, I dunno.

I can't say I prefer one show's approach on the topic over the other.  Both have their merits, but I'm also still contemplating whether they're saying the same thing or not.

Garland has, for a number of years now, been exploring both philosophical and technological concepts in his very heady directorial sci-fi projects like Ex Machina and Annihilation, but his screenplays even before that, like Never Let Me Go, Sunshine and even 28 Days Later toyed with contemplation of existence (whether it be clones bred for organ replacement, a crew trying to save the humanity or a small group of survivors of a zombie-like plague).  Clearly, what life means and what we're supposed to be doing with it is something that is on his mind.


At the epicenter of Devs story [mild plot spoilers ahead] is that a secret coding project within the Google-like Amaya corporation, where they're working on a project that can see the past and future with precision.  But the meat of the show centers around Lily (Sonoya Mizuno) whose fiancee, Sergei, was admitted to the Devs program and then disappeared, only to show up days later and self-immolate on the Amaya campus.  Her investigation into Sergei's actions, attempting to understand them, lead her on a complicated path that sees her revisiting her past and questioning her future.

The idea behind the Devs project is one of determinism, that we're all on a fixed path, that free will is but an illusion.  Having taken in all of the data systems have collected on practically everyone for decades now, the Devs system can extrapolate and interpret and ultimate display the exact past and the exact future.  Everything will happen as it will always happen, such that it always has happened even if it hasn't happened yet.  Amaya founder, Forrest (Nick Offerman) and Katie (Allison Pill), his right hand on the project, have looked to their future and they know what happens.  As such they perform their roles as they're meant to, thinking they would be unable to deviate even if they tried.  They also know Lily's future, and they're more than at peace with letting the horrifying events in her life proceed without  any sense of troubled conscience.  They're devoted believers in the fixed tram lines our life are on, and feel absolved on any complicity because of it. 

An author before a script writer then director, with Devs, Garland seems to be redefining what can be done in the new golden age of television [aside - the new golden age of TV is certainly coming to an unpredicable end thanks to the Coronavirus shut-down...I wonder how things will look a year from now?] by literally making a tele-novel.  It's a rare show that has one writer and director for the entire production, but Garland's control of the situation make it a decidedly singular vision from start to finish, and it feels structured like chapters of a book.  At times the way the show plays out, it has a similar feeling to reading a book. There's a solitude to the experience of watching (or maybe that was just my experience watching it alone), as Garland let his camera sit and rest in a scene, letting the ambient noises fill the space, gleaning insight or understanding by holding on expressions or exploring the backgrounds, or just giving the audience time to contemplate meaning or feel the weight of events.  He bookends each chapter with a song, the same one in the starting montage and the ending montage, but a different song for each chapter.  The songs are well selected reflecting the tone the show is seeking perfectly.

Devs is very small scale in how its looking-glass project impacts humanity in the world of the story.  It's still technology at its incubation stage.  It hasn't been commoditized or exploited for much purpose other than self-satisfaction.  But one can see where taking all that personal data collected, all that observational video recorded, all that digital audio parsed and using it to see what people will do, and what they have done (or at least believe that's what you're seeing) could wind up being very bad for society, and the very sense of freedom.

In Season 3 of Westworld, we've left the trappings of the theme park where the automatons ran wild.  They're now loose in the real world (well, the real world of 2058) and they've starting a war nobody even realizes is happening yet.  Delores (Evan Rachel Wood) an a small cabal of hosts have taken various strategic forms and insinuated themselves in roles across the globe, including taking the body of Charlotte Hale (Tessa Thompson) seeding her in the top spot of Delos, the owners of the AI technology and host body technology.

Delos is the focus of a hostile takeover by Incite and its somehow mysterious and completely off-the-grid owner Serac (Vincent Cassell).  Serac, meanwhile, is aware that someone, or something is interfering with his plans.  Serac is the co-creator of Rehoboam, an AI construct that has absorbed the world's big data and now effectively (and secretly) governs it, ensuring that everyone stays on their predictive paths, and that the outliers, the ones its unable to predict the actions of, are removed from the equation.

Rehoboam is also tracking aberrant behavior from other hosts that made it out, Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) who's basically in hiding, having had the massacre at Westworld pinned on him, and Maeve (Thandie Newton), who has been resurrected under Serac's sway.  It's also tracking Caleb (Aaron Paul), an ex-marine with PTSD finding it hard to break out of Incite's predictive existence for him, and who falls into Delores' sphere of influence.

Westworld is using our advancements in big data, AI and predictive modeling as it's groudwork, noting its potential to eventually accurately predict the future, and then extrapolating a scenario where the AI and its employers ensure a predictable future, both as well-meaning societal benefit and as a means of self-elevation (Serac is clearly not hurting for money or resources).  It's the central thesis of the season, having already explored the ideas of existence and what it means for AIs to have consciousness and exist in the previous seasons.  It carries those with it, as the hosts are still front-and-center, but each displaying just as much humanity, good and bad, as any character in the show.  Serac and Delores are flipsides of the same coin each very much fueled by their convictions, and each very much willing to sacrifice anything for their plans.

Jonathan Nolan explored the emergence of artificial intelligence prior to Westworld in Person of Interest, a clever bait-and-switch on the case-of-the-week formulae that was really about observational nanny state, the abuse of all that monitoring, and artificial intelligence that could use that information for good or ill based on the guidance of their programmers.  Rehoboam in Westworld is very much an extension of PoI's machine, taking that observational AI system, feeding it ALL the world's data and giving it the task of ensuring humanity's future through order.  It's kind of like communism if you manage to eliminate the corruption and thirst for power.
 

Where Devs' determinism is explored on the micro level, how the very idea impacts the people who believe it, or the people who refuse to do anything with the information they have, believing even the possibility of doing something other impossible, Westworld's use of determinism is mostly macro.  We don't really sit with the impact of a predetermined existence too much with any one character, but we see the impact it has on society, and it's not a far-off extrapolation of where we already seem to be heading.  Westworld, however, has more designs on staying within its pulpy Michael Crichton origins. Action is still very much a part of the play, as are cool looking technology and futuristic designs to vehicles and other equipment.

The original Westworld is said to have influenced the Terminator, and this season is taking that influence right back.  The indestructible machine, the stony-faced determination, the impassioned assaults... Evan Rachel Wood's face seems to be made up to be even more esoterically smooth and her angles sharpened to give her an inhuman, perhaps even ultrahuman visage.  It's not uncanny valley, but it is somehow captivating and unsettling.

In both shows, the idea of the outlier does come into play, where in Devs the very concept is willfully abandoned, the very idea that there is free will would throw the system into a chaotic multiverse, but it does play it's part.  In Westworld it's these anomalies hailed as humanity's savior...or at least liberator, much like Delores was her people's liberator in Season 2.  For better or worse.

Devs is methodical, and may not be to everyone's taste.  Westworld Season 3 basically reboots the show with a new path and keeps only a scant few threads from the past.  It may not be what viewers of previous seasons were expecting.  Both are, however, compelling viewing.

Maleficent

2014, d. Robert Stromberg - Disney+

Disney's animated cinematic output has included more than it's fair share of memorable heroes, but likewise it's produced many a striking villain as well.  Although, many of those villains were mature women envious of the attractive young princesses in their lives, which is certainly a problematic stereotype.

Maleficent comes from Disney's adaptation of the the Sleeping Beauty fable, and is here re-imagined/retconned not as an envious and vain queen but as a woman scorned.  Well, actually it's more brutal than that...far more brutal.

But first, we meet Maleficent as a bright and bubbly pre-teen.  She's a horned, winged faery and the benevolent ruler of the Moors, hidden away from the world of man.  She wakes up in the morning and greets her community much in the same way Paddington does in his films (although, Paddington's urban London environment is far less unappealing than this vibrant-bordering-on-garish looking CGI abominable reality).  Her attention is called to an outsider, a human boy who has stolen a gem from the waters of the Moors.  Large tree-like creature seek to restrain him when Maleficent smooths things over and befriends the orphaned peasant boy, Stefan.

Through montage and voice over we learn that Stefan and Maleficent become best of friends and eventually, in their teen years, a romantic couple.  But as Stefan ages, his ambition -- now an aide to the king -- starts to blind him to his love, and eventually their love fades.  The king attempts a conquest of the Moors and fails brutally, suffering a mortal wound.  On his death bed he offers his crown to anyone who brings him the head of the demon woman who leads the fae folk.

Stefan seeks out to warn her but in fact tricks her, drugs her and cuts off her wings.

Yes, you read that correctly.  He roofies Maleficent and violates her horrendously.

It's brutal and sobering and honestly shocking.  I don't know if the writer or director intended this to be such a strong rape allegory, but in the fallout scenes, Angelina Jolie performance is certainly playing the horror of it.  This isn't just a woman scorned, this isn't just the betrayal of her love, it's the vicious abuse of her body for a man to feel powerful.  She has every right to be angry, and for what she could do, following her painful recovery, she shows incredible restraint.

When she hears word of Stefan's daughter's birth, she enters the palace and curses the child, to prick her finger on her 16th birthday and sleep forever, granting the one concession of true love's kiss reawakening the child, believing herself that true love cannot exist.

Through vignettes (the whole film is pretty much a series of vignettes, kind of like old Disney storytelling in a way), we see Maleficent watching over the child with hatred, and yet the child reciprocates with smiles and affection.  As time passes Maleficent finds herself the shadow guardian of the child, or, as Aurora believes when she discovers Maleficent in broad daylight, she's her fairy godmother.

Now out in the open, Maleficent cant help but adore this child she's basically helped raise from a distance, but she also can't help but feel guilty for the curse she placed upon her.  Yadda yadda yadda true love's kiss followed by overlong action sequence, and a happy ending.

It really is a ghastly-looking film beyond some impeccable costuming and make-up (Maleficent is so striking)... had this been a practical film instead of largely CGI it would have been a real marvel.  But also the storytelling, the vignette-style, doesn't serve any of the characters particularly well.  Relationships between characters imply familiarity more that demonstrate it.  There could have been more time spent developing the relationship between Maleficent and Stefan, so that we see, rather than are told, about the distance that grew between them because of the cold and ambitious heart of man.  Then the betrayal and assault could have been far more shocking and upsetting, but perhaps, being a Disney film after all, they thought they would temper that by keeping focus squarely on Maleficent. 

This film barely holds together, at times, and even at a brisk 97 minutes (with lengthy credits) it drags in spots.  Jolie is marvelous, clearly knowing exactly what she wants to put into the role and exactly what we should be getting out of it... the rest of the cast needs more direction.  Sharlto Copley makes for an awkward Stefan.  We can see from the outset his intentions as Stefan (we're also basically told), so there's no moments where he doesn't have an air of nefariousness.  Elle Fanning plays the princess Aurora, and she's asked basically to be bright and sunny and love everything, which she does, but there's no personality behind the role, and really, not much of a role there for her to play.  She's the film's maguffin, in a sense, but she should have been more.

I'm not certain a...less novice director than Robert Stromber (his first film, coming from effects and art direction)  could have saved the vignette style of the script, but think of the meal Guillermo Del Toro could have made of this.  Word was Tim Burton was originally interested in directing, which is probably for the best he didn't as it would have been Alice In Wonderland Burton and not Edward Scissorhands Burton.  But Edward Scissorhands Burton would have been perfect as well.


I admire what Disney was trying to do with Maleficent as both a story and a character, and while the execution let the story down tremendously, the character actually comes through for the better.

[Toast's take from 2014, we agree]

3+1 Short Paragraphs: The Discovery

2017, Charlie McDowell (The One I Love) -- Netflix

I have a next door neighbour whom I noticed about 10 years ago. The first handful of times I saw her, I nodded a smile of recognition and hello. But soon after I realized, I had no idea from where I knew her. To this day, I have never figured out how I knew her, but am still convinced I must have -- she could have been the server at a bar I frequented when I arrived in Toronto, she could have worked with me briefly at The Store. Or, she could be from another, a past life?  And no, I have never done something as simple as ask her -- what do I look like, the creepy next door neighbour? Don't answer that.

The premise of The Discovery is that Robert Redford discovers indisputable truth of the Afterlife. They don't say exactly how, but it involves machinery and brainwaves. Despite us being in a world that disputes vaccines and how social distancing can save lives, the world accepts his science and the ramifications are not pretty. People around the world are committing suicide in droves, hoping to get a better start in the next. Will (Jason Segel, How I Met Your Mother) is Will, his son, who helped him with the Discovery, but has become estranged from his father after seeing the consequences, and from lingering bitterness against his father for his mother's suicide. The movie begins with Will on a ferry heading to a small island, to ask him once again to stop the science, tell people he was wrong. On the way to that island, Will meets Isla (Rooney Mara, The Social Network).

This is a melancholy movie about the point of life. Will believes that you shouldn't be moving on to another life if you haven't made the best of this one. It's not about Heaven or Hell, as religion plays very little into this movie, but about mistakes and learning from them. He sees people just repeating the same mistakes over and over in life, so he questions how it could be any different just moving on to another "plane of existence" and expecting anything else. That is, until he sees the results of his father's latest experiment, where he records what people see after they pass over. This new and terrible reality is that people do make different choices, do get to choose the better paths -- that you can just re-start and expect a different outcome.

**spoilers**

The weird thing is that the movie presents us with this horrible idea of not being bothered by consequences, because you can just go on and try again, and suddenly slides past it into a rather beautiful idea of the Afterlife. Will, after suffering a great loss, takes upon himself to use the machine, the machine that even his father now believes must be destroyed, to find out whether he could save Isla from a tragedy. And he passes before he learns. But in doing so, he is back on the ferry to the island, and he is back meeting Isla for the first time yet with an inkling that he knew her, but now things are being explained to him --- that Death, as a natural part of Life does allow you to try again and again and again, getting multiple chances in multiple realities, until you get it Just Right. In showing us this beauty, I had hoped it would show the folly of choosing the quick path, of ending your life early so as to have another chance, was wrong -- that it would have unforeseen consequences. Alas, no, Will has died (and technically at his own hands) but has another chance to make his life with Isla come out for the better. So, what are we supposed to learn? Nothing, I guess, just life I will never know who the neighbour really is.

Tru Crime (allathetime)

McMillions, 2020, d. James Lee Hernandez, Brian Lazarte - HBO (6 episodes)
Tiger King, 2020, d. Eric Goode, Rebecca Chaiklin - Netflix (6 episodes)

I'm not an avid true crime consumer, but I certainly dabble and have been doing so since the heyday of Unsolved Mysteries in the early 90's.  There's something fascinating, eerie, curious (sometimes morbidly so) and upsetting about murder, arson, kidnapping, robbery and all the other criminally atypical behaviours in society.

For me it's not so much the "what happened" but the "why did it happen" that intrigue me, and what I think make for a captivating true crime story.  There's a part of me that loves to play amateur psychologist, to try and understand the motivations of someone who acts so aberrantly.  A well told crime story may not spell this out explicity but at least give you a thorough enough profile to hazard a guess.

HBO's McMillions doesn't necessarily fit the profile of your conventional true crime story.  It tells of how the McDonalds Monopoly game was subject to years of fraud where every winner of a major prize was a hand-picked recipient...but the primary question was, hand-picked by whom?  And once it reveals "whom" it's still not that interested in the whys of the action.  Perhaps because it's a non-violent crime (all things considered, there's threats lobbed about, and an insinuation that a fatal car accident may not have actually been an accident).

The 6-part series begins with the discovery of the crime, one in which a the Sacramento branch of the FBI receives a tip off that something is hinky with the contest.  As it's told it's almost happenstance that the thread left dangling is even pulled at all.  A post-it note memo of the tip is discovered by a junior agent hungry for something meatier than the usual insurance fraud case their branch normally tackles.

From there, the show starts tugging at the thread, slowly unraveling the complex weave of characters, criminals and dupes involved in the scam.  We see the connections, and the show helps with the usual "family tree" mapping board to display the connections.  But who sits at the top?  A name, "Uncle Jerry" is all that they have for a while.  The Feds also have to determine if they should be working with McDonalds on this, or possibly risk tipping off an insider who's in on the scam.

A complex but cinema-ready ruse is put in place as the Feds act as a marketing company hired by McDonalds to create commercials starring past winners of the Monopoly game, which gives them an excuse to question them.  Through phone taps and rigorous investigation they start working their way to the top, which at first seems to be connected to the Columbo crime family through one Jerry Columbo.  Included in the talking heads is Jerry's brother and sister-in-law, both who seem eager to lay out what they know of the story, but also very aware of what can and cannot be said about their family's extra-legal dealings.

By the start of the fifth episode, we know who Uncle Jerry is, but the mystery has become less "whodunit", or even "whydoneit", but more "howdoneit"?  This dangling carrot of how it was done is kind of the least exciting aspect of the show, and the directors remind you of that hovering veggie a little too often, to the point that it seems almost like a magical feat.

The greatest success of McMillions is the impartial lens in which it looks at the people who were wrangled into helping Uncle Jerry accomplish his crimes, some far more complicit than others.  The shows producers, like the prosecuting attorney, aren't letting anyone off the hook, saying that greed got the better of them, but at the same time, the context provided give you a sense of how these people became involved, often through duplicitous means, and even more unfortunately, to no real material gain.

The show isn't beyond compassion, even for the guilty.

Which is much more than can be said for Netflix's highly exploitative Tiger King.

The biggest cultural phenomenon of today is, well, COVID-19.  But a close second is the Tiger King documentary.  There's a reason for that...it's absolutely insane.  It's upsetting and entertaining in equal measure, profiling, mainly, one Joe Exotic, a "big cat" private zookeeper in Oklahoma.

To get into the story of Tiger King would take hours to frame right, but in broad swaths, it's framed around Joe's hatred for big cat rescue advocate Carole Baskin.  Lest we think Carol is the hero of the piece, the show takes time, practically a whole episode, midway through the run to explore Joe's theory that Carole killed her second husband.

It would seem there's no agenda to Tiger King other than to tell the most sensationalistic story it possibly can.  The editing of the series makes for a confusing timeline, and Joe Exotic's constantly shifting narrative (and existence) makes it even harder to track exactly what happened and when.  It really only matters if the show were interested in truth telling more than storytelling.  But it's as interested in hot gossip, insinuation and heresay as it is about facts or any sort of message about the nature of keeping big cats.

In many ways this docuseries should act as a scathing expose of the big cat "industry" that's seeing thousands of big cats subjected to abusive conditions in the United States.  The show doesn't take any measure to psychologically explore why the people who are into big cats are into big cats, but it's easy enough to extrapolate... it's all about power.

Though never actually said in the documentary, Joe, it turns out, is very afraid of these big cats, but he likes the power and notoriety it affords him.  It does seem that for a time Joe does actually care about the well-being of these animals, but as it starts to afford him more fame, his ego revs up and takes over.  Joe is like a Batman villain, a two-faced conundrum of a man, capable of brutal crimes and venomous vitriol, but also overly brimming with love and charity.  He's a living cartoon, always wearing a costume with his dyed mullet mismatched with his dark beard, his cowboy hat and ever-present thigh holster.  He's proudly out and gay in a state not known for its tolerances.  He doesn't seem very smart, and yet in his own way he's fumbled his way into being a criminal mastermind.

Joe is kind.  He holds an annual thanksgiving dinner at his zoo where the impoverished can come for a big meal.  He takes in ex-convicts who may have nowhere else to go and puts them to work and gives them a home.  He showers his husbands (yes, plural) with affection and gifts a plenty, doting on them sweetly.  Joe wants people to experience the joys and wonders of big cats, doing outreach events at local shopping malls and up close experiences at the zoos.


But beneath all this warmth and charity is something very sinister.  Those ex-cons are effectively slave labor, working 80 hours a week for barely a pittance, and their living conditions are vermin-infested squalor (and the food they eat is the same discarded meat they get from the Wal-Mart that they feed the cats).  Joe's husbands are all straight men effectively kept in Joe's sway by the gifts he gives them, oh, and the steady supply of meth (we aren't even told about Joe's first husband in this series).  The big cat outreach is more about the glory of Joe than the glory of the cats, and the money he makes off them.  There's a potent scene where Joe, late in the series and in effectively desperate times, violent steals a literal newborn tiger cub from its mother and absconds with it for sale for a measly couple thousand dollars.

We meet in the second episode Doc Antle, another big cat breeder/zookeeper/showman who is effectively Joe's mentor.  He taught Joe about animal handling but Joe was even more interested in Doc's many beautiful wives who work at the zoo for basically nothing.  Doc is running a cult, no bones about it, and he dupes young women into both his employ and his familial life by means of attacking their confidence while bolstering their importance to the animals, and therefore him.  Doc taught Joe the way of manipulating, but with Doc you can see the control and restraint he has in his upsetting and unseemly ways.  Joe on the other hand unable to control his warring id and ego, which is why Joe is now in jail and Doc, save for the bruising this documentary might give his reputation, is still pretty much untouched.

The central narrative, as mentioned, is the rivalry with Carole Baskin (though there's so much other craziness in Joe's life, like his "music career" and his ill-fated run for President).  Herself once a big cat breeder, she's flipped to the other side running a big cat conservation, where she houses rescued big cats, and has her own cult-like army of volunteers who work their way through her t-shirt colour rankings like graduating through karate belts.  Carole is a public advocate for laws on big cat breeding and keeping, which puts her on the radar of every big cat wrangler in the documentary (and beyond...but they all seem to hate her).  She's put a target on Joe's zoo and Joe responds in kind x1000.  His egocentric homebrewed internet broadcast network seems (at least from the perspective of this documentary) heavily invested as a Carole Baskin smear campaign and/or hate show.  Numerous times Joe shoots or explodes effigies of Carole on camera.

So when it come out that Joe was involved in a murder-for-hire crime with Carole as the target it's hardly a surprise, it's just yet another twist in Joe's crazy out of control life.

I've written ten paragraphs on this series already and I've hardly scratched the surface of all the seriously crazy bullshit from Joe's life (and surrounding personalities orbiting it's sphere).  It's not a finely crafted documentary, but it is very entertaining, and that -- next to the insane amount of animal abuse -- is the disturbing part.  This reality show doesn't see it's people as humans, so much as characters in a story, and as such there's a sense that the participants are unwittingly self-incriminating in their participation (less concerning for the guilty) but also unknowingly opening themselves up to mockery, ridicule, and abuse (again, less concerning for the guilty).

Ultimately, there are no heroes in this story, there's hardly even a truly good person to latch onto.  Rick Kirkham maybe, but he was still trying to capitalize upon Joe's insanity for his own gain.  Or Joshua Dial, Joe's campaign manager he recruited from the Wal-Mart guns and ammo department who witnesses Joe's third husband's accidental suicide (and, horrifyingly we witness him witness it, the deed happening off camera).  But even Josh, who has our utmost sympathies for the trauma he endured being in Joe's sphere, still seems to defend Joe far too much.  Or Saff, the ex-marine trans man (misgendered by the show) who has his arm ripped off by a tiger, still seems to uphold Joe's good deeds, ignoring his bad...acknowledging at the end that the animals seemed to have been forgotten amidst all the madness.  And that's pretty much the damning commentary for the mini-serise, that the animals got lost amidst all the meaty messiness.

So yeah, it's highly entertaining, but just as upsetting, and even more problematic.  In its edit, the Tiger King is transfixed by Joe, and gives him perhaps more time, more attention and more of the benefit of the doubt then he deserves, almost painting him as a sympathetic victim.  Again, clearly less interested in facts, and more interested in opinions, there's a reflection of modern America at the heart of all this.  It's one of ugliness, division, exploitation, crass consumerism, and cults of personality barring any sense of logic, fact, or reason.  It doesn't paint that correlation but it really should.

---

Some things it left out (from Robert Moor's twitter, a podcaster who extensively covered the Joe Exotic story prior to this docuseries)

3+1+1 Short Paragraphs: Underwater

2020, William Eubank (The Signal) -- download

I was rather fond of Eubank's previous movie, The Signal, from six years ago. So, right off the bat, I have to say I am rather disappointed that this one was not better. Alas, I think I have to dredge up my old adage about indie directors making some successes and then being signed on to helm something big and Hollywood Flashy, only to sink to the depths. Pun intended.

Don't get me wrong, Underwater looks fantabulous, so Eubank's vision is still very prevalent. The problem is inherent in the story, in that we have already all seen this overused plot device, where a disaster happens (even so, in water) and the last few survivors have to make it to supposed safety, all while being stalked by a monster. And even though he's got a tired plot, some movies can work wonders with it. Dredd was a re-worked The Raid: Redemption and did it wonderfully. John Wick  was just another "you killed my beloved family member, prepare to die" revenge flick, but... BUT !! So, given how great this movie looked, the budget and effects, I should have enjoyed it much more than I did.

Norah (Kristen Stewart, Twilight) is an engineer on (in?) a deep sea drilling platform, this time one down in the Mariana Trench. We don't get much intro or breathing room before BOOM SPLASH, the rig is collapsing into itself and Norah, and Random Black Dude (Mamoudou Athie, Unicorn Store) are running and hiding in safe(r) parts. Norah thinks she knows a way out, so off they go, picking up some others on the way. It turns out the only solution may be at a not-yet-completed station. But that will require a walk along the ocean floor in their deep-sea-cum-space-suits.

Of course, soon after leaving the relative safety of one interior structure, they realize something is stalking them. Once out in the water, they see the humanoid figures swimming around in the murky water, only lit by whatever the humans have handy. One by one, they lose people until there are three, three at the final destination, where (SPOILER) well, it's Cthulhu. Nobody calls him that, but think of a leviathan sized creature where the murky swimmers were pretty much remoras or parasites swimming around or attached to the great beast. Yep, they dug too deep and release their own massive Balrog. So, in a rather rushed final act, Norah sacrifices herself so the other two can escape, and so she can blow Cthulhu to kingdom come.

I can see what Eubank was trying to do, doing the world building he did with The Signal establishing a monster movie world that is bigger than the encounter we see depicted. The problem is that we don't really get to encounter that world, as we are too focused on watching all these panicky people run clumsily from point A to point B. There is little to no chance to character build, let alone world build, so the movie relegates it to silly opening and closing credits of newspaper reports and redacted documents. I doubt he will get a sequel, so we will never really know what it was all about.

3 Short Paragraphs: Bloodshot

2020, Dave Wilson (video game cinematic director, Bioshock Infinite) -- download

Not that Vin Diesel is hurting, but man, the guy's luck. Sure, he is doing well by the Furious franchise but as a head liner, things either bomb or, in this case, just not come out at all. Relegated to Straight To by The Pause, it actually might have been a blessing in disguise, as this was not likely to get any rave reviews. An adaptation of the 90s comic book property from Valiant, its classic not-comic-booky, as in removing itself entirely from the world of capes and becoming a sub-par actioner. If Valiant is hoping to do their own Universe thing, this does not bode well.

You see, the trouble with dumb actioners is that very few even try to be more than that. How do you expect to rise and become the next John Wick or Dredd if you are content with Good Enuff? You can see that Wilson had a desired look for his movie, with bright colour palette and strong archetype characters. But instead of doubling down on it, giving us solely his own style, he instead just kept on pulling back short of style to make a more "relatable" action movie, something more familiar.

Vin is Garrison, a soldier killed after watching the kidnapping and torture of his wife by a bad movie cliche Bad Guy. But not really. Garrison is actually a resurrected soldier, killed in action yes, but his backstory is being manipulated by Guy Pearce, in another of his many Evil Company Overlord roles. Pearce's Dr. Harting re-builds super soldiers, claiming to be a hi-tech Waramps program, but really he just wants to perfect a technology he can sell. In Garrison's instance, his body was filled with nanites that heal his injuries, provide him super strength and a connection to technology. When Garrison discovers he is being reset (mind wiped) again and again, so that Harting can take care of the competition, he goes rogue and kills all the Bad Guys.

[We agree] Birds of Prey (or the Fantabulous Emancipation of One Harley Quinn)

2020, d. Cathy Yan - rental

[click here for Toast's take]

As Toast explained in his review, Harley Quinn came out of Batman: The Animated Series, where I really liked the character.  She was turned into a hot-pants and bustier-wearing pseudo-Deadpool in the comics, and I was not on board.  Somewhere along the way, while I wasn't paying attention, she settled into a force of malevolence, breaking free (though not entirely) from the "Joker's Girlfriend" mold.

I've written about the Harley Quinn cartoon (currently in its second season) which fast became something I enjoy immensely, and I consider to be the definitive second-take on the character.  The emancipation of Harley from the Joker is a season-long arc of that show, violent, bloody, absurd and funny.  I'm guessing both were in development at the same time, and once the episodes started streaming (on the "DC Universe" platform in the US) Margot Robbie said "I've made a huge mistake", because, frankly, that's how it is done.

This movie is, to paraphrase David, kind of a non-entity.  It certainly exists, but it's uninspired.  It's got all the feelings of a first draft, and a first edit.  It feels unrefined.  It's not until the third act -- where it actively mimics The Warriors then segues into a bizarre fun-house brawl -- that I realized Yan was striving for some sort of gritty grindhouse aesthetic.  But she didn't commit, she didn't lean into it.  A brutal feminist action-comedy with grindhouse trappings would have been amazing.

This instead is something that can't decide whether it's going for something PG-13 or hard-R.  It certainly doesn't shy away from violence, but at the same time, it doesn't seem to get the revelry of it either.  Harley clearly loves beating the crap out of people, and we see that in Robbie's performance, but the camera doesn't know how to love the violence-as-art.  It just looks like violence with no real take on it.

I was rooting for this film, but I was left wary by the trailers.  The fanboy in me wanted the Birds of Prey as proactive costumed crime-fighting vigilantes, not well-tailored women happening into a bad situation together.  In my head cannon, the Birds of Prey would have been an established team, reluctantly helping Harley who had gotten herself in over her head post-Joker.  Instead, Harley is helping out a young pickpocket, Cassandra Cain (Ella Jay Basco), who stole mob boss Ewan McGregor's precious diamond.  Detective Renee Montoya (Rosie Perez), lounge-singer turned attache Black Canary (Jurnee Smollett-Bell) and  vengeful assassin Huntress (Mary Elizabeth Winstead) all find themselves involved in middle of the situation as well through different angles.  It's much messier than it needs to be and also quite underwhelming.

There's a definite undercurrent of the uphill battle against misogyny all women face, that is sometimes flagrant and often institutional (no matter the institution).  There's a message about finding solidarity in facing this fight together, even if it's with someone you don't necessarily like or identify with.  I like the message, which I should add is unvoiced, but obvious.

That said, the movie doesn't really *inspire* like I wanted it to.  It passes time, but it's not the good time, the rollicking entertainment it should be.  The fight scenes seem plain, but it's because they're not shot dynamically.  If you pay attention the coordination in those sequences is actually quite astounding, but the lens doesn't get how to draw attention to that.  It captures everything but enhances nothing.

... and now... *nerd gripes*
1) Rosie Perez, always liked her, I even like her here, but she's not the Renee Montoya I wanted to see.  She's 55 and the role acknowledges that because she's a woman she's underestimated in her police department, and been stepped over time and again.  But I want a Renee who can become The Question, and she's not who I picture making that journey.
2) Cassandra Cain from the comics is not at all represented in this film.  Ella Jay Basco is fine in her in-over-her-head sass-mouthed pickpocket role, but that's not Cassandra Cain.  This is shades of 90's comics-to-film transitions where they literally just take a name and nothing else.  Meh.
3) Mr. Zsasz is a terrifying serial killer in the comics.  Here he's a nasty misogynist playing mob enforcer against Black Mask's much subtler misogynist.  Messina doesn't seem right for the part, and the part doesn't seem like the right adaptation of that character.  It should literally just be some otherwise generic goon.
4) I don't really know what Black Mask is like as a villain in the comics, but I found McGregor's performance here confusing.  It wasn't until late in the second act that I truly understood he was a petulant spoiled rich kid who was playing at being a big-time mobster by cultivating his own worst instincts.  The storytelling doesn't convey that very well, though the performance is trying hard to get that across.
5) Harley narrates this thing, but as with most films the narration tapers off completely after the first act...only it returns in the most jarring manner in the third act. 

Picard Season 1

2020, CTV SciFi - 10 episodes

(Note: I originally wrote this review after episode 6, and then forgot to save it.  Then I wrote it after episode 8, not knowing how downright awful the finale would be...so bear that in mind reading the following words)

I've had a few conversations with a few different people about Picard at this point and it seems like everyone had different expectations about what this show should be, and now that we're pretty deep into the season order, those differing opinions seem to now be about what's working and what isn't.

My expectations were something more character-specific, after all, this is the very first Star Trek show that is named after one specific character.   Episodes of the various shows do often center around one figure or another, but never have they been dedicated to following one journey or one point of view.  The first season of Discovery did that a bit with Michael Burnham, but it was still very much and ensemble show that did share the spotlight.

The first half of the inaugural episode of Picard seemed to be giving me what I want.  It caught us up on the character's current status (retired from Starfleet in protest many years ago, living at his familial vineyard full of trauma and regret).  The last Star Trek film, Nemesis, was a defining moment for Jean-Luc, his attempts to lead Starfleet's efforts at rescuing and relocating the Romulans (their most hated enemy) was aborted after synthetic beings went rogue and assassinated everyone at a Mars colony destroying the rescue fleet in the process. This not only was detrimental to the Romulans' desperate plight but also caused a ban on all synthetic life across the Federation.  Both of these decisions were a slap in the face to everything Jean-Luc thought Starfleet was about.

But these scars have started itching again when Jean-Luc learns of Data's twin daughters and the secret Romulan cabal that is determined to destroy them. Obviously, this is all connected.

The pilot builds this story very well, and centers it around Jean-Luc's anger, shame and trauma.  When one of the daughters of Data is destroyed on Earth, he must venture off world and find her twin.  But without Starfleet's support he must find a new crew to help him.  Up until this moment, the pilot, shot in widescreen format, was very cinematic, letting the emotions and weight of history settle in on Picard.  It took its time, and it felt like a small, personal story with a very grand scope was ahead of us.  But as soon as the show dovetailed into "getting the crew together" it lost all its intimacy and just seemed like another TV show ahead of us.

The subsequent episodes (I'm up to episode 8 as of this writing) have all been fine, but the show's focus on Jean-Luc Picard is not there.  In some episodes it's very much like Picard is a supporting player in his own series. (Patrick Stewart is very much looking like a fragile senior at this point, which may be why he isn't in complete focus. Getting old sucks.) Episode 6 finds Picard returning to a broken Borg cube (now a Romulan reclaimation project) which has a potent effect on him, which is then followed by his hasty escape to his old crew.

We've seen a few returning characters.  The spectre of Data in Jean-Luc's dreams in the pilot, Seven-of-Nine pops up as a badass vigilante, Hugh the ex-Borg is around, and in episode 7, Deanna Troi and Will Riker help counsel their mentor and friend in a very emotional reunion. But that return, while catching us up on the beautiful existence of old friends, is still so much about Picard, how others see him and how he sees himself.

I was worried the show would get lost in nostalgia, and thankfully it does not, but at the same time it too often gets lost in the weeds necessitated by being a TV show.  I wish the series was instead a movie, one with dedicated focus and a streamlined story.  It's not that I dislike the new cast of characters (in fact I think Captain Rios may be one of my favourite all-time Star Trek character at this point, and his ship, La Sirena, may be my all time favourite Star Trek ship at this point as well).  I recognize that were this a movie we would have been robbed of the beautiful reunion of the Picard, Riker and Troi, so there are aspects of it being a series that have paid off, yet I feel it's taking more time than necessary to tell it's story.  (In this age of over-saturation on TV, who has time for shows that are biding time to fill out an episode order?)

I enjoy the series for how it ventures outside the conventions of Starfleet, which is, from what I gather, what some people really don't like about the show.  Some people want more nostalgia, others want less.  Some want more focus on what's familiar, others want more that's new.  I've fielded complaints that the technology has advanced too much from when last we saw this universe, while some think it hasn't advanced enough (given Moore's Law).  A lot of that is just background, however, and the ultimate point is whether the show is telling a compelling story or not.  

I would say it is, but it's definitely not perfect.

[POST SCRIPT: contains SPOILERS]

Way to not stick the landing.  The, effectively, two-part finale was a big ol' whiff at bat, if we're using tired sports metaphors.  They forgot to get a target lock before firing phasers on this ending.  Jesus it's bad.  Real bad.  It's trying not to be that bad, but it is one of the most manipulative things I've watched in some time. 
 

And another thing...he doesn't even take
the dog with him. He just abandons it on
earth.  We need a space dog, dammit!!!

The series establishes early on that Jean-Luc has something wrong with him, terminal.  Once or twice, and once or twice only, we see signs of that terminal affliction affecting him.  Jean-Luc is too stoic and won't comment further on what's happening.  Then in episode 9 it comes back in full force, all of a sudden, meaning Picard has to fight through the symptoms of this disease ex machina in order to fight for (and against) the synthetics.  I'll get to where this all leads in a moment.

The planet of the synthetics is quite the let-down, yet it feels almost a part of the 60's Trek, complete with the hippie commune mentality.  The orchids that La Sirena first encounters defending the planet are terribly cool and inspired, but the society down below is much less so.  Just a group of weirdos standing around awed by everything.  Certainly not what we'd been led to believe we'd be encountering, but that was the point.  The stories were of terrors in the unknown, instead we find a band of pacifists whose survival is suddenly threatened.

In the span of one episode, there's a mini-rebellion and the threat of "old god synthetics" who the Romulan Prophecy warned about.  For fear of getting too nerdy, this whole angle doesn't jibe, but I won't get into it.  A Romulan Armada shows up, threatening to eradicate the planet, but Jean-Luc saves the day with ingenuity, guts, determination and powerful diction.  Then he dies.

Yep, they kill off Picard.  We get to see everyone be sad an mourn him.

Except moments later they resurrect him as a synthetic, but in the same body he's known, with the same life expectancy otherwise.  Why?  There was no reason for any of this beyond sheer audience manipulation.  And we don't see those same characters who were in such mourning discover his rebirth.  It's cursedly stupid and I hate it so much.
 

Arrow Season 8

2019-2020, CW - (10 episodes)

I've already written about some of Arrow Season 8 already with my Crisis on Infinite Earths review, but that's just a small shred of what is one of the best final seasons out there.

Often shows in their "final season" either don't know it's their last year, or they've gotten so long in the tooth they don't know how to focus anymore.  Once past a fifth season, most series start to fumble around with their characters and the situations that they put them in start to become ever more ridiculous.  They've done so much with them already, what more is there to do.

One of the best-ever final seasons was Parks and Recreation which jumped a few years into the future and gave each major character a focus episode to send them off.  It was a show that provided real closure, while still leaving us wanting more because we love the characters so much.

The writing staff over at Arrow took notice and adapted this formula to their heavyweight, universe-building superhero show.  Season 8, like Arrow's other best season (Season 5) has Ollie facing his past, and the decisions he's made, but also moving forward and growing as a character as a result.  With Season 8 though, it's not just growing, but showing how much he's grown over the years as a result of his relationships.

Crisis on Infinite Earths was teased at the end of the 2018 crossover ("Elseworlds"), and we knew from the events of that crossover that Ollie had made a deal which would lead him to make the ultimate sacrifice.  This season spent seven episodes leading into the Crisis with Ollie honoring that deal.  Each episode took Ollie to a place and/or time where he encountered someone from his past, or an alternate version of them, which allowed him to finally reconcile who he was and who he has become.  The spoiled rich boy, the traumatized assassin, the extreme vigilante, the heroic champion...but even more important a father and a husband and a son and a brother and a friend.

The moments with cast and crew, both long-time and long-ago are all handled brilliantly.  We may not get to see Oliver reconcile with everyone from over the years, but the show covers so many bases the gaps are easily excusable.  Oliver meeting his time-displaced, grown-up kids, knowing that he's not going to be there for them in the future, but getting to meet them and know them now is one of the show's greatest feats, utilizing the powers that the Crisis brings to the table. The show never forgets either how much David Ramsay as Diggle propped Oliver up.  Their brotherhood, way, way more than Olicity, was the show's best pairing.

The Crisis itself sort of fumbles Oliver's sacrifice, undermining it with a not-quite fake-out, and then a strange return as the Spectre, and then another sacrifice, and then the show follows up Oliver's death with a backdoor pilot for Green Arrow and the Canaries which takes place 20 years in the future with Mia being the new Green Arrow under the guidance of both Laurel and Dinah.  It felt like rush job, and undoes a lot of what should have been interesting fodder as a result of the effects of the Crisis (all the shows in the Arrowverse do this in different ways, by giving all the main characters full knowledge of the pre-Crisis timeline in the most comic-booky-science kind of way).

The series finale, however, is absolute gold, bringing together the majority of the Arrow cast to mourn Oliver's passing while celebrating what an actual accomplishment this show was.  It was a wildly uneven 8 years of television with some absolution highs, and more than a few lows.  But the characters always made it worth returning to, and Stephen Amell went from being a sub-par soap-opera-esque actor to an actual dynamic and exceptionally emotive performer, the absolute glue it needed to hold it all together.

If anything, Season 8 just proved how much these Arrowverse shows need more limited episode seasons.  How much better would each Arrow season have been at a concentrated 10-13 episodes?

I'm not sure if I'll ever return to a complete series watch of Arrow, but it definitely will live with me fondly.  At the same time, with Oliver's passing and the show's finale behind me, I feel like a door has closed not just on Arrow, but the Arrowverse altogether.  Black Lightning is now part of the Arrowverse, officially, but it still always feels like it's its own cordoned off thing, and it's really great.  The only other show I'm still even somewhat enthused by is Supergirl, and I'm still slowly working through last season on Netflix.  So we'll see what next year has to bring.  I'm curious to see if any shake-ups happen to Batwoman in order to make it more engaging, and if that Superman and Lois show materializes (where they're parents) I'm very curious to see it.

3 Short Paragraphs: 21 Bridges

2019, Brian Kirk (lots of TV including Game of Thrones) -- download

The only thing I really knew Chadwick (why not just Chad?) Boseman from before the Marvel movies was Gods of Egypt, so yes, entirely forgettable. But since then, well... there is nothing else; he is just T'Challa and I have trouble seeing him as anything else. Especially when he speaks out loud. Not that I expect an African accent to come out of his mouth, but to hear him speak American just sounds... off. That said, he's doing his best to build a career in spite of Marvel, with a smattering of crime movies since he first appeared in Civil War; 21 Bridges is the latest.

The character is set in stone as the son of a murdered cop who grows up to be the detective with the reputation for not just pulling his sidearm, but putting the bad guys down. He believes in justice, he believes in just retribution. They play this like it will be a key point to the story, but its just a plot device for him to be used. When eight policemen are gunned down during what appears to be a botched robbery of a drug dealer, he is called in because every cop in NYC wants these criminals dead, and who better to do it. He is the blunt weapon for their blue rage.  That is, until he notices something was off about this whole deal and he needs the gunmen alive in order to unravel the mystery.

This movie is crafted in the shadow of cop movies of old, back in the time when the NYC was infamous for its corruption and dirty cops. Its not a spoiler, as the idea is pretty much written in neon from the beginning. But that's not the point, as it is about determining what the conspiracy was as opposed to foiling it. Boseman, like Taylor Kitsch and JK Simmons, get interesting characters to play, but not much use is made of them.  We get hints of where a much more interesting movie could have gone, such as making the criminals somewhat sympathetic, or the actual title of the movie, where Bosemen gets brief permission to close all access and egree points to Manhattan. But then they just rush to the conclusion of a Straight To crime flick.

Rick and Morty Season 4 (part 1)

2019 - Adult Swim (5 episodes)

Rick and Morty came out of the gate fully formed.  Going back to the earliest episodes of the series, the characters are already willed into being and the structure of the show is already in place.  Few shows come out so self assured.  Community is the first show at the top of my mind where the pilot seemed to know exactly what it wanted to be, and largely who the characters were.  Of course the through-line here is creator Dan Harmon who seems to be able to fraction of his complex personality into distinct character units, and then build them up into unique and complex individuals that extend beyond him.  The characters start fully realized, and grow and evolve from there.

There have been 3 really terrific seasons of Rick and Morty so far, becoming a series resonating strongly and passionately among it's 19-49 year-old demographic.  It's a show that satirizes pop culture tropes frequently -- often critically, sometimes savagely, usually insightfully -- but its best moments are always those that dwell on the characters and the impact the events of the show have on them.  There's not really a dud episode in the run so far, though some clearly stand out more than others.

Season 4 is disappointing in that it only delivers five new episodes out of its remaining 70 episodes ordered by the Cartoon Network.  But, all five episodes are superb for extremely unique reasons.


"Edge of Tomorty: Rick Die Repeat" finds a space crystal embedded in Morty's head granting him ultimate foresight, with Rick both envying Morty's power while also struggling to free him from the cage such power brings.  It's reflective of Morty's usual helplessness that he traditionally finds himself in that he embraces the crystal...but he also embraces it for such shortsighted reasons, being the vision of Jessica caring for him on his death bed.  Morty's unhealthy fixation on Jessica is such a teenage boy thing, but that toxic fixation is something that the show needs to clearly going to deal with at some point but is taking its time getting there.  In the meantime, we often see how this toxic fixation leads to Morty making some really bad decisions.


"The Old Man and the Seat" has two very silly threads, one about an alien-created matchmaking app (Harmon's insight into dating app culture here is as biting as his social media app culture commentary in Community's "Meow-Meow-Beenz" episode) and the other about Rick's most epic and exclusive pooping area which is discovered by an interloper.  Both threads, though, end up highlighting feelings of loneliness and isolation in very different ways, with Rick's pooping saga being surprisingly effective.


"One Crew Over The Crewcoo's Morty" screams Dan Harmon from moment one (even though these episodes each have credited writers, Harmon's showrunner status looms large, and from the sounds of things he was even more involved with this season than he was previously).  Clearly Harmon, with Rick as his avatar, needed to express his utter distaste for the "heist movie" formulae, and this absolutely hilarious episode is a non-stop piss-taking on the genre.  So effective it is, that I'm not sure I'll ever be able to enjoy a heist movie ever again.


"Claw and Hoarder: Special Ricktims Morty" finds Morty demanding, and getting, a pet dragon.  This is a very potent and uncomfortable episode.  It's an extremely weird examination of how we deal with pets as property, how we may or may not bond with them, and how "ownership" of another living being is just weird.  Plus, poking at so many fantasy tropes.  And then it gets cerebral-sexual, which is really, really, really off-putting.  This is the show at its most provocative and twisted.  It is literally hard to watch.  I'm not sure if it's successful at what it really wants to say but it's certainly memorable.  Jerry's b-plot about the talking cat is total goofballs.

The final episode, though, is its masterstroke.  "Rattlestar Ricklactica" finds Rick and Morty accidentally killing a snake astronaut from an earth-like planet, but where snakes are the dominant species.  Rick and Morty replace the astronaut with an earth snake and the impact upon this other-earth society is monumental.  A 9-minute montage of this evolution is the brilliant result.  It's entirely wordless (only snake-speak and snake-jazz is heard along the way). This all culminates in Terminator-like time-jumping from multiple parties to try and correct the mistakes only to devolve into ultimate chaos.  Rick and Morty is always at its best when ultimate chaos ensues.  Of all the wonderfully conceptual things the show has introduced, from Mr. Meeseeks ("look at me!") to Pickle Rick, I think snake-jazz may just be my favourite.

Jay and Silent Bob Reboot

2019, d. Kevin Smith - AmazonPrime

I was a massive Kevin Smith fan back in the 90's; wildly entertained by his salty dialogue, his geeky undercurrents heretofore unseen in the mainstream, and he had the first real sense of universe-building and shared continuity long before the MCU found success with it. But as I grew up as a movie viewer I found Smith didn't grow much as a filmmaker with me.

Stylistically, he's self-admittedly never been able to dazzle with the camera's lens. The deeper one goes into his repertoire, the more one wishes he still was beholden to the limitations he had with Clerks.

The man is a talker, as witnessed by his numerous speaking tours and his multitude of podcasts. Like many a geek, he likes to talk, opine, geek out and rant... the key distinguisher from, say, myself, is he actually takes the initiative to create as well, and had the gall to be a moderate success along the way. So his films reflect his verbosity, with the dialogue having always been the key draw.

But the juvenile sensibility to his dialogue -- extensive cursing, sexual innuendo, and pseudo-boundary pushing -- wore thin by the time of Jay and Silent Bob Strike Back.  Even more egregiously, like latter-day Simpsons, that film spent way too much time passing off self-reference as comedy.

Smith's career has been a see-saw since then. Red State showed improvement as a storyteller and a willingness to move beyond his standard tropes, while Clerks II (and even the maligned Jersey Girl) showed he had more on his mind as a writer. But then the atrocity of Cop Out and wildly unnecessary goof-em-up films like The Walrus and Yoga-Hosers seemed to undermine any sense of real auteurship, any sense of a place where he's not only comfortable operating in, but competent too.

These days he seems most at home in his podcast network, whil doing side jobs on the CW superhero shows like Flash and Supergirl put him in a machine that's too big for him to fail. So coming back to Jay and Silent Bob, particularly after the ugliness of the last movie they featured in, was not necessarily the most welcome news from Smith, and the parade of guest stars and names reprising past "View Askewniverse" characters announced made it sound like another tired retread of past glories.

The opening of Jay and Silent Bob Reboot is a painful exercise in production company title card creep, followed by an opening sequence that screamed at me to immediately turn off the film and do something better with my time. Out front of the old Quick Stop location (an artificial but accurate recreation) it's immediately reliving old jokes, delivering a crudely juvenile "Cock Smoker" joke name for a chicken sandwich place (a brief moment later it revisits this joke and smugly takes time to have Craig Robinson and Joe Manganiello laugh at it), and Jay do his "Buffalo Bill" impression when he mistakes the police order to "put the plants down" to "put the pants down". This would have been pretty funny in Smith's second or third feature in the mid-90's but we're over a dozen features in and this is about as sophisticated that Smith's comedy seems to get.

The film spends the next 20 minutes revisiting old jokes, making painfully unfunny new jokes (puns and weed jokes mostly), and managed a parade of guest stars including Molly Shannon, Fred Armisen, Kate Micucci and Justin Long before it gets to the crux of what it wants to deal with: Jay learning he's the father of an 18 year old girl, and then coming to terms with it via a road trip that conveniently intersects with the otherwise rehashed plot of Jay and Silent Bob going to Hollywood to stop a reboot of Bluntman and Chronic.

The father-daughter road trip is full of inane turns (so much pot talk and guest appearances, and a couple go-nowhere complications like a menace-free encounter with the Klan) but it still has a tremendous amount of heart as Jay's paternal instincts, self-doubt and nervousness ground the film with some sense of reality and meaning.

The third act is a messy mixed-bag of this earnest - and welcome - sentimentality and a level of self-reference/fourth wall breaking that actually fatigued my eye-rolling muscles.

"Chronic-con", a Jay and Silent Bob/Bluntman and Chronic-themed convention, is where, in-movie, director Kevin Smith is filming the final scene of his Bluntman and Chronic reboot. Anything having to do with this film or its director is the most tiresome winky comedy (often directly into camera), and he just keeps going back to it.

Conversely though, the cameos and trips down memory lane make much more sense at a convention, with Jay and SB running past the cast of Clerks (in black and white, a good gag but held on too long) or encountering Ben Affleck's Holden and Joey Lauren Adams' Alyssa from Chasing Amy to see where they are today and make some genuinely welcome (and meaningful) contributions to the plot while also serving as both a necessary critique of the film and a coda to it.

The big climax (snoogans) of the film is wacky surrealism, which the film otherwise does a decent job at staving off for most of its run (though it finds its way through here or there like creeping bellflower), but the sweet heart at the core of it makes it more palatable than it otherwise should be.
This is not a great film, but you can see the gestation in Smith's friendship with Jason Mewes, and Mewes newfound parentage providing inspiration for he script (his actual daughter appears in a prominent scene). It's somewhat familiar ground from Jersey Girl but its a logical happy place for Smith to operate in and show some maturity.

Harley Quinn Smith, as Jay's daughter, Millennium Falcon, Treshelle Edmond and AP Bio's Aparna Brielle provide some distinctly feminine energy and youthful vigor to an otherwise (acknowledged) dated pairing. Of the guest spots aplenty, Chris Hemsworth comes out on top ("It's Hems-worth it"), with Method Man, Redman, Affleck, Adams and Rosario Dawson following close behind.

Not the exact waste of time I was expecting. Strangely, as a lapsed Kevin Smith fan, it felt like closure I didn't know I needed.