3ish Short Paragraphs: Awake

 2021, Mark Raso (Kodachrome) -- Netflix

Still pecking away at my largish post, for the binge-meant trilogy for RL Stine's Fear Street, in my usual way of never being able to say anything about something I really enjoyed. Unlike, say Kent, who writes a monster of a post about a book he read. I am just not sure I have that many things in my head to say out loud, on paper, screen or otherwise. Well, not unless its bitching about work. That shit never ends.

(This is the point in the recipe where you just wish the author would stop writing anecdotally and get the fuck on with the ingredients and steps)

This is another in the (or near post) Apocalyptic movies that Netflix is fond of. I cannot call them disaster, as they are not directly related to natural disasters, even if the predicament they are dealing is entirely of nature. Bird Box (blink away, if you don't want to be spoiled) was about "entities" that inspired people to commit suicide, rather like Shyamalan's maligned The Happening. A Quiet Place was about monsters that kill most of the world's population, homing in on any sound. And there is the strikingly similar The Silence. Each of these are about a world-ending event, and some of the lone survivors a short while after. Awake takes place as the world ends, with not a bang or a monster, but with a mad raving whimper, as the world suddenly cannot sleep.

Skipping the science on all of this, as I believe there are documented examples of people who do not sleep, the idea in this movie is that suddenly we cannot sleep, and without sleep we will all succumb to madness and eventually death. Jill (Gina Rodriguez, Jane the Virgin) is a veteran, a recovering addict, estranged from her mother in law, who doesn't trust her to take care of her kids. An event happens, short circuiting all electronics, including all the human brain. Cars die, technology fails, humans cannot sleep. But at the exact moment of the event, Jill and family are in a car accident and daughter Matilda almost drowns. And that causes a small, but critical side effect -- she can sleep.

The rest of the movie is about Jill trying to protect her family as the world quickly crumbles. After just 24 hours of no sleep, civilization falls apart. Anger, irrationality, violence erupts. Meanwhile Jill's boss, Dr. Murphy (Jennnifer Jason Leigh, The Hateful Eight) is setting up a lab to investigate what has happened, and find a cure. But of course, they only have so much time. But of course, Jill doesn't want Matilda exposed to experimentation at the hands of a group of scientists very quickly about to lose their minds.

This is another in a long line of movies made by directors of indie dears, but saddled with a tired, over moderated film. And it shows. Its tense, but that's it. Rodriguez is decent, and I am glad to see Shamier Anderson (Wynona Earp) getting work -- he's actually a rather lively reprieve from all the furrowed brow acting of others. We know it has to hinge around the daughter's ability to sleep, but really, in the end, how can the rare occurrence that allows her to survive actually contribute to the rebuilding of a world? It is that logical fallacy that just ruins it in the end for me. All PA Fiction tells us that a certain percentage of people is required after an apocalypse in order for the world to rebuild. And that ain't gonna happen here.

I Want My MTB: Once Upon A Time In Hollywood by Quentin Tarantino

 [NEW FEATURE: Of the two, Toast is the book reader, but as he notes "I read slower than GRR Martin can write books".  Kent, on the other hand, just "gets bored reading" so he mostly reads comics.  It's the reason this blog mostly covers Movies and TV shows.  We cover a lot of "Comic-to-movies/TV" or "Book-to-movie/TV" but "I Want My MTB" is for the rare "Media-to-Book" (MTB) ...for when we actually get around to reading something.]

2021 - Harper Perennial Paperback

As a late-teen I had a copy of Quentin Tarantino's screenplay for Pulp Fiction, which was maybe my all-time favourite film for a number of years (still my favourite Tarantino).  As much as I don't read, I read and re-read that screenplay many, many times.  The dialogue flowed so easily, reading it was effortless.  It helped that I had seen the film a half-dozen times in the theatre and listened to the soundtrack regularly (fun fact, my dad asked me to make a tape of the soundtrack for him to play in his truck, the ONLY time that's ever happened).  Tarantino once cited Elmore Leonard as one of his main inspirations for writing dialogue, and I've read a few Leonard novels in the many years since discovering Tarantino and can totally see the influence.

I've never read another Tarantino screenplay, mainly because I haven't connected with any of the other films in the same obsessive way.  I probably should though, if only to get myself into the mindset of script writing again.  But I digress...

I was listening to a recent installment of the podcast WTF with Marc Maron in which Maron was interviewing Tarantino.  The episode debuted a week before Tarantino's novelization of Once Upon A Time...In Hollywood would hit the stands.  Maron had read the novel...more to the point he kind of absorbed it, in a very short span of time, and was praising it as not so much an adaptation of the movie, but an extension of it, totally different than the movie, and totally entertaining.  They get into the book a bit in the podcast but I was already sold from Maron's preamble.  I liked but didn't love the movie...but if the book was a completely different experience than the movie, I was in.  Even if it's something I'm not into, any kind of extended/alternate versions of movies/media is always intriguing to me.

Book pre-ordered.  Book arrived.  Book consumed rapidly (well,over a few weeks, but for me, that's really, really fast).

First, the book we're talking about is an old-school paperback, set up like a 60's or 70's-styled film adaptation novel, 400 pages, and about the size of a grown man's hand... rather than describe it, here's a picture:

Most of the books I've read over the past two decades have been in hardcover, or else an oversized paperback.  I've forgotten how maneuverable a traditional paperback back book is, how easy it is to hold in one hand.  It was already tweaking nostalgia buttons in so many different way before I ever read the first line.

The book is such a Tarantino production.  It jumps around in time in a non-linear fashion from chapter to chapter, and has single-chapter connected asides which focus on tertiary characters, much as his films often do. 

The opening chapter is 24 pages of actor Rick Dalton in his agent's office, most of which is the two men talking about movies (real and Rick's in-world films) and tough-guy action and western TV and movie stars of the era and how they compare to Rick.  The second chapter follows Rick's stunt double/personal assistant Cliff Booth for 24 pages, but is mostly about his interest in films, how they differ from Rick's.  There's a lot of talk about Kurasawa films and Tohsiro Mifune.  It may sound laborious but it's a test of whether you're in or out. 

The film doesn't labor on so profusely about movies following these two chapters, but it's living in Hollywood circa 1969, following a professional actor whose star is on the wane, and is ultimately concerned with such things as people's opinions on movies, television, music and pop culture as a guideline for who their characters are.  One has to think that QT himself engages with people on this basis if this is how he engages with -- and defines -- his characters.

Once Upon A Time... In Hollywood as a film was often described as an ode to the tough guys of old that just don't exist anymore, as well as a love letter to a Hollywood long gone (both as town, and as a movie production center), its innocence shattered after what the Manson family did in 1969.  It's also, in its production, an homage to so much TV and film of the 60's, as all of QT's films are, full of pastiche and reverence for so many films and filmmaking styles (and stars).

QT worked on the story for Once Upon A Time... for the better part of a decade, apparently as a novel first, not a screenplay.  He built out both the world that actually was as well as inserting his own voice into it via Rick and Cliff, and their work.  There were spaghetti westerns, TV shows and advertisements all featuring Rick that, it's been reported, Tarantino fully scripted out, all for what winds up as seconds in the film.  There's also, apparently, hours of footage left on the floor, for as long as the film is, QT didn't want to be too over-indulgent as to lose focus on the main characters: Cliff, Rick and Sharon Tate.

But the film left a lot of questions on the table about the nature of its characters and their portrayal.  Was Cliff Booth (as played by Brad Pitt) a murderer?  I mean there were rumours in the film that he murdered his wife (along with the briefest of "cut-to" scenes that perhaps showed him doing the deed).  But it wasn't clear cut.  Certainly the controversial Grand Guignal of a finale very uncomfortably shows Cliff's aggression towards women.  

There was controversy surrounding the use of Bruce Lee in the film, in a flashback scene where Rick beats up Lee in a head-to-head fight, something that family and fans (and beyond) found disrespectful to the late martial arts master and performer.  Did QT intend to besmirch the Dragon just to elevate his character?

There was certainly some discourse about Tarantino's use of Sharon Tate (as played by Margot Robbie) but only receiving around a dozen lines of dialogue.  Did he think so little of her?

The book, by nature of the format of storytelling, is allowed to get in the heads of these characters, to tell their stories from a far more intimate perspective.  Cliff, if you remove the sexy gloss of Brad Pitt, is a disgusting, violent, racist, misogynistic, homophobic, murderous human being (and yes, he most definitely killed his wife).  That he is so adoring and loyal of his friend Rick, who acts in movies like Cliff behaves in real life, but is otherwise fairly soft, full of self-doubt, and prone to fits of vulnerability and crying is a stark counterpoint.  It leads to the question, does Tarantino adore these type of men, or just the cinematic representation of them?  Is this story a tribute to them or a damnation? Or does it fail to take a standpoint, because QT can't separate his love for the product from the complex, often repulsive nature of these men.

Case in point, QT spends an entire chapter on real-life actor James Stacy (in the story, Rick is guest starring as the heavy in the pilot for Stacy's real-world TV show, Lancer).  There is a sense of admiration that QT has for Stacy, as he notes that he would have been a better choice for certain roles, and glowingly descriptive of Stacy's handsomeness, yet, it also dives into a pettiness and there's a number of points where the author notes the presence of the child actor sitting on Stacy's lap.  A quick google entry finds that - skipping past Stacy's dismembement in a motorcycle collision with a drunk driver - Stacy was prosecuted for doing bad things with kids in the early 90s.  Stacy's a real piece of shit.  That QT both admires him as a performer yet doesn't paint him as a great guy (though never addresses his criminal behavior head on despite jumping forward in time through others careers) is part of the confounding depth of the story of Once Upon A Time in Hollywood (both book and film).  He clearly loves the era, but is also not completely ignorant of the real nature of the men involved, and yet isn't directly addressing these behaviors either.

It's the complexity of being a QT fan.  He's able to write these awful lines of dialogue (it's hard to forget his troublesome penchant for using the n-word), there's often a thread of misogyny, homophobia and/or racism to many of his central characters.  In prose, that he's able to put his head inside someone like Cliff makes it hard to separate the thinking and thought patterns of the character from those of the author.  It makes it challenging to

Sharon Tate spills out as a kind, generous, loving, upbeat, intelligent woman in the book. You actually can gather that from the film, but it's very spelled out in the novel. Tarantino clearly adores her.  He shows Tate's presence in the lives of the people she knew meant their lives were better.  She was aware of Hollywood's desire to portray her as sexy, and she would use that to advance herself.  The scene where she goes to watch her own performance in a Matt Helm movie, in the film, has its own layers as it's Margot Robbie watching the Real Sharon Tate, a sure signifier of the artificial edifice of the film, but in the book it's in Tate's mind as she wants to get a true gauge of how her comedic performance - an extension of her acting ability she has the least confidence in - goes over in an average crowd.  One of QTs mandates for the story (in both forms) was to cover over the label of victim that has defined Tate for decades, instead showing people an actress on-the-rise who was Hollywood beautiful but versaitile, and also that she was genuinely a good person, the kind the world needs to be a better place.  Her kindness and good nature is in stark opposition to men like Rick and Cliff.

The infamous murder of Tate, Jay Sebring and the other visitors to her home is retconned in Tarantino's representation of 1969 Hollywood, as the "Manson family" members get the wrong house and wind up facing Cliff Booth instead, with a much different result.  In the film, this is an aggressively violent sequence of Brad Pitt beating the living tar out of the intruders in a scene which ogles the violence with the same fascination of an 1970's grindhouse or Giallo.  In the book this sequence -- which is the climax of the film -- is reduced to a half-paragraph jump-forward mention partway through an early chapter of the novel, another key sign early on the book experience was to be drastically different from the cinematic one.

That Bruce Lee incident gets completely recontextualized, and in its telling, having the luxury of observing from both Cliff and Lee's perspectives, notes that the reason Lee appears to have lost the fight was because he didn't want to hurt Cliff (or rather that he couldn't hurt Cliff or he may have been fired from The Green Hornet), but that Cliff had absolutely zero compunction about hurting Lee.  As well QT gets into how Cliff suckered Lee, and Lee knew it, only too late.  It acquits Lee in the loss, but also serves to re-up Cliff's awful nature.  It's nuance the film isn't able to cover (and perhaps shouldn't have even been in the film at all?).

Charles Manson is more of a spectre that haunts the film, but has much more of a presence in the novel.  QT is of the generation to have a perverse fascination with the cult leader, and did the research to get in his head.  The boogeyman that only scared people after being put away is very much demystified here, as a small man with big ambitions as a musician only to fail and fumble his way into leading lost and wayward teens.  He would trick them out in his quest to advance his career,and keeping them pliable via a steady diet of drugs and philosophical platitudes.  Under the guise of free love and anti-establishment counter-culture, he was a true predator who preyed on the people whom he then taught how to prey upon others.  There are sequences here that further integrate Manson into the story QT is telling, sequences that flesh out the events of the film even more.  The intonation of the story seems to be that for all the disgusting things Cliff is, at least he's not Charlie Manson.

As well, QT gets into the actual story of the pilot of that Lancer television series, obviously a fictional pilot versus the one that got made, but it equates for two full chapters, told as a narrative rather than relayed as a meta narrative (in the final chapter of the novel, QT writes Rick as Rick as well as his Lancer character, exemplifying how actors dissappear into their roles).  It's actually one of the most engaging aspects of the books, these sudden divergences into a very pulpy 60's western.  I won't be surprised if there's a completed 90-minute Lancer screenplay that QT has written, ready to take this forgotten series and rebirth it.  The only thing he's missing is the stars of the 60's.  These Lancer chapters may be the least Tarantino-esque things Tarantino has ever written since he has to adhere to 60's network TV storytelling norms.

The oddest aspect of the book is QT's decision to insert himself into it, twice within the last 50 pages.  In the same chapter, he makes reference to a character's future acting career, and inserts that character into three fictional movies from real directors, including "Quentin Tarantino's 1999 remake of the John Sayles script for the gangster epic The Lady In Red" (another Google search reveals Sayles wrote the screenplay for the 1979 Lewis Teague movie The Lady In Red).  Later that same chapter, Cliff, Rick and Lancer star Jim Stacy go out for drinks and meet Quentin's real-life stepfather who then gets Rick to sign an autograph for his son "Quint...Quentin".  Unpacking this crossover of reality into fiction (which ostensibly is the whole Once Upon A Time In Hollywood story) seems cute, but is this just a sign of Quentin's desire to be a part of the late-60's Hollywood story?  Is the intonation that Hollywood would have been different had the Manson Family murders been prevented destroyed by noting that The Lady In Red is still a screenplay, and that various other films like Melvin and Howard, Prizzi's Honor and Boys Don't Cry all still exist?  This kind of cheeky Stephen King-ish metatext only confuses things.  Then again, QT often would insert himself into his own films as a character, maybe to the detriment of those films, so is this less egregious?

I found Once Upon A Time In Hollywood to be an effortless read, challenged only by the ugly thoughts of 1960's-era men and the perpetual need to see whether what QT is writing about is real or made up (so many Google searches performed in the reading of this book).  QT's dialogue is as deft as ever, but his prose is equally fluid.  There's always a sense that the writer is fully engaged at all times with what is being written.  Nothing feels labored over here, surprisingly, given the novel's gestation period.  I don't know that it satisfies as a stand-alone novel (having seen the film already, it's too hard to judge) but as a companion to the film, it fleshes it out even further, deepens and adds context to sequences that played differently without it.  It's perhaps best described as a novel of deleted and extended scenes. 

The more I think about it, however, the more I wonder what QT is actually trying to say about Hollywood 1969, beyond the fact that he wishes he were a part of it.  I don't think he's lamenting its loss, or trying to damn it... I even hesitate to say he's trying to come to some sort of understanding about his fascination with - or relationship to - the era.  The fact that he has Roman Polansky and Jim Stacy as two lauded characters in his book, but with their future criminal lives as predators of children left out, (not to mention a strip tease from an underage girl in the car with Cliff) makes for complicated consideration of just what is QT trying to say.

I get the sense that there's more Once Upon A Time In Hollywood material for QT to flesh out, more that he could do with it, that there's still other avenues for facets of the story or the setting to appear.  Time will tell.

 

3+1 Short Paragraphs: Gunpowder Milkshake

 2021, Navot Papushado (Rabies) -- Netflix

There is always those posts about movies that I truly enjoyed, that I want to jump into writing, and once I get there, I find I have nothing to say that gives it credit where due. Over there, just above, or long after, there is a post about the Fear Street trilogy of teen horror movies that is stalled in drafts. So, instead I jump to my To-Be's and find something I was disappointed in. It just seems easier to write when I dislike something or almost dislike-something.

Gunpowder Milkshake is a movie that in promo, I thought I will enjoy. It's a Women With Guns tag flick, it's in the head-canon-universe that spawns John Wick, it's violent and colourful and creative. Too bad it was just so bloody boring. It's not hard to see what Papushado was going for, and its all up there on the screen, it just seems too disjointed, constantly tonally shifting, too Jackson Pollock in approach, without the proven skill. Too bad.

I like Karen Gillen, but I don't think she's a good actor. She shouts at the screen, but that's fine, she can find her niche and play it through. Gun toting assassins is not that niche. She is the daughter of an assassin, one who abandoned her in a picturesque American 50s style diner. Instead of running away from her mom's legacy, out of resentment and anger, she became one, working for the exact people who drove her mother away. And then, like her mother did, she kills the wrong guy, and is put on the hit list and the bad guys send EVERYONE to kill her. She finds support and solace with the Library, this world's sort of The Continental, but a library that hides guns in books because... well, someone thinks its cool, I guess?

In this movie you can see hints of John Wick, comic booky action from Sin City, sexy women killing people in slo-mo ala Sucker Punch. The acting is on-point kitschy, the styles and colours all crisp, the world otherworldly, just like I like it, but the pacing was off and I found myself yawning metaphorically. And yet, not truly hating it. Any movie with Lena Headey, Michelle Yeoh, Carla Gugino, and Angela Basset all playing bad-asses cannot be that bad. But it should have been so much more, instead of just being a decent effort.

Horror, Not Horror: you ari such an egg

 "Horror, Not Horror" movies are those that toe the line of being horror movies but don't quite comfortably fit the mold.  I'm not a big horror fan (Toast is the horror buff here), but I do quite like these line-skirting type movies, as we'll see.

The VVitch - 2016, d. Robert Eggers
Midsommer - 2019, d. Ari Aster
The Lighthouse - 2019, d. Robert Eggers
The New Mutants - 2020, d. Josh Boone

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I became aware of Anya Taylor-Joy because of the VVitch, her breakout role, although I don't rightly think I'd seen her in anything until 5 years later with The Queen's Gambit.  If The VVitch - a small, vvell-received horror film -  broke her out, the Queen's Gambit - an ambitious Netflix mini-series about a young chess prodigy with a tumultuous personal life - thrust her into superstardom.  A Saturday Night Live hosting gig was backed-up vvith the announcement of her taking the lead in Furiosa in George Miller's Mad Max: Fury Road prequel, seeing her take over the role Charlize Theron made impeccably cool.  And not long after a trailer dropped for Edgar VVright's much anticipated latest, Last Night In Soho, in vvhich she's the lead.  And then all her old films - Emma., Thoroughbreds, Split and even The New Mutants - titles vvhich I was familiar with, but hadn't seen, became that much more intriguing.  Such is the power of stardom.

But if I was going to do a dive, I figured I should dive back to the beginning, since The VVitch has long been on my "to vvatch" list. (Okay, I'll stop it with the "VV")

The film opens in the 1600's with the deep resonant voice of actor Ralph Ineson, who plays William, the patriarch of a puritan family agreeing wholeheartedly to being cast out of their New England settlement.  He deems the settlement to have lost their way, to not being pure enough.  They settle way off any beaten path, but just outside of the woods, near a creek.

Within a year the family have built a new home, with livestock (chickens, goats, and a horse), and a new baby, William and Katherine's fifth child.  Thomasin (Taylor-Joy) is the eldest of the siblings, with the most responsibilities.  One day, she's playing with the new infant close to the forest, playing peek-a-boo, and in a moment with her eyes cover the child disappears mysteriously.  She has no explanation for her family and her mother is inconsolably grief stricken.

There's a quick-cut montage, about a minute long, of a witch processing (for lack of a better term) the baby for her own devices, gruesome in concept but restrained in imagery.

The family fractures, and William cannot seem to mend the wounds.  He takes their pre-teen son, Caleb, out to search the woods for wolves, where Katherine doesn't want him to be.  Meanwhile the precocious twins tease Thomasin, calling her a witch and saying she's responsible for the baby's disappearance.  The twins also sing wicked songs of Black Peter, the black, horned goat that they chase around, and William has to constantly wrangle. 

After Caleb and the dog disappear in the woods, Katherine starts to suspect Thomasin of wickedness, and William, despite his profound love for his daughter, does little to douse her suspicions though he has certain answers that would vindicate her.  The twins' incessant taunting (and Thomasin's roleplay as a witch) doesn't help matters either.

Things go downhill even further, to a miserable yet inevitable denouement.

Robert Eggers debut is a very assured feature.  It sports the greyest of grey colour palettes, using natural light and candlelight, just a hair's breadth away from being black and white, but it's striking in its composition.  The Ontario-as-New England greyness feels cold, bleak and harsh (have you ever been camping in the rain in Ontario, it's basically the same mood as this film), and it's accentuated by a haunting, tense score from Mark Korvin. Eggers purportedly researched the time period intensely and pulled dialogue straight from records of the era.  The odd nature of the dialect, plus extensive ambient noise required me to put the subtitles on the get the most out of what was being said.  But the attention to detail is superb, and makes the film stand out dramatically against most modern interpretations of the 17th century.

I respect the hell out of Eggers craft, and the performances are all exceptional, however, a couple of choices in Eggers screenplay utterly ruined the experience as a whole.

That early scene showing the witch immediately takes away any possible suspicion that Thomasin might be a witch herself, as she is accused so often by the twins, and even her mother.  The inbred tension of suspecting her innocence but not truly knowing would have added a whole other level to the film that isn't otherwise there in its present form.

Late-in-the film scenes utterly destroy the film's carefully crafted, era-specific mystique, by personifying Black Peter and then showing us a coven of flying witches, two effects that I laughed at because of their absurdity in the face of everything else we've been presented.

Totally maybe four or five minutes of screentime, these scenes just wreck the natural aesthetic the film had going for it, and lead to a goofy, unsatisfying resolution.  Given the laborious care put into the production, I still can't believe Eggers would go so broad.

The VVitch was a moderate success, and it sent people looking for a new term for this kind of film that balances a persistent unease with moments of discomfort but never really any jump scares or extensive gruesomeness.  The term they landed on is "elevated horror", which might as well just mean "horror for film snobs" or, as I call it, "horror, not horror"

But is it horror? I would say it's a moody, suspenseful period drama, but not horror.

[Toastypost on The VVitch - we disagree]

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I have to say I just CANNOT believe I'm getting to Midsommar before Toasty.  This is totally his kind of movie, starring Florence Pugh, his type of cinematic crush.  I just CANNOT believe that he's not watched this yet.

This aforementioned term of "elevated horror" certainly suits this movie, perhaps even better than it suits The VVitch.  Ignoring the reputation Ari Aster had earned as a result of the read-the-summary-on-wikipedia-and-I-shall-never-actually-watch-the-film mindfuck called Heredetary, this film opens with creeping unease, as psych major Dani (Pugh) frets over the well being of her bi-polar sister who hasn't responded to her in a couple days.  A troubling message leaves her panicked.  She calls her parents who aren't answering, and so she calls her boyfriend, Christian (Jack Reynor), who talks her down from her panic, but with a heavy sigh.  After the call we see Christian is hanging with his friends who seem to be even more frustrated with Christian's relationship than he is.  Back to Dani, she's talking with a friend, now paranoid that she's damaging her relationship with Christian.  And then we learn before Dani that her sister has committed suicide and killed her parents in the process, and it's devastating.  And then Dani finds out and it's heart wrenching (Pugh is a raw nerve of emotion).

Christian, who was thinking of dumping Dani now feels saddled with her and her grief.  In the process he casually invites her to the "boys trip" to their friend Pelle's Swedish commune for the summer, much to some of the boys disdain.

It's a rough trip for Dani, who can't help but sob uncontrollably at times, and even broaching the subject of her family's death (as Pelle tries to a couple of times, himself having lost his parents at a young age) sends her into a stress spiral.  Pelle's brother, who has also brought friends from his studies in London, offers the visitors psychedelic mushrooms which prove to be too much for pretty much all of them.

Their introduction to the commune is pleasant and welcoming, if a lot of what they see seems completely alien to them.  There's a once-every-90-years ritual upcoming and the preparations are both lovely and odd.  A communal sleeping area is intricately adorned with tiles of vivid imagery, telling some perhaps innocent, perhaps bothersome stories.  Everyone is friendly to a point, unless insult is delivered upon them such as when Christian's friend Mark (Will Poulter) relieves himself on a sacred tree stump, or Josh (William Jackson Harper) asks too many questions about the nature of their beliefs.  The impetus for the trip is largely Josh's interest in studying Pelle's commune for his thesis, but Christian heretofore unfocussed in his masters probgram, drives a wedge by also deciding it will be his thesis as well.

Dani, meanwhile, is just trying to cope.  There's the unease of being a stranger in a strange place where strange practices make for stranger days.  Sweden is in the midst of its solstice, the midnight sun blurring the Americans' sense of time, and creating a sense of disorientation.  And then they experience one of the community's rituals that sends them recoiling in horror.  As the British visitors completely freak out, one of the commune's leaders tries to explain their traditions and apologies for not forewarning them...it all seems very polite amidst the brightly lit terror.

Things just seem more upsetting from there, but Dani, getting her first real sense of solace over her parents' deaths can't seem to find the will to leave.  Pelle, sweetly and gently, implores her to stay, to find the comfort in community that he found after his parents passed.

From moment one of this film, there's a creeping unease, and it never leaves.  Unlike most horror movies, which live in the shadows and the dark, making effective use of the things you can't see, the natural intimidation of the sun's respite, here it's near-perpetual daylight, which is its own type of nightmare of never ending days.  Sleep, already difficult for Dani, is only that much harder as a result of her surroundings.

The iconography and structures and tenets of the commune are all a little perplexing, hinting at something sinister under the surface that is otherwise overwhelmingly pleasant.  While the film never goes into jump scares, there's something profoundly upsetting when you just know that the faces smiling at you, welcoming you, embracing you, also have something planned for you that they're not telling you about.

This film doesn't play with any of the conventional horror tropes, not even the usual remote cultish ones, the kind that go as far back as the Wicker Man to most recently HBO's The Third Day.  Aster is keen on unveiling slowly the practices and rituals of the commune, almost more in cultural interest rather that as a point of terror, as if he's a documentarian, finding the goings on fascinating (yet keeping his sypathies with Dani).  

So, is it horror?
I didn't find it scary, but I did find it very upsetting.  It's like Requiem For A Dream or Irreversible, that deals with intense human emotions, coupled with some intense visual scenes that leave an indelible mark on your psyche, whether that's a scar or some form of perspective I can't say.  I liked it, but I also had to ask why I did that to myself.

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Returning to Robert Eggers, his 2019 follow-up to The VVitch is a wild two-hander starring Willem Dafoe and Robert Pattinson called The Lighthouse.

It's a disarming movie from the outset, shot in black-and-white in a nearly square 1.19:1 aspect ratio, leaving thick black bars on either side of your widescreen TV.  This at times gives the visuals an additional depth as the black of the borders sinks into the shadows of the shot on screen.

Like The VVitch, Eggers researched for accuracy in both aesthetic and dialogue (once again I required the use of the subtitles to ensure clarity) but unlike his inaugural film, here Eggers lets the film operate on a much broader keel from the start.  I mean, Dafoe is playing with the most cliched sea captain brogue, which, accompanying his busy, bushy beard and his leathery made-up face, makes him an outrageous presence on screen.  Pattinson, with his thick handlebar mustache and his glowering, quiet reserve, and his New England accents is an equally outrageous counterpoint.

The thrust of The Lighthouse finds Pattinson as "Ephraim Winslow", a new hire for on a month-long contract as the "wickie" to Dafoe's lighthouse keeper, Thomas Wake.  Wake is exceptionally tough on the newbie, and the resentment builds almost instantaneously.  Double that with the fact that Wake refuses to give Winslow a rotation as light keeper, which seems to be the only reward for an otherwise miserable existence.

Winslow suspects Wake is hiding something, and begins to have nightmares and hallucinations about mermaids, both the beauteous and demonic kind.  The fatigue, work stress and isolation seem to be getting to him, and his boss seems to only be cordial to him when inebriated.  

Wake's taunts and abuse aren't just motivating factors, but apparently a means of burning through his wickies, perhaps resulting in them not getting paid, but definitely pushing them so they don't come back. He's got some sort of romance going on up in the light tower, and whether it's just madness or something more metaphysical... well, who can really tell.  The point being Wake doesn't seem to want others around, at least not for long.  And he seems to get off on driving them to madness... he's a literal and figurative gaslighter.

As Winslow's term comes due, a storm rolls in and his transport away can't relieve him, so he's stuck for another month with rations dwindling, and the only potable liquid being alcohol.  Winslow starts letting his guard down, and in the process both the men feel ever-threatened by an actual friendship blossoming, which leads them to blows.  In their sober states, their acrimony exacerbates.

Paired with The VVitch, The Lighthouse provides a deeper sense of what Egger's calling card might be as an auteur director: deeply researched, era-specific stories featuring a small ensemble, with precise visual craftsmanship, and an aural buffet (the continual drone of the foghorn, so ominous) creating an experience unlike much else.  Unlike The VVitch, with The Lighthouse Eggers seemed to have learned not to be so literal with his metaphysical elements, the sexy/creepy mermaids, though sometimes made plain visually, we're never truly convinced of their existence.  Has Winslow gone mad? Has Wake? Or both? Or neither?  Hard to say.  It's the nuance that Eggers first film was missing.

Be it horror, though?
No, it's not horror.  It's full of tension but it's also delightfully bizarre, with an ashy sense of humour.  Dare I say it, it's an odd, fun film.

[Toastypost on The Lighthouse - we totally agree] 

---

And finally we return to the work of Anya Taylor-Joy, this time her foray into a superhero franchise, though as part of an ensemble and not the lead, though she clearly stands out.  Sporting a long blond wig that frames her angular face and wide-set, bulbous eyes, she's never not striking to look at, but she also looks like she crawled off the comics page as Ilyana Rasputin, aka Magik. 

But we start with Dani Moonstar (Blu Hunt) as she and her father run in terror from a mystical force destroying their community.  She is left to hide while her father returns to help.  She is the only survivor.  She awakens in a medical facility with serious phsychiatric ward vibes that we're led to believe is there to help young mutants learn to control their burgeoning powers.  There's an insinuation that this is where kids go before they head to Xavier's School for Gifted Youngsters/the X-Men, but we know almost instantly this is false by the fact there's a force field around the facility, and way too many locked doors.  Unfortunately the film toys with this farm team idea a little too much as if there was any plausibility (the ultimate reveal of what it is will only make sense if you're an X-Men fan...or look it up online, another failing of the film's story).

Dani meets Rahne (Game of Thrones' Maisie Williams), a similarly aged Scottish mutant with lycanthropic (werewolf) powers and Catholic guilt.  The two hit it off sweetly, and a romance blossoms. 

There's also Roberto (Henry Zaga), the child of wealthy Brazilians who can radiate intense heat like a tiny sun, while Sam (Stranger Things' Charlie Heaton) is a poor Kentucky kid who has a nearly indescribable power which allows him to propel himself with exceptional force.  Ilyana, for her part, can open up a portal to a pocket dimension, and manifest a magical sword.

Each of these kids (which, we're talking all late-teens here) has had a traumatic experience as a result of their burgeoning powers, although in the case of both Ilyana and Rahne, their powers were instrumental in allowing them to escape their abusers.  But these traumas are likely a part of why they don't have full control over their abilities yet.   

Though they're under the care of Dr. Reyes (Alice Braga) we don't really see a lot of care or treatment, more disciplining than anything (reinforcing the prison vibe).  As Dani acclimates to her new surroundings, exploring her relationship with Rahne, and suffering the taunts of Ilyana, strange things start happening around the compound, with nightmares of each of the kids manifesting in real life.

The end result is the kids having to negotiate these nightmares as well as learn the truth about their surroundings, and the truth about each other.  

Famously, this film was shelved for the better part of two years.  There was talk of reworking the film with reshoots, but that idea seemed to have been lost amidst the Disney/Fox acquisition.  There was a lot of early interference from the studio as it toyed with it's own inner ideas of building a superhero universe and tying this film to X-Men Apocalypse or Deadpool or the never-made Gambit film.  Director Boone intended for The New Mutants to be a YA film using Marvel IP, but then the studio saw It making money and wanted it to lean more into the outright horror (promoting the film and cutting the first trailer to represent such).  The reality is that a truly terrifying movie made from comic book superheroes is likely never going to be in the offing (there's more promise that Doctor Strange and the Multiverse of Madness from Sam Raimi will actually go for it, but I don't believe it), and, it's not exactly what Boone was going for.  As such you can inherently tell this film has been cut down.  It's a trim 95 minutes, exceptionally slight for a modern superhero film.  

It is, in fact, a nightmare of a movie... an editing nightmare. There's no real flow, scenes change abruptly, and the characters seem to bond more offscreen than on.  Understanding the passage of time is impossible.  The horror elements are still there, but they're scaled way, way back, cut down to defang them for a PG-13 crowd more on the "13" side of things.  The film makes a choice to set up a big bad that doesn't appear in the film, and is never explained, in the form of Essex Corporation.  I mean, a corporation taking an interest in imprisoning and weaponizing young mutants is a legit scary thought on its own, but it's never explored.  Instead of the horror film we were promised, as Toasty postyed, "we ended up with a movie that was, at best, the pilot episode of a middling CW series".

While I gripe, I kind of disagree with Toast.  I think that instead of a horror movie, what we wound up with was the pilot episode of a good CW series. Frankly, I kind of loved it.

Expectations were exceptionally low, and lowered expectations can yield surprises.  I was expecting to put on this movie only to turn it off in 20 minutes for being, like Neil Marshall Hellboy-level bad, or Dark Pheonix-level boring.  But I found it neither.  

Yes, it was a muddily told story, but the story still comes through.  I was intrigued and delighted by each of these characters, each performed very very well by the young talent in the roles.  Heaton's full of appropriate nervous energy which compliments his explosive powers.  Zaga is utterly cocksure until he's not, and he handles both facets very well.  Williams is absolutely delightful as super-sweet Rahne, and I got tingles when she was in her "Wolfsbane" form and her vicious side came out...she nailed it (she seemed to be mostly over her catholic guilt, but not Catholicism altogether which I wish was explored more).  Taylor-Joy is an utter ice queen, but when you get to the root of her trauma her lashing out is completely understood.  She's fierce and her powers are so well handled.  If anything it's Hunt's Dani Moonstar, while our gateway character into the world, that's least defined, but unlike the others who have been in the institution a while, Dani is new and still finding herself and finding out about herself which does make sense.

Frankly, I wish this WERE a pilot for a CW series (if anything it more felt like part of FX's Legion, Noah Hawley's interpretation/corner of the X-Men franchise...hell I thought the Demon Bear was a result of The Shadow King possessing Dani)  I loved this cast together and I genuinely loved the characters so I want more (sadly Boone's planned trilogy is never happening).  While the storytelling was a mess as a result of so many studio tweaks and edits, I still got a story out of it I quite enjoyed.  I let go of any anticipation of a horror movie, and settled into the slow revealing YA character drama.  Every use of superpowers gave me butterflies, because I was expecting it to be so toned down in the superhero department, and they use the powers quite often and quite effectively.

There's a 90's superhero movie vibe to this, you know the type where they take away the tights and capes and put the heroes in plainclothes, and then scale things way, way down?  And yet it worked for me, it really did.   It's not the disaster Fant4stic was, nor as utterly unruly as X-Men: Apocalypse.  I mean, if we're putting this on the scale with other Fox superhero movies this is close to the top for me (that's really not saying much, but it's still a surprise).

Hey, horror?
It has aspects that indicate that's what the director was maybe going for at one time, but in this incarnation it ultimately doesn't play at all like a horror movie.  It's a YA superhero drama.

WFH: True Grit

 1969, Henry Hathaway (Prince Valiant) -- Amazon

This was to be the first of many Western movies to be watched in the spurts & moments that WFH allows me. I intended to watch some Spaghetti Westerns, but the Amazon and Netflix selection is scattered at best, and my completist brain just doesn't want to start somewhere in the middle. To support that desire, a brief amount of research said the Django and Sartana movies sound like a blast, especially considering they were coopted almost immediately after they became popular, basically because a character's name could not be copyrighted in Italy. Also, Italian authorities just didn't care. With Django for example, there are only two "official" movies, and more than a dozen unofficial. Imagine that being done today, where Neo from The Matrix stars in a dozen (probably terrible) movies after the Wachowskis finish their run.

Anywayz, I had always liked the Coen Bros remake (I did not remember that) and I actually have an excuse for not reviewing it on the blog, considering it came out in 2010. But its still weird that I recall writing about it, owing it to a moment of me blathering on to Kent about the movie, the type of blathering that inspired this blog. I specifically recall really enjoying the period dialogue that comes out of Mattie Ross's mouth, a stern, educated and very intense tone of speech that is her weapon against the rough & tumbles of the Old West. I was happy to find that this was inherent to the original, and not just a Coen Bros typical quirk.

Mattie's father is shot down by a ranch hand whom he has befriended, despite everyone's misgivings. The drunken, violent man runs off with her father's money into the "Indian territory" where few of the law can follow. So Mattie is forced to enlist a US Marshal, and she wants one with "true grit", basically that legendary level of dedication and violence she believes is required to catch the dastardly fellow. The marshal she goes for is Rooster Cogburn, played expertly by an overweight, past his prime John Wayne. Rooster is known for shooting first, bringing home most of his quarry dead. But nobody doubts his ability. Interrupting her choice is LaBoeuf, a Texas Ranger played by Glen Campbell, yes the country & western singer -- he is a "dashing" rogue, making immediate advances on Mattie, despite her young age, but just as quickly comes to dislike her for rebuffing him and choosing Rooster. That said, both men end up on the hunt.

Westerns, for me, were always like a D&D Adventure set in the wilderness, something I always looked forward to, as Player and as DM. The land they travel is wide, and mostly empty of settlements, with only the occasional safe spot. And it is utterly glorious to behold. Rooster, an accomplished tracker who knows the land, and the man he is hunting, quickly picks up the trail, chasing the man & the scoundrels he rides with (including a young Robert Duvall) to a dugout (basically a logs & thatch hut dug into the side of a mud cave) where he wounds some, kills others. The outlaws escape, but Rooster gives chase. They eventually catch up, but mainly due to some folly of Mattie's.

Rooster is a drunk, falling down and foolish. LaBoeuf, who is played much straighter than Matt Damon's clownish ranger in the remake, is both loyal and consternating. He despises Mattie, probably mostly because she doesn't fall prey to his charms. He despises Rooster even more because the man is capable without even trying. He is on the hunt for his own reasons, but in the end, as Rooster puts, he saves Rooster's skin twice, once after he was already dead. In that LaBoeuf redeems himself, but at the cost of his own life, and Rooster shows his true grit, racing to save Mattie from a snake bite's doom.

I need to add this movie to my shelf, which only contains a few westerns. I might do both versions. There is a charm, in the dialogue and in the unabashed love for the wild land it is shot in, that I cannot resist. Oh, like most westerns of the late 60s/70s it is overly melodramatic in the score, and I hate the theme music, but the style is crisp & gritty, and showing true grit.

What I Have Been Watching: The Chosen Few (Pt2)

What I Have Been Watching is the admitted state of me spending too much time in front of the TV, especially during 2020 the Extended Version. But this time, I don't even barely attempt to tell you EVERYTHING I have been watching or we would be here all day. 

Pt1 is here.

The Falcon and the Winter Snowman Soldier, 2021 -- Disney+

Every week, as the episode came up, I asked, "So, watch The Falcon and the Blankety-Blank now?" It was rarely clever, but I amused myself and since I am not a Dad entitled to Dad Jokes, this is what I gave myself. The Falcon and the Winter is Coming was my fav, though I do recall some lame attempt at connecting him to Frozen. But I let it go.

This was the second of the new Disney+ MCU shows, that don't try to separate themselves from the MCU, as the Netflix shows did their very best to. It feels very much MCU movie-lite. The best thing about Captain America: Winter Soldier was that it was as much a spy thriller action movie, as it was a superhero movie that actually drew upon stories in the Marvel milieu. This series picks up post-Snappening (that brief period in the MCU when all Snapple beverages disappeared) in a world still recovering from those five years. For some, life begrudgingly returned to normal. For others, those that had to live through them, there would be no new normal. Borders went back up, people were displaced, families broken up and refugees abound.

Nice bit of world building, but I wish it had explored that setup more thoroughly. There were lots of ideas in this show that were just touched upon, but were never satisfyingly explored. The whole Flag Smashers, juiced up revolutionaries, trying to force world leaders to return to the open border policy through acts of terrorism, just seemed... hinted at, but never really understood. As well, the latent racism that existed against Sam, despite being a bonafide world saver. As well, the rise of a new (white) Captain America without anyone seeing he is a pretty big dick. And the reemergence of Sharon Carter, via a glimpse of Madripoor (which I know from Wolverine fame) and the mysterious Power Broker. And let us not forget Dancing Zemo. And finally, PTSD Bucky trying to make ammends.So many of these ideas could have been core to a series unto themselves, but they were mashup-ed into this one.

Don't get me wrong. I had a blast. It was exciting and adventurous, and was great to see the characters in action again. But I was hoping for something just a ... little more.

Shadow & Bone, 2021 -- Netflix

J (Marmy, the Peanut Gallery) has these books on the shelf. Before we began watching, I asked her for a breakdown, and whether I would like them. I don't recall (my fav phrase of late) her exact response, and likely it was that she is not sure. I have a challenging relationship with fantasy. I read slower than GRR Martin can write books, and the last series I truly enjoyed thoroughly was his, as well as The Malazan books by Stephen Erickson. I am more fond of traditional, generic fantasy being that in a swords & sorcery world with monsters and gritty male heroes; yup, Mary Sue the fuck out of me. I am also less fond of the latent Fantasy Victorian or Edwardian genres, i.e. fantasy that also seems more set in Victorian Europe than medieval Europe. BUT, I am not entirely adverse to it, so I gave this one a shot. Don't get me wrong, I am not against these sub-genres, but they are not my cup of tea with the Queen.

Ravka is a European-styled country at war with nations to the north and nations to the south, further hampered by being divided down its centre by a massive black .... void, called the Shadow Fold. Think a swirling mass of clouds filled with monsters that are certain to kill anyone who passes within. Alina Starkhov is a map maker assigned to the army, with a small squad of friends, as well as her star-crossed crush from childhood, Mal the tracker. She is also Grisha, this world's code for Magic-User. Grisha were once outlawed and hated, until they were gathered into the armies, to make use of the magic powers, towards the needs of Ravka. But Alina is hiding her ability, even from herself. It comes to light, pun entirely intended, when she is forced to defend herself while inside the Shadow Fold, ina  brilliant burst of white light that no one can ignore. Suddenly she is the Chosen One, the girl from prophecy who will destroy the Fold and unite Ravka.

*Spoilery Spoilers Easily Guessed*

Buuuuuut, the youngish, handsome General who is supposed to be mentoring her is, in fact, the evil Grisha who created the Fold ages ago (i.e. he's not young at all), and wants to manipulate her to further his own ends.

This is classic Young Adult Fantasy, where Young Girl Heroine has an unspoken crush on her Best Friend, and it takes FOREVER to reveal this to each other. There are other youngish characters all vying for connection to the main character, being drawn into her drama, but with tons of drama of their own. There is magic, and horniness, and family intrigue and violence.... and yet, almost no depictions of this war that is the centre of the entire series. There are some great visuals, and some great characters, but for the most part I was bored, and not expecting to being un-bored. It was as if all the actual juicy bits, including the romance between Love Interest Sex and Love Interest Emotion (the two boys) were only being reference in the most threadbare manner. The only story I took any real interest in, was a side-plot about a Grisha being taken captive by a "witch hunter", a warrior of the North where they despise Grisha. The witch and the witch hunter fall in love, because of course they do. 

If not for being beautifully shot, with some fantastic settings and visuals, as well as some compelling performances and world building, I would have wandered out of the room while Marmy continued to watch. In the end, I considered it Alright, as much Fantasy on TV is these days.

A Black Lady Sketch Show season 2

 2021, created by Robin Thede - HBO

I can't believe it was over 2 years ago that I reviewed A Black Lady Sketch Show's first season.  It does feel like it's been a while since I saw it (to the point that I was wondering if the show hadn't been renewed for a second season), but I was surprised when a second season debuted.

There were some cast shake-ups between seasons, with Quinta Brunson having a scheduling conflict, but new additions Laci Mosley and Skye Townsend very quickly incorporating into the collective with Robin Thede, Ashley Nicole Black and Gabrielle Dennis.

The post-apocalyptic framework is still there, acting as sort of the ongoing narrative of the show.  It's an unusual device for sketch comedy to have an ongoing framework, but it's one of the most delightful aspects on the show.  In the framework sketches, the actors all play heightened characters modeled after themselves and it allows some amusing insights into their personalities and dynamics, even if it's not real.  It gives the show something to hang on.

I loved that the opening of the show wasn't the same every week (set to KaMillon's "Fine Azz").  It looked the same but there seemed to be new takes that made their way in, each week more and more noticeable the differences.  It's not saying anything specific, it's just fun.

Likewise, each episode ends with a blooper reel, which often can be corny but when you're having as much fun as they are, it's infectious.  Now, as a middle-aged white male, I'm naturally not the target demo for the show, so I'm sure there's a lot that goes over my head, but, like the first season, the sketches themselves are always enjoyable with a couple of absolute classics.  Here the final sketch of the season is the season's best.

The "Brown Family Reunion" finds some tense conversations deflated by the introduction to Bell Biv Devoe's "Poison".  I can't describe it, but there's few things I've laughed so hard at.  I don't know if I'll ever think of "Poison" any other way.

Halston

 2021, created by Sharr White - netflix

I came across Ewan McGregor and Pedro Pascal's edition of Variety's Actors on Actors youtube series, and beyond the goofy, boyish Star Wars talk Pascal was interested in discussing McGregor's turn as famous designer Halston in the Netflix mini-series from earlier this year, a mini-series which seemed to have been buried, or maybe it just wasn't advertised in my usual nerdy circles of the interwebs.

Although there was a time I paid some attention to fashion as an industry (the mid-'90's), Halson was not a name I was familiar with.  My wife assured me he used to be a big deal.  The series covers what a big deal he was, both in reality and in his own head, how he landed in fashion (creating hats to cheer up his abused mother as a child turned into creating a hat for Jackie Kennedy after which he exploded as a name) and became a somewhat omnipresent personality in the early 80's.

The series trades off Halston's eccentric personality (which would lead him to having some fiercely loyal friendships, and also into some very unhealthy relationships).  His substance abuse issues are a problem in his life, though the show displays him as a high-functioning abuser.  It's more his egocentricity leads to a lot of drama in this undoubtedly fictionalized presentation of his life, and costs him far more than the drugs did (which cost him a lot).

It was an intriguing watch, but I had a lot of conflicted feelings about it.  Foremost, I have to ask, does McGregor get a "free pass" when playing non-hetero characters?  He seems to do it often, to the point where I had to check what his public status was (just had a child with Mary Elizabeth Winstead, whom he co-starred in Fargo Season 3 and Birds of Prey with, and was previously married with children).  His portray of Halston was a deep character piece, but at times it seemed to fall into mostly affectation.  Now, not knowing Halston, maybe he was a personality built around a mask of affectation, hard for me to say without digging deeper.  

The series also jumps through three decades in his life across five 50-minute episodes so it covers a lot of ground, very quickly, too quickly to transition well between eras.  As well the show's trying to say something about identity, as well as the nature of art versus commerce, but I don't think it ever gets there.  These larger themes never settle on a particular point of view, but it's certainly being examined, if not in enough detail.  

It's not stellar, but it is a complicated series with a lot of intriguing elements (and Krysta Rodriguez is outstanding as Liza Minelli, just mind-blowingly good).

Lupin part 2

 2021, created by George Kay, François Uzan - netflix

What I said about Lupin part 1 holds true for the 5-episode part 2: Omar Sy is a very charming lead and the show is very watchable, I'll say without being, let's say, focused.  

Where part 1 felt very full of momentum, part 2 ambles, and frankly hits peril fatigue early on.  The return episode, in which Assan partners up with the detective who has been chasing him (though he assigns the Lupin-loving cop the role of Ganimard - Lupin's police adversary in the novels) in order to find his son, who has been taken by the mercenary hired by the big bad guy, the powerful and connected Pellegrini.  

The over-arching plot, Assan's revenge on Pellegrini for the framing and murder of his father years before, is compelling, as is the drama raised between Assan, his ex-wife and his son, not to mention the people that fall as result of his actions.  Pellegrini is so well connected as to be almost untouchable, but that's what makes him such an intriguing adversary.

Assan is not a superhero, though he is very skilled and savvy, but he's human, and fallable and can even be outsmarted (he is on numerous occasions).  His failures are always more compelling than his successes, but at the same time his failures don't always lead to growth, as the show sometimes forgets about them.

It's a show that's got action, but it's not big action, even though it seems deserving of bigger action set pieces.  Lupin is about stealth and cunning, not necessarily physical adeptness, yet Sy is such a huge presence it almost demands that he use it more.

It's almost disappointing at the end of part 2 to see that part 3 is coming, because the story isn't quite finished.  I would like a new story to begin but I don't know what there is outside of this revenge plot which fuels both parts so far, and I don't know that it has the legs to be dragged out any further.  That said, I do want more of Sy and Lupin.

 

Master of None: Moments in Love

 2021, created by Aziz Ansari and Alan Yang - netflix

Aziz Ansari got in a spot of bad press in 2018 during the initial #metoo wave.  The story, sadly, seemed a typical one  (not for Ansari, just...in general) of a date that went sour with too much alcohol and too much male aggression.  

Ansari owned up to his behavior, behavior that, unlike say Louis CK or Harvey Weinstein, didn't seem to be an endemic problem in his life.  But that he did it at all was a problem, and Ansari was made an example of, a warning to "playas" to just fucking stop it already. The following year he put out a comedy special on Netflix that he addressed the work he needed to do on himself, and the lessons he needed to learn, and the listening he needed to do.  Beyond that comedy special, and a limited, low-key tour preceding it, Ansari has stayed out of the spotlight.

His TV show, Master of None, I've greatly enjoyed.  It's a romantic comedy delivered primarily from the male perspective (which is atypical for the genre), with personal cultural observations from Ansari, co-creator Alan Yang and collaborator Lena Waithe. As a fan of Ansari as a comedian and actor, I was disappointed in his behavior, but encouraged by his mea culpa and hoped that he could rehabilitate both himself and (less importantly) his image.  And I really wanted more Master of None.

Master of None:Moments In Love is a reflection of Ansari's desire (or need) to avoid the spotlight, so he steps behind the camera as director of all 5-episodes in the ...season? Side-series?  He handed the focus to Waithe, who co-wrote the season with Ansari and Yang.

It focuses on Waithe's Denise (who had a stellar spotlight in Season 2) and her marriage to Alicia played by Naomi Ackie.  The show opens with the couple living upstate in a beautiful cottage home with a sort of farming vibe (chickens and vegetable gardens), and establishes a state of contentment.  That is disrupted with a dinner party visit from Ansari's Dev, who we last saw making a big romantic play for the engaged Italian woman he fell in love with in Season 2.  He's now with someone else, and their relationship falls apart in front of Denise and Alicia, which then spurs on some heightened emotion between the two.  (Dev's life has completely gone to shambles compared to when we saw him last, which seems to be a form of in-show parallel to what happened IRL).

Alicia wants a baby, and while Denise is on the fence, she eventually comes on board.  It's an arduous process, but they conceive, only to lose the child.  The miscarriage fractures their marriage, and a shorter episode follows Denise as she packs up her former life to move back to the city.

The fourth episode is Alicia-centric, and a wonderful spotlight for Ackie.  It's an hour-plus that takes us through Alicia's trials as she decides to become a single mother and go through IVF on her own.  It's an arduous process (as anyone who has gone through it can tell you) and an emotional one.  

The final episode jumps years in the future as Denise and Alicia have a renewed relationship, but it's an ongoing affair away from their spouses and kids.  It strangely seems to work for them... but you have to wonder about the fallout on their family side.

Ansari shoots the whole season in a 4:3 aspect ratio in primarily static frames.  There's a lot of measured takes... moments, if you will... that just sit and breathe with no real action or story.  Contrary to what you might think, rather than being boring, it kind of forces you to pay even closer attention, to invest even further.

Master of None was a comedy-drama, but Moments in Love is straight drama.  It's certainly not what I was expecting from its return, but I was glad to have it.  That said, I really want to see what's happening in Dev's life, and maybe that was the point of the character's two brief cameos, as a gauge of interest people might still have in him.

Black Monday Season 2

 2020, created by Jordan Cahan, David Caspe - Showtime/Crave

The first season of Black Monday was, frankly, outrageous.  Just coke-addled, off-the-wall bananas following the oh-so-heightened adventures of a black man, a black woman, and a gay man running a investment firm on Wall Street at the end of the 1980's, culminating in the trio perpetuating a scam that crashes the stock market.

Season 2 deals with the fallout, as Don Cheadle's Mo takes the fall and goes on the run to Miami with Keith (Paul Scheer) where he dreams of just escaping.  Keith, meanwhile, gets caught up in drug dealing on the boardwalk with, unsavory results.  Dawn (Regina Hall) and Blair (Andrew Rannells) are trying to keep the Jammer Group afloat, but Dawn struggles for respect (particularly after Black Monday) and Blair's too coked up and obsessed with his new secret relationship with a congressman to do much actual work.

They come up with a plan with the remaining Lehman brother (Ken Marino) to invest banks, but their investment goes south when Mo finds out and (in trying to help) ruins the deal with a fake robbery gone horribly, horribly awry (definitely the high point of a constantly outrageous season).  Then Mo returns to New York, trying to help Dawn and win her heart, only to consistently get in her way.  Keith, meanwhile, teams up with the Lehman brother to help take down their nemesis, the Jammer Group.

It's a farce.  The whole thing is farcical, and it's a show that pushes the boundaries of what people can realistically do, or how they should act, or react in any given situation all for some exceptionally entertaining and ludicrous comedy.  After the bank robbery episode, it felt like I was overwhelmed by the show, and I took a break for too long, but returned after seeing Don Cheadle in No Sudden Move.  Cheadle is always great, but Hall is also stellar. The entire cast is fun, and it's a show where you can never predict what its going to do or where its going next.  It's smart, it's funny, and it's ethically compromised, but at its heart it's about people trying to make space for themselves in a domain where they normally weren't allowed, and the toll that takes on them.

Invincible Season 1

 2021, created by Robert Kirkman - amazonprime

We haven't even come close to peak comic-book adaptation yet.  Frankly, until people stop watching TV or Movies they're never going to stop.  Superheroes, though, superheroes may be on the downswing.  If me, an uber comic-book geek for 40 years has gotten disinterested in most superhero TV shows and is wondering how much longer Marvel's steady output can sustain before the masses decide it's not their thing anymore... well, yeah.  We're at the point where so much superhero content is kind of anti-superhero content.  The Boys, Jupter's Legacy, even Watchmen are taking the stance that superheroes are kind of a bad thing, and that despite their altruistic comic book roots, the modern take on any human with any power is going to be one of corruption, or at least complete self-interest.  There's no place for heroes anymore.  Snyder's version of superheroes is very much this as well, and the heroes of the Marvel Cinematic Universe seems to constantly have to reckon with the harm they've caused while doing what they think is right.

Invincible, an adaptation of the Robert (Walking Dead) Kirkman, Cory Walker and Ryan Ottley series, can seem like its sitting in that realm.  It's a series (both TV and comic) that trades in excessive ultra-violence, which is usually a signifier of something darker, more anti-heroic.

I read Invincible for a half dozen story arcs, but ultimately couldn't get into its groove, and yet the TV series really resonated.  The first episode was incredibly well done, positioning it as a wholesome, almost Saturday morning-ready affair.  Mark Grayson is finally getting powers inherited from his dad, one of Earth's mightiest heroes, Omni-man.  It's an awkward time with Mark juggle teenage life as well as his new inheritance, but he's up for it.  The set-up seems to be that the status quo is Mark learning to be a hero from his dad.  Then his dad goes and kills the planet's premiere super-team, covers it up and the world is rocked to its core.

The rest of the series deals with the fallout of Omni-man's actions, the audience the only ones initially aware that Omni-man is a bad, bad dude.  He trains Mark with some real tough love, often brutal love, in reality no love at all.  And life starts getting pretty traumatic for, well, everyone.

The show's episode-to-episode is pretty great, giving Mark very specific objectives to overcome, sometimes heroic, sometimes personal, and often both.  The supporting cast is pretty broad with subplots galore, most of which are very, very intriguing.  

The weak point of Invincible is in its reliance on hyper-violence.  It trades in it often, too often, to the point that it's just kind of numbing when an fight goes on for an extended 4 or 5 minutes (or longer).  The impact of these brutal, knock-down, drag-out fights would be so much more used sparingly.  The most visceral impact is the Omni-man fight at the end of the first episode because it's so unexpected given the set-up, but then it just becomes the norm afterward.

The voice cast is incredible (Stephen Yeun, Sandra Oh, JK Simmons, Gillian Jakobs, Andrew Rannells, Walton Goggins, Clancey Brown, Zachary Quinto, Jason Mantzoukas, Zazie Beetz, Seth Rogen, Mark Hamill, Jon Hamm, and on and on), breathing real emotion into this heightened reality.

The first season ends beautifully, but leaves a whole smorgasbord of loose ends to be explored.  I wasn't expecting to love it, but I did.

I Think You Should Leave season 2

 2021, created by Tim Robinson and Zach Kanin - netflix

There are a LOT of thinkpieces out there about Tim Robinson's sketch comedy I Think You Should Leave, it's six-episode second season having just debuted on Netflix.  My favourite take is from the Guardian's Rachel Aroesti, who likens the sketches in the show as a reflection of internet behavior but in a real world situation.  Whether it's repeating an opinion ad nauseum whether anyone wants to hear it or not, or always believing yourself to be correct no matter the situation, or gleefully looking for an opportunity to curse regardless of how inapprorpiate, or repeating a barely-joke over and over until someone acknowledges it, or dismantling a joke because you don't understand it... etc. 

It's a show of sketches that center, typically, around a single person behaving poorly (or, rather, ineptly) in any given situation, and it's always, ALWAYS the suspense of whether the people around them are on board with them, or against them...or sometimes against them, but then on board with them.  It's like internet culture where there seem to be tides that just turn for no other reason the the persistence of some very loud voices.  The root of many sketches is inept pleas for understanding for belonging.

I can understand this obsession Robinson has. We seem to be an ever insular society, where we can't handle differing opinions of any sort, and taking ownership of one's flaws or misdeeds is never an option, so doubling down is the only route.  People become obsessed about the most bizarre things and they become so fixated it becomes their entire reality, all they want to talk about (like the intricately patterned shirts one of Robinson's characters is willing to sacrifice everything for).  People wind up in subcultures that just serve their confirmation bias, and any outside opinion or even attempt to help extracate someone from their limited world view is seen as an outright attack on ones very being.  The absolute rage some of Robinson's characters (or the Robinson archetype that other performers stand in for) is always unfounded.  On its face, on a per sketch basis, it's pretty funny stuff, but as a whole it's an exposed nerve, the failure of our society, how the disconnectedness of engaging online has influenced real-world culture reflected over and over again in sketch comedy form. And, I should point out, the internet, phones, or computers rarely come into play at all in the show.

It's kind of a reminder that we don't know how to act around each other anymore, we don't know how to converse or engage, and sometimes, while watching the show, I forget how to laugh even though it's really quite sharply funny.  Another unique thing about Robinson's sketches is they don't typically have punchlines, they're more about the moment, the mood, and/or the personality that dominates it.  It strikes such an unsual tone and format that it shouldn't work, but at around 16 or 17 minutes per episode, no sketch outstays its welcome (with the exception of the "Calico Cut Pants" sketch which seems to live too long, then comes back around), and they almost always leave you wondering how that situation resolves itself.  If anything that's the brilliance of I Think You Should Leave, it often leaves it up to the viewer's imagination to close out the sketch.  

That all said, the nonsense of "Sloppy Steaks" is my favourite thing from Season 2.

Pacific Rim: The Black

 2021, created by Greg Johnson and Craig Kyle - Netflix

I downright loved Guillermo Del Toro's Pacific Rim, I thought it was going to be my thing, my new Star Wars, my new pop culture obsession.  But I knew as soon as I bailed on buying all of the first wave of action figures that I wasn't as all-in as I wanted to be.  I didn't think I wanted more, but I needed more, mainly because I knew there would just be more.  So, I needed to see how the world of Pacific Rim would expand beyond the first film.  There was a couple comic books that really didn't capture what I was looking for out of the franchise, and Uprising, well I was disappointed.  Extremely disappointed.  Disappointed to the degree that I lost most of my enthusaism for the series and the concept.

I wasn't up to the challenge of being an obsessive fanboy, I can only think of how crushed I would have been by Uprising had I been.

I knew Pacific Rim: The Black was coming, and as any of our longtime readers know, I'm not an anime guy.  The Black is promoted as an anime, and the style, at least in the character design (particularly their faces) is certainly of the type, so if I wasn't already wary about that, the fact that the trailer presented it as the story of a couple of siblings who find a Jaeger and go on adventures was grounds for immediate dismissal.

Then I forgot about it.

Until a few days ago when I was scrolling looking for something to watch.  Pacific Rim popped up and my heart ached a little bit.  I want to love you Pacific Rim so bad, but a couple of mediocre comics and a bad sequel just threaten to spoil my good time. 

But wait, did that cartoon ever come out? 
It did? 
What was its deal again? 
Just start watching before whatever you remember ruins it.

So I did, and, well, it's pretty good.

The setup finds young Taylor, a Jaeger cadet, and his little sister Hayley left behind in a secluded location in Australia with other survivors, while their Jaeger-piloting parents go back off to the Rim to battle the seemingly constant wave of Kaiju, though promising to return.  5 years later, Taylor tries to keep Hayley from constantly running off, the the tighter he holds onto her the more she slips away.  She stumbles upon an abandoned base, where a training Jaeger still sits.  Her activation of the Jaeger makes too much noise and summons a Kaiju (an immensely awesome-looking bronzed beast named Copperhead) who destroys their makeshift community and kills everyone.  The guilt hangs on Hayley.

They run in the Jaeger, as they are not armed and not trained and cannot face Copperhead on their own.  In running they enter The Black, a zone of Australia that is basically a black market free-for-all where everything is run by different warlords or bosses or whatever you want to call them.  Their Jaeger runs out of power and in looking for a new power source in abandoned bases,  Hayley and Taylor discover a boy in tank, left behind.  Hayley breaks the boy free and befriends him.  Taylor just calls him "Boy" and the name sticks (an homage to Taika Waititi's Boy?).  He's uneducated, mute, but completely attached to Hayley, and carries a few secrets, like a predelection for killing tiny animals.

Much of the season revolves around their encounter with Shane, one of the gang bosses in The Black, and things don't go great for anyone involved with him. But in the process of engaging and separating and dealing with Shane we learn a lot more about Hayley, Taylor, and the Pacific Rim reality.

Owing a debt to Mad Max, along with all the other mech-suit animes and Japanese giant monster movies, The Black isn't exactly what I wanted from follow-ups to Pacific Rim but it comes close.  I want to see what life is like in a reality where giant monsters keep emerging from the sea, and globally we're putting so much of our resources and efforts in to controlling the flood.  This show sits outside of any "normal" society, but it picks up some of the more intriguing threads that Uprising abandoned after its opening minutes.

The show builds upon its past, taking place an extended period of time after Uprising, but it references events from both films, and namechecks some of the characters without being overly clever or winky about it.  Their use of what comes before is actually quite well integrated.  At the same time, it advances, introducing new concepts (which I won't spoil) which heighten the stakes of the ongoing war.

The animation is very dynamic with some stellar "camera work", approaching things at suprising angles and capturing scale that does inspire some of the awe that Del Toro's original picture did.  The designs of the creatures are incredible, some of the best so far, while the Jaegers seem a little more generic, without as much distinctive flair (or anthropomorphised personality) as they had in the first feature.

I felt like Uprising got the drift wrong in their use of it, but here it's explored very well, and I love the lasting effects being in the drift has on its users.  

There are a few shocks and many surprises in this, and if you thought it was going to be Kaijus-for-kids, it's definitely not.  It's not capital M mature but it takes it all seriously and lives with the weight of things in a way I definitely was not expecting.

At seven 20-minute episodes, it goes down pretty quick, but thankfully there's more coming, and I'm certainly appreciative enough to watch it again. 

3 Short Paragraphs: Mortal Kombat

 2021, Simon McQuoid (Australian commercial director) -- download

The follow-ups to the 90s flops, based on a VERY popular, and ultra-violent, fighter video game (from waaaay back in the days when you fed machines quarters; Google it kiddies) suffered in various forms of development hell for decades. For a moment there was an end of tunnel light, when Kevin Tancharoen almost got a full-feature off the ground, based on his very well received short Mortal Kombat: Rebirth but even that went nowhere. Until James Wan, yes the Saw guy, got this one produced. Alas, I doubt this will resurrect any franchise hopes.

I admit, I never took to the game. Not only was I not attracted to the gratuitous ultra-violence (I know, surprises me as well), I was just never very good at fighters. They also struck me as the jock choice, video games to be played by the testosterone obsessed. Judgmental nerds was even a thing back then. The games follow the similar pattern where fighters of great skill & power, some human, some not so much, battle it out for ... glory? fame? heads? I never knew. This movie establishes that there is a tournament, if won by the dark dimension Outworld, for a tenth and final time (I guess we in Earthrealm kind of suck, despite all those quarters) gives permission for all the evil monsters of Outworld to invade our world with impunity. Despite the already seemingly destined win, the Big Bad Evil Guy Shan Tsung, sends his evil warriors to kill the potential Earth winners ahead of the tournament, because apparently that's not against the rules. Whose rules, you ask? Who knows, as I guess they expect the audience to either be aware of lore from the game, or just accept. Meanwhile the Earth warriors have an prophesized ace card in the resurrection of a famous Japanese fighter, as well as having the totally-not-thor Thunder God Raiden on their side. But to defeat Outworld there must be .... <ominous shouting> MORTAL KOMBAT !!

With some chagrin, I say that this is the exact kind of movie I need to see during The Pause. Its easy to digest, even easier to mock, and I am not invested. But it has a heavy dose of fantasy, an adequate special effects budget and the acting/production values are slightly above most action flicks. It was light, it was fluffy but it was fun. And I imagine, if I was a fan of the games, I would have loved how highlighted Sub-Zero and Scorpion were. But by all means, the movie is not good, with so many plot holes, you just cannot think about it with any depth. For example, I don't think we actually ever get to any tournament fight, with the movie ending by defeating the BBEG's champions before any organized event happens.