10 for 10: Something Something TV Something Something

  [10 for 10... that's 10 movies  TV shows which we give ourselves 10(ish) minutes a piece 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  TV show we watch.  How about a 10-minute non-review full of half-remembered scattershot thoughts? Surely that's doable?]

In this edition:

1. Never Have I Ever s2 - netflix
2. The Bad Batch s1 - D+
3. MODOK s1 - D+
4. Black Monday S3 - Showtime/Crave
5. Clickbait - netflix
6. Brooklyn Nine-Nine S8 - NBC
7. Locke & Key S2 - netflix
8. Wellington  Paranormal S1 - 3 - crave
9. Lego Masters Season 1&2 - fox/ctv scifi
10. Doom Patrol S3 - space

GO!

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 Oh boy do I ever love Never Have I Ever.  It hits all the teen rom com sweet spots for me and teen rom coms are kind of my least favourite of the rom com genre (because teens are kind of awful). 

I indeed loved season 1, so much so that I happily did a binge re-watch of it just as season 2 was hitting Netflix, after which I was SO excited for season 2...which I was already SO excited for.

The problem now is, I'm writing about it and I can't remember much of what happened...oh, except Devi tried to date both Paxton and Ben at the same time, which wound up in her losing both of them rather quickly, returning Ben to nemesis status. Then her mom starts thinking about moving them to India to be closer to family, and also Devi having a crisis of identity when the new cool girl in school, Aneesa, is also Indian like her but kind of better in every way (or so she thinks).  She accidentally starts a nasty rumour about her which she has to atone for.  It all leads to Devi being forced to reconcile her behavior towards Paxton, Ben, her mom and all her friends, as well as finally addressing the trauma of losing her father last year. (Mississauga native Maitreyi Ramakrishnan is a powerhouse this season as Devi).

Meanwhile Nalini (Devi's mom) discovers that maybe India isn't going to be the supportive return home she's looking for.  So back in LA, she starts getting closer to a super-handsome competitive dermatologist (played by Common) much to Devi's disgust.

Devi's BFF Fabiola starts dating, but hides that she's queer from her mom.  Devi's cousin Kamala, now in a seemingly happy relationship with the man her family arranged to marry, starts having issues at work and he seems less than supportive (traditional roles get examined, and feminism within tradition prodded).  Paxton gets a spotlight episode (with Gigi Hadad doing the narration), and Ben and Aneesa start dating, which sets off alarms in Devi's head?

It's all complex drama, and watching Devi handle these twists poorly over and over, yet still learning from them is both frustrating and rewarding.  She's a fascinating central character, but a complicated one for sure (which is what makes for interesting, entertaining television).  John McEnroe providing her inner monologue is still the most entertaining thing, and he's such a bang-on suitable choice because of his own hot-headed temperment, and his asides into his own personal tennis accomplishments - sometimes related, sometimes not - is just good comedy.

I love this show.  Repeat viewings needed. More episodes needed.  I kind of want to go rewatch it all right now.

[16:14]

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Time was I could spend hours upon hours thinking and writing and talking about Star Wars, any Star Wars.  I have thoughts and feelings about all of it, and a lot invested into that crazy universe.  But, I don't have a lot to say about Star Wars: The Bad Batch.  I don't have complex feelings.  I like it.  It entertains me.  But it doesn't rock the boat, and maybe that makes it just a little... bland.

Picking up from the recent Disney+ release of The Clone Wars Season 7, The Bad Batch follows a quintet of, let's say, aberrant clone troopers at the dawn of the Galactic Empire.  The clones are Hunter (an expert tracker with a strange face tattoo), Tech (he's got super smarts and is good with gadgets), Wrecker (who is big, abnormally strong, and kind of dim), Crosshair (a sniper with a chip on his shoulder), and Echo (a "regular" clone who was experimented upon and decided to join with the Bad Batch).  

In the pilot, the Batch meet their sister, Omega, who was not rapidly aged as they were so is still a pre-teen girl.  Together they escape the dismantling of the cloning facility by the Empire, as well as manage to avoid the effects of Order 66.  Except that Crosshair swears loyalty to the Empire, and becomes their number one enemy/pursuer.  They take on mercenary work-for-hire roles, including rescuing a rancor and facing down bounty hunters (Cad Bane returns).

There's a lot of emphasis on found family, and they meet new friends along the way (Rhea Perlman plays their handler, and she's great).  The show operates within the era of the building of the Empire, so it's intriguing to see that in its nascent form, an element I wish they would hit even harder.

I was iffy about Omega at first (as I always am when Star Wars introduces a youthful character) but she fast becomes utterly endearing and is never grating (the New Zealand accent is one of my favourite things).  This show is almost entirely devoid of The Force which makes it stick out from most other Star Wars.  

I like what happens in this show, but I'm not as enamored with it as I was with Rebels.  It's very much a continuation of Clone Wars, if only more focussed.  The animation picks up much of the Clone Wars aesthetic with a bit of a paintbrush feel.  It often looks outstanding, there's some great set and environment designs.

[30:44]

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The animated series MODOK is, of course, an anomaly in the current Marvel catalog.  Since Disney+ launched, basically all Marvel programming has fallen under Marvel studios careful watch.  All other programs that were running had stopped and any in-flight productions were cancelled (RIP New Warriors...they robbed me of a live action Squirrel Girl).  

MODOK (as well as a handful of other projects, including the upcoming Hit Monkey) were announced around the same time as all these other things were winding down, and the new slate of Marvel programming at Disney+ was ramping up.  These shows would not be Disney+ shows, but airing on rival streaming service Hulu (in the US at least), and all would be adult animation.  It was a weird decision, but not an unwelcome one.

Behind MODOK is comedian(/actor/writer) and nerd extraordinaire Patton Oswalt along with Jordan Blum and produced with Stoopid Buddy Stoodios who also make the long-running animated action figure sketch comedy Robot Chicken.  The series uses the stop-motion puppets that Soopid Buddy has perfected, and employs a lot of the physical comedy language that series has used for over a decade and a half.

The story of MODOK, the "Mental Organism Designed Only for Killing", is surprisingly a dual family/workplace comedy.  It follows MODOK as the leader of AIM (Advanced Idea Mechanics) where he has no shortage of rivals looking to usurp him, and no shortage of minions who he feels are completely undermining him.  At home, his marriage is falling apart, and his children have no respect for him.

What could have been a bog standard animated show, which resets its norm after each episode is instead an ongoing character study of this very, very unusual man, as his life crumbles before him and he needs to build it back up.  He gets his greatest enemy in himself (thanks to some wonky time travel) and manages to team up with his former greatest enemy, Iron Man (Jon Hamm).  He also has a rivalry with Hollywood superstar superhero Wonder Man (Nathan Fillion) who starts dating MODOK's wife.

It's a funny show, featuring occasionally extreme puppet violence that somehow is surprisingly endearing in painting a portrait of a sad-sack killing machine, but it's one for the nerds...like me.

[42:39]

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I just recently wrote about Black Monday Season 2, which was a wild, sometimes very bloody mess of a run set in the fast-times world of a Wall Street stock brokerage firm in 1990 (and rapidly expanding outside of that).  Season 3 we watched hot on the heels of Season 2, and it presented a story of even greater scope and ambition, with more extremes, that managed to somehow still feel overly contained.

Dawn (Regina Hall) is fresh out of jail.  Mo (Don Cheadle) is running his own record label now, and ready to settle down with Dawn.  But the nature of their relationship makes progressing it a very painful experience and Mo winds up engaged to one of his new musical prodigies instead.

Blair (Andrew Rannells) meanwhile, is now a politician (sacrificing all dignity and integrity posing as a Republican gay) but gets shot at a rally. Following the attempt on his life is more attempts on his life as well as a few more successful attempts on the lives of others in the orbit of the "Jammer Group".  Oh, yes, there's a serial killer on the loose.

So the gang, having all fractured by late in the season (as they do every year) must come together and devise an absurd plot to out the killer.

Stepping away from the Wall Street satire, Black Monday does lose a sense of purpose, but it doubles down on its characters and the arcs in presents them.  Thinning out the peripheral cast by killing them off just further emphasizes the show's commitment to this likeable if nothing-but-flawed group of not-friends.

I like Black Monday a lot.  I want to love it but it's characters maybe a little too cruel, and too lacking in self awareness, and the outlook a little too bleak to be something I want to celebrate and view over and over.  That said, it is pretty damn outlandish, and there's not a lot of that type of comedy going around (at least in live action).

[56:58]

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Clickbait  was HUGE for Netflix a few months back, one of those limited series that people binged in one or two sittings, just pulled through its tawdry story, and ironically a viral sensation.

But it's also one of those shows that's all empty calories, a tasty meal you don't even remember having a couple days later.

So what the hell is Clickbait?

Ah, right.  This guy (Adrien Grenier - Entourage) is kidnapped, and his kidnappers put him up on a video on a youtube analog, with him holding signs saying "I hurt women" and that at 5,000,000 views, he dies.

His family, and the police and others start digging into his past, into his web history, into his accounts that start to reveal a history of joining dating sites and carrying on relationships with women who are not his wife.  There's also insinuation that may something inappropriate happened between him and one of the college-age volleyball players whom he is a sports massage therapist for.

This is a critique on the nature for people to pile-on to a situation with only the thinnest of information, to form judgements without facts, and to treat clickbait headlines as "all the information I need to make a decision".  It's actually pretty sharp in that regards, though the series needs to work some serious gymnastics to get to the ultimate reveal and then pile on some stakes that, seriously, just don't feel right, or earned.

That said, it is a compelling view, one that deliberately pulls you through it. Each episode shifts point-of-view to a different character, hitting harder that idea that even with multiple perspectives you may still not be getting the whole truth, the whole story.  There is a savvy statement underneath this pulpy, trashy show.

It's not a must watch, but it certainly fits the bill if you want something propulsive and bingeable...it's the TV equivalent of a bag of potato chips.

[1:06:24]

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I can't believe that Brooklyn Nine-Nine has run for 8 years, and that it's over.  I still remember putting it down as a show to watch in a Fall TV Preview back in 2013.  Looking at the other shows that I listed along with it, only a few lasted more than a season or two, and none of them lasted as long as B99...and none of them I really enjoyed except B99.

About 2 or 3 years ago, I let my daughter start watching it, and she immediately became obsessed with it.  She's watched every episode at least three or four times over, some of her favourite episodes I'm sure she's seen dozens of times.  It was really hard for her to let go of the show.  She put off watching the final 2-part episode, until I convinced her of its greatness and sat down and watched it with her.  There were tears.  Michael Shur has given us three of the greatest series enders with B99, Parks and Recreation, and The Good Place.  He's figured out how to close out a long running/beloved show with satisfaction and sentimentality, without being treacly.  He knows how to deliver series enders that feel important, grander than just another episode, yet still fit as part of the whole.  

Here he does that with one of the show's famous "heist" episodes (where the key players of the department participate in a friendly competition that means more to all of them than it logically should).  I might even say that it's perhaps the best of the heist episodes, and they're all highlights of the show.

Even before the two-part finale, the show had a lot to deal with coming back: Black Lives Matter, defund the police, COVID-19... they all are brought into the series opener, and then put down a thread underneath the show that is not just story beats, but actual resonance with the characters.  The stress of BLM and systemic racism in police structures took a toll on Holt and broke up his marriage to Kevin (poor Cheddar lives in two homes now).  Of course Jake makes it his mission to reconcile them but it's not as simple or easy as he thinks.  Rosa quits the police force and becomes an advocate for marginalized individuals who experience police harassment.  They face off against a police officers union representative (John C. McGinley in a most disgustingly earnest repeat role), which hits its climax when Jake makes a wrongful arrest, and has to decide whether he wants to fight via the union or accept a semi-just punishment... does he take advantage of a broken system or set an example no one will notice or follow?

B99 still stayed funny and absurd in spite of the weight of the changing world on its back, and not a lot of sitcoms have ever managed serious issues without sacrificing the comedy for the "very special episode".  I'll miss you B99, it was a good run, but it was your time to go.

[1:23:12]

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I wrote my history with the comics of Locke and Key in my season 1 10-for-10 write up, my general sentiment being that the show did some things the comic did well and did its own things well but had a general problem with tone.  Was I excited for season 2 of Locke and Key? Not so much, and the first episode was a big soggy noodle of an episode that threatened to stop me watching altogether.

Season 2 returns with an all-teen-drama all-the-time episode that just drove me bonkers.  I turned to my wife and said "I'm here for the magic keys and demon fightings, not teen drama".  The show used the first episode as a cleanser as well as a refresher for the second season, a way to establish that Tyler's girlfriend Jackie is aging out of her understanding of magic, that Kinsey is still painfully unaware that Gabe is Dodge (and some other love triangle crap), that Bodie is lonely, that Uncle Dunc is having trouble adjusting to life in Keyhouse, that Nina, having put her alcoholism into remission, needs something else in her life, and that Gabe is escalating his plans... he wants to make his own key.

These threads then play out over the subsequent 9 episodes, and there's a lot of fun magic key action.  What's frustrating is the sheer ineptitude of the Locke family to use the keys effectively.  I mean, it's believable enough that these kids aren't warriors, they're not really experienced in fighting demons or crafting elaborate plans, but geez.  They're the new "Keepers of the Keys" and they manage to lose SO MANY of them to demons who can't forcefully take the keys from them.

The actor playing Gabe/Dodge, Griffin Gluck, I've liked in other projects, and last season he was fine as Gabe (before we knew he was also Dodge), but here when he has to go into menacing he only sometimes pulls it off.  He looks like a young Joseph Gordon Levitt, and there's not a lot of sinister happening in that face.  That all said, you really do just want to give him a smack all.the.time.

There's some absolutely great moments of intensity this season, some real pulse pounding sequences of the Lockes putting themselves into jeopardy, not because they're being stupid, but because they're being daring.  There's also some good creepiness here, but the show's production design doesn't really lean into it.  It was part of the complaint about season 1, that horror should be a definite element of the show and it's by and large side stepped.

The first episode not-withstanding, as well as a late in season 2 flashback episode that really doesn't tell us anything we don't already know, this was really quite fun.  Not perfect, but fun.  It deviates wildly from the comics while still utilizing much of what the comics established, so it's not feeling like a retread. I've come out feeling more positive about season 2 than I did season 1.

[1:38:12]

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It's always hard to write about comedy in a way that actually sells the comedy and does it justice.  I have in the past described whole scenes or tried to detail jokes which I know don't really serve the actual comedy well.  Comedy is not meant to be explained.  Explaining why something's funny only dulls the potency.  

So, that said, for the three seasons, 18 episodes (so far), of Wellington Paranormal, I'm just going to hit upon some touch points that will either give you the reader an "I'm in" or "Pass" result.

Wellington Paranormal was created by Flight of the Conchords' Jemaine Clement and super-director Taika Waititi.  Clement acts as showrunner, I believe, and has a more active hand in the series, while Waititi is just an executive producer.  It is actually an offshoot of What We Do In The Shadows, the 2015 movie (which itself spun off into the ongoing FX series of the same name).

Wellington Paranormal is set in Wellington, New Zealand and follows O'Leary and Minogue, two police officers who have been tasked by Maaka, their Sergeant, to head the "Paranormal Crimes" division.

Wellington isn't a super metropolis so the type of crime that Minogue and O'Leary are used to facing is mostly domestic disturbances, street crime, break-ins that sort of thing.  They have a very particular demeanor when handling people they encounter in these situations (it's asking a lot of rhetorical questions) and they approach the paranormal with the same casualness, until situations escalate and Minogue typically freaks out.

The same conceit of What We Do In The Shadows is employed here, which is that the officers are being followed by a documentary crew.  Toasty mentioned in a recent review how he prefers found footage to this documentary style, but for comedy (not necessarily horror) it works well enough (see also The Office, Parks and Recreation, Modern Family etc).  The thing that Wellington Paranormal does with its documentary footage that is unique, however, is it acknowledges that documentary footage is/has been captured (in one episode in season two and another in season three, the cops reference the fact that they've seen the documentary What We Do In The Shadows, which I love).

I found the series to be hilarious from the get go, right in my wheelhouse humour-wise.  I giggle incessantly during the show.  The storytelling and the types of paranormal encounters they experience get ever more creative as the series progresses, to the point that season three has many of the series highs (though I did like the pod people of season 1 and the follow-up episode even more...there's actually some continuity).

The show is goofy, silly comedy, relying a lot upon the officious mannerisms of O'Leary and the denseness of Minogue, but it also is very often exceptionally clever with its use of paranormal activity and later episodes toy with horror convention much more than the earlier ones do.

This will go on the "rewatch often" pile.  I think it's funnier than What We Do In The Shadows.

[ok, one joke... one of my favourite lines in the show.  Sergeant Maaka asking his assembly of officers if anyone has seen his missing box of jam donuts his grandma made. "My name was clearly written on the side of the box! 'Maaka' written in marker."  The New Zealand accent truly is one of my favourite things.]

[1:53:57]

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 I'm long past my point of enthusiasm or interest in "reality TV".  There are some people who subsist almost solely on them for their entertainment diet, and I pity them. In recent years the only "reality TV" I have watched/binged is Nailed It, a baking show where the contestants are knowingly set up to fail in trying to bake elaborate cakes and things beyond their capacity, yet try their best anyway (in a time too short to *actually* accomplish it) with hilarious results.  But I'm not here to talk about Nailed It.

Lego Masters I started PVRing for my stepson, who is a Lego buff and seemingly more so as he ages.  I thought the show would be something he would really be keen on, programming directed directly at him.

Alas, he mostly plays video games, and occasionally watches murder procedurals.

I just put an episode on while killing time, just to see, and while all the usual manipulative bullshit editing of reality TV is still there (just show me the people building!) by the half hour mark of this hour long show the projects are built and the judging commences.

And wow, what some of these people build is outstanding, and like any specialty form of art, whether it's cakes or blown glass or metal forging or home renovating, you have to have at least a passing interest to really care, but it's probably possible for anyone to appreciate the skill and craft put into these Lego diaramas or constructs.

Lego Masters is a rare show where it's relatively clear who are the strong and who are the weak each episode.  There's no upset-for-sake-of-drama, and the contestants are all very, very supportive of one another.  The challenges they face are frequently very challenging and even though they may sometimes cater to a strong skill of one designer or another, it doesn't guarantee anything.

Some of the challenges, my favourites actually, involve stress testing the designs, whether holding up in strong winds, or to a shaking foundation, or to weight put atop them.  It's impressive what those little plastic bricks can do.

We watched about half of season two before catching a marathon of Season 1 (only catching the latter half of Season 1) and then finishing season two.  They're immensely interesting to watch, to see what they're asked to do and to see what each team comes up with.  Will Arnett hosts and is amiable enough to not be annoying, and smart enough to know when his dumb jokes are dumb, and play into them.

I kind of got hooked.

[2:06:06]

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Doom Patrol, season 3 baby!  It's still airing as I write this, but I'm just so enthused that I have to say that the best special effect on the show is Brendan Frasier's swearing.  

As the series progresses, the showrunners seem to be on a mission to have the most swears per minute of any form of entertainment ever (they've got to have beaten Deadwood by this point).  Frasier is the king of swearing in the show (and now in real life), but he's obviously been training the rest of the cast because all of them have gotten very, very good at hitting those swears for maximum comedic punctuation.

But Frasier's voice coming out of Robotman/Cliff Steele is just one of the absolute best things on Earth.  The way Cliff swears makes me laugh every.time.  It's like when a child swears not knowing that what they're saying is inappropriate...that's how Cliff swears.  And he does it so, so much, and with such gusto. [Edit.  Just watched episode 8, and there is, what may be, the best scene on TV this year, with Robotman (the guy in the suit) meeting a physical subconscious entity of Cliff Steele (actual Fraser) and the "What.the.fuuuck?" exchange is fucking goddamn deliriously fucking glorious.]

This season has been an interesting affair, with a lot of plot lines that don't seem to really go anywhere and a main plot line that has unseen purpose.  The arrival of Michelle Gomez to the cast has been a fucking delight.  She's just an absolutely compelling presence with the driest of dry British humour.

The show has sent Rita, in search of purpose, time traveling.  It's sent Larry off into space and back again with a little lump inside him.  It's solidified Cliff's reunion with his daughter and welcomed in a grandson he loves to bits, but also given him something more serious to avoid (or deal with irrationally).  As for Jane, she's trying to liberate her host, Kay, to help her be well and take control, but the other personalities are ready to go to war in a fight for self-preservation. Cyborg struggles with his identity, and identifying the trauma of what his father has done to him.  Oh, and Chief's dead, and the Sisterhood of Dada are brought in as their main ...not antagonists, but, rather...thing... for this season (with the Brotherhood of Evil, led by a petty, petty Brain [he's a brain in a big, immobile, metal skull] and Monseur Mallah [a French-speaking gorilla wearing a beret] rearing their heads).  

[Edit: episode 8, even ignoring the great Robotman/Cliff "what the fuck?"-off, is maybe the best episode of the series yet as each character has to face off with their subconscious self, and it gets, real, real deep.  It's a potent, but still very very wild episode].

Doom Patrol is not a superhero show.  It's a comic book show, yes, and it features people with super powers, yes, but they're quick to point out they're not superheroes.  Early in the season one of them points out that they won't bother to intervene in something bad happening because they seem to just make things worse whenever they do... so they're just going to sit it out and veg, loaf, whatever.

It's a bizarre entity but always unexpected, and even if a particular plot doesn't resonate, man all that swearing will elicit more than a few hearty chuckles.

[2:18:29] (only 60 minutes over..sigh)

---FIN---

I Saw This!! What I Have Been Watching (Kent Edition) - ANOTHER Another One

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our feature wherein Kent(me) or Toasty attempt to write about a bunch of stuff they watched some time ago and meant to write about but just never got around to doing so. But we can't not write cuz that would be bad, very bad.  Everything's bad bad.

What I Am/Have Been Watching is the admitted state of typically Toast, but in this case, Kent, spending too much time in front of the TV. But what else has the pandemic been about if not toobin? Sure, we got a few breaks from being confined at home, and might have actually gone outside (gasp!) and socialized with (double-gasp!) human beings (faint-dead-away) but we always ended up back on the sofa, flicker in hand, trying to find something to watch amidst the many streaming services pillaging our credit cards every month...and yeah, Kent still has cable. 

---

Like last time, since these are all subsequent seasons or spinoffs of things I've already watched/reviewed, I'm going to reread (and link to) my review(s) of previous seasons and see what, if anything, different I have to say about them in comparison.

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Stranger Things Season 4 pt.1 - Netflix
Season 1 | Season 3

I called Season 1 of Stranger Things a masterpiece, and it remains so.  It's one of those first seasons that's basically so perfect, it was almost futile to continue on because it could only be downhill from there.  Season 2 was certainly a drop, with a few detours along rocky roads along the way.  Season three, for it's part, started climbing that hill, trying, but not quite making it back to the top.  With season 4, three years later, it's Running Up That Hill, but with the realization it's not going to reach that perfect peak.  Instead, it finding the closest plateau and just going to circle.  

I've run this analogy into the ground, all for the sake of a tremendously on-point Kate Bush joke, but the truth is still there: Season 4 is not quite the equal of Season 1, but it's pretty damn fantastic, at least so far.  There have been gripes and complaints bandied about regarding both the split Parts 1 & 2 of the season (a roughly 6 week gap between) and the length of the episodes this season (all running over an hour, most at 75 minutes or more), a lot of the complaints levied in advance of the show's airing.  Frankly, the show, almost every episode, earns its runtime.  The only episode I found was maybe a little drawn out was the 90-minute 7th episode where it perhaps teased too much rather than got on with things.  As for the splitting of  the season, I can only say it's likely to give everyone time to binge before all the shit starts going down, and it's a way for Netflix to keep subscribers from cancelling for two more months.  I really think Netflix should have released these as weekly appointment episodes, really let the fans savour them.  As much as we wanted to binge it all, we only really had time for one episode a night with some gapping between nights.  It was kind of exciting and really gave us something specific to look forward to on the same level as the Marvel or Star Wars shows on Disney+.

As for the content of the season, it breaks the cast up into at least four, if not more, bands, and it really, really works.  What Stranger Things has done quite amazingly well over its four seasons is cast well and then develop their characters.  While the first season had an amazing cast, I imagine the show would feel pretty tired if it we were mostly just following Mike, Lucas, Will, Dustin and Eleven.  Steve, Hopper, Joyce, Max, Robin all have become utterly great focal characters for the show, and this season, by separating Jonathan and Nancy, both of those characters have managed to come into their own in a much more natural way than what the show was trying to force feed before.  But we also get this season a bigger spotlight for Brett Gelman's Murray, and wonderful newer additions in Jonathan's stoner friend Argyle (Eduardo Franco), dungeon master/anarchist Eddie (Joseph Quinn), and a pair of entertaining mock-Russians in Dmitri (Tom Wlaschiha) and Yuri (Nikola Djuricko).  The show's even given Officer Reynolds more of a spotlight this season, having finally gotten around to realizing Search Party's John Reynolds hapless schtick is so much fun.

This season has hopper in a Siberian prison, with little hope of escape, it has some of the kids in Hawkins facing another incursion from the Upside Down - a very specific Freddie Kreuger-meets-Pinhead inspired nemesis this time - but having to sleuth out a mystery.  Eleven is on a journey back to the labs to rediscover her powers but also learn some horrible truths, while some of the other kids are on a mission to rescue her.  Plus there's a secret war going on between the government and the labs, and the Russians are still experimenting with the Upside Down, and the bad guy is seriously something else the kids just aren't prepared to face.   And it's not all plot, it's really digging deep into these characters (the characters getting the shortest shrift, however are Matthew Modine and Paul Riser, neither one getting any real growth or revelations).  By the end of the 90-minute 7th episode, it's set the dominoes up for a pretty spectacular display as they fall.  The Duffers could muff it, but this season is so strong, I think they've got it.

---
Atlanta Season 3 - FX
Season 1

I haven't written about Atlanta since early in the first season, way back in 2016.  As long a break as we've had from Stranger Things, we've had an even longer break for Atlanta.  In between, a lot has happened, both on the show, and in the world that the show is a reflection on.  

Donald Glover has gone on from being the "wunderkind" multi-hyphenate that he was as the first season launched to being a true auteur but also one of America's finest cultural critics.  He's been very concerned about the status of the Black community, and has a lot to say about it in an exceptionally contemplative fashion, both on a micro and macro scale.  

Glover has also been really concerned with both celebrity and status, and it shows in Atlanta through both the character he plays, Earn, and Al, aka Paper Boi, Earn's cousin who he manages, and has taken him from local mixtape celeb to an international superstar.  Earn has capitalized on Al's success, but he also is a big part of Al's success.  But as Al's status rises so too does the potential for Earn to be overshadowed, or underappreciated.  Al, tries to keep it real, but realizes that both his recognizability and his money no longer keep him at the street level from which he came.  The situations he finds himself in are not those of the first season, the awkward encounters of being cash strapped and hungry, but of the upper eschelon that act pretty much as a warning to desiring celebrity. 

Season 1 of Atlanta, although full of detours into specific moments. was still mostly a cohesive narrative.  Season 2 really started to lean into the detours as a focus, with occasional episodes that are completely removed and just pull you aside on a mini-movie journey.  Season 3 is mostly interested in detours, its interested in singular stories, rather than ongoing narrative, and its interesting in pushing boundaries of storytelling and the reality of its setting.  

Many of Season 3's episodes are fully detached from its main cast, with nary a Glover, Brian Tyree Henry, Zazie Beetz or Lakeith Stanfield to be seen.  The first episode of the season was a fable about a boy put into foster care only to become basically an indentured servant along with his foster siblings, and plot his escape.  It's a commentary both on Black children (boys specifically) and Black family dynamics are misunderstood by the systems that supposed to support them.  But it's also a ripped-from-the-headlines horror story, but with a pleasantly twisty ending, where the "troubled youth" gets to be the hero.  

A couple episodes later, were taken into a alternate reality where reparations litigation becomes the norm, but as told as a supposed "horror story" from the perspective of the normal middle-aged white guy being pursued.  But it's a dark comedy with a kind fantasy resolution where society kind of has finally embraced equality, at least in the limited sense of black-and-white.  A few episodes still we get another stand-alone that, well, I'm still parsing out what it was trying to say.  It involves a  white family whose  young child has been primarily raised by his Trinidadian nanny, as mostly told from the parent's point of view, the child definitely showing the influences of who raised him.  And a couple episodes later a deep exploration of Blackness, from the perspective of a bi-racial teen who primarily identifies with white preppy culture, but then, when an offer of free college tuition for all black students, he gets judged on his blackness and suffers a crisis of identity. It comes to a head in a real gut-punch action-horror fashion.

So 4 of the 10 episodes do not feature the series main cast (all of whom are now superstars since even before Season 2 aired).  What we do get is a spotlight episode for each character, with Al getting a really trippy insider tour of Amsterdam, Dairus learning that even his just-go-with-it attitude won't spare him from the disappointments of the world (like the co-opting of food culture) and the season ends with Van's really surreal new life in Paris through the eyes of a friend from back home that exposes the breakdown she's going through. 

Glover has used Atlanta as a playground in the past, but here it's its most assured, and, despite not having a cohesive narrative to the season, its most focused.  With each episode Glover knows what he wants to say, but never delivers his message in a conventional way.  There's still a comedian in Glover, and this season is frequently outrageous and conceptually audacious.  There's sort of a Black Mirror or Jordan Peele vibe throughout, playing with horrific concepts but with a bit of a wink and a bit of archness that doesn't cut the severity but relieves the tension.  

I don't use brilliant easily, but Atlanta is brilliant, and most of these episodes have kept me thinking long after watching.

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Barry Season 3 - HBO
Season 1 & 2

Speaking of shows that haven't been around for a while, it's been 3 years since season 2 of Barry and I wasn't really sure I wanted to continue.  When last I left Barry, I wasn't keen of the story of a bad man who's trying to be good but can't escape his nature, and is dragging other people down with him.  Well, Season 3 starts up, and I've changed by tune.  He's not dragging other people down with him...cynically, they were already down there, but are now in the position to reveal their wolve's teeth.  Two episodes in, and I said "I don't really like any of these people and I'm not sure I care."  But the season, if it has a purpose, it's to show all these characters that their behaviour, their actions, they have consequences, and in the world of Barry, those consequences are, well, unexpected, and ridiculously entertaining.  

And then we get Episode 7, "Forgiving Jeff", which like Season 2: Episode 5 ("ronny/lily"), is one of the greatest action sequences ever on a television show.  The build is only a small part of what makes the sequence so good, I think even as a standalone piece, it's pretty exceptional.  It's not doing anything particularly flashy, but it's so well crafted, brilliantly shot, and full of wonderfully unexpected moments that make it unforgettable.  Just like "ronny/lily" this one is going to live beyond whatever else the series is about.  Hader, as a writer and director, really needs to get his hands on a big budget to make his own motion picture action/comedy.  It might possibly be a huge success, but more likely would be a slow burn cult hit for years to come.  

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Wellington Paranormal Season 4 - Crave
Seasons 1-3

I was not expecting another season of Wellington Paranormal but was tremendously excited when it turned up.  It's another 6 episodes of incredibly entertaining paranormal Kiwi silliness.

This season we get a bird woman terrorizing the city (and a temporary love interest for Sarge), the WP take on small-town cults,  Sarge getting possessed by an old white ghost, and some time-travel shenanigans resulting from a literal worm-hole.

The season's best episode, "The Coolening", involves a haunted 80's leather jacket that makes its wearer a tremendously confident and stereotypically 1980's cool person. Of course each of the main cast get a turn in the coat, but its power is addictive.  

WP is such an of-the-week type comedy that there's very little in the way of character development or growth, but we do get a B-story that follows Parker - not a member of the Paranormal team - on his normal rounds, to find that he's a surprisingly capable supercop, but only has thoughts of being part of the Paranormal team.  It's a great joke that gets increasingly funny as his situation (and apathy towards it) escalates.

While maybe not the sharpest comedy, it's such an easily digestible series, and immensely fun.  

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A Black Lady Sketch Show Season 3 - HBO
Season 1 | Season 2

Another season of A Black Lady Sketch Show and another bit of casting shaking, mainly in Laci Mosley's departure.  At this point it's evident that Robin Thede as creator and showrunner is the driving force of the series, but it needs the talents of its other cast members, and it seems that Thede has found her most stable cast with Ashley Nicole Black, Gabrielle Dennis, and Skye Townsend.  These are talented comedic actors who craft fun and funny characters for every piece.  There's comedy in specificity, and with ABLSS every sketch comes from a specific premise, and then plays that premise to sometimes ridiculous extremes, other times very subtle ones.

Like prior seasons the opening sequence is similar but not the same, each episode changing just a little from before, enough to make you pay attention or even keep the finger on the pause button to read the increasingly lengthy text that pops up on screen.  Structurally ABLSS has its framing formulae, and each season plays with it to keep it fresh, intriguing and entertaining.  Framing sequences are often a weak spot for sketch comedy series, just a basic device to introduce sketches, but here it's an ongoing narrative that give the performers, playing themselves, to show who they are as a comedic personality.

I've been learning about how Black women have been tremendously underserved, harmfully represented, tokenized and all manner of disrespected in comedy throughout history. In some respects A Black Lady Sketch Show needs to exist regardless of its quality.  HBO has certainly put money behind it -- the sketches are all very well produced -- but it doesn't matter unless it delivers the funny, and it does at that.  While I can easily say I'm not the target market for this show, and a lot of the show's humour frequently goes over my head as beyond my frame of reference (sometimes culturally, sometimes gender-ly, sometimes both) but even then the performances are where it stands out and it's open enough for anyone to come in.  

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Human Resources Season 1 - Netflix
[Big Mouth Season 1 | Season 4]

Over 5 seasons the raunchy, heartfelt Netflix animated coming-of-age comedy Big Mouth introduced a whole other fantastical realm of creatures that influence our lives.  Hormone Monsters, Shame Wizards, Love Bugs-turned-Hate Worms, and Depression Kitties each season an escalation of what came before, used as parable for the emotional development of teenagers as they develop through puberty.  They are effective metaphors that took on a life of their own as the show's creators obviously really enjoyed playing in that realm, and the performers (including notables like Maya Rudolph, David Thewlis, and Thandiwe Newton) really chewed up their lines, and spit out gold.

I was dubious about a spin-off, as what works so well with Big Mouth is the balance of the human world with a smattering of this fantastical realm.  I thought, maybe, that spending more time there would dilute its impact.  I was most definitely wrong.  Big Mouth is as potent as it is funny but it still is constrained by its "human" cast of characters and their being pre-teens.   I mean, for as constrained as they are, they still get up to some huge flights of fancy...but I digress.

Human Resources allows the Big Mouth creators to move to a whole other level.  I mean, yes, it could have just been a weird workplace sitcom, but it has bigger ambitions.  Like Big Mouth it still has things to say amidst all its weirdness.

Like a perverted Monsters, Inc. crossed with a horny Inside Out, Human Resources really gets to play in the sandbox of human emotions by way of a reality of creatures who exist to manipulate said emotions.  Our lead character is Love Bug Emmy (Aidy Bryant) who is completely out of her depth in her role having accidentally gotten her mentor (voiced by Pamela Adlon) fired and is now tasked with taking the lead with a complicated "client" Becca (Ali Wong) who is pregnant and maybe unhappy in her marriage.  Across Emmy's journey is her own self doubt showing that despite the fact that these creatures are tailored to a specific emotion, they're not always inherently good at dealing with their emotions.  It can get a bit trippy thinking to much about it, but the creatures within this sphere also have a bit of influence on each other.

Maurice, Connie, Rick, Lionel and every other creature seen in Big Mouth appear in the show, but Maurice and Connie, who are spotlight creatures in Big Mouth take supporting roles here so as not to overplay them.  New creatures are introduced, Logic Rocks like Pete (Randall Park), Petra the Ambition Gremlin (Rosie Perez), Dante the Addiction Angel (Hugh Jackman), and Tito the Anxiety Mosquito (Maria Bamford).  There's more and more in the background teasing an even richer world to explore, but they definitely do a thoroughly satisfying job in the first season of proving just how worthy this world is to exist in.

Getting away from the hormonal, primarily white middle-school kids of Big Mouth (and also the pseudo-autobiographical nature derived from creators Nick Kroll and Andrew Goldberg) allows Human Resources to branch out culturally to delve deeper into stories involving queer and non-binary tales as well as cultural stories and stories about adults who are still slaves to their emotions (as we all still kind of are).  One story, a love story between a human and a love bug that has a lot to say about the tragedy of relationships that burn bright but are unhealthy long turn, is, as is Big Mouth's style, counter-punched by an incredibly silly story of Maruice's underground cock-fighting ring, and his little Rocky-esque champion.  Thankfully they don't counter-punch the next episode which very specifically focuses on loss and grief and is an absolutely beautiful, affecting piece of television.

Much like Big Mouth, it feels like Human Resources is getting away with something, but I think unlike Big Mouth it's not trying as hard to.  It strangely seems more focused than Big Mouth, and I guess more mature...there's a lot less talking genitalia at least.  A worthy expansion.

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Star Trek: Strange New Worlds Season 1 - CTV Scifi

I loved Star Trek: Discovery's first season for daring to do something different with Star Trek but the fan reaction demanded a shift, and that came in Season 2 which introduced some of the new crew of the Enterprise - Captain Pike (Anson Mount), Number One (Rebecca Romijn), and Spock (Ethan Peck).  Discovery, early in its second season really acted like it wanted to be old episodic Trek but it was still really stuck in building to something bigger.  Mount and Peck, however, proved themselves capable of taking on the legacy roles and bringing something new without dishonouring the past.  That they were to get their own spinoff was welcome news.  But what would this new series be?  This new age of Trek has been a challenging one, so would going back ten years before TOS really be wise, or welcome?

The answer is a resounding yes.  Part-way into Strange New Worlds' first season and the sense is that they're finally doing Trek like Trek... episodically.  Rather than building a big over-arching plot, they seem to instead just be threading in small character journies.  Rather than propulsive binge television they're reverting to a-mission-a-week format that just...feels...right.  It feels like proper Trek.  Yes, it does take place before TOS, and the sets and effects and costumes and make-up are all shinier and much more impressive, but at its heart it's telling the same type of story, so it fits.  Discovery, in telling a very different, darker, more character-driven story its first season, couldn't properly resolve its technological differences between itself and TOS, but here, with sympatico storytelling, it doesn't matter.

Casting hasn't been Trek's problem.  Most of the cast of Discovery and Picard have been uniformly great, and the same can be said here.  Obviously Mount, Peck and Romijn came pre-cast, but the rest of the crew are quickly revealing themselves as likeable new additions to the fan culture.  There's once again some re-casting of old roles with new faces.  Most immediately is Celia Rose Gooding as Uhura.  She's got such big shoes to fill, but she gets the spotlight role of the second episode and nails it completely (one of my favourite Trek episodes in a very long time).  Nurse Chapel is now played by Jess Bush, who, somehow, always has a little twinkle in her eye.  She's sexy without being sexualized, and bisexual, which in the narrow reaches of representation in Star Trek still feels rather novel.

Helmsman Erica Ortegas has a certain pilot's swagger but without being unlikeably douchey.  The new doctor, M'Benga (Babs Olusanmokun) has a wonderful bedside disposition so as to be immediately endearing, while the new security officer, La'an Noonien-Singh (Christina Chong) quickly surpasses the need to tie her into the Khan mythos.  Bruce Horek is under piles of prostetics as Hemmer, the chief engineer, and resident curmudgeon.  As a blind character (but with enhanced other senses) there's an opportunity for a certain other type of differently abled representation (beyond Geordi LaForge) but, as yet, I haven't seen it in this character without delving into the superpowered solution.  There's no understanding or inference of how anything works differently on the ship for a blind person/alien.

It's a great looking show, and so far the episodes have been fun and stereotypical in the best way possible.  I hope they don't try, at all, to introduce an over-arching story, they've kind of nailed it right out the gate.  It doesn't make for essential watching, but it does make for delicious comfort watching.

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Pacific Rim: The Black Season 2 - Netflix
Season 1

Despite my aversion to Anime and my disappointment with PR: Uprising, I quite enjoyed season one of PR: The Black.  It didn't necessarily explore the parts of the PR reality that I maybe wanted them to with Uprising but they did explore a part of the PR reality and that was enough to hook me back in.  Plus, it wasn't really Anime.  Sure the visual style of the show is tres Anime but the story was created and written by American writers (the showrunners are creators Greg Johnson and veteran Marvel comics and cartoon writer Craig Kyle) so its story sensibilites are far more Western.

Season two picks up where season one left off, with the motley band of orphaned youths making their way in their appropriated Jaeger to Sydney base, and encountering all the strange things The Black (this abandoned section of Australia) has to offer.   They meet early on a Kaiju-wrangler (voiced by Rhys Darby) who seems to have tamed the great beasts, but anyone who has seen Grizzly Man should have an inkling about how this will turn out.  There's also a coven of Kaiju-worshipping witches who seem to be at least partially inspired by the twin fairy priestesses from Mothra, except of a much more malevolent nature.  They seem to, through their majicks, have developed the ability to influence Kaiju with their chanting, and seem completely fixated on Boy, the human-Kaiju hybrid as their central figure of worship, their savior.

I was worried with the second season, much as I was with the first, that it would be dragged down by spinning wheels plot and story.  But, the second, much as with the first, doesn't ever get comfortable nor settle into anything remotely resembling a status quo.  Whenever the story seems to be veering into a predictable story pattern, something unpredictable happens, yet it's always something that makes sense in-character or in-world, not just a jag for jagging's sake.

It's evident by where the series went and how quickly it went there that the show needed a wrapping up point.  There was probably a trajectory towards a season 3 but instead became a wrapping up point.  I was into where the possibilities for a season 3 could take the characters, but a slightly hasty finale did kind of work for me, again, jagging to a conclusion when it should be settling in on a cliffhanger.

Watching: Time Bandits S1

2024, download

So, a re-imagining of something precious from my youth, Terry Gilliam's Time Bandits which cannot be all that precious because I haven't felt compelled to watch it in decades. But I remember the reaction I had back in  1981-ish (more than likely saw it on VHS first) when I was an adolescent. It was crazy, confusing, astounding and invigorating. That excitement still carries through as a tangible memory, but... unlike, say, Star Wars only a few years earlier, I did not scramble to rewatch constantly as I few older. Honestly, I felt that way about all the Python-esque films -- they were great in small doses and often not oft repeated.

But when I heard this was coming out, and by Taika Waititi (and his usual gang; wonder how they feel tha he is the name on the "brand") no less, I was excited. But also reserved. I can take Taika in small, controlled doses. I am not a huge fan of Our Flag Means Death but more so of What We Do In the Shadows; Marmy loves Wellington Paranormal but I can take it or leave it. And remember, I have never been able to effectively rewatch Thor: Love and Thunder. But again, back to excited -- I could do with some wacky, ensemble, time jumping hijinks. OK, they are not little people, that's fine. OK, Lisa Kudrow (?!?!?) as their leader, that's fine. I think.

I usually do the above paragraph or two as italics, where Kent does a Meta tail-end, but I only remember I usually do that AFTER I wrote it, with already so many italics. So... that's that.

What 100. Kevin is a nerd, basically me at that age, minus the talkative -- I was and will always be, very quiet except in certain circumstances. His parents love him but don't understand him; his sister tolerates him. And then his wardrobe rumbles and the Time Bandits tumble into his life. They have a Map to Space & Time, barely know how to use it, and are on the run from The Supreme Being (Taika Waititi, Jojo Rabbit). His nemesis, Pure Evil (Jemaine Clement, Avatar: The Way of Water), also wants the map and has sent demon Fianna (Rchael House, Foundation) after it. The Bandits want to jump around in time stealing its greatest treasures, proving themselves as more than just gardeners, and Kevin is begrudgingly dragged along.

1 Great. Really, just the imaginative, silly escapades. I loved loved loved the concept of what was going on, and obviously a lot of thought went into it. It looks "appropriately" good, as in not terribly high on the special effects scale, acceptable on the sets and costuming. Something about only a middling attention to detail fits with something silly like this show, because if it was much better, you would be expecting more from the show.

1 Good. The characters. I didn't expect to actually like Lisa Kudrow as Penelope, their erstwhile "leader" (they're a collective, no leaders) but she ... kind of worked? Much of this show works to some degree and fails in others. I hesitantly enjoyed pretty much every episode. Its not so much as comedic as it is silly. The mix of weirdoes as Time Bandits is great, but non-sensical, and the Waititi-Clement usuals are always spot on when brought together.

1 Bad. There is just something.... missing. Again, I wonder if its my tempered fondness for the Waititi-Clement model of comedy. Its not always my bag. I have to allow for my irritation with some characterization (the Bandits themselves are confusing, callous, incredibly stupid beings, but I have to remind myself, they aren't humans, despite appearances and affectations.... no, no idea what they really are) to be ignored so I can just enjoy the romp, but sometimes my irritation reigned.  Just ... something didn't always work for me. I wonder if that's what Kent noticed and ultimately dropped the show.

3 Short Paragraphs (Or Not): Freelance

2023, Pierre Morel (Banlieue 13) - Netflix

"I am in the mood for something dumb," I said as she queries why I have clicked on this. I have said this enough that it could probably become a tag. But as the credits opened, I saw Morel's name and I also thought, "Wait, don't we like Morel?" We do. I have written about a number of his movies here, but strangely enough, no post for Taken, not even a rewatch.

Another tag thought occurred the other day, wherein I rewatch all the movies I have previously commented on or questioned, "Why don't I have a post for _______." But at the same time I am saying, "Why look for an excuse to rewatch when you have hundreds on your to-be-watched list?"

Also, "clicked" ? Is there a better term for what you do when you press a button on a remote control that activates an icon on a smart TV ? Essentially the remote is the mouse for the TV...

I am not entirely favourable in my write-ups of Morel but I guess they are the dumb movies I am looking for at the moment. BUT there were shades of a decent movie in here, but were over-shadowed by the pablum-ization required to make this a mid-range hit in America? Hit is stretching it, but if Uwe Boll made a career out of making movies purely for the in-flight movie market, then making movies purely for the "short theatre run + streaming" is a business model... I guess?

Mason Pettits (John Cena, Peacemaker; [also, #IYKYK]) was a lawyer who hated being a lawyer so quit to become an Army Special Forces soldier. Weird pivot but if you look like John Cena, sure why not. He finds purpose, finds happiness (happy killing people, sure why not) until a failed mission kills a bunch of his squad mates and fucks up his back. So, back to the lawyer career, family, house in the suburbs; unhappiness.

Until his old Army commander Sebastian Earle (Christian Slater, Mr. Robot)  calls him. Just seeing Slater on the screen, in this role, I predicted, "This is the man who will betray him." Earle offers him an easy protection job -- escorting discredited reporter Claire Wellington who is seeking career resurrection through an interview with south-of-America dictator, Juan Venegas. Based on depicted maps, I still couldn't tell if the fictional country was in South America or Central America, but it was your classic pseudo-Latin, semi-tropical country run by a foppish, brash, charismatic dictator. And Venegas just happened to be subject of Pettits failed mission.

Duh duh duh duhhhhh....

Of course, ten minutes after arriving in the country, they are ambushed by rebels during a coup / assassination attempt and Pettits has to defend the man he hates, technically protecting Claire, killing all the Bad Guys. Good Guys? If this is an Evil Dictator, wouldn't his enemies be the Good Guys? And that's the crux of the movie. As Pettits tries to lead Claire to a safer place, with the dictator tagging along, we learn he isn't such a bad guy. I guess, at first, he was happy that foreign interference could prop up his government, giving him full control, while exploiting all the country's resources, but eventually he realized he did want to protect "his people" and started manipulating the situation. He knew that if he betrayed his exploiters directly, he would just be replaced by another puppet leader, so instead  he stuck around to build a charade, doing their bidding but also helping the "rebels" and helping his people as much as he could. The interview was supposed to be the point where he would reveal that to the world, and begin turning things around, while the eyes of the world protected him from further interference.

That was the shade of the decent movie -- a decent, fun plot. Alas, it was mired in a boring, run-of-the-mill chase & shoot-em-up. And so many dumb scenes. Dumb dumb dumb. At points I wondered whether I was watching a video game adaptation, tossing me back into memories of Uwe Boll. One weird quirk, which almost derailed my brain, my sense of confidence in reading movies such as this, was that Earle didn't betray him, but even the depicted plot wanted to make you think he did. It was a prime thread to the story that probably got lost in edits and re-writes, a send-up of our expectations.  Maybe Purple Suit interference?

But I guess I got what I wanted?

I Saw This!! - Here There Be Monsters

I Saw This (double exclamation point) is our all-too regular 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.  These are some monster films Graig watched recently.

Monster Squad - 1987, Fred Dekker - Shomi
Monster House - 2006, Gil Kenan - Shomi
What We Do In The Shadows - 2015, Taika Waititi & Jemaine Clement - DVD

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I don't know what was going on with my adolescence, but there was a whole lot of films in the 1980s that my peers consider seminal that I've never seen.  Well, perhaps Monster Squad isn't as classic as, say, Watership Down, but its still one of those pictures that should have fit in with the Gremlins, Goonies, Explorers, E.T. -type films about kids getting into trouble that I didn't wind up seeing.  I never saw any horror movies as a youth, so perhaps my parents thought a film called "Monster Squad" would be too scary or gory or something?

What makes Monster Squad worthwhile is twofold: firstly, it brings together all of the classic Universal horror monster icons (Frankenstein, the Mummy, Dracula, the Creature from the Black Lagoon, and Wolfman, though they were variations on the Universal versions since Universal didn't make the picture) and makes a fairly competent pre-teen friendly mystery/spookfest/adventure.  The second is the script co-written by Dekker and Shane Black.  Black, if you don't know, was the writer of Lethal Weapon (1 & 2), Iron Man 3 and Kiss Kiss, Bang Bang.  Following the release of the latter film, despite having over 20 years in the industry, he suddenly found himself a critical darling.  Thanks the internet.

Black is now well known for his dialogue, snappy banter and monologues alike.  He's got a penchant for clever action/violence and a keen wit.  He's like a straightforward Tarantino, with noir seeming to be his preferred genre.  He put that to good use within Dekker's script.  Where the film has aged somewhat in the visual effects and the general aesthetic, the script is still punchy, the kids all delivering these meaty lines like pros.

It's a genre of film that doesn't really exist today, the pre-teen horror/adventure film.  Back in the 1980's the perception was that adults wouldn't go see animated movies en masse, so they would make these high-adventure kids movies to capture the audience.  Goosebumps is the only one in recent memory and even that starred late-teens at best.  These were films where grade school kids were getting into all sorts of trouble.  These days, the CGI animation stuidos have that all-ages market on lock, and these kinds of films, where they're meant to appeal directly to the younger crowd but also be enjoyable for the parents (and Monster Squad still does both) don't get made anymore.


Monster House is one of those CGI films, but it's also an homage to those pre-teen horror/adventure films.  The story kicks off when the young protagonist, DJ, crosses the street to retrieve a basketball from the lawn of the the crotchety old man across the street.  The old man (perfectly voiced by Steve Buscemi) seemingly lies in wait to rush out and frighten anyone off his property but this time has a heart attack (though we don't find out he's still alive until late in the film, so it's a rather distressing opening moment) and keels over.  Without the old man's presence, DJ begins to notice strange things going on with the house.  It seems to be...alive.

Monster House was the lead of the second generation of CGI animated movies, where it delivered something unexpected and on par with Pixar, such that it didn't coddle its audience or play to the lowest common denominator.  It was notable as one of the first 3-D movies released in cinema, and even more notable since its script was co-written by Community and Rick and Morty creator Dan Harmon.

What's most interesting about Monster House is it's wholly not a comedy.  It's a horror movie for kids.  It's genuinely intense and frightening, but the severity of the threat is just at a much smaller scale.  That said, it was too much for my six-year-old, which, fair enough.


What is a comedy, full-on, while also being horror is the [expletive] delightful New Zealand film, What We Do In The Shadows.  I was on board with this film before it even started, being a huge fan of co-writer/co-director/co-star Jemaine Clement in Flight Of The Conchords (a musical comedy duo/HBO show) and also having enjoyed his past effort with co-writer/co-director Taika Waititi, Eagle vs Shark.

Where that latter film was a quiet outcast comedy, like a Napoleon Dynamite done New Zealand-style, this film is moves much faster as an ensemble mocumentary, a spiritual successor to Spinal Tap or the films of Christopher Guest, where the comedy is much more rampant, but it's equally charming with its distinctive Kiwi flavour.

The subject of the mocumentary is the hidden subcommunity of vampires in Wellington, in particular a small group of single men of different ages and backgrounds living together under one roof.  It examines how they live amongst the normals, and how they live with each other, their troubles with keeping a low profile while satisfying their urges, their "familiars", their friends, their gatherings, and their conflicts.  Early on it seems like the mocumentary angle might only support a short film, the introduction of a newly turned vampire to the group (and his still human best friend whom they all like more) adds a wildly entertaining narrative thrust as they adjust to his presence.

There are shockingly tense moments in this film as moments of comedy suddenly turn to the camera crew becoming genuinely frightened for their life.  It's part of its brilliance, it's ability to not abandon the genre its characters normally inhabit, while still making one of the funniest films of the decade.

What I enjoyed most was the level of detail provided to the back story of the characters.  All the aged photos and trinkets they've collected over their long lifespans (there's probably a nice art book ready to be made in there somewhere), as well as the way their personal style still reflects the era they were turned in.  They've not just thrown together a comedy but they've built characters and a cohesive reality for them to exist in, no matter how absurd it may seem at times.

KWIF: Bullet Train (+6)

Kent's Week in Film is this: each week (or so) I have a spotlight movie which I write a longer, thinkier piece about, and then whatever else I watched that week I do a quick little summary of my thoughts... just to speed things along. I usually write this on a Sunday.  Today is Wednesday. This entry covers the past two and a half weeks minus some rewatches.

Bullet Train (2022, d. David Leitch - AmazonPrime)
The Visitor (1979, d. Giulio Paradisi - tubi)
Galaxy of Terror (1980, d. Bruce D. Clark - tubi)
Two Little Boys (aka Deano and Nige's Best Last Day Ever) (2012, d. Robert Sarkies - tubi)
Hercules (1983, d. Luigi Cozzi - tubi)
The Dungeonmaster (1984, d. [x6] - tubi)
The Young Master (1980, d. Jackie Chan - Crave) 

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Sitting pretty evenly between the stylish cool of John Wick (and his world largely populated by assassins) and the overwhelmingly frenetic comedic tone of Deadpool 2 (both in which director Leitch had a hand), Bullet Train is both highly entertaining and allcaps A LOT.

A necessary bio-break meant pausing the movie, and with half the players seemingly dead or out of the picture, I thought "surely we're about to hit the endgame". But the time elapsed showing on screen read 1 hour 10 minutes with another 50+ left to go. That seemed like too much movie. And it was!

Though I was never bored in this latter half of the film, it did lose a lot of its mojo when the boss level shows up, mainly because, at this point, it started to incorrectly think we cared about the larger story it'd been attempting to weave. The problem is Brad Pitt's Ladybug is our central POV character and he's utterly circumstantial to the whole affair of this underlying story, so while the film is trying to invest us in its story from an insider's perspective, we're actually tracking it as an outsider. And given Ladybug's sort of laissez-faire attitude, the film shouldn't care as much about the story as it does. I certainly didn't.

The film does a better job at getting us to care about many of its characters, largely a lot of ruthless killers (Ladybug being the "no guns", trying-to-find-zen exception). Lemon and Tangerine are "The Twins", played by Brian Tyree Henry and Aaron Taylor-Johnson. Henry and Taylor-Johnson are both immensely charismatic in this, which sort of neuters their intimidation factor. They're supposed to be a couple of psychos, the dialogue keeps reminding us of this, but the performances and characterization don't really show it.

As said, a very entertaining movie, but also one that constantly thinks were too dumb to keep up with it (given the shape of the world, there may be a point there). It's continually doing visual cutaways or brief flashbacks to moments or objects or people from earlier in the film, because it thinks we've forgotten or aren't paying attention? It also takes a lot of side trips into the various characters histories, but in a very inconsistent manner (some players get extensive history sequences, others don't get any). This imbalance would be more bothersome if the film had any room to breathe, but it's pretty go-go-go from the get go.

There is a lot to drive an astute film goer nuts within Bullet Train, and I can see how the vast amount of real-world improbabilities and impossibilities, on top of the overbearing cinematic devices used in telling its story would be frustrating, annoying or maddening, if you let it be. There's a better, cleaner film within what's presented, sure, but that's not really what its striving for. Taking it just as surface level entertainment, it delivers pretty highly.

[Toasty's take (we agree)]

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Something I enjoy doing all too much is browsing the ghastly Fox-owned streaming service Tubi. It is absolutely overloaded with content with zero discretion as to quality or subject matter. It is currently the best source for 70's/80's also-ran/B-grade genre schlock, the kind that used to lure you in at the video store with a lurid tape-box/sleeve cover image (often a painting of some kind) that falsely presented intoned a film with scale and quality far beyond its means. 

The Visitor jumped out at me primarily because of cast: a young, already leathery-looking Lance Henriksen, Glenn Ford, John Huston, Shelley Winters....  Names like these in schlock is never a demarcation of quality, but it is a lure, as was its description that promised demonitc, telepathic children and an "intergalactic tug-of-war". My mind, as it so often did with the text on the back of the VHS box (paired with the front-of-box painting), reeled with with potential.

The film opens with that potential revealing itself via a stark, desert-like wasteland with an ever-so-alien sky, shot with all manner of low-budge effects tricks. It's very striking. An impressive soundtrack of tones and whistles and scratching strings accompanies a sudden snowfall as a haggard, cloaked old man faces off against an unknown cloaked silhouette.  It's 4 minutes of ominous, menacing, wordless visuals which falls apart the moment a talking head starts to try and fill in the eye-roling mythos for this tale, as a christ-like figure explains its good-vs-evil concept to a group of bald, white robed children in an indoor arboretum.  The film crashes and burns the moment the overwhelmingly 70's funk horns start blaring as we're transitioned to a 5 minute sequence of a basketball game (culminating in a ball exploding, no questions asked) during which any sense of the fantasy of what came before is completely lost.

The film doesn't know what direction its going it, its not at all confident in its plot. I heard tell (via a later listening to the Video Archives podcast) that this was originally scripted as a proposed sequel to a sort of demon-seed pregnancy movie then re-formed into a sci-fi horror.  The kind of confused conception is evident, and the storytelling never settles into its more fantastical plot.  It could have been the original The Orphan had it not reached too high.  It's too boring to be bonkers, ironic viewing, and it's too bonkers to even approach being good. 

BUT IS IT HORROR?
It's more genre thriller or suspense than horror, at least it's trying to be.

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Galaxy of Terror, from Roger Corman's New World Pictures, does a good job at feeling like a film ahead of its time, and by that I mean you could easily mistake it for a cheesy rip-off of sci-fi horror films from 1987 as opposed to 1980.  What works in the film's favour is its incredible set designs, it's moderately competent special effects, and some costuming that isn't outright embarrassing.  The acting is fine but the script is garbage nonsense that doesn't matter.  It's almost like it was written to employ sets, creatures, models and costumes that Corman already had sitting around, and less like they were constructed solely for the purpose of this picture.  I'm sure it's a mix of the two.

A rag-tag team on a rescue mission arrive on a strange planet and encounter the same dangers the prior crew clearly died from.  It's a film built entirely around set-pieces, gross-out gags and tentacle rape.  Sid Haig, Robert Englund, Erin Moran, Ray Walston and others sleepwalk through the meaningless dialogue and tolerate the humiliating horror gags they're forced to suffer through to collect their paycheck.

It's said that James Cameron was working effects on this, when he requested to do second unit filming of the sets to give them more coverage, which got him noticed for his first directorial gig, Piranha 2.  The trivia on this film is kind of more interesting than the film itself.

BUT IS IT HORROR?
sure, barely. It's surely horrible.

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So many of the Kiwi comedy films I've seen seem to center around naive simpletons or awkward oddballs (or both), and I've generally been quite receptive to that sort of thing. There's a subtle, sly tone and balance these films have to sustain, seeing the humour in the oddities of the characters, but also retaining some sense of empathy and affection for them. We want them to succeed, or at least find some growth in their journey (although it seems a particular NZ trait for these characters to kind of learn nothing or refuse to change). 

Two Little Boys (or it's original name, Nige and Deano's Best Last Day Ever) centers its story around two nitwits who are trying to cover up the accidental killing of a Norwegian backpacker in the opening moments of the film, which makes it particularly tough to invest in these characters. I don't know that we want them to get away with it, or if we're even supposed to (Nige's guilt being what it is).

Nige and Deano are estranged best friends reunited by the accident, but very quickly the toxic nature of their relationship returns, and it's clear why Nige wanted to end the friendship in the first place. 

So, if the film doesn't really want us to want the boys to get away with manslaughter, and if it doesn't want us to hope for reconciliation than what outcome exactly are we supposed to want here?

It's not a poorly done movie. There's some interesting editing choices, some fine needledrops, and even some fun vfx and camera trickery. McKenzie, Blake and Pohatu are all really quite good, inhabiting their roles well, making me quickly forget their more prominent personas in Flight of the Conchords, Lego Masters and Wellington Paranormal where I know them each well, but it's just fundamentally flawed story with a thoroughly unsatisfying conclusion (and an even more unsatisfying coda).

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I've watched a couple of Hercules movies in the past year, and they are, when in the hands of Italian filmmakers, passable escapist entertainment.  This one, though, is a spectacularly ill-conceived peplum that tries to smush together all of Hercules' 12 labors into one 90 minute story in an awkward mish-mash of fantasy, sci-fi and mythology that dares to rip-off Superman, Star Wars and Clash of the Titans at once but with a quarter of their budget.

The effects are pretty daring but done on a frugal budget, so they can be either read as really charming or really bad (or perhaps both?).  The costuming, though, is superb, and super sexy.  This is the best Hercules look, methinks, and the ladies are totally va-va-voom without being lurid about it. I was surprised to find the lip sync was totally on point, like, amazingly so. There are also some fairly amazing sets, which the Italians have been great at for some time, but there's also some that really feel the budget limitations.

This was under the Canon film group logo, so there's a sense that this was trying to capitalize upon the success of Masters of the Universe, by mixing sci-fi with fantasy and superheroes, but they would have to take another crack at it a few years later.

So, that final sequence...Hercules is warned that if he removes the sword from the stone, it will result in the awakening of the pheonix.  He needs the sword to fight the big bad guys, and so he does unsheath it.  The phoenix is awakened and the whole bloody island begins to collapse, killing thousands in the process? This is the big heroic ending??

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The Dungeonmaster basically auto-played on Tubi after Hercules. I didn't select it, and I didn't intend to watch it. It opens with a sequence that plays out like an 80's glam metal music video, of a toe-headed man in glasses following in slow motion a woman in a flowing red dress through some weird local architecture that could is weird enough to be vaguely construed as "fantastical" without any set redressing.  She strips, lays on a bed, and beacons him near, only for demonic creatures to break through the wall and capture her, leaving the man, confused. Title sequence and credits. Man wakes up from dream.  The film starts with a cold open. It's rather inane.

We later see the "real life" scenario of this couple, their existence. He's a too-handsome nerd who has made a primitive 80's computer AI assistant that makes his aerobic instructor girlfriend jealous because of how much time he spends with it. Then they seem to get sucked into another dimension, she's chained up, he's in a weird costume, and a tall, deep-voiced, sallow-looking figure tells him they're going to play a game. 

What follows is a series of vignettes, each from a different director, each in a different genre, including a Mad Max-style chase and fighting a Harryhousen-esque stop-motion animate statue. None of it is particularly well-executed, and our "hero" is armed with his AI in a wrist gauntlet that serves as a total deus ex machina in every scenario.

It is supremely goofy 80's genre trash, and yet it's not unwatchable, thanks mostly to a charming Jeffrey Byron. Like most anthologies, it's not very unified, nor is this all that satisfying in whole or in part. But it also doesn't take itself too seriously, which doesn't exactly save it, but does help elevate it somewhat above some of the other more unwatchable low-low-budg fantasy trash of the era.

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I'm not as well versed in Jackie Chan's filmography as I would like to be.  Having recently watched the Police Story trilogy (I know there are more than three, but I've only seen the first three at this point), I have to say I much prefer the fight-coordination-focused Jackie Chan pictures to the stunt-set-piece-focused Jackie Chan. I mean, yes the stunts are cool but...are they maybe only cool because of the end-credits revelations showing the behind-the-scenes attempts?  As opposed to films like Drunken Master or, here, Young Master, where the film is instead built with a simple story meant to weave through a series of fighting set pieces that showcase the performers' physical prowess, Chan's inventiveness, and humour? It's not like the Police Story films take themselves overly-serious, but they're not really comedies, and the fights definitely take second fiddle to the stunts in those films.

I like Chan's sensibilities, and the sheer cleverness and comedic timing that is built into the very balletic martial arts fights needs not just the movement skills, but comedic acting chops as well to sell it all.  In Young Master, Chan and his various scene partners can run up to 10 minutes through a mesmerizing coordinated routine that is as much dance and pantomime as it is kung-fu. It is ridiculously entertaining, and not a single fight seems redundant or repetitive, somehow Chan and crew constantly keep it fresh.  The opening Dragon dance sequence is a stunner, the coordination difficulty level cranked up to 10, as two two-man teams must react to each other team, themselves within the team, and their surroundings, as they traverse the edges of water barrels and climbing to a 10-foot-high narrow platform.  It's at once joyous and intense. 

Chan's direction with Young Master is so much clearer than his Police Story 1 & 2 work, likely because they are somewhat more involved in their shooting (being shot on city streets and active locations).  He knows exactly what needs to be focused on in any given sequence, and even at this early stage in his career, seems to have a crew of people he trusts to carry out the plan, and follow the action.  Again, I don't have a deep knowledge of his repertoire, but this is a completely clean, crisp effort that doesn't attempt anything flashy behind the camera because it has absolutely no need to. The performances are all the flash needed.  An absolute gem of a movie, that I watched twice in the same week.