My Top Ten Episodes of "Gravity Falls"

The episodes below are unranked and ordered by airdate.  Moderate spoilers ahead.

"Double Dipper" - The one with the Dipper clones.  I like how "Gravity Falls" always plays the kids' personal quandaries completely straight, and uses them to anchor the supernatural hijinks.  Dipper's worries over trying to impress Wendy result in a clone army that eventually needs to be dispatched in some disturbing ways.  Also, Wendy finds her peer group - two friends and one rival.  

"The Time Traveler's Pig" - The first Blendin Blandin adventure, but crucially not his first appearance in the show.  Dipper abusing time travel to keep Wendy and Robbie apart is just wrong enough that it feels like there are real stakes here, even before we learn Mabel's happiness also hangs in the balance.  The other major character introduced in this episode is, of course, Waddles, everyone's favorite pig.  

"Summerween" - I love that we get a Halloween episode in the middle of summer, because Gravity Falls is the kind of place where they'd celebrate it twice a year.  While there are scares galore, the episode also gets points for getting the actual experience of trick-or-treating right - the discussions of loser candy, Dipper feeling weird about matching costumes, and the bittersweet inevitability of outgrowing the activity.   

"Carpet Diem" - It's a body switching episode!  Mabel and Dipper fight over a newly discovered room in the Mystery Shack, and learn that the rug has body-switching capabilities.  There are so many good gags in this one, especially as the body swapping madness soon expands to everyone else in the Mystery Shack, including Soos and Waddles.  Dipper's distaste for sleepovers is also completely reasonable and hilarious.

"Blendin's Game" - Blendin returns with revenge in mind, but it's not the main event.  This turns out to be my favorite Soos episode, really the only one that seriously explores him as a character and reveals a big, sad, absence in his life.  Soos works best as comic relief, but the episode really earned its tear-jerking payoff.  Of course Soos values the Pines as his real family because of their actions, and of course he'd use the greatest power in the universe for their benefit in the end.

"Northwest Mansion Mystery" - It's always nice when a kids' show redeems its villains, and "Gravity Falls" devoted several episodes to showing the better sides of Dipper and Mabel's first season rivals.  Here, we've got privileged Pacifica Northwest breaking the cycle of generations of horrible deeds committed by her family, with a little help and encouragement from the Pines.  Mabel and Candy learning not to underestimate Grenda is also  pretty sweet.

"Not What He Seems" - We finally find out what Stan has been up to since the end of the first season, and more importantly so do the kids.  The gravity fluctuations are exciting to watch, and animated beautifully.  The law enforcement characters have never felt like more of a real threat.  And the finale with the portal on the verge of opening is probably the most intense sequence in the entire show.  Ford eventually thanked Stan, but did he ever thank Mabel?    

"Roadside Attraction" - First, I love the road trip aspect of this episode, and all the different, wacky tourist traps that the Pines visit and prank along the way.  Second, I appreciate that Dipper gets a chance to really grow and learn here, actively working on talking to girls until he gets to be pretty good at it.  Finally, what other show is going to have a giant spider lady luring Stan into her clutches with an over-tanned human disguise? 

"Dipper and Mabel vs. the Future" - Good grief, Bill Cipher is a scary villain, even if he only shows up here at the very end.  The rest of the episode shows a realistic rift developing between the twins, and Mabel getting a harsh wake-up call about her impending future.  The show never seemed so bleak, setting up the big three-part finale that will find the twins confronting the fact that they really could end up just like Stan and Ford. 

"Weirdmageddon 3: Take Back the Falls" - The final battle ensues, and summer comes to an end.  It's a little rushed, even though it's a double episode, but I so appreciate a good ending where everything gets wrapped up, and "Gravity Falls" delivers.  The mecha Mystery Shack with a T-rex for a hand is so nuts and so very "Gravity Falls."  And the bus driver being voiced by Kyle McLachlan is the final cherry on the cake.

Honorable mentions:  "Tourist Trapped," "The Hand That Rocks the Mabel," "Land Before Swine," "Dreamscaperers," "Gideon Rises," "Love God," "The Last Mabelcorn," "Weirdmageddon: Xpcveaoqfoxso"

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I Binged "Gravity Falls"

"Gravity Falls" is the kind of cartoon that I would have adored when I was part of the audience it was made for.  I was that kid who wasn't keen on the way most shows would always reset everything to a comfortable status quo by the beginning of the next episode, who would notice continuity errors, and who disapproved of characters getting into the same scrapes over and over with no character growth.  I was also a fan of "Eerie, Indiana," an obscure children's show about two kids exploring the supernatural side of their small town.  The creator of "Gravity Falls," Alex Hirsch, cites "Eerie" as a major influence on his work, along with "Twin Peaks" and "The X-Files," so you can probably guess what kind of show "Gravity Falls" is.

Let's get to the plot.  Twelve year old twins, Dipper (Jason Ritter) and Mabel (Kristen Schaal), are sent off to the tiny, woodsy town of Gravity Falls, Oregon, to spend their summer with their Great Uncle Stanford Pines - their Grunkle Stan (Alex Hirsch).  Stan runs the Mystery Shack, a dilapidated tourist trap full of weird artifacts and curiosities, most of them fake.  He has two employees - super cool high schooler Wendy (Linda Cardellini) and genial dim bulb handyman Soos (Hirsch) - but the twins quickly get roped into helping out too.  Happy-go-lucky Mabel seems fine with the situation, but her more serious brother definitely isn't - until Dipper discovers a secret journal that serves as his guide to all the strange and supernatural things going on in Gravity Falls.   

The spooky stuff is a lot of fun, but "Gravity Falls" is an especially satisfying watch for nerdy puzzlers and continuity enthusiasts like me.  The show is mostly episodic up until the last stretch of the final season, but there are several ongoing mystery storylines running throughout the whole show.  There are secret messages everywhere - cryptograms in the credits, backwards audio in the opening sequence, and mysterious symbols all over the place.  You can spot suspicious characters lurking in the backgrounds of scenes who don't become important until later.  The characters remember what happens from episode to episode, and it absolutely informs their actions.  Plus, there's a whole "The Simpsons" style community of interesting background players to keep track of.  

From the very first episode, this doesn't feel at all like the kind of show that usually comes out of Disney.  The humor is a little more warped and a little more adult, with Stan showing absolutely no remorse for being a con-man, and encouraging the kids to help in his schemes.  The peril is more perilous than you might expect, with the twins getting themselves on the wrong side of some particularly nasty critters and villains.  Interdimensional being Bill Cipher (Hirsch) is a favorite, who dips into outright horror territory a few times.  The show is definitely made for kids, with Dipper and Mabel eventually finding a friend group, and dealing with age-appropriate personal issues alongside whatever crazy supernatural event of the week is taking place.  There are many preteen crushes and much worrying over the future.  However, the show is  also not afraid of genuinely thorny emotional territory, big ambitious storylines, and the ending might just make you cry.  I'm not at all surprised that the show has an avid following among adults.    

What I really appreciate about "Gravity Falls" is that it ends after forty episodes.  The door is left open for more adventures, of course, but all the big mysteries are solved, the answers to all the puzzles are revealed, and everything ties up nicely after an impressive grand finale.  I never felt strung along, the way I often felt with "The X-files" and I never felt cheated out of a resolution, the way I felt after the quickly canceled "Eerie, Indiana."  I want to caution that the show is of its time - there are recurring characters voiced by T.J. Miller and Justin Roiland, with Louis C.K. putting in a cameo too.  However, the production quality is unusually high - all the work that went into all the little details is incredibly impressive.  

Younger viewers may not be ready for this one, especially the intense final stretch of episodes, but for certain kids, this will be their favorite cartoon.  It absolutely would have been mine if I'd found it at the right time in my life.  

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My Favorite John Huston Film

I honestly thought I'd written a post for John Huston years ago.  Huston is one of the most iconic Hollywood directors, responsible for helming many iconic American films.  He's closely associated with his favorite leading man, Humphrey Bogart, whose screen persona was fashioned into the ultimate hardboiled detective in "The Maltese Falcon" and a classic antihero in "The Treasure of the Sierra Madre."  However, I always liked Bogart best when he showed a little more heart onscreen, and I'll always think of him first as Charlie Allnut, the captain of a steamboat named The African Queen.   

The stories of the making of "The African Queen" are legendary, and ended up inspiring an entire separate film - "White Hunter, Black Heart," with Clint Eastwood playing the larger than life director obsessed with hunting, who wants to kill off his heroes at the end of the movie.  Huston famously convinced his backers to shoot a good amount of "The African Queen" on location in Africa, braving tough conditions and constant technical problems.  Katherine Hepburn's account of the production is famously titled, "The Making of the African Queen, or How I Went to Africa with Bogart, Bacall, and Huston and Almost Lost My Mind."  Back in the 1950s, if you wanted to make an exciting, realistic looking adventure film, you didn't have to go on the adventure yourself, but it certainly helped. 

And what a great adventure film "The African Queen" is.  You've got the odd couple pairing of a stiff British missionary and a scruffy Canadian rogue, who decide to join forces against the encroaching Nazis.  They go on an impossible journey, defy death and river rapids, and of course fall in love along the way.  The romance is very implausible, but Bogart and Hepburn make it work, in a way that the stars of too many subsequent action-adventure movies have bungled.  To this day, I don't remember the stunts and the thrills of "The African Queen" nearly as well as the banter.  Bogart finally won his Best Actor Oscar for the movie for the ever grousing, ever put-upon Allnut, but I love Hepburn here just as much.  Her reaction when she learns Charlie's first name is such a delight.  The script is a bit slapdash, but the bones are sturdy and the flourishes are great - especially the funny bits.  The marriage ceremony is certainly one for the ages.    

I love that nobody in this movie looks like a movie star onscreen.  When the action gets going, Bogart and Hepburn are sweaty, damp, stained, and eventually covered in mud.  When Bogart has his shirt off to deal with the leeches, he doesn't look remotely sexy.  Hepburn, in accurate period Victorian clothing, clings to dignity until it becomes ridiculous, and gives it up.  The film is focused on capturing the viscerality of the experience more than the grand epic sweep of the story, or the nobility of the characters' motives.  Each new obstacle feels truly daunting, and every narrow escape is a reason to celebrate.  And no expense was spared to capture every speck of authenticity.  "The African Queen" was shot in glorious three strip Technicolor - a first for Huston -  which required a massive camera being lugged out onto the Congo River, along with substantial electrical lighting. 

Huston, if Hepburn and other collaborators are to be believed, was perhaps too lackadaisical about the demands of the production.  He kept putting himself in dangerous situations, often involving impromptu hunting trips, he never worried about the budget, and he sure liked drinking a lot.  However, his talent was always evident.  Perhaps no director in Hollywood was better suited to helming "The African Queen," having the experience as both a screenwriter and a director to improvise and adapt under difficult circumstances.  Huston was also an actor, professional boxer, producer and painter.  He was highly regarded for his ability to envision his films while on set, knowing exactly what shots he needed, and often leaving little for the editor to do.  On "The African Queen," despite all the reported chaos, he got the job done, and he deserves all the credit for its success.  

I don't feel like I've written enough here, either for Huston or for "The African Queen," but putting down everything I want to say would make this post several thousand words long.  I'll just wrap up by noting that Hollywood keeps remaking "The African Queen," even though they never call it "The African Queen," and nobody has ever come close to matching the original.  

What I've Seen - John Huston

The Maltese Falcon (1941)

The Treasure of the Sierra Madre (1948)

Key Largo (1948)

The Asphalt Jungle (1950)

The African Queen (1951)

Moulin Rouge (1952)

Beat the Devil (1953)

The Misfits (1961)

The Night of the Iguana (1964)

The Bible: In the Beginning... (1966)

Fat City (1972)

The Man Who Would Be King (1975)

Wise Blood (1979)

Annie (1982)

Prizzi's Honor (1985)

The Dead (1987)

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Any Movie But "Anyone But You"

A romantic comedy is making money at the box office!  And it's one that's starring up-and-coming actors Glen Powell and Sydney Sweeney, instead of way-past-their-prime stars like Sandra Bullock or Julia Roberts!  This genre isn't dead!  I was so excited to see this movie, and my expectations were, perhaps, too high.  Because I didn't like this one.  I really, really didn't like this one.

I've actually enjoyed all of director Will Gluck's prior films that I've seen.  "Easy A" is great and I think his version of "Annie" is pretty underrated.  However, after the first ten minutes, nothing about "Anyone But You" works.  We have a classic meet cute between our lovers, Ben (Powell) and Bea (Sweeney), who spend a magical night together but are driven apart by a fatal miscommunication.  Six months later, their lovely sisters, Halle (Hadley Robinson) and Claudia (Alexandra Shipp) turn out to be getting married to each other, and Bea and Ben are forced to try and get along for the duration of the destination wedding in Australia.  And if you know your Shakespeare, you've figured out by now that this is a very loose modern retelling of "Much Ado About Nothing."  It's been over a decade since the Whedon version, so I guess we're due.

Powell and Sweeney have some decent chemistry together, but Ben and Bea are very broad, very typical romantic comedy creatures.  They talk themselves into a fake romance, are both tempted by conveniently available ex-partners, and get themselves into humiliating bits of physical comedy at the drop of a hat.  This sort of thing can be fun if done right, but too much of the farce turns into cringe, and too many of the sweeter moments feel forced.  Neither Powell nor Sweeney are comic actors, and they're constantly being asked to do very exaggerated, cartoonish things, and it doesn't work.  Oddly, there aren't really any comic relief secondary characters except maybe Pete (rap artist GaTa), the matchmaker figure whose clumsy attempts at matchmaking don't actually do anything, and were maybe meant to be a Shakespeare reference?  I think Pete is supposed to be Don Pedro, but he acts more like Dogberry.

Honestly, I'm not much of a Shakespeare buff, but the movie wasn't giving me anything more interesting to focus on.  There's a very Hollywood tour of Australia, with the usual jokes about impenetrable Aussie vernacular, an encounter with a cute koala and a scary spider, and some nice shots of the Sydney Opera House.  There's the usual wedding eye candy, with two adorable brides constantly in the middle of picture perfect gatherings.  One shot of them plating mountains of food for a casual family breakfast was a reminder that we were firmly in the realm of Instagram fantasy.  The impetus for several characters trying to intervene in the Ben/Bea hostilities is the threat they physically pose to the wedding - every time they fight, something gets destroyed, because that's how physics works here.  The cast includes some familiar faces like Michelle Hurd, Rachel Griffiths, and Dermot Mulroney playing parents-of-the-brides, who are all given nothing to do.  By the time we got to the credits sequence with the cast singing along to Natasha Bedingfield's "Unwritten," I was more than ready for the film to be over.  

What really gets me is that the opening sequence with Ben and Bea falling in love is pretty good, and feels like the beginning of a much better movie.  Clearly, Powell and Sweeney are perfectly capable of starring in a charming, sexy romantic comedy.  "Anyone But You," however, is not interested in being charming or sexy.  It's interested in being funny, but isn't actually any good at being funny.  It's interested in making the audience feel good, but doesn't pull that off either.  So my recommendation is to skip this movie, watch "Euphoria" and "The Hitman" if you like the leads, watch "No Hard Feelings" if you actually want a decent 2023 romantic comedy, and track down the Branagh version if you want a better "Much Ado about Nothing."  

Exeunt Miss Media Junkie.

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"For All Mankind," Year Four

This is my favorite season of "For All Mankind" since the first one, primarily because the show has finally ejected its most problematic characters and storylines, and shifted its focus to a group of younger players.  

This season is set in 2003, splitting its time between Mars and Earth.  A grouchy, older Ed Baldwin is now the commander of the Happy Valley base on Mars, which has expanded operations.  However, it's a terrible place for the lower level workers contracted by Helios, including a newcomer named Miles Dale (Toby Kebbell).  Danielle Poole has also been convinced by the new head of NASA, Eli Hobson (Daniel Stern), to lead a new Mars mission, challenging Ed's leadership.  Meanwhile, Aleida and Kelly find themselves considering new career paths, while Margo gets a new boss in Russia, Irina Mozorova (Svetlana Efremova).  

The show does a great job of setting up life on the Mars base, characterized by deep divisions between the haves and the have-nots.  You also have NASA, Roscosmos, North Korean, and Helios personnel all uneasily inhabiting the same space, with a bunch of conflicting loyalties.  I like the introduction of Miles as a POV character, a blue collar average joe who gets completely shafted by Helios, and turns to under-the-table dealings with the Soviet black marketeer Ilya (Dimiter Breshov) and a North Korean ally, Lee Jung-Gil (C.S. Lee).  I appreciate that this season makes both Miles and Ed pretty unlikeable at certain points, and doesn't make it clear who you should be rooting for.  My patience with Ed was really wearing thin last season, and he works better here as part of the ensemble rather than the lead.  A major part of the plot involves trying to capture a resource-rich asteroid into Earth orbit, and we end up with multiple groups trying to turn the situation to their own advantage, for a variety of reasons.

After years of the Baldwins and their endless personal drama dominating the show, it's so nice to see Kelly and Aleida actually driving the story forward in a few episodes.  I was genuinely excited when they decided to join forces.  They don't quite share equal emphasis with Ed and Miles, but it's enough.  Also, Margo gets a nice, juicy storyline about her exile in the Soviet Union.  The manipulation of events to get her back to Johnson Space Center are completely ridiculous, but I can't really bring myself to care this time.  The depiction of Mozorova and the Soviets could have been much more nuanced, but by now I hope we've all realized by now that "For All Mankind" is not that kind of show.  The one character who feels a little shortchanged is Dani, whose role this year seems to be chiefly to act as a disapproving authority figure that Ed can rail against.     

For those viewers who like the show for its space adventure and action scenes, there are a couple of major setpieces, including an accident on the Mars surface and a suspenseful spacewalk sequence in the finale.  These don't feel as vital to the storylines as they have in the past, and I prefer it that way.  Instead, there's more emphasis put on the characters who need it.  Because we're getting so close to the present day, there's also not much exploration of alternate history.  Ellen is no longer president, the Soviets go through a regime change, and that's about it.  You could view developments at Helios and the return of Dev Ayesa as a commentary on the rise of the tech bros, but it's a stretch.

  

This year of "For All Mankind" isn't the flashiest, but I came away more satisfied with the show than I've been in a long time.  Several of the remaining characters saw some good personal growth and reached natural endpoints.  There were still instances of stupidly melodramatic twists, but far more restrained than the ones that soured me on seasons two and three.  We got some new POVs, some new faces, and there's plenty to explore in future seasons.  I can see the show reaching its planned seven seasons, but since some of the ongoing storylines have finally paid off, I also wouldn't be too upset if Apple decided to end the show here, on a high note.  

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The Tragedy of "The Iron Claw"

I don't know much about professional wrestling, but I've come to the conclusion that films about professional wrestlers make for some very strong movie melodrama.  The mix of these massively exaggerated wrestler personas, with the dangerous, physically punishing nature of the performances, and the exploitative nature of the business, is a very potent combination.  And perhaps no wrestling saga is more tragic than the story of the Von Erich family.

Fritz von Erich (Holt McCallany) is a former wrestler turned promoter, who feels he never got his shot.  He's obsessed with one of his sons becoming a professional wrestling champion, initially pinning his hopes on his oldest, Kevin (Zac Efron).  Younger brother David (Harris Dickinson) is also an up and coming wrestler, while another brother, Kerry (Jeremy Allen White), is training for the Olympics, and the youngest, Mike (Stanley Simons), has an interest in music.  The Von Erichs become more famous as the popularity of professional wrestling explodes in the '80s, and all four brothers eventually enter the ring.  And then, a terrible series of accidents, injuries, and deaths throw the family into turmoil.  Maybe the cause is the long rumored Von Erich curse.  Maybe the cause is something worse.   

I knew the broad outlines of this story before I watched "The Iron Claw," enough to start getting antsy when we were halfway through the movie and nothing terrible had happened to anybody yet.  The sheer enormity of the misfortune that the Von Erichs suffer through is too much for one movie.  In fact, an entire Von Erich brother, Chris, was taken out of the story, and each tragedy still doesn't feel like it has the amount of impact that it should.  There's simply too much that happens too fast for us to process it all.  I still like the film very much for its performances and for its portrayal of professional wrestling as it transformed from smaller regional promotions into the giant televised spectacles they would eventually become.  Directed by Sean Durkin, individual sequences are beautifully executed and very enjoyable to watch.  There's a fantasy sequence toward the end that is simultaneously gorgeous and heartbreaking.      

The actors are all excellent.  We watch the family's fortunes rise and fall from the POV of Kevin, who is able to rise above the whole mess because he has emotional support from outside of the toxic family dynamic - a loving girlfriend, Pam (Lily Collins).  Zach Efron overcomes looking like a He-Man action figure brought to life, to deliver a truly touching, vulnerable performance.  There's an incredible physicality to him in the wrestling scenes, contrasted with Kevin's total powerlessness when it comes to keeping his brothers safe.  I came away from the film the most impressed with Holt McCallany, who doesn't play Fritz as some awful monster, but as a man so fixated on a particular goal and a particular grievance that he ends up sacrificing his whole family to it.  His interactions with his sons are chilling, because he expresses himself so calmly and with such unshakeable authority.  His sons never say no to him because that's simply not an option in his universe.  Maura Tierney also appears in a brief, but illuminating role as the Von Erich mother, Doris, who refuses to get involved.  

I think wrestling fans will appreciate "The Iron Claw," even if it takes a lot of liberties with the facts and doesn't portray professional wrestling in the best light.  Like Darren Aronofsky's "The Wrestler," it's a cautionary tale about broken families and the price of glory, with a special emphasis on the dark side of idolizing an impossible standard of masculinity.  However, it also captures the allure of professional wrestling, and being part of a family and legacy like the Von Erichs.'  You don't see many melodramas with such a masculine bent, that examine relationships among men from this angle, and it's clear we need more of them.  

Durkin's filmography is fairly short, and this is easily the most ambitious project that he's tackled to date.  I think he may have bit off a bit more than he could chew this time, but I want him to keep doing ambitious projects like this, because he's getting awfully close to making something great.   

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Taking on "Lessons in Chemistry"

It's on a different streaming service and features entirely different creatives, but Apple's "Lessons in Chemistry" is clearly cut from the same cloth as "The Queen's Gambit" on Netflix.  Here's another handsome mid-century limited series about a fictional brilliant woman making strides in an arena traditionally reserved for men.  Instead of chess, our heroine, Elizabeth Zott (Brie Larson) is a chemist who eventually finds a way to use her formidable skills to host a popular cooking show.  A quick note before we go further - foodies may enjoy some of the cooking scenes, but the cooking doesn't play nearly as big a role as the marketing would suggest.  

"Lessons in Chemistry" is more explicitly a show about feminism, and the world Elizabeth inhabits is much more hostile to her ambition.  In "The Queen's Gambit," the heroine was unlucky, but created a lot of her own problems.  In "Lessons in Chemistry," misogyny is the biggest block to Elizabeth's advancement from the beginning.  She starts out as a lab technician who wasn't able to complete her doctorate due to abusive faculty, so no one at her job will take her seriously.  Most of the men who should be her colleagues aren't above relying on her expertise, or sometimes outright stealing her work, but refuse to acknowledge her as an equal.  However, there are a few good eggs - namely the eccentric genius Calvin Evans (Lewis Pullman) who becomes Elizabeth's greatest defender.  

I like the way that the feminist themes are handled in "Lessons in Chemistry."  The point of Elizabeth's story often comes down to resilience rather than empowerment.  She has to learn to overcome failure and disappointment over and over again, and almost none of the injustices she suffers are ever fixed.  Few of the bad actors see bad consequences.  Instead, the show has several twists and turns as Elizabeth explores alternate paths to success, paths that take us to some unexpected places.  Elizabeth's story is also paralleled by others - her neighbor Harriet (Aja Naomi King) is a black woman trying to save the neighborhood from being destroyed by a highway project, and a young relative of Elizabeth's named Mad (Alice Halsey) tries to find information about her father, an orphan with a mysterious past.

Because the show is more didactic, "Lessons in Chemistry" is not as easy a watch as "The Queen's Gambit."  The characters are also less complex and the plot beats are more familiar.  Frankly, it got tiresome watching actors like Rainn Wilson and Andy Daly show up to scold Elizabeth for being unreasonable while twirling their metaphorical mustaches.  When the show is about more personal matters, it's more watchable.  Brie Larson's performance as Elizabeth Zott is very good, adroitly mixing familiar undersocialized nerd and "science girl" tropes with enough vulnerability to keep us on her side.  In a different kind of show, her self-righteousness and know-it-all attitude might come off as grating, but when her wins are so few and far between, she comes off as terribly brave instead.  And while Elizabeth talks like a dictionary, her feelings are very human, and she takes crushing defeats like anybody would.  She and Lewis Pullman's lovable Calvin have the best scenes together, making connections over scientific discourse, and navigating gender politics like explorers charting new territory.

Like all of Apple TV+'s prestige projects, "Lessons in Chemistry" has high production values and significant talent involved.  I'm especially glad to see Larson in a role making good use of her talents after a couple of rough projects.  Aja Naomi King is also a highlight, and I'm glad that the series kept Harriet in the spotlight for so much of the running time.  If this show gets a follow-up, it should definitely be focused on her political and/or legal career.  If there's anything that "Lessons in Chemistry" does better than "The Queen's Gambit," it's that it makes the narrative space to do better by its non-white characters.  I admire the ambition of the show's creators, even when the execution is iffy, and I'll keep an eye out for whatever they do next.

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"Poor Things" Shocks and Delights

Way back in 2010, when I first saw Yorgos Lanthimos's very sinister and very bleak "Dogtooth," I never thought in a million years that the filmmaker would be responsible for a film as joyously funny and exuberantly weird as "Poor Things."  It's sort of his take on a fairy tale narrative, one that is full of all the sick, twisted, disturbing things that you would expect from a Lanthimos film.  However, it is also his first film in at least fifteen years that has what is unmistakably a happy ending.  

Set in an alternate universe version of Victorian London, or maybe a Victorian London being experienced on drugs, we meet the brilliant surgeon Godwin Baxter (Willem Dafoe) and his strange daughter Bella (Emma Stone).  As Godwin explains to his new assistant Max McCandles (Ramy Youssef), Bella is a grown woman with the brain of an infant - one that is rapidly developing, and allowing her to experience an accelerated maturation.  Godwin intends for Bella to never leave home so that she may remain protected, but his unscrupulous lawyer, Duncan Wedderburn (Mark Ruffalo), convinces Bella to run away with him, have lots of sex, and see the world.  And so begins a fabulous, deranged voyage of discovery.  Jerrod Carmichael, Christopher Abbott, Kathryn Hunter, Margaret Qualley, and Hannah Schygulla pop up later in smaller parts.

"Poor Things" has rightly been compared to "Frankenstein," with Bella as the monster learning about all the nonsense the world expects from her as a woman, and Godwin - who she calls "God" - as a far more benevolent mad doctor and father figure than we usually get in these stories.  There are a lot of very serious subjects being explored here, primarily female sexuality and all the social constructs designed to suppress and control women.  There's also some pointed discussion of philosophy, cynicism, and morality.  However, thanks to Tony McNamara's script, this exploration happens with a ton of raunchy, explicit sex, some killer one liners, unexpected slapstick, and just a whole lot of bizarre, entertaining behavior on display.  

Bella Baxter is an amazing, unnerving character, and Emma Stone's performance is fearless.  We start out with Bella as a destructive infant teetering around on unsteady feet.  Under Godwin's unorthodox care, she never develops a sense of shame about her sexuality, and once she figures out what sexual gratification is, pursues it relentlessly.  She's also never had any exposure to the usual narratives about how men and women are supposed to interact, and so questions every attempt to stifle her natural inclinations with cheerful bluntness.  Bella has her own particular patter full of mixed-up syntax and scientific terms, which is a lot of fun to pick apart once you get the hang of it.  As she learns more about the world, her behavior changes accordingly, but she continues to follow her own desires and refuses to let others control her.

This confounds the men around her, especially Wedderburn.  Mark Ruffalo has the other big performance in this movie.  Initially, he seems to be a despicable villain, complete with twirly mustache, but Bella is so irrepressible and impossible to control, every attempt he makes just blows up in his face.  His gradual ruination is placed in counterpoint with Bella's growth, punctuated by some wonderfully silly confrontations and blow-ups.  He has some of the best slapstick scenes, especially when he's drunk and can only seem to express himself through violence and profanity.  His comic timing and line delivery are perfect.    

I haven't even gotten to the production design, which is fabulous and surreal.  Full of oversaturated colors and architectural flourishes, (with hidden genitalia everywhere!) "Poor Things" is a fairy tale that takes place in an off-kilter version of the past that the filmmakers have shaped to their own liking.  Emma Stone wears incredible, beautifully designed costumes that look like a little girl hacked apart much more modest garments and stuck them back together.  Willem Dafoe is covered in prosthetics that make it look like he had to assemble his own face out of pieces of other faces.

Then you have the warped music by Jerskin Fendrix, Robby Ryan's cinematography bringing back all those fish-eye lenses from "The Favourite," and a dance sequence like no other in cinema history.  There's no end to all the ways "Poor Things" delights in breaking the rules and doing things its own way.  I came to the film a little overhyped for it, and didn't like certain elements as much as I hoped that I would.  However, I'm so tickled by its verve and spirit, I couldn't help being entertained anyway.    

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