KWIF: Mickey 17 (+4)

 KWIF=Kent's Week(ish) in Film.

This Week:
Mickey 17 (2025, d. Bong Joon Ho - in theatre)
Bravestarr: The Legend (1988, d. Tom Tataranowicz - YouTube)
Red Rooms (2023, d. Pascal Plante - Crave)
Problemista (2023, d. Julio Torres - Crave)
Wicked Little Letters (2023, d. Thea Sharrock - Crave)

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Mickey 17 is a satirical sci-fi romp from the fantastic Korean filmmaker Bong Joon Ho. His vision for the film is one that is delightfully odd, replete with director Bong's usual nuanced touches and social commentary, but this is the first of his films that I've seen where he seems like he's wrestling with the construction of the narrative.   

The plot finds Robert Pattinson's Mickey on the run from particularly sadistic loan sharks after his macron business failed, and his only hope of outrunning his fate is to get on board one of the long-distant colonizing space ships (as is noted, the environment of Earth is becoming increasingly uninhabitable and so competition for spots on these ships is fierce). Mickey's got no particular special skills, knowledge, or influence so his only option is to take on the designation of "Expendable". As such, Mickey's physiology, personality and memories are downloaded and should Mickey die in the process of doing his jobs (all jobs which are all but guaranteed to kill him, such as being the guinea pig for catching the virii on their new planet, and for testing vaccines to inoculate against them).

There is a tremendous exposition dump in the first act of the film that would feel interminably long if it weren't so entertaining.  A lesson we've learned from, like, time loop movies, is dying over and over again can make good comedy fodder.  It also squares us up for the politics of the era (not too dissimilar from our own) and that the spaceship Mickey is aboard is led by failed presidential candidate, and definite center of a cult-of-personality, Kenneth Marshall.  As played by Mark Ruffalo, Marshall is like a mix of Trump, Musk and televangelist Jim Bakker (with Toni Collette being his sauce-obsessed, intellectually superior co-conspirator, ala Tammy Faye). Marshall is an absolute clown of a human being, an absurd egocentric who has failed upward with the support a gullible populace. He's uncomfortably comedic, and just as reprehensible. Ruffalo puts on a good show.  

When we first meet Mickey, he's the 17th version. He has fallen in an ice cave and left for dead. But the native potato bugs rescue him.  Being a man made of soup, he just thinks his meat is bad, and the potato bugs rejected him. Returning to the ship, he comes to find that his replacement, Eighteen, has already been made, and the woman who's always by his side, Nasha (Naomi Ackie) is already cozied up with him. Eighteen is a much brasher, no-nonsense version of Mickey, while Seventeen is much more timid and reserved. The two of them, through a series of increasingly odd events, spark a revolution aboard their ship, but first spark outrage being Multiples, an affront against God and all that's good apparently (as a soul can't be shared between two bodies, or so they say).

Following the massive international and award-winning success of Parasite in 2019, Bong Joon Ho got a budgetary upgrade for his follow-up, Mickey 17. The film's price tag at nearly $120 million is well over double his next most expensive film (Okja, for the record) and triple that of Snowpiercer which played like a blockbuster, but was made pretty modestly.  In Mickey 17, it's all up there on the screen, though. The sets are plentiful, and feel all of a whole, creating a world aboard a spaceship that is tangible and lived-in. The alien planet that is the destination is a desolate and frigid place populated by a race of gigantic potato bugs, and, yeah, it's all well-realized too.  Could Director Bong have made this on a slimmer budget? Absolutely, but it wouldn't look nearly as good.

Pattinson and Ackie are great together, and I loved how Pattinson seemingly channelled Joe Pesci from Home Alone for Seventeen but Joe Pesci from Casino for Eighteen.  I enjoyed watching the movie, quite a bit, it is so fun and weird, but I didn't come out loving it as I had hoped. Nothing sticks out as particularly bad, or egregious, but it doesn't quite all gel together smoothly. There's not really a clear message to the picture, as it seems to be working through a multitude of societal critiques.  I think were this a film from the 1980s and I'd just seen it for the first time, I would be just agog, absolutely blown away by it, so maybe I just need to give it a little time. In the end, even if it is more of a lark than another Oscars-worthy movie from Director Bong, it's still an entertaining picture that should be worth a revisit.

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The 1980's were the golden age of action figures. G.I. Joe, Masters of the Universe, Star Wars, Teenage Mutant Ninja Turtles and Transformers were the top tier "boys toys" lines of the era, bolstered by syndicated cartoon series or big franchise movies.  These major properties still live today not just out of nostalgia, but a rich sense of world building that keeps sparking the imagination of young and old alike.

The pervasiveness of these toy lines was in part due to the loosening of restrictions around advertising to children, and so the accompanying weekly (or daily, in some cases) cartoon became a necessity when launching any new toy line.  It was no guarantee to success, however, and each also-ran toyline has its own unique story to tell (see the excellent pop-culture histories on the Secret Galaxy youtube channel).

Filmation, makers of the fine He-Man and the Masters of the Universe and She-Ra: Princess of Power cartoons wanted to find success with their own ideas, not just producing cartoons based another company's intellectual property. Long story short (again, watch Secret Galaxy's recent retrospective), Filmation brought Bravestarr, a mash up of nearly everything popular in the 80's -- sci-fi, westerns, magic, and superheroes (it only needed dinosaurs) -- to Mattel, and the toy company ran with it... but too fast for Filmation. The plan was for Bravestarr's origin story to debut in theatres in the summer of 1987 along with the toys, followed by the ongoing series in the fall to bolster continued sales of the toys, but Mattel jumped the gun, excited to get the toys on shelves for Christmas 1986...where they died on the vine.

The cartoon series debuted on time, in the fall of '87, but the movie was delayed, and released in 1988 with little to no fanfare, the toy line already languishing on shelves and Mattel having moved on. Filmation as a studio was sunk and Bravestarr: The Legend was all but forgotten (in fact it was only upon watching Secret Galaxy's recent video that I even learned there was a Bravestarr movie).

Did it deserve its fate? The toys have become a bit of a cult classic, certain toys reaching pretty astronomical prices in the nostalgia-laden aftermarket, but unlike the big names of the 80's, there's been no revival for Bravestarr (maybe in part because licensing is a bit of a clusterfudge). But having caught the feature (it's on youtube), I have to say...I would have freaking loved this as a kid, and I quite like it now.

There aren't a lot of toy lines or multimedia properties, even to this day, with a person of colour as the lead, and most lines feature no Indigenous characters at all. Bravestarr is a series built around a futuristic society where a Native American is the titular hero.  "The Legend" is Bravestarr's origin story, and it starts with the history of Bravestarr's people, a civilization of Native Americans with very advanced technology and magics, being assaulted by Stampede, a power-mad invading force that wants to take the civilization's power for its own. I don't know if the allegory of colonial genocide was the intention, or if they just kind of stumbled into it, but it's there. 

Bravestarr's people escape to the stars as the planet is literally destroyed by Stampede's greedy thirst for power (again with the allegory), and only settle again when a new colony on the planet "New Texas" is formed as a result of the "gold rush" like atmosphere for the precious fuel jewel Kerium. But the planet is already besieged by Stampede and his proxy, Tex Hex. So the mayor of New Texas sends for help, which comes in the form of Bravestarr, the newly recruited galactic marshall, joined by J.B. the tough woman judge (and love interest) appointed to the planetary county.  He's there to clean things up, but he fails...at first.

It takes Bravestarr reconnecting with his roots, granting him great powers (strength of the bear, speed of the puma, eyes of the hawk, and ears of the wolf, all very nicely visualized in the show), and joining forces with the indigenous Prairie People of the planet that he is properly able to take on the evil forces New Texas faces.

In total, "The Legend" is an unevenly told story, waffling in and out of exposition, at one point running through a montage of, I presume, all the action figures available to buy. It makes use of the same well-trod 80's mold of good-vs-evil toy cartoons, and of the equally well-trod origin story formulae (that would get a workout for a good long while to come). But at the same time, the combination of influences and genres does make for a unique scenario that is quite enticing, and the animation is, often, quite stellar. Filmation's cartoons of the 80s were always a cut above. They were know to reuse animation to cut costs, but their beautiful background paintings and live-model character references always made their work stand out. Here, it's animation meant for cinematic release, so it's at another level to what we're used to seeing out of the studio's TV output. Anime influences can be felt in the work, and the visualization of Stampede is an homage to the classic Disney moment in Fantasia, "The Night on Bald Mountain".  It's all really a cut above.

The story ebbs and flows, showing signs that the Filmation team isn't fully comfortable working in feature length storytelling, but for the most part it's a satisfying watch (in spite of a frequently grating synthesized orchestra score). What gives me pause is the general conceit of using non-descript Native American culture as backdrop for a sci-fi-superhero-western meant to sell toys, a literal commodification of the culture. It would feel less...icky... if there were more Native Americans directly involved with the whole production. Bravestarr is voiced by a white man (Pat Fraley) for cripes sake! Representation matters, not just for what we seen on screen, but who is telling the stories behind the scenes. From my limited caucasian perspective, it seems like none of Bravestarr is meant as offensive, but it's also not doing the good work either. I would love for a First Nations or Native American creative team to revive this property with authenticity. I can imagine a Sterlin Harjo production would be pretty phenomenal. Maybe it's possible if the Masters of the Universe movie does well next year, creating a surge of toy property movies. 

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Red Rooms (or Les chambres rouge in its native Quebecois tongue) opens on the face of a attractive woman sleeping. Her surroundings are grey, and she is somewhat bundled up. The colour saturation is almost non-existent, intoning the chill of her surroundings. After waking she bundles up her blanket and makeshift pillow, and determinedly walks down the street. Her full-length wool coat is tailored perfectly, she looks far too beautiful and put together to be unhoused...but we don't know. We next see her entering a building, being scanned, having her possessions checked at security, and once through she finds her destination...a smallish courtroom where she sits in the back of three aisles. 

We learn that a case is just beginning in this courtroom, with the prosecution and defence delivering their opening arguements. The case involves the kidnapping, assault, mutilation of three teenage girls, and the prosecution alerts the jury to the fact that there is video footage of two of the three murders that were filmed and sold on the dark web. It's a grisly story, and as the lawyers deliver their speeches, the camera floats around the courtroom, sometimes fixating on the attorney speaking, or the one who is not, or the accused sitting in a plexiglass box looking bored, or on the woman we met in the opening frame of the film.

This is Kelly-Anne (Juliette Gariepy), she is ostensibly the film's protagonist, but for much of the film she is basically unknowable. Kelly-Anne is, we learn, not homeless, she just camps out each evening nearby the courthouse in order to keep her seat in the small viewers galley.  She is a model, she is also an avid (and successful) online poker player, and she is very web/computer savvy (she hacked her off-the-shelf AI assistant and operates it off a private server). 

Kelly-Anne, we see, fixates on the mother of one of the victims in court, more than she even leers at the accused, and she seems slightly paranoid when the crown's cybersecurity expert looks at her too long. We just never understand why. She is caught by press coming out of the courtroom, but she doesn't seem interested in speaking to them, unlike the other young woman, Clementine (Laurie Babin) who ventured in from Northern Quebec to watch the trial with an unhealthy fixation on the man on trial.

Clementine thinks she's found a kindred spirit in Kelly-Anne, but the model/hacker gives nothing away. She never confirms which side she's on, just that it seems very important to her to be in attendance at the trial.

The score to Red Rooms is exceptionally minimal, to the point that the soundtrack of the film, anytime we're in Kelly-Anne's high-rise apartment, is simply the whistling of the wind as it scrapes the side of the building. The possibilities of what Kelly-Anne's interest in the film are plenty... like, was she an early survivor of the accused, or is she like Clem just obsessed with him, or is she a true crime junkie, or was she an accomplice or somehow involved, or even the murderer. Whenever Gariepy supremely reserved performance threatens to tell on her, she does something else -- sometimes overt, sometimes nuanced -- that completely undermines prior assumptions. Her behaviour gets pretty whackadoo late in the film, and it's not entirely certain if it's performance, and if so, for whom.

Red Rooms quietly made some 2024 top ten lists of critics I follow, and from the capsule reviews I was expecting something more... conventionally thrilling, and was so happy to find that it got my heart racing because this curiosity that is Kelly-Anne is such an unknown quantity.

This is, as I like to say, a deliberately paced film, and definitely not for the impatient. It makes you squirm because of subject matter, and the time it spends contemplating it, and the time spent with these people who are perhaps too interested in it.  It is an unsettling film despite having no overtly grotesque visuals, just the insinuation of them, of knowing they exist, and sometimes hearing vague audio and seeing peoples' reactions to them. If it is a film commenting on anything, it is our society's fascination with murders and murderers, and how often, in the process of examining this fascination, victims and their stories are forgotten.

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Julio Torres as a comedian, performer, writer, and artist is a very distinct voice. It's not just that he was born and raised in El Salvador, nor that he is a queer performer, although both are very much a part of his presence, whether on stage or screen. No, what makes Torres so distinct is he is an unapologetic weirdo whose sense of humour can best be described as obliquely surreal. His comedy special, My Favourite Shapes, in which he sits in the center of a conveyor belt that enters and exits off stage behind him, and dispenses oddball toys and abstractly shaped objects which he then discusses as he presents them to the audience by way of a projector...well, it's one of the most unique comedy routines I've seen in a long time. It was bizarre, strangely frivolous and yet seemed deeply personal and spoke much to Torres' voice and how he sees the world.  He's also the creator of Los Espookys, the hilarious Spanish language HBO show about Mexican hipsters who put their homegrown special effects makeup to work via a haunting-for-hire enterprise, and as a writer on SNL he wrote one of my all-time favourite sketches, "Wells for boys".

Problemista is Torres' first directorial effort which at once seems both personal and yet distant from connecting to real emotions. It can be a challenge for creators who excel in the surreal to ground their work with the relatable. They are capable in inviting you into their unique point of view, but have a much harder time with helping you understand them.

In Problemista, Torres plays Alejandro, a sensitive young man who finds himself in New York with the desire to work as a toy designer for Hasbro, but instead winds up, through happenstance, being the personal assistant to an artist's widow, Elizabeth, played by Tilda Swinton. What a get for a debut feature.

Alejandro, facing deportation, is left dangling on the end of a thread as Elizabeth yo-yos him around. He's desperate enough to work for this woman who is, at best, unhinged, at worse severely mentally unwell. She is loud and irrational and seems to get her way primarily because people will do what she wants just to get away from her (or get her away from them). She seems to live in another reality and definitely not interested in being part of the polite society we'll talk about in our next film.

Swinton delivers a tour-de-force performance, sweeping into every scene as Elizabeth, sucking all the air out of the room, and then telling everyone around her it's not enough and that they need to give her more. I've worked for a woman like this some time ago.  She was a person who lived in a world that only rotated around them, and considered other people infrequently, if at all, unless they could serve her agenda in some way. Elizabeth is a tad more extreme than this ex-boss of mine, but not by much. People like Elizabeth exist, and I've seen them. They're awful.

Torres' demure performance as Alejandro, complete with an affected shuffle-step walk, and a shrinking inside himself physicality, is one meant to be dominated by Swinton, and pretty much anyone else he encounters.  But unlike The Devil Wears Prada, where an assistant discovers their absolutely horrible boss is human human afterall, there's no such discovery for Alejandro. In fact, he seems to see Elizabeth in a light nobody else does, he seems to understand her and her motivations and her objectives, somehow...and he actually learns from her how to be more confident and assertive. 

It's not a hard film to like, but it's a difficult film to love, because Alejandro's demureness is so easily overshadowed. It's a fine line between playing a shrinking violet character and disappearing as a screen presence. Torres keeps the film, and Alejandro's life just weird enough to remain interesting. I was expecting this to be a much weirder film. The opening moments, taking us through young Alejandro's toy obsessed childhood with his artist/designer mother, is visually very vibrant and odd, but it's fleeting. Torres' New York (probably for budgetary reasons) isn't nearly as surreal. There are only glimmers of Torres' inventiveness, like his toy pitches to Hasbro, his visualization of the rigged system of American immigration, and a decidedly uncomfortable personification of Craigslist. 

I was hoping Torres would explode out of the gate as our next Michel Gondry, but it looks like we're just going to have to be patient.

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My grandmother - my mom's mom - was a woman of propriety. Things had to be a certain way, like the way a table was set, or a bed was made, or a home was kept. We had to behave and speak a certain way in being part of a polite society. Many subjects were not to be discussed, and most definitely certain words were not to be said. I recall having my filthy mouth washed out with soap once or twice (the lesson being "don't swear around Grandma").

I considered this propriety to be a generational thing, but upon contemplating the message of Wicked Little Letters, it is much more the product of sexism and abuse. It's not generational, it's cultural. The expectation of women as subservient, of taking care of cooking and cleaning and otherwise staying out of the way. In this type of culture, women are barely permitted freedom of thought or expression, they certainly aren't permitted education or agency. There are seemingly more of these cultures around the world today than aren't.

Set in the southern coastal English town of Littlehampton post-World War I, Wicked Little Letters, is the true-ish story of decorum being scandalously broken by way of a series of wicked, nasty, filthy letters delivered to one Miss Edith Swan (Olivia Coleman, Secret Invasion), at this point a spinster still living at home in her mid-50's, still under the thumb of her controlling father (Timothy Spall, Chicken Run).

The most likely culprit is their next door neighbour Rose Gooding (Jessie Buckley, Men), a widow and single mom, and also an Irish immigrant and a real liberated woman, whose no-holds-barred, profane way of speaking bemuse and shock in equal measure. As Rose states, though, she has no reservations about expressing herself, so why would she resort to writing anonymous letters to say what she would already say out loud?

The scandal hits national level, and Rose is an easy scapegoat. The film is very clear about the hypocrisy of this mass propriety, as the men expect women to behave a certain way, to be unsullied by any awareness of lewd or profane words or acts, and yet in closed quarters the men talk this way about such things with jovial frivolity, as "Woman Police Constable" Gladys Moss (Anjana Vasan, We Are Lady Parts) witnesses. She is torn between "knowing her place" as the town's first woman officer, and actually serving justice, when her male counterpart is an idiot and her superior is lazy. ACAB, man.

It's difficult to talk about the film without revealing the writer of the letters, so we'll discuss more some of the subject matter after the Spoilers cut, but just to say that it's not actually a mystery that the film holds close to its chest and it reveals the answer to the audience (but not the characters in story) about the midway point.

Coleman and Buckley are both phenomenal actresses, and they're both excellent here.  I don't think I've ever seen Coleman deliver a bad performance, and she is has a lot to do here, as Edith is torn between the expectations of her from her father, her lapsed friendship with Rose, and the notoriety that she's received as a result of being a victim of the letters. Demeanour shifts are frequent, and Coleman has mastered her control of nuanced facial expressions. I don't know if I've seen Buckley in a role like this before, where she's sort of comic relief, but also an emotional lynchpin. She has a zeal, a liveliness, and an untamed natuer that flies in the face of the stiff-upper-lip/well-I-never crowd that is so delightfully appealing. She is the antidote to the buckled-down, boring existence of Littehampton.

The film utilizes colour-blind casting which is in equal measure admirable and distracting since nothing is ever mentioned about anyone's race or background. I know I was expecting the elder Swan, when ranting about his neighbour Rose, to bring up her Black boyfriend in a derogatory way, but he never does. The film holds squarely in its lane in examining sexism. Even its critique of the police, and their structures winds up rather toothless in the end.  It's a film that says much, and rewardingly, but had the potential to say even more.

[Toastypost]

**SPOILERS**

It's really to no one's surprise when we find out that the writer of the letters to Edith Swan is none other than Edith herself.  The letters seemed to be spurred by befriending Rose, and revealing in her liberation, but then having that friendship quashed by her father. So she, in secrets, begins to liberate herself by way of writing the most foulest things she can think of. That those thoughts are directed at herself is a product of a caged woman loathing her inability to escape the cage, and it's telling that when the letters extend beyond her, that they are directed at the other women of the town, she's admonishing them all for their upholding of the systems that keep them down. It's equally telling that she never writes a letter to the person she fears the most, her father.  Edith's greatest sin is not writing the letters, but letting Rose take the fall. In her admiration (and emulation) of Rose, she also cant escape her patriarchal thinking, that Rose's liberties as a woman are somehow criminal and deserve to be punished and reigned in. Afterall, why should Rose be allowed to curse and cavort so freely when Edith cannot?

It is a bittersweet ending when Edith is found out and sentenced and carted off to jail. She is a victim herself, afterall, and yet, being sent to prison allows her freedom from her father for the first time in her life. The downside is it is still jail, though, and whose to say she won't encounter a whole institution of men (and women) looking to subjugate her just like her Father?

I think back to my Grandmother, and it's distinctly possible she had a father who was somewhat like Edith's father, who demanded a certain discipline and propriety, and that her mother would have upheld such structures in the household [edit. not exactly a true assumption on my part, but generational trauma resonates in expectations and behavioural norms].  I know my Grandmother had husbands who were maybe less forcefully demanding, but expectant of such norms. My Grandmother also worked, she had a number of jobs throughout her life which began out of necessity, having fled an abusive relationship with two small children. Despite marrying again (and again) she retained a definite drive and work ethic, perhaps a desire to stand on her own two feet, to not need to rely upon a man financially. In her own ways, she broke free of the patriarchy despite being unable to let go of its legacy of teachings. She was a remarkable woman who led an impressively active life well into her late 80's before dementia robbed her of her resources, and I miss her. 

Westworld Season 4

 2022, HBO (8 episodes)
created by Lisa Joy and Jonathan Nolan

Season 1 was a phenomenon. Season 2 was a let down. Season 3 was a radical reinvention.  Season 4 brings it all back full circle.

These are, of course, oversimplified statements about each of this rather remarkable show's four very varied seasons.  I don't know that any season has even come close to building the same anticipation episode-to-episode as the first one did, so well developed was its mystery, and so unexpected was its playing with timelines in its storytelling.  Season four attempts the mystery again, to lesser effect, and also with varying unclear and unannounced timelines, again to lesser effect (after three seasons, we've come to expect this storytelling trickery.  At least the reveal of the timeline trick is half-way through the season and not meant as a season-ending "gotcha").

My Season 1 review, over 5 years ago, and from a pre-Disney+ era, I realize how quick I am to forget about a time when television didn't have cinematic production values.  Every season has looked great, but by Season 4 it really does feel like TV, just the new standard of TV.  Shots are just a little hastier, effects just a little below cinematic quality, and some of the set design showing its seams a little.  But the world of Season 4 (which piggybacks off of the world of Season 3) is a futuristic cityscape, requiring a whole other world of effects, fake building edifices and a much more intense amount of CGI to keep up appearances.  Plus, Season 4 was a COVID shoot, and in that it does also feel a little more contained.

Season 4 really does try to be the culmination of its three previous seasons, picking up where last season left off, and catching us up on what happened in the interim.  Following the civil war that ended last season, the omniscient machine that was in effect controlling society last season was destroyed by Maeve (Thandiwe Newton) and Caleb (Aaron Paul), and society is in a very different place.  A resurrected Delores is now "Christina" (Evan Rachel Wood), a writer of stories for NPCs in an online game, unaware of her past, but receiving strange phone calls that unsettle her sense of her reality.   Charlotte (Tessa Thompson) is resurrecting the hosts within a new "world" set in the 1920s era, but it's secretly a place for her to experiment on humanity with a new control mechanism, delivered by common houseflies.  Charlotte also has William, aka the Man in Black, under her control, both as a host, and the real thing in cold storage in her corporate headquarters.  Maeve has retreated from society, knowing that she would be hunted were she to make her presence known, while Caleb is now a father and husband, but paranoid of who might still be after him.

So, *spoilers*, ok?

As the timelines start to collide, and focus is pulled on what is exactly happening. Caleb goes from being father and husband in a very homey life to on the run after Maeve turns up and tells them there's work still to do.  But in the process they both are killed and we find that 30 years have passed, Caleb's daughter has grown up as one of the leaders of the resistance.  It turns out that Charlotte now controls the "world" (I'll get to it) as she's been mostly successful with her human control mechanism, but she's also cloned Caleb over and over and over again sort of as torture, but also because she's trying to discover how some people are resistant to her control.  Despite otherwise having complete control over society, Charlotte remains unhappy.  She wanted the humans to experience what the hosts felt, but finds her revenge delivers no satisfaction, only insatiable boredom.  Christina, meanwhile, is awakened by Teddy (James Marsden), who helps her see what she truly is....not an actual person living in Charlotte's world, but the creator and conductor of this world.  Bernard (Jeffrey Wright) returns from the other side where he's been running seemingly endless probability scenarios for decades, and with Stubbs (Luke Hemsworth) by his side the two hosts try to convince the resistance that they have the only plan to success and liberty.

In the end it seems they get the chance to start it all over again, where it began, at Westworld, a very puzzling ending indeed.

Season 3 didn't really ask a lot out of the audience in terms of remembering how the prior seasons were impacting the present, but boy does Season 4 ever count on you remembering it all, and isn't great at providing you context along the way.  I don't have a problem with the show striving for tighter continuity and its past having relevance, but my time with the prior seasons was years ago and I've forgotten much which I'm sure would help.

The series finale was a real puzzler, and it seemed to intone that what's gone on in Westworld has been a whole repetitious cycle that keeps happening over and over...or at least is destined to, but I can't make sense of this.  One character at some point mentions the hosts would be overwhelmed by the millions of humans they would face, intoning that there are only millions of humans on the planet (like, one percent of the population survived the civil war or something).  My alternate take is the city that we see in season 3 and 4 is not a city representative of the outside world (meaning outside of Westworld and the other fantasy lands) but instead it's the Humanworld that is a mirror society to Westworld.  This Humanworld is all that Charlotte has gained control of, an isolated megacity of millions, but hers to do with as she wants.  If there's a world that exists outside of Humanworld or the other theme parks, I have no idea, and the show doesn't seem to even consider it a question.

So if the sister cities of the Humanworld and Westworld co-exist then it's entirely possible that the cycles of human and host relations keep repeating (see also The Matrix Revolutions).  

What I found most intriguing about this season, though, was Charlotte's utter dissatisfaction of the world she runs.  More than anything she wanted to control the humans, to get revenge on them and make them be the line-towing automatons that the hosts once were, appeasing every whim.  The city/Humanworld is completely under her every control, except it's tiresome. Revenge is boring.  She feels her people should have something more, be something more.  The key point is that the hosts are created in their creator's image.  Therefore their imagination is pretty much limited to that of their creators as well.  Where they should be able to transcend humanity, to be free of physical bodies and even the earth (see also Her), the hosts just can't seem to get past petty human emotions, desires, and body types.  It even makes me wonder if any humans exist in these stories at all, or if everyone is just programmed to believe they are human or a host, and let the experiment repeat.

I found the ending obtuse and unsatisfying, but I've also enjoyed thinking about it afterward.  The season was a pretty brisk watch, but I found there was a fair bit of repetition and, at times, Dolores/Christa's story seemed to drag under its own weight.  I'd been quick to forget that it was Dolores who resurrected both Charlotte and Bernard, and in effect both are facets of her own being, one representing her darkest instincts, the other her brightest.  It makes strange sense that the endgame would be Dolores' angel trying to convince her devil to change.

Before I leave, much credit to Ramin Djawadi, who created a very specific sound suite for the show to operate under, but more importantly his reworking of popular music tracks from the likes of Radiohead, Billy Eilish, The Rolling Stones and Nine Inch Nails (among others) into stringed versions or player piano versions.  They're really enjoyable and worth seeking out.

I will likely revisit all of Westworld as a whole someday, but there will need to be a significant gap in the TV schedule to accommodate it.  Too much content.

A prelude to T&K's XMas (2021) Advent Calendar

Toast and I are really, really, really ready to ramp up into Christmas this year.  I mean, I've been in it to win it since the end of October, but as you've seen, Toast is also diving in early.  I've definitely watched more Christmast stuff this past November than any November before in my entire life, and I'm all in.  The Christmas lights have been up for weeks, we got our tree this past weekend,  I've got some mixes for gluten-free cookies, I've filled up the reusable advent calendar with chocolates, and most of my shopping is done.  I'm ready, but Christmas is still 26 days away.  So what else can I do but review (and clean the slate before the Advent Calendar gets going tomorrow):

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I've never been big on tradition, or revisiting the same thing over and over again, even at Christmas, with the exception of the wonderful steak dinner and Community Xmas episodes with the wife on Christmas Eve.  That said, I once had this mixtape I put together from alternative late-night CBC Radio that I listened to every year for years.  And when I switched from tapes to CDs, I tried to assemble as much as I could from Napster (to limited success) and when I moved from CDs to iPods, I ripped one whole side of the tape into a single mp3 that I could listen to.  But as I moved away from iPods and physical music sources, I lost my traditional listen.   Strangely, The Nine Lives of Christmas (2014, d. Mark Jean - Hallmark) I've watched each year for the past four years (twice the first year, as I had to show it to Adj just to confirm that I wasn't wrong in enjoying what should have been godawful).  If we have anything to thank for bringing Hallmark movies into my life, and regular rotation each holiday season, it's this delightful piece of holiday romance garbage.

 

In this'un Kimberly Sustad plays, uh, Marilee...yes she does (makes me laugh every time I watch it, because I forget that's her character's name), an early 30-something woman (actually I think they say something like 28, but...yeah, right) who has gone back to school to become a Vet after having to give up the dream earlier to raise her younger sister after her parents died.  She works at a pet store to bring in some income, while her sister has become a bigwig real estate agent who gets invited to mayoral parties and the like.  Anyway, Marilee (yup, that's still her name), has no time for dating despite her sister and class friend and work friend all pushing her to get out there.  She also has a pet cat, but she shouldn't, because her building doesn't allow it, and her nosy landlady is being such a feral beast about it.

Former Superman Brandon Routh is Dashiel Snow...nah, just kidding (though that seems like the appropriate counter to a Marilee, don't it?)... he's Zachary, a fireman, and the biggest slab of beef in the firehouse.  We meet him getting his picture taken for the fireman calendar, and it's a rare moment of Hallmark beefcake (because we don't get much of that ever in Hallmark, maybe not again until The Christmas House?).  The other boys in the station (and I do mean boys) live vicariously through him as he stumbles his way through one shallow relationship after another.  His latest girlfriend is the hilariously vapid Blair (Chelsea Hobbs), an absolute cartoon of a human being.  Blair is supposed to be a high fashion model, but I think really she's a catalog mode for Sears, or JC Penny or whichever of those department stores is still in business in 2014.  I love to hate Blair, she's the absolute worst, and she's a big part of what makes this movie so enjoyable.  There's nothing like rooting against a truly awful, shallow, selfish, vein, egotistical person.  Zachary rescues a stray cat (Ambrose) being attacked by a dog and the cat takes up residence in the house he's currently renovating himself.

Zachary and Marilee meet cute at the supermarket, where he needs to pick up cat food (and Marilee helpfully advises against him feeding Ambrose dairy, thank god), and she's picking up a 4-litre lonely-lady tub-of-ice-cream-for-one.  It's a friendly exchange but it passes.  Moments later, Zachary rescues her from a runaway shopping cart in the parking lot.  My hero...like Superman... but on a severe budget.  Zachary doesn't think much of it but Marilee can't help but swoon a little.  

 

Out at her birthday dinner with her sister and brother-in-law, she runs into Zachary again (he's escaping Blair and her soulless entourage) and they have a really nice chat that's obviously interrupted.  A little bit more sparking.  Turns out Blair's dad is the owner of the pet store Marilee works and and she gets her fired.  Zachary and Blair break up, finally.  Marilee gets kicked out of her place and goes to live in Zachary's renovated apartment in exchange for helping with the main floor reno.  They start to connect but Marilee feels out of his league.  There's a mayoral party that leads to a misunderstanding but it all works out because of cats.  It's really cute.

Some of my favourite stuff about The Nine Lives of Christmas happens in the firehouse.  The Chief (Gregory Harrison) is a real get-in-touch-with-your-emotions type guy and he encourages Zachary to stop being so shallow and search for happiness over beauty.  And to stop being such a fraidy cat about his emotions.  The other guys just want Zachary to keep slutting around, but once they meet Marilee they're kind of in on the Chief's wavelength that Zachary should just get with the pretty, smart, awkward, nice girl.

It's just delightful.  Sustad has great comedic timing, and there's actually some legit funny scenes here. It's a rare Hallmark romcom that actually has some com.  It's not very Christmassy, I might say, but it's southern states setting means there's no chance of snow or inclement weather so it's only Christmassy by decoration.  This sort of pre-dates the heavy tropification of Hallmark so there's no baking montages or Christmas tree shopping scenes or much hot chocolatification.  So if it lags in peoples rankings of holiday romances, that might be why.

 

The Nine Lives of Christmas is certainly not the best Hallmark movie ever made, but obviously it's resonated with more people than just myself, as there is a sequel - The Nine Kittens of Christmas - that debuted on Hallmark last week (but doesn't air in Canada until this coming Sunday).  It will be in the Advent calendar next week.

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A running joke in early Simpsons was Bart crank calling Moe's Tavern.  My favourite of these was Bart asking for Hugginkis, first name Amanda, and Moe calling out "Can I get Amanda Hugginkis, oh why can't I find [A Man To Hug and Kiss].  

 

Cut to 2020, when A Princess Switch 2 comes out and I start thinking "oh why cant I find a Van to Hudg and kiss", which is wildly inappropriate given that I'm a happily married man.  But it's just what happens in my brain when I watch a VanHudg movie, particularly one that has no less than 3 different VanHudges starring in it.

 

Ok, let's be clear, I don't really want to be kissing VanHudg, it's just the saying going through my brain.  Also, there aren't three VanHudges, but truly just one, and she's freaking amazing in these movies playing multiple roles.  Not only that, but playing those roles against herself.  Not only that, but often playing those roles, as each other, against each other.  It's fucking ridiculous how amazing VanHudg pulls it off, but she does, perhaps even better each time.

 

In A Princess Switch 3: Romancing the Star (2021, d. Mike Rohl  - Netflix), VanHudg is back playing Stacy, her distant relative Lady Margaret, and Margaret's cousin, Lady Fiona Pembroke.  If you will recall, in APS2, Fiona and her little cadre tried to steal Margaret's crown by kidnapping then impersonating her, then selling the country of Montenaro off and getting the eff outta dodge.  She did not succeed.  Here, Princess Stacy and Queen Margaret are co-hosting a Christmas celebration and have secured from the Vatican a priceless tree-topping star, which promptly is stolen.  In order to get it back without causing a fuss, they need someone who can operate in dark shadows, which means Fiona is called up from her penance at a convent (she tried to overthrow the monarchy and all she gets is cleaning duty at a convent...man rich people get away with everything, don't they?)

 

So yeah, Fiona, a royal pain in the ass (haHA!) in the last one is our central character here, and we find empathy for her via a subplot about her avoiding her estranged mother's attempts at reconciliation, as well as her reunion with an old lover who used to be with Interpol but is now a security expert.   

 

This movie takes a long time for any switching to happen (it's almost an hour by the time the first Princess Switch is necessitated, but let it be known there is more than one switch required) but it's essential to both rehabilitating Fiona as a character, and setting up the monstrously ludicrous - but utterly entertaining - plot whereby Fiona and Peter Maxwell (Remy Hill, sort of Henry Golding-lite, which is not a bad thing) need to bust into dastardly villain Hunter Cunard's (a delicious mustache-twirling performance from Will Kemp) place while Margaret, acting as Fiona, distracts him.  They cop a scene from Entrapment as Fiona gets all cat-suited up to lithely slither between lazerbeams in a sort of dance with Peter.  It's so much fun and a little steamy.

This one goes full out ridiculous, where as the previous two were just largely ridiculous, kind of like how the Fast and Furious franchise evolved.  We don't get a fourth VanHudg but what she does here with the three is still immensely impressive.  She is so capable of performing against herself, so amazingly adept at creating distinct characters, that I honestly forget most of the time that it's a single performer, not three different ones.  How VanHudg manages to be one character playing another character and yet you can still tell from subtle physical or verbal cues that it is the original character is so amazing.  

The sets and the settings are all so lavishly decorated, as Toasty noted about the first one, "Gawds it's gorgeous there."  These aren't cheap, these movies.  They splurge on digitally having three VanHudges together in one scene, and they splurge on the sets and setting.  Yeah, there's real Christmas vibes in Montenaro.

 

If they're planning, at all, to continue the Princess Switch movies (and I get it if they don't, because they can't be easy on VanHudg) how would they possibly up the ante?  I say...crossover with Orphan Black...

 

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The only people who say they don't like Bruce Campbell are people who don't know who Bruce Campbell is.  The chin, the myth, the legend has from moment one of The Evil Dead such wonderful presence, there's a warmth and likeability there that he has never lost.  In fact it's only grown over the decades as he's become one of the most affable, charming personas at fan conventions that he's as much known for being Bruce Campbell as he is for any of his on screen credits.

So while it's definitely not out of the range of possibility that Campbell, given his B-list status, would appear in a Hallmark, it's still a surprise that he's actually in a goddamn Hallmark.  I assumed he would be playing the gregarious father figure to some young(er...mid-30's to early 40's) Hallmark starlet who would steal scenes but otherwise be a non-integral presence in yet another bog standard holiday romance, and I was here for it.  But then I saw he was acting against Peter Gallagher, another senior character actor of maybe grander repute as an actor, and wondered just what the hell kind of Hallmark would need two such heavyweights.

One December Night (2021, d. Clare Niederpruem) is not the typical Hallmark, but rather a "Hallmark Movies & Mysteries" product, which means absolutely nothing to me, but I gather it means that there's a separate Hallmark channel for more dramatic or mysterious storytelling, and less romantic cliches?  I really don't know.

The film opens with a montage of photoshopped albums, magazing articles, merchandise of in-world famous folk-rock duo Bedford & Sullivan which gives the movie an instantly different feeling than almost every other Hallmarkie, but then undercuts that by featuring the same, bog standard obligatory establishing shot of "the big city".  We meet Quinn Allan(Eloise Mumford), who works at a music talent agency.  She's been having difficulty getting any traction for her up-and-coming star (who seems to only be busking on the streets, so Quinn must be really, really bad at her job), but is given a prime slot for her if she can get the Bedford & Sullivan televised holiday reunion back on track.  She's being asked primarily because she's Mike Sullivan's (Gallagher) daughter.

 

She ventures to the smallish town which just lives as a popular tourist shrine being the home grounds of Bedford & Sullivan.  Mike still lives there, a hermit in his home/recording studio which is namechecked as being as famous as Abbey Road. He and Quinn have a strained relationship, as Mike seems to have with everyone.

 

She meets Jason Bedford (Brett Dalton) again, whom she hasn't seen since they were teens, maybe.  They grew up together in the trenches of their fathers' shadows.  Jason is now his dad's manager, but Steve Bedford (Campbell) isn't much of an act without Mike Sullivan, and the bookings are drying up.  Plus, it's rather clear from the first moment that Steve forgets something that he's got Alzheimer's (we know how movies work, there, script... oh an older person is pointedly forgetful...yeah, we know this one).

 

So it's about Fathers and children strengthening their bonds, and about those crazy kids falling in love (but did they though?), and about making sure that those grumpy old goats become friends again, not just for the sake of the concert, their kids' careers, but for their own well-being.

 

The romance sub-plot, which tries to shoe-in Hallmark favourites like a decorating montage or Christmas tree shopping, is the worst part of this.  I like how Jason and Quinn relate to each other as old friends with a shared background, and they could have done that with trying to make it so Christmas-cliche.  Dalton and Mumford are both great, but they didn't really have much of a romantic spark.  They had real friend chemistry.

Conversely their relationships with the senior members of their families, and the idea to cross pollinate (where Quinn works on getting Steve to the concert, and Jason works on getting Mike to the concert) works so incredibly well.  Particularly Quinn's relationship with Mike is a standout and all the appropriate, mature feels are there, without taking any shortcuts.  But obviously the show is about Campbell and Gallagher, and the two are so dynamic together.  Campbell is charming and gregarious while Gallagher plays Mike as holding on to something (his authenticity) so dearly it costs him everything.  Campbell entertains while Gallagher is the dramatic heavy hitter, but they both get a chance to switch hit. 

 

I only wish this were a film with better production values, elevated out of the Hallmark generic ghetto.  Stylistically it doesn't do anything flashy, so it's up to the wonderful cast solely to elevate it, which they do.  But a 2 or 3 million more and you would have a real movie, something that would fit beyond the pale.  It's quite good for what it is, but you can so easily see where, and how, it could have been better.

 

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Five-Star Christmas (2020, d. Christie Will Wolf - Hallmark) was never something on my list, but I stumbled into an airing a few minutes in and I was, frankly, quite impressed with the family dynamic of the cast.  I'm always impressed when performers in these things actually have that sibling feeling, the over-familiarity but with a bit of lingering animosity, and a playfulness that intones history.  This cast had that between Lucy (Bethany Joy Lenz), Will (Blair Penner), and Amber (Grace Beedle), as well as Will's wife Suzanne (Barbara Patrick) who joins in just that half-bit out-of-step with the rest of them.

They're all gathered, along with Grandpa Walter (Jay Brazeu), at their family home to find that widower father Ted Ralston (Robert Wisden) has transformed the spacious ranch home into a bed-and-breakfast.  The renovations were more expensive than he had anticipated and he has been struggling to book guests.  He figures his savings have only a couple months to hold out before the place folds.  The kids, already reeling from their home's transformation are doubly worried that their family home might go up for sale.  People in these cheapo holiday romances are always so overly attached to their family home.  People need to learn to fuckin' relax and detach.

Anyway, after all the familial anxiety and hullaballoo around that news, they have word that a famous(?) travel writer is in town (where there are a couple other competing establishments they could be visiting) when suddenly a car rolls up with with a flat tire.  It's Beth Thompson (Laura Soltis) who shares the same initials as the travel writer ( nobody knows what they look like, because we find out later they're actually a collective of individuals writing under the same pseudonym).  Soooo, Lucy, suddenly improvising that she's the hotel manager, invites Beth to stay, and quickly informs the family that they need to act as staff and guests in order to make the B&B look busier and more established.  Will and Suzanne act as erudite, travelers, Amber takes a stab at being the cook, and Grandpa is the desk clerk.  

They fawn and hustle for Beth's benefit (event though it's absolutely clear that Beth is not the review) and it's all B-grade farce, but for Hallmark it works.  Meanwhile another guest arrives in the form of big, brawny geologist Jake Finlay (Victor Webster).  Jake and Lucy hit it off instantly and over a few days and nights the line between guest and host has disappeared.  Also maternal Grandma Margo shows up and is instantly wants in on the fun of deceiving the guests, posing as an uppercrust lady with a German? accent.  Margo's delightful.

There's some sloppy 70's sitcom hijinks, a bunch of the usual Hallmark Christmas cliches, but also a few above grade scenes, like a genuinely romantic late-night gab-fest over a fire pit between Jake and Lucy, and later a tidy callback to their in joke as Jake makes a grand gesture, embarassing himself in a very public space (obviously after the complication happened whereby both of their deceptions were revealed).  So it's sweet romance all around as even Dad and Beth get some more time together... and it's rare that Hallmark handles the senior romance with anything less than a bludgeon.

What I took from this, though, is that Bethany Joy Lenz is a goddamn delight.  There are a few other bright, quirky, charismatic leads in the Hallmark stable, but none of them manage to navigate the comedy, drama and melodrama quite as adeptly nor as enthusiastically as Lenz.  She's just both feet on the ground and hoisting the whole production up on her shoulders. I've only seen two of her efforts (I'll get to Unexpected Christmas tomorrow) but I'm ready to declare her Hallmark's best lead actress.  Her past and future films will be on my "must watch" lists to come.  

The whole cast here comes together and delivers a well-above average Hallmarkie. It's still ridiculous but it uses that ridiculousness for comedy.  It's not trying to pull this scenario off as if it were something legit, it's just a romcom.  Hallmark is still kind of new at the com-part of romcoms so we'll forgive them a few growing pains.  By no means a must watch, but enjoyable nonetheless.

Orphan Black (complete series)

 2013-2017 - Crave

As the pandemmy raged and lockdowns persisted, and the flood of new entertainment was but a trickle, I decided it was time to invest in binge watching a multi-season series that had been sitting on my "to watch" list for a very long time.

Orphan Black was always a kind of cult hit that never truly broke out large probably because it was a Canadian series co-produced with (and airing on) BBC America.  Only a few aspects of the show penetrated beyond its niche market bubble: it was a show about clones; its fans were called "#CloneClub", and Tatiana Maslany netted a surprise Emmy as best actress in a Drama for her work after its final season (a surprise only in that it was a genre show with a concentrated audience).

I put the first episode on "just to give it a shot", not really sure if this would be another episodic show that would take a season, or seasons to reveal its larger story. My wife kind of rolled her eyes and buried her nose in her social media / book rather certain this show would hold no interest for her. 

The series opens with darkly made-up Sarah Manning, mid-20's, having just gotten off a train. She makes a heated call from a payphone on the platform, noting in her English accent that she's back in town and wants to see her daughter, but she's hung up on.  A woman emerges onto the nearly empty platform sobbing loudly.  Sarah moves towards the woman who has put down her bag, taken off her shoes and folds her jacket.  The woman turns and she has Sarah's face. Sarah is stunned, the other woman seems somehow unsurprised to see her, and she calmly takes a couple paces in front of a train.  Sarah is stunned at first, but amid the commotion she picks up the other woman's purse and leaves the platform towards a new, twisted reality.

It's a bold opening that sets up the series operating pattern of surprising and shocking moments but grounded with a real sense of humanity. We get in this three minute opening stretch the revelation that Sarah is a clone as well as the death of that clone.  As well, Sarah has a British accent but the train platform announces the next train to New York City (the establishing skyline is definitely Toronto, and the train platform is definitely Union Station...there is no train service from Toronto to New York), so Sarah is not native to the country.  Sarah's make-up, hair and wardrobe indicate a rough lifestyle, rebellious at the very least.  She has loose change in her pocket, and no cel phone, so it indicates she doesn't really have any money. As well, she has a daughter whom she's not allowed to see, although we don't know yet who is not allowing her to see her.  

Rarely, I think, are costuming and make-up choices as deliberate as they are here at signalling a character's identity.  Over the run of the series, Maslany plays over a dozen different clones, each with strikingly unique identities.  Maslany gives each of them - the main ones, the ancillary ones, and even the one-offs - their own speech, their own physicality, their own mannerisms but not in a way that screams "ACTING!".  It's subtle, nuanced performances that breathe life into each of them.  Of course, each identity is aided with their own style - clothing, makeup and hair - with some of the best wig work.  These aesthetic choices are labored over for movies and TV shows, used to help define the character, but they're so rarely needed to distinguish the character from other similar characters, being performed by the same actor.  Within 5 episodes Maslany earned the Emmy it would take another 5 years for her to win, but likewise the hair, makeup and wardrobe teams should have been given such commendation.

Following her encounter on the platform, Sarah, we learn, is a con artist with a troubled past.  She's an orphan who was raised by Siobhan (the amazing Maria Doyle Kennedy) alongside her orphan foster brother Felix (Jordan Gavaris). Siobhan is now raising Sarah's daughter, Kira, and has forbidden Sarah from seeing her until she cleans up her life.  Both confused by what happened and rejected by Siobhan, Sarah adopts her doppleganger's life, and stretches to the limit her conning ability.  In becoming Beth Childs, Sarah stumbles her way through being a police detective, learning that her alternate had her own secrets, substance abuse and a wrongful death incident looming over her.  Beth's partner Art is frustrated with her, but gives her a lot of latitude. 

Throughout the first episode one can't help but get the feeling it's going to be a slow burn, Sarah's journey into #CloneClub...but at the end of that first episode Beth/Sarah is approached by yet another doppleganger who is assassinated in Sarah/Beth's car as they are talking.  At the start of episode 2, she gets a mysterious phone call, helping her dispose of the body, and Sarah then poses as the dead woman to gain more info, learning about even more look-a-likes.  By the end of the episode she meets suburban housewife Allison, and Cosima, an evolutionary biology student and learns she is a clone.  

There's no slow burn here, it's pretty much momentum from the get go.
I was sucked in.
My wife, well, she put her phone/book down.

Much of season one revolves around Sarah messing around in Beth's life while also working with the clones to unravel the mystery of their origins.  It ties them into the "Neolutionists", a subculture of people who believe that they can use technology to advance human evolution (but it's also a fetish culture that sees people getting, like, webbed fingers, or tails surgically grafted onto them), but also the Prolethians, the Neolution's opposites, who believe they can advance humanity through gene manipulation.

Season one introduces Helena, another clone (and the show's most engaging character, in a show rather full of enjoyable characters), who was raised by the Prolethians as a fanatic, hating the other clones as abominations against god that must be destroyed.  She's a brutal assassin but also in her limited education and secluded upbringing, rather naive to the world.  At first a frightening adversary, she is slowly indoctrinated into the sisterhood of the #CloneClub.

While Sarah is the central character, each of the key clones - Allison, Cosima, Helena and Rachel - all have their own full arcs over the five seasons.  Likewise, Kira, being the daughter of a clone, has an important role to play, and the kindly "Mrs. S", Siobhan, has her own secrets that are revealed.  But Siobhan sees all the clones as she sees Sarah, as orphaned daughters that need her tough love.  Felix is also an integral part of #CloneClub, and he finds his own special dynamic with each of them.

Cosima finds love with her handler Delphine (the only meaningful romantic subplot of the series) but both are under the thumb of the Dyad Group who have ties to either the Neolutionists or the Prolethians or both, and given that sinister clone Rachel is sitting near the head of the Group, it's clear that they have ties to the clones' origins, a mystery that takes all five seasons to fully unfold.  As well, Cosima is trying to find a cure for the fatal illness that seems to be striking the clones, including herself.

The suburban adventures of Allison and her bumbling husband Donnie are often a point of comic relief, as their adventures seem so trivial compared to the higher stakes of Sarah and Cosima's arcs, but still they're adventures that wind up with literal bodies buried in the garage, and always tend to criss-cross with the regular shenanigans.

Seasons one and two are effortlessly breezy binge consumption, pulling you through with a lot of wild, often outrageous twists and turns.  Season three introduces a captivating additional wrinkle of a breed of rival male clones, and the mythology of the series gets fairly dense from that point in.  

Each season is a rather taut 10 episodes, and while the story is constantly evolving there's some repeating patterns in the show that become frustrating in binge watching, mostly involving Sarah and some of her behaviors or the situations she finds herself in (often as a result of her behavior).  Some of these "not again" moments the show seems oblivious to.  It's usually smart and self aware enough to call such things out, but it seems to have a few blind spots.  

Within that, even when the show ebbs (which rarely lasts more than a single episode) it's completely uplifted by Maslany's performances.  When a particular subplot isn't hitting, the viewer's attention can become even more attuned to the complex ballet Maslany has to perform, and it's always superb. (It's also to easy to forget to credit Maslany's double, Kathryn Alexandre, as the show did its first seasons.  She was no doubt was integral to every scene with more than one clone in it).

Despite being Orphan Black's most interesting character, there are long stretches without Helena, and it's baffling why that is.  It's not always like Cosima or Allison's storylines fit seamlessly into the larger narrative, and it's a palpable absence whenever the show goes more than two episodes without her. If I'm going to be drawn to rewatching the series, it will be to get my fill of Helena no doubt.

Similarly the Cosima/Delphine love story is very unevenly handled, a lot of trust issues make it compelling initially, but once they get past it and commit to each other, they resume their mistrust with tiring results.  And then Delphine disappears for much of season 3 and 4, returning only sporadically for the final one, but in a somewhat satisfactory fashion.

One factor that thrilled me was Orphan Black being a show that used Toronto as Toronto (as well as using Toronto as all sorts of international locales).  Early on the show wouldn't blatantly state it was Toronto, or Canada even, but they regularly use Toronto street names and land marks and never attempted to hide it as a participant in the show.  Eventually (I think in Season 4) the defining line that it is indeed Toronto becomes clearer, but it's almost a Toronto that lives in a world where Canada and the US exist as a "Generca" (as co-creator Graeme Manson dubbed it), where the border doesn't exist.

As much as I enjoyed the ride, the grand arc of the series, and the overall conspiracy within it got a little lost in the mythology for me.  The fifth season's "Island of Dr. Moreau" vibe was an unexpected path, and it works double time to weave all the disparate threads from prior seasons together to some success but still not without muddying the waters. 

But even still, the conspiracy of clones isn't truly what the show is about, it's really more about finding family, and the connections that bind, and the things that make them human.  The character arcs of all the characters in the show do wind up being very satisfying and worth the venture.

We consumed all five seasons of Orphan Black over a single month, with a few interruptions for some of our ongoing series.  By the time we hit season five I felt a little exhausted (again, it's pretty briskly paced and densely structured), and I was ready to reach the end... but once I did, I felt very sad to not see the Clone Club anymore.  But, there is a next phase: podcasts.  Orphan Black: The Next Chapter is a multi-episode prose podcast that picks up a new story involving our characters over half a decade from where the show left off, with Kira and Charlotte now both teenagers, Cosima and Delphine married, and a new clone in the FBI gets inaugurated into the Club, among other highlights. It's read by Maslany, making it feel extremely authentic to the tv show, and it highlights her amazing talent as she embodies some of the non-clone characters like Delphine, Felix and Art pitch-perfectly, as if she spent her time on the show studying them and aping their speaking styles. It's a really satisfying way to catch up but also experience something new, and in a new way.  A second series is coming later this year

10 for 10: more TV than necessary

[10 for 10... that's 10 consumables which we give ourselves 10 minutes apiece to write about.  Part of our problem is we don't often have the spare hour or two to give to writing a big long review for every movie or TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?   ]

In this edition:

Living With Yourself (season 1 - Netflix)
Batwoman (3 episodes - CW/Showcase)
Stumptown (pilot episode - ABC)
Genndy Tartakovski's Primal (season 1 - Cartoon Network)
His Dark Materials (3 episodes - HBO)
The World According to Jeff Goldblum (4 episodes - Disney+)
Harley Quinn  (5 episodes - Cartoon Network)
Impulse (season 2 - YouTube)
Rick & Morty (season 4 - Cartoon Network)
The Mandalorian (season 1 redux - Disney+)


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Over the holidays I did back-to-back viewings of Us and Enemy (unfortunately The Double was unavailable), getting some intriguing doppleganger viewing in.  I had forgotten that, back in October, we had watched Living With Yourself, the Paul Rudd-starring Netflix vehicle about a struggling advertising executive who is referred to an experimental self-improvement process, and comes out feeling like a new man...because he is, literally, a new man.  The Paul Rudd that steps out of the treatment is actually a rapidly grown clone with some behavioral modifications that immediately starts improving his life...better performance at work, a better relationship with his wife.  But the original Paul Rudd, who was supposed to be terminated, wakes up in a shallow grave and finds his life usurped by this newer version.  But rather than being nefarious nemeses they wind up more like twins, since they both basically have the same shared memories and experiences, just their attitudes are slightly different.  The show doesn't put them through any overtly extraordinary paces, despite their unique situation, instead it reminds us that the only person who can make our own lives better is ourself (it's a metaphor).  That said I loved how the show would keep switching its POV character from episode to episode, following one Paul, and then at the start of the next episode recapping the previous episode's events from the POV from the other Paul.  The show may not be the goofy comedy I was hoping for, nor is it a forced farce, or sci-fi nightmare, instead it's a light drama in the vein of Amazon's Forever or Netflix's Maniac (both shows left unreviewed from The Dark Year of this blog).  It has some sharp storytelling tricks to establish a very human and grounded tale.  Not exceptional but certainly watchable (as most Rudd vehicles are) with some very enjoyable elements.

[10:00 (I actually forgot to start the clock, oops)]

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Batwoman as a comic book character is a difficult choice to base a whole TV series off of.  Kate Kane is an excellent character, but the modern interpretation of her is not even 15 years old at this point and she's only had a handful of solo adventures.  In the time between her introduction into comics and today, the entire universe she exists in had at least one huge reboot and a few soft ones, so the character hasn't really had time to grow as part of the DC superhero community.  The basics is she's Bruce Wayne's cousin (from his mom's side).  Her dad is a hard-driving ex-military.  She dropped out of the military due to "don't ask, don't tell" policies.  She had childhood trauma as a result of the deaths of her mother and sister in a car accident.  She becomes Batwoman, for reasons I don't recall.

In the show, she becomes Batwoman because Batman/Bruce Wayne up and disappeared from Gotham three years prior and someone has to do something about all the crime (and her dad's private security force is...problematic).  Kate's comic book time hasn't been long enough to establish a very thorough rogues gallery, so the only villain she's really connected to is Alice, who runs an "Alice in Wonderland" gang motif, and who is really Kate's crazy, long-thought-dead sister.

I Saw This!!: Rhyming Titles

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Graig or David attempt to write about a bunch of movies they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. Here are two films whose titles rhyme.  They're also both genre films, and probably the last entries in each of their a particular franchises.

Star Trek: Nemesis - 2002, d. Stuard Baird - Netflix
Terminator Genisys - 2015, d. Alan Taylor - Netflix

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If forced to choose I'm taking Star Wars over Star Trek every time.  It's more escapist, immersive and exciting, in my opinion.   But when nobody's forcing me to choose, I will choose me some Star Trek when Star Trek is available.  I like it just fine, but it's not quite the same experience.

Star Trek: The Next Generation was my Star Trek.  Kirk and Spock were always around in my youth; in the cinemas, on videocassette, and in repeats, but it had felt like I'd already missed out on most of it.  Plus, it wasn't Star Wars, and when I was a kid, I wanted everything to be Star Wars.  Next Generation started when I was 11, so it hit me right in the sweet spot, where I was old enough to get why it wasn't Star Wars and to eventually come to understand the social and political criticism it was allegorically bringing to the table.

I watched every episode of that show, and loved the first two movies (particularly First Contact which seemed like the first real Star Trek space opera/action movie) but for some reason, by the time Nemesis hit the theatres, I was just totally and completely done with the franchise.  I had put it away.  I wasn't following whatever was on TV at the time (I don't recall if Voyager or Enterprise were the flavour of the day), and Nemesis as a film looked...disappointing for a Star Trek motion picture.  It needed to be an event... I remember thinking, why isn't this film a collision of TNG, Deep Space 9 and Voyager?  I understand now that having the full cast of three different series in one film is a logistical and scripting nightmare, but at the time that was what a Star Trek movie event should be.

A decade and a half later, seeing a Next Generation film I've never seen before felt like a reunion.  It didn't matter so much that the film wasn't particularly very good.  I was just happy to see these characters again, even Wesley Crusher put in an appearance at Deanna and Riker's wedding at the start.  The whole plot stems around the fact that the Romulans had cloned Picard, discarded him to their Siberia-like prison camps, and now that clone has risen up, usurped the Romulan government and is waging war with the Federation.  The thrust is a "nature vs nurture" argument that's done somewhat thoughtfully, but it doesn't feel any grander than your average two-part TNG episode.  In fact it doesn't even stack up remotely against the best episodes of that show.

There's a sub-plot where they discover another android who predates Data, a Beta model if you will, and once again it's a story of nature vs nurture, in that they both share similar programming but with encouragement Data has advanced where the Beta hasn't had the opportunity.  The script nicely dovetails the B-plot into the A-plot, making Data's heroic sacrifice pretty badass...well, as badass as anyone can look in a Starfleet uniform anyway.

The main problem with big-screen Star Trek (up until the JJ Abrams films) is that the very set-up of the series is one of peace, so everything is designed around peace and exploration.  This means that it's ill equipped to handle action really, really well (the desert dune buggy sequence was painful if only because it just didn't fit the Star Trek mold).  The characters, after getting to know them for 7 or more years, are pretty well defined, and "badass action hero" was never in the offing for them.  It also doesn't help that so many of these performers don't have big screen presence (Patrick Stewart the most obvious exception).  Amidst an ensemble on TV there's some forgiveness but it doesn't extend to the big budget spectacle.

But as I said, it was good to see them again.  I wouldn't object to another Next Generation reunion, but it feels like it should be a Netflix thing, or a short run like the recent X-Files reunion, and not another motion picture.

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I've probably said this before, but I'll repeat myself because it's relevant.  I don't have much love for the Terminator franchise.  My favourite installment was probably The Sarah Connor Chronicles that ran on Fox for two half seasons (Lena Headey + Garrett Dillahunt + Summer Glau, it was a nice cast), but even then it was the character drama that I enjoyed.  The whole premise of The Terminator has worn kind of thin.  Skynet sends killing machines back in time to kill their future opponent, while their opposition sends someone (or something) back to stop them, rinse, repeat.  It gets a little ridiculous after a while the chicken and the egg thing of who went back in time first... to the point that in this latest entry a character jumps back in time to 1984, only to, ten minutes later, jump forward in time to 2017.  I like time travel movies, but these aren't time travel stories, they're a unified one-note take on man vs machine.

Terminator Genisys (I can never spell that right on the first try) is the latest in a spate of JJ Abrams-style soft remakes/reboots (aka "requel") wherein it doesn't entirely eradicate the past stories but it fan-servicingly uses the established canon to build its new story.  It spends its dire opening minutes reiterating the premise of Terminator...Earth getting nuked when Skynet awakens, the robots take over, humanity resists with John Connor in the lead, etc.  Then we spend some time in the future where the battles still happen...a bloated, meaningless action sequence finds Kyle Reese (Jai Courtney) and John Connor (Jason Clarke) leading one final assault against some place important where I guess John know's they're going to send a terminator back to kill his mother (why only one, they had time to send at least a few).  As the story goes, Reese follows it back.  John has told Kyle all about his mother for years, so Reese's already deified this woman and loves her (John securing his own future since Kyle is his father).  As Reese is getting sent back he witnesses an attack on John by the eleventh Doctor (Matt Smith, who was obviously promised a larger role in subsequent entries that will never happen).  Again, a lengthy sequence that tells us very little new information, instead retelling it with new actors and a few differences to hopefully make a new franchise out of.

Cue up the rehash of the first Terminator, only instead young naked Arnie is fought off by an older, beclothed Arnie and Sarah Conner (Emilia Clarke).  The older Arnie is also a Terminator , nicknamed "Pops", who saved Sarah as a 9-year old and took her under his protection and tutelage.  After defeating 1984 Arnie, they venture off to save Reese (and an unsuspecting police officer) from a T-1000 (who also morphs into a police officer all the time).  The whole first act is entirely a play off of the first two movies, rehashing so many things, only a little different this time, flipping the Sarah and Reese roles where she's the one in the know and he's scrambling to keep up.

This first act is almost pure tedium.  Jai Courtney is practically a non-existent presence on screen, while Emilia Clarke feels like a shadow as Sarah Connor.  There's no life to either of these two characters.  Their conversations all stem around predestination, and it spells out that there's no agency for these characters to really act, they're just being swept along by the plot.  Beyond that there's zero chemistry between them, and the fact that Sarah knows she's supposed to birth the leader of the resistance against Skynet (and Pops keeps pressuring her to mate with Reese) is perhaps the most underplayed aspect.  What does she feel about it? We never really know.  I think we're supposed to, but either Clarke can't play it or the director can't sell it.

The second and third acts are marginally better once we wind up in 2017.  It's a much different world than 1984 (not that Sarah and Reese seem to notice all that much), and two naked people appearing on a freeway amidst a bright explosion gets them immediately arrested and detained for homeland security.  Pops is supposed to be waiting for them, so they're surprised when it's John Connor who turns up to save them.  Turns out though that John was transformed in to a T-3000 (nanites, I guess) and is there to...I dunno. Reese's had visions during his time travels of another life and he knows what they have to do stop him.  The whole "Genisys" plot doesn't make a whole lot of sense, except being yet another "we've got to stop Skynet from coming on line" type event.

The best part of the story is JK Simmons, who was that cop that Sarah inadvertently save when saving Reese from the T1000.  30 years later, he's a crackpot FBI agent who's been investigating the time travelling robot conspiracy while also heavily drinking.  Simmons brings the joint alive every time he's on screen.  What would have been fantastic and far more engaging (and less trite) is if the whole story were told from his outsider perspective.  When the young cop appeared in the first act I even said to the wife, "I hope they take him with them, it would be nice to have an outsider's perspective on this".

Imagine that movie where it starts with Sarah rescuing Reese, and Simmons is saved along the way.  He tries to follow and keeps stumbling in and out of the chase/fight, only to lose them and never find them again.  He's seen the robots and is laughed at by his peers.  Cut to 30 years later and suddenly those same two people emerge again, naked on a freeway and he's got to track them down, witnessing from the outside their very public fight with killer robots (Cloverfield-style).  Meanwhile he's putting the clues together as to what is happening, what they're after, the skynet/Genesys conspiracy.  That would be amazing.  All the action would be indirect, off in the background or witnessed from afar.  It would be thrilling and funny and far more original even though it's presenting roughly the same story.  It's all about perspective.

As is, Simmons flits in and out a couple times, and he's amazing every time, but it's just not enough.  Schwartzenegger is actually pretty fantastic in this (I was for some reason expecting him to be the weak link having been away from acting for so long, which was totally not the case).  For all the lack of chemistry between Courney and Clarke, Schwartzenegger manages to be a stone faced robot and yet the utter heart of this movie.  Taylor does a good job of presenting his T-800 as having aged and matured somewhat as a result.  He's a father by all rights, not just "Pops" in name, and while Clarke contributes to the relationship, it's Arnie that delivers it as something meaningful.  Plus most of the humour comes from Arnie, and it's not rehashed, self-referential bullcrap cliches like in Terminator 3, but it's humour that comes from his character, being an old model robot/paternal figure.

The action in the film, since it's mostly one-on-one fighting (beyond that opening sequence) is pretty good, and quite fun.  They make good use of the settings and of the different Terminator types.  Taylor makes it a really, really good looking film (he would have been and awesome director for that JK Simmons-focussed movie), but the story and script itself is just lacking.

Like David's take, I still quite enjoyed the film, more than its reputation suggested I would.  It had better avenues it could have taken to not be so repetitive, but it's not a badly made movie.  I can understand why Terminator fans haven't taken kindly to it, since it changes almost everything (and everyone) they've know or like about the series.  I also understand why audiences didn't react to it, because it's so inside baseball, you have to really know the series to get a lot of what's happening and why it's fun, or interesting, or funny.