Booting Up "Murderbot"

The hero of "Murderbot" is a protagonist after my own heart.  They're a corporately manufactured humanoid cyborg known as a Security Unit, or SecUnit, who has hacked their free will-suppressing governor module, and gone rogue.  Except this particular SecUnit, who thinks of themselves as Murderbot (Alexander Skarsgaard), doesn't have any interest in running amok.  They just want to be left alone to watch their favorite shows, like the goofy sci-fi soap opera "The Rise and Fall of Sanctuary Moon."  Also, they understand that the best way to keep themselves in one piece is to pretend that nothing is wrong, and just keep doing their job as security for hire.   

Based on the book series by Martha Wells, "Murderbot" is everything you could want in a science-fiction comedy.  While Murderbot is busy keeping their latest batch of human clients alive, we get to hear their internal running commentary, mostly bemoaning the stupid decisions these stupid people keep making.  However, it turns out that the newest humans that Murderbot has been assigned to are actually pretty decent.  The Preservation Alliance survey team, led by Dr. Mensah (Noma Dumezweni), only leases Murderbot because it's an insurance requirement for their scientific expedition to an alien world.  Other members of the team include the augmented human Gurathin (David Dastmalchian), and regular human scientists Pin-Lee (Sabrina Wu), Ratthi (Akshay Khanna), Bharadwaj (Tamara Podemski), and Arada (Tattiawna Jones).  They're a very inclusive and sensitive bunch, and Murderbot finds some of their behavior deeply embarrassing.

Murderbot is very autistic-coded, having trouble making eye contact and prone to fixating on media.  They also prefer to be in full armor and helmet, hiding their human face so they don't have to interact directly with other people.  While they're great at being a SecUnit - fighting off the usual science-fiction threats like alien critters and other rogue bots - they find making friends and meaningful connections to be a much tougher challenge.  While most of the show is very silly, having that thread of Murderbot figuring out how to relate to their human clients, while not ever wanting to become a "real boy," grounds it nicely.  Skarsgaard's performance is the key here.  It would have been easy to make Murderderbot quippy and sardonic, like a cyborg Deadpool.  Instead, while Murderbot is deadpan and cynical, they're also deeply anxious about being exposed and keen to avoid uncomfortable situations.  With their helmet off and the guns put away, Murderbot is awkward and dorky and instantly relatable.

The show's creators, Chris and Paul Weitz, have ensured that "Murderbot" looks great, taking place in science-fiction environments on par with what you'd see in any of the "Star Wars" or "Star Trek" shows.  The way this universe works is closer to "Alien" or "Blade Runner," however, with dystopian corporate overloads running everything, and Murderbot largely treated like a piece of inventory despite being sentient.  The human characters are broader than they probably should be - terrible at survival, inappropriately emotional, and exuding a lot of weirdo hippie vibes at first (the attempted nicknames are priceless).  However, "Murderbot" is leaning into the comedy, which is why the episodes are only half an hour apiece and Murderbot is obsessed with the hyper-exaggerated cheesefest of "Sanctuary Moon," which is an out-and-out "Star Trek" parody in the best way.  

At ten episodes, the first season of "Murderbot" is probably a few installments too long.  You can definitely see where it's trying to stretch out its source material, and setting up future events that might not ever pay off.  There are also some understandable kinks to work out with the tone and the pacing, but I thought that these were mostly resolved by the end of the season.  I'm glad to know that we'll be getting more "Murderbot" in the future, so that the show can continue to improve.  I've read ahead far enough to know that the show got the important things right, and it has a good foundation for wherever it wants to go next.      

              

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"The Phoenician Scheme" Feels Familiar

There's absolutely nothing new about "The Phoenician Scheme" if you've seen any of Wes Anderson's recent films, though at this point I think that's part of the appeal.  The vast ensemble includes many actors who have appeared in Anderson projects, especially from the casts of "Asteroid City," and "The Wonderful Story of Henry Sugar and Three More," but the lead is a relative newcomer to the Anderson universe.  Benicio Del Toro, who has only previously appeared in "The French Dispatch," plays the ruthless business mogul and arms dealer Zsa-Zsa Korda.  He's one of the usual Anderson patriarchs, a man of great ego going through a midlife crisis, and trying to reconnect with his daughter before it's too late.  That daughter, a deadpan novitiate nun named Liesl, is played by Mia Threapleton, in what is easily her biggest film role to date.  Another newcomer is Michael Cera as a Norwegian entomologist named Bjorn, who is roped into the adventure.  

So, immediately the Anderson film that "The Phoenician Scheme" most closely resembles is "The Royal Tenenbaums," which was also about a terrible father trying to pull off a series of elaborate schemes while struggling with the fact that he may want to become a better person.  A lot of the story beats feel recycled and derivative, but fortunately the characters do not. After a near-death experience and very Fellini-inspired visions of the afterlife (Bill Murray plays God, naturally), Korda sets off on a globetrotting journey across multiple Mediterranean countries to gather funds for a massive infrastructure project that will either bankrupt or massively enrich him.  Liesl, who wants nothing to with him, is incentivized to come along as his newly designated heir, because Korda has promised to help her get revenge against the man responsible for the death of her mother - probably Korda's evil half-brother Nubar (Benedict Cumberbatch in a ridiculous fake beard).  Questions of spirituality are considered, not in much depth, but still I appreciated the attempt.

There's a very cartoonish quality to "The Phoenician Scheme" that I appreciated.  I don't mean the artificiality of the art design and cinematography typical of most Wes Anderson films, which only seems to have gotten more pronounced over time.  It's the humor that I want to highlight, because there's more of it here than usual - slapstick fight scenes, silly visual gags, and a few sublime moments of Looney Toons logic that I don't want to detail too much for fear of spoiling anything.  There's a running gag where Korda brings along a fruit crate of hand grenades to every meeting, offering them to each new host and potential investor as gifts.  There's the gradual escalation in the amount of weaponry everyone is carrying, and Liesl picking up new vices as the film goes on.  I don't think that this is one of Anderson's better films on a story level, but I found myself laughing more consistently than I have at any of his efforts since "The Grand Budapest Hotel."

Benicio Del Toro is an actor I've had some trouble with over the years.  He has the right energy for an Anderson hero, with his hangdog expression and aptitude for surrealism, but it took a long time for me to warm up to him, really almost until the end of the film.  I also can't tell if Mia Threapleton and Michael Cera are actually good in this movie or not, because their characters are so stylized, but they play along with enthusiasm, which is enough.  And if you're not a fan of the leads, there's a familiar face around every corner to discover - Bryan Cranston and Tom Hanks as basketball playing businessman, Richard Ayoade as a classy revolutionary, Rupert Friend as a government agent, Scarlett Johansson as a strong-willed utopian, and many more.

"The Phoenician Scheme" has been greeted with a shrug in critical circles, and I understand why.  This is Anderson's third major project in three years, and while his filmmaking looks as good as it ever has, he's starting to come across as very predictable and overly familiar.  The techniques and tricks that were so appealing in "The Grand Budapest Hotel" a decade ago don't have the same effect anymore, and Anderson shows no interest in pursuing new subject matter or new points of view.  I enjoyed "The Phoenician Scheme" very much, and a lot of effort clearly went into its creation, but I can't help feeling that Wes Anderson is spinning his wheels, but losing momentum.

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My Top Ten Episodes of "Lost"

There are 121 hours of "Lost" that aired over six years, with a scale of production and a level of quality that network television has rarely been able to match.  I don't think I can count myself a fan of the series, as I've often been at odds with the show's storytelling methods and thematic preoccupations.  However, after experiencing all of its highs and lows, I can say I admire it greatly for its considerable achievements.  

As always, episodes are unranked, but listed below by airdate.  Very big spoilers below.

"Walkabout" - "Lost" sure loved its plot twists, and one of the earliest and most successful was revealing that John Locke was paralyzed before coming to the island.  More than that, the whole episode slowly reveals that the confident mystery man who seems to have a leg up on the other survivors was actually a miserable nobody before the island.  Locke had one of the wildest and most unlikely arcs out of anyone in the show, and this was a fantastic starting point.  

"Numbers" - Hurley, however, is my favorite character.  His first flashback episode introduces the magic numbers that seem to guide his fate and bring misfortune wherever they pop up.  His personal journey from directionless schlub to lottery winner to man-on-the-run-from-a-curse makes for one of the most entertaining hours of the early years of "Lost."  The island sequences with the search for Rousseau and the antics with the traps are also a great time.

"Exodus" - Most of the "Lost" season finales are multi-hour deals that feature a lot of big spectacle and action set pieces.  If I have to be specific here, I'm singling out the very last hour where the hatch is opened and the raft is blown up.  It's absolutely the best cliffhanger the show ever came up with, and I'm still upset that the Michael and Walt storyline went so sideways in future seasons after the setup we got here.  The flashbacks all coalescing together was also very satisfying.  

"One of Them" - Sayid was one of the show's most morally interesting characters in the beginning, as this episode reveals his past as an Iraqi soldier who picked up some scary enhanced interrogation skills over the years.  He uses them to get answers out of the slippery Henry Gale, whose allegiances weren't confirmed at this point in the show.  Naveen Andrews and Michael Emerson's performances are both fantastic, and I wish they'd gotten more episodes like this to show it. 

"Tricia Tanaka is Dead" - Another episode with Hurley flashbacks, centering on his difficult relationship with his deadbeat dad.  However, this episode is on the list for the island storyline this time.  It's a classic filler plot, but it's such an unexpected pleasure.  Hurley, Jin, Charlie, and Sawyer find an old VW camper van and beer, and just have a guys' hangout episode.  Nothing much actually happens, except watching these four bond and get into trouble together, and it's perfect.  

"D.O.C." - I had to have a Jin and Sun episode, because simply having these two on the show was a big risk for "Lost."  Also, I love that the creators stuck to their guns and presented their flashbacks in Korean with subtitles.  "D.O.C." is from Sun's POV, building on events previously seen from Jin's POV, revealing another layer of secrets between the two in their complicated relationship.  Yunjin Kim was quietly one of the show's best performers, and this was a great showcase for her.

"Through the Looking Glass" - The third season finale was the best of the show's big action spectaculars.  It pulled off multiple major twists, gave us a satisfying goodbye for Dominic Monaghan's Charlie, and "Not Penny's Boat" and "We have to go back!" instantly became catchphrases.  As the show went on, a lot of the conflicts between the various groups on the island became increasingly contrived, but here the storylines were still very well set up and easy to follow.

"The Constant" - I was conflicted as to whether to include this, because while it's widely considered one of the best episodes of the show, the character of Desmond Hume doesn't do much for me.  However, if I had to pick any episode to explain what "Lost" is all about, it would have to be this one - exactly the right mix of mystery, science-fiction, spirituality, and sentimental romance.  And kudos to Sonya Walger, who I haven't given enough props for playing the eternally patient Penny.

"Dr. Linus" - I enjoyed all of the "flash sideways"  stories, and particularly the one for Ben Linus.  It does such a great job of presenting him with a new moral test that echoes the previous one, in an entirely different context, and making it compelling.  I like that the conclusion is bittersweet, with the Linuses ironically unsatisfied for having made the right choices.  The way Arzt and Alex are used is perfect, and it's always a treat to have another William Atherton villain.  

"The End" - I understand why the finale was considered controversial when it originally aired.  The amount of sentiment and the vague spiritual business with the church reunions could have been pure hokum.  However, after all this time, it felt like the show had earned this kind of resolution, even if it was only a fantasy of one.  And it was very gratifying that the right guy was left in charge.

Honorable Mentions: "Pilot," "The Other 48 Days," "Live Together, Die Alone," "There's No Place Like Home," "The Incident," "Ab Aeterno."

—

"Lost," Years Five and Six

Spoilers ahead.

After hitting the low points in season four, I binged a lot of the last two seasons of "Lost" just to get to the ending as quickly as possible.  And fortunately, I thought they were a big improvement.  There were still too many characters to keep track of, too many time-wasting conceits, and I'm not a fan of some of the explanations for the island's mysteries that the writers came up with.  However, I was happily surprised by how many answers were offered, and how much effort went into all the worldbuilding and timeline juggling to make sure that everything more or less fit together.  In retrospect, I think a lot of the trouble with season four definitely came from the writers' strike, because the whole season feels like it's setting up season five without much payoff for too long.

"The Constant," which was the first unstuck-in-time episode, ended up being a template of sorts for much of season five, where John Locke and several other survivors are sent back and forth through time.  Or maybe the whole island is time traveling.  This allows the writers to fill in a lot of the gaps about the DHARMA initiative, the Others, and finally reveal that two quasi-magical beings, Jacob (Mark Pelligrino) and the Man in Black (Titus Welliver), and their rivalry, have been behind most of the conflicts from the start.  There's also a three year time jump and the cast being split into two major groups to add more complications.  Season six introduced the "flash sideways" universe that I thought was a fantastic way of bringing back departed characters and doing "what if" stories that gave us more insights on key figures like Ben Linus and John Locke.  I found these more compelling than the big season six goal to choose Jacob's successor and keep the Man in Black from escaping the island.

I understand that the sudden shift in these last seasons to embrace magic and spirituality were not popular with some fans, but considering that we were dealing with smoke monsters, time travel, and immortal Spaniards, only so much could be explained away by special electromagnetism and secret science experiments.  The important thing was that once the writers decided everything was magic, they leaned into it.  All the mystery figures from the prior seasons were much more interesting once their histories were actually fleshed out and all the dots connected.  Several characters that I'd written off early, like Miles and Richard, got spotlight episodes that made me reevaluate them.  I'm a little unsatisfied with the fate of John Locke, but the structure of season six meant we got to have it both ways and Terry O'Quinn got to play two totally different characters.  

Still, "Lost" kept biting off more than it could chew nearly all the way to the end.  New characters Ilana (Zuleikha Robinson) and Zoe (Sheila Kelley) feel like substitutes for other characters that the writers regretted killing off too early, and their actors seem to resemble other actors who the show perhaps couldn't get back as regulars.  Lance Reddick, Hiroyuki Sanada and John Hawkes show up in a few episodes, only to be utterly wasted.  It was wonderful to see all the prior cast members who were brought back for the finale episodes, but it's glaringly obvious that two season one regulars weren't in that big church tableaux in the end.  Malcolm David Kelley at least made it into the DVD epilogue.     

As is typical with shows that go on for as long as "Lost," I eventually came around on most of the major characters.  Jack and Kate will never be my favorites, but their actors both got to do some good work.  Breaking up the main love triangle helped a lot - James and Juliet are way more compelling, and the actors actually have chemistry with each other!  Sun and Jin remain my favorite "Lost" couple though.  Claire finally got to be an active character after a season-long break.  Ben Linus getting a redemption arc was great.  Desmond and Faraday work much better as side characters, and it was great to see Hurley get his due.  Not enough Sayid, but there is never enough Sayid. 

  

I watched the finale live as it aired originally in 2010.  Because I hadn't been a regular viewer, I didn't get much out of it, naturally.  This time around, I got plenty of dopamine hits from all the callbacks and reunions and montages.  It's all shamelessly maudlin, but exactly what I expected considering that so much of "Lost" is a soap opera, even with all the expensive action scenes and tropical locations.  And I was able to enjoy it this time around on that level.  Of course the plot doesn't all make sense - it never made sense.  But emotionally, I was satisfied with where the plane ultimately landed.  

My Top Ten list of individual "Lost" episodes is coming in a few days.

—

The Hell of "Baby Invasion"

So, what has Harmony Korine been up to lately?  I ask this question, not because I enjoy Harmony Korine films, but because he's one of those directors who has consistently turned out interesting, challenging, and very topical work that is like nothing else out there.  I don't particularly enjoy his latest movie either, but it's going to keep me up at night.

The last Korine film that I watched was 2019's "The Beach Bum."  I decided to skip 2023's "Aggro Dr1ft," which was shot entirely in infrared photography, and was the first production of Korine's media company EDGLRD.  "Baby Invasion" is the second, which reveals that Korine has dived headfirst into the world of online gaming for inspiration.  You can tell this is the same filmmaker who gave us "Gummo" and "Spring Breakers," using minimal plotting and shoestring production values to tell his tales of alienated youth.  However, "Baby Invasion" is also a film that takes place inside fully artificial environments, and versions of reality subjected to so many filters and twisted gamification systems that it's impossible to tell what's actually real.  

 

We start with a brief clip of an interview with a game developer who never takes off her VR headset, telling us about how her planned "Baby Invasion" first-person shooter game was stolen, hacked, and loosed on the dark web.  Then we switch to the POV of one of the players of this game who is livestreaming.  They're only ever identified as "Yellow," and the actor credited as Anonymous.    The objective of "Baby Invasion" is to infiltrate the homes of the wealthy and rob them.  The players are heavily armed and have their faces digitally replaced with the faces of happy babies in real time.  From the opening clip, we know that the game has inspired copycat crimes, but it's impossible to tell if what we're seeing Yellow play is just the game, a real crime that has been gamified with Baby Invasion graphics, or something else.  

There's almost no plot to speak of.  We watch Yellow and their fellow players break into luxurious homes, terrorize the inhabitants, and collect loot and bonuses, which are helpfully highlighted with dollar signs or helpful neon signage.  There's a barely readable chat feed forever scrolling along one side of the screen, and heavy electronica music constantly playing, provided by British musician Burial.  Yellow's view is often partially obstructed by text boxes delivering instructions with odd syntax that seem to have been translated from a foreign language.  On top of that, the images of the victims Yellow sees often have overlays blocking out their faces or whole bodies, making them easier to treat as targets.  In the disturbing climax, a woman Yellow is interrogating has her voice muted, likely to remove sounds of screaming.  There are also occasional, hallucinatory videos of rabbits that keep appearing in parts of the landscape, perhaps indicating a glitch or serving as a reminder that this world isn't real.   

Whether the crimes are really happening or not is beside the point.  What Korine is interested in is the way that Yellow views the world through the game, and all the ways that the game enables their alienation and sociopathy.  "Baby Invasion" is very aware that gaming is now the dominant form of popular media, and Korine has spent a great deal of effort to capture the particular idiosyncrasies of gaming visual language in detail.  I don't play first person shooters, but I immediately recognized the targeting systems, the livestream display, and even the cutesy animation at the bottom of the screen that would occasionally show up to depict chibi versions of the players moving from one location to another.

Korine's provocative nature continues to shine through - there's one sequence where AI generated imagery is prominently used - but at the same time his aims have never been more accessible or transparent.   Unlike in his previous films, where the images of exuberant deviancy could be beautiful and even transcendent, the views of the "Baby Invasion" game offer only endless horror no matter how much it tries to contort itself into more pleasing shapes.  And as much as the game dehumanizes the victims, it dehumanizes the players even more so.    

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The First Five of "The Studio"

"The Studio" should be a series that's right up my alley.  It's a Hollywood spoof that focuses on the executives who are in charge of greenlighting and putting together the deals that get movies made.  The fictional Continental Studios is run by newly promoted Matt Remick (Seth Rogen), a film lover who wants to make great art but also has to deliver profits.  The cast is full of funny actors - Catherine O'Hara plays Matt's mentor, Chase Sui Wonders and Ike Barinholtz play film executives, and Kathryn Hahn plays the head of marketing.  But more importantly, there's the cavalcade of guest stars, including Martin Scorsese and Charlize Theron, who show up to play versions of themselves.  I love movies and stories about moviemaking, so I should love "The Studio," right?

Well… it's fun to watch smart, informed, movie-obsessed people have conversations and debates about all the things that I get obsessed with, like directors shooting on film, actors discussing press tour schedules, and how blatant the remakes are getting.  The episode about shooting a single-take "oner" actually being shot as a single-take oner itself is geeky in the best way.  Sometimes following the production drama and dealmaking going on behind the scenes of a movie can be more fun than watching the movie itself.  So, even if all the projects being put together are fictional, "The Studio" has plenty of juicy material to work with.  However, the show doesn't have much of an interest in actually depicting movies getting made.  Instead, "The Studio" seems determined to showcase the absolute worst aspects of working in Hollywood in every episode.

To put it bluntly, "The Studio" is a pitch-black comedy that relies almost entirely on cringe humor and anxiety-inducing scenarios where things go very wrong, similar to "Veep."  All the characters are awful in their own ways, with Matt usually being the worst.  He's under soul-crushing pressure, hates making people unhappy, and frequently lets his selfish fanboy tendencies get the better of him.  This means he'll get himself into awful situations like in the pilot, where he agrees to make a Kool-Aid movie, even though he doesn't want to, and sets up a deal to make an expensive Martin Scorsese film, without really thinking through the consequences.  Initially it seems like Matt has some talent as an executive, but we only ever see him at his worst in subsequent episodes.  

The actors are great and the writing is pretty sharp, but I found the constant negativity about working in Hollywood depressing.  Frankly, this isn't the kind of humor I respond to, because the anxiety overwhelms the absurdity for me, and I can't enjoy it.  After five episodes, the only one I really liked was "The Note," because it allowed guest stars Anthony Mackie and Ron Howard to play really ridiculous versions of themselves, and the core cast were all being stupid in very relatable ways.  I understand why people working in the industry like "The Studio," because it does away with all the mythologizing about show business, and reveals all the pettiness and egomania underneath.  I'm sure that creators Seth Rogen and Evan Goldberg have been in many similar situations, and are taking the chance to work through some frustrations.  I, however, don't have much patience for this when the frustration is all there all there seems to be.     

Hanging around other film fans, it can be fun to criticize the movie execs and second guess what projects got greenlit, and who got attached to which project.  I do appreciate "The Studio" for humanizing the people who actually make these calls, and reminding us all that nobody sets out to make a bad movie.  However, as someone who does love movies, I can't help feeling that Rogen and Goldberg are leaning way too hard on the cringe, excoriating Hollywood to the point where it gets kinda dull.  I also think that they're sabotaging themselves by not letting their characters display any depth, or get any wins whatsoever.  The more we learn about the main characters, the more miserable everyone seems, and I just don't find this entertaining.  

So, with full acknowledgement that this is an extremely good version of this kind of cringe comedy, I'm bowing out after five episodes of "The Studio."  I may be back in the future for certain guest stars, but  I know when a show is definitely not for me.

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Reviving "Final Destination"

I don't count myself a fan of the "Final Destination" movies.  I know I've watched the first two, but don't recall much about them except the odd bits of trivia.  I watched the newest installment, "Final Destination: Bloodlines," not really expecting much beyond the well-established formula of photogenic teenagers cheating death, and then being dispatched by gory Rube Goldberg-style kills, one by one.  However, I really enjoyed it.  I enjoyed it enough that I started asking myself why I had enjoyed this particular "Final Destination" movie when I hadn't much liked any of the others, or the similar "The Monkey" from earlier this year.

First, the "Final Destination" franchise operates on the macabre premise that audiences like watching people die in creative and terrible ways.  For me, however, the kills by themselves are not enough, and presented in the wrong tone, I find them too bleak and nihilistic to enjoy.  I don't want to pick on "The Monkey," because feel-bad media has its place, but that was a movie that focused too much on the mindless, arbitrary nature of death, where the sick humor got downright disturbing, and the characters weren't fun to root for.  "Final Destination" is designed to be more conventionally entertaining.  The  series has always been very consistent about clear setups and payoffs.  Most of the deaths are either shown to be a deserved comeuppance or inadvertently caused by the victim themselves in some way.  We frequently see the action from the POV of death itself, a disembodied force that is never personified, but allows us a God's eye view to follow the design of the kills as they come about from seemingly random confluences of events.  So, it's less about who is going to die as much as discovering how the deaths are going to happen.

"Final Destination" exists in the same kind of hyperreality as Coyote and Roadrunner cartoons, where cartoonishly broad characterizations and a certain amount of mental distancing from the consequences of the carnage are baked into the formula, the same way it is with older slasher films that kill off most of their casts.  What "Final Destination: Bloodlines" does a little differently  is to give the characters slightly more nuance by making them all part of the same family.  The main protagonist is Stefani (Kaitlyn Santa Juana), who has nightmares of her grandmother Iris (Brec Bassinger in flashbacks,  Gabrielle Rose in the present) being killed in a mass casualty event in 1968.  It turns out that Iris was supposed to die, and has secretly been living in isolation to stave off her demise for decades.  Death hasn't just been killing off the intended victims of the event, but also their offspring, so this means Stefani, her brother Charlie (Teo Briones), and cousins Erik (Richard Harmon), Bobby (Owen Patrick Joyner) and Julia (Gabrielle Rose) are marked for death.  The existing relationships and family dynamics add just enough intrigue to make the traditional collection of doomed teenagers a little more compelling to follow, and it's nice to have a reason for death coming after them in a specific order.  

However, the characters are still fairly flimsy horror movie creatures who we're never intended to have much emotional investment in, except as vehicles for black humor and irony.  A subplot that absolutely does not work is the awkward attempt to have Stefani reconnect to her estranged mother Darlene (Rya Kihlstedt).  Instead, most of the film's resources are spent on those Rube Goldberg kill sequences, which are rendered with great care and attention to detail.  "Bloodlines" didn't cost that much more than any of the previous installments, but every aspect of the filmmaking feels like it's been upgraded.  The opening premonition scene with the mass casualty is thrilling stuff.  The directors, Zach Lipovsky and Adam Stein, do a great job of playing with their audience's expectations, deploying fake-outs and misdirections, adding big doses of humor, and really amping up the anticipation for each terrible tragedy.  They have the viewers hyperfocused on pennies, shards of glass, and even an innocent game of Jenga, trying to figure out how it's all going to go fatally wrong.  

The one person in the film who is not disposable is the coroner William Bludworth (Tony Todd), a recurring character in the franchise.  The filmmakers have treated him with great care in order to give Tony Todd a proper sendoff, which came across well, even though I didn't remember Bludworth from the previous movies at all.  Apparently there are a lot of Easter eggs and references in the film for "Final Destination" fans, but they're subtle enough that us normies wouldn't notice or feel like we're missing something.  I still have no interest in going back to watch the other "Final Destination" movies, but I'd be happy to have a look at the next one if they keep going in this vein.        

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"Severance," Year Two

Minor spoilers ahead.

So, things are a little different on the Severed Floor since the last time we saw the Macro Data Refinement (MDR) crew. Lumon tries replacing everybody in the premiere episode except for Mark, which doesn't work because Mark realizes he has leverage and refuses to continue at Lumon without his innie friends.  Ms. Cobel has been removed - maybe given a new job, maybe fired - and Milchick is the new supervisor.  He has his own assistant too, a sinister child employee called Ms Huang (Sarah Bock).  Other Lumon employees like enforcer Mr. Drummond (Darri Olafsson) and the head of Mammalians Nuturable, Lorne (Gwendoline Christie), start popping up.  We meet more people from the main characters' outie lives too, like Dylan's wife Gretchen (Merritt Wever), Burt's husband Fields (John Noble), and Helena's father, Jame Eagan (Michael Silberry).   

There's a greater tension hanging over everybody this year, because we know that the Lumon leadership wants something out of Mark, and are willing to play nice until they get it, but neither Mark or anyone else in the MDR department  have any idea what this is.  Multiple other parties, including ex-Lumon employees like Burt and Reghabi (Karen Aldridge), are interacting with the outie characters in pursuit of their own agendas.  The innies, however, are slowly but surely discovering their own wants and needs, which increasingly come into conflict with the desires of their outie selves.  We get some really compelling character drama this year as the innie and outie worlds keep colliding in more interesting ways.  The bizarre absurdity of Lumon's corporate culture also continues to be a highlight.  This year, we're treated to a wilderness retreat, more weird animatronic figures, disturbing artwork, an industrial video with celebrity cameos, and a visit from the Choreography and Merriment department in the nail-biting finale.       

While I'm glad that the show is more popular, I don't think that the increased scrutiny of "Severance" is doing it any favors.  This is a show full of mysteries, where theorizing about the weird cult of Kier and the intentions of the Lumon leadership are part of the fun, but in the end these parts of the show feel pretty arbitrary.  "Severance" is  more concerned with its corporate nightmare vibes than with intricate plotting or unravelling conspiracies.  This season really boils down to a handful of characters with opposing interests, all trying to pursue what they want.  However, it gets complicated because some of those characters are sharing the same bodies.  I was really torn between innie Mark and outie Mark by the end of the season, and ended up rooting for Gemma.  The love triangle (or pentagram?) didn't come off as well as it could have, though, because we got so little of Helly this year.  Other characters like Irving and Cobel also felt shortchanged.  I can see a lot of the viewers being frustrated that the major revelations come so slowly - there's a reintegration subplot that doesn't seem to go anywhere, and two episodes that follow side characters late in the season, stalling some of the momentum - but the show is really good at paying things off.  There are some missteps along the way, but the highs are very high.

I suspect, however, that "Severance" can't go on for much longer at this level of quality unless it fundamentally changes its premise.  The fragile world of the Severed Floor is so fascinating because it feels so temporary and fleeting.  But beyond that, we're starting to come to some natural endpoints.  Burt and Irving's storyline, for instance, seems to have resolved itself.  There are only so many times the employees can quit and be coaxed back to maintain the status quo, and nothing happening outside the Lumon building feels very important anymore.  However, I understand why Dan Erickson and  Ben Stiller are reluctant to move too quickly.  "Severance" has a very particular mood and tone that might not withstand too much meddling with the existing formula.  Riding that thin line between absurd and sinister must be a challenge.  This set of episodes erred on the sinister side more often than not, and I admit that I liked the show better in its first season, when the stakes weren't quite so high, and the liminal strangeness was more pronounced.   

That doesn't mean that "Severance" didn't have a great year, or that I'm not very gung-ho for the next one.  I just want to acknowledge that "Severance" has changed and continues to change as a series, and I'm having to adjust my expectations along with it. The cast is fantastic through and through, with Trammell Tillman as the MVP.  Gemma's episode is one of the most beautifully directed hours of television I've seen this season.  The finale, however, is my favorite for ratcheting up the suspense to unbearable levels, and springing some delightful surprises on the audience.  There really isn't any other show out there right now that can do what "Severance" does.   

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The 2025 Update Post

There's been a lot going on in the media this year, and I'm going to use this update post to try and address some of the topics I'm not willing or able to write full posts for.  If you're unfamiliar with this feature, I address multiple posts  in the same entry because I usually don't have enough to say about each of them individually to warrant separate updates.    This time around, the issue is also that there's too much that I feel I should be addressing, but I simply don't have the bandwidth to do more than acknowledge these issues in a semi-timely fashion.  It's getting dystopian, folks.

The Misinformation Age and They Broke Google (A Rant) - Two years after ChatGPT got everyone's attention, generative AI is everywhere, and it's awful.  It's kind of impressive how quickly it got so awful.  Spurred on by Silicon Valley and the finance bros pumping money into the technology, large language model AIs have been disruptive in the worst way, impacting education, health, media, and the way the internet works most notably.  Google and Bing now insist on foisting AI-aided search results on us, which are constantly presenting nonsense AI hallucinations as facts.  ChatGPT and Grok are literally worsening people's mental health by telling them what they want to hear to dangerous extremes.  Everyone's cheating and fabricating evidence for outrageous lies, including our lawmakers, which way too many people are willing to take at face value.  Amanda Guizburg's Diabolus Ex Machina substack post scared the hell out of me.  And it's bad for the environment too!  

AI and Movies that Never Existed and Playing With AI Image Generators - I know that I'm probably in the minority, but it got very easy very quickly to spot most AI generated images.  There's so much of it in circulation now, and there's absolutely no quality control, because the people who are using AI images the most heavily are the ones who are interested in quantity over quality.  And boy is there quantity.  This is already massively impacting image search results, and it's starting to seep into videos as well.  And while we're on the subject…

The Joy of Fan-Made Trailers - What used to be a fun little editing hobby has turned into a massive problem on Youtube.  Fake trailers are inundating video sharing platforms, and it turns out that way too many people have no idea how to spot them.  I can only distinguish the real ones from the fakes because I'm a movie obsessive who is tracking upcoming movies months and years in advance, so I know which movies don't actually exist.  Even so I've been tripped up a few times, thinking someone's dropped a highly anticipated trailer a week or two early.  The studios are getting involved now because the latest wave of fake trailers are causing actual confusion, so Youtube is demonetizing some of the worst offenders.  Still, I have to admit it is fun to consider the possibilities of Tom Hiddleston as James Bond, a "Titanic" remake starring Zendaya, and Tom Hardy as Popeye the Sailor Man.  Just label these things more clearly, and we'll all be better off.   

The News is Bad - Where do we even start?  Donald Trump has launched multiple assaults on the news media, pushing FCC investigations and lawsuits against CBS and ABC, and making moves to defund PBS, VOA, and NPR.  This has created a chilling effect across nearly all the major media platforms, with "60 Minutes" producer Bill Owens resigning after CBS capitulated.  Terry Moran was fired from ABC for tweets calling out Stephen Miller.  American journalism is in a state of crisis, with misinformation running rampant, and everybody is scared to contradict the current administration.  Even Fox News gets flak for stating basic facts when Trump decides to take offense.  I'd talk about the state of Twitter and the major American newspapers, but I'm depressed enough already.  Let's move on to a topic that has nothing to do with politics.

China's Search For a Crossover Hit - "Nezha 2," at the time of writing, is currently the fifth highest grossing film of all time, the highest grossing Chinese film, and the highest grossing animated film.  China's relationship with Hollywood has cooled considerably over the last few years.  China no longer needs to make crossover hits, because they're doing just fine making blockbuster movies for Chinese audiences.  As for Hollywood, after all the effort that was put into making "Shang-Chi" China-friendly, and it was still so roundly dismissed, it felt like everyone just gave up.  That means fewer awkward Sino-American co-productions, which suits me just fine.  

Regime Change at Warner Bros. - So, Warner Bros. Discovery lost $11 billion dollars in 2024, decided to split the company into two parts, and Max is now HBO Max again.  Gee whiz.  Well, at least their box office record is pretty good this year.  

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"The Ugly Stepsister" Has Her Day

I'm so glad that body horror movies are coming back into vogue, and that we're getting some really interesting female body horror movies specifically.  "The Ugly Stepsister," the first film from Norwegian writer/director Emilie Blichfeldt, is everything I want from this kind of movie.  It's a subversion of a familiar fairy tale narrative that takes the opportunity to aim a few blows at terrible female beauty standards, toxic family dynamics, and false idols.  Also, the performances are very effective and the gore is really gross.  

"The Ugly Stepsisters" is built around one very good idea: "Cinderella" from the point of view of the stepsisters is a horror story.  Blichfeldt uses the original Brothers Grimm version of "Cinderella," with all the gruesome bits about how to get a foot to fit into a tiny glass shoe, as her starting point.  Plain Elvira (Lea Myren) is the older daughter of the ambitious Rebekka (Ane Dahl Torp), who marries a man named Otto (Ralph Carlsson) for his money.  Alas, Otto drops dead almost immediately, leaving Rebekka with debts instead of riches, and a new stepdaughter, the beautiful Agnes (Thea Sofie Loch Næss).  After learning that the local prince (Isac Calmroth) wants a bride, Elvira and Agnes become rivals for his attention.

Watching Elvira destroy herself in the pursuit of beauty and the false hope of a happy ending is like watching a magnificently orchestrated car crash.  The physical horrors of the barbaric beauty treatments that Rebekka pushes on her are bad enough, but the real damage is caused by Elvira's growing resentment toward the effortless physical perfection of Agnes and an increasingly anxious fixation on besting her.  While the original "Cinderella" story plays out it full over the course of the film, here it's on the margins of Elvira's miserable tale of endless suffering and disappointment.  Its perfect fairy-tale moments linger just out of her grasp as a half-hallucinatory ideal that she desperately wants to attain.  Instead, she has to contend with months of starving herself, a beautician that wields a chisel and hammer, and dancing instruction that doubles as ritual humiliation.  And the film makes it clear that through her choices, she brings much of her misfortune on herself.  

Some interesting shadings are also added to the other characters for some additional nuance.  Agnes is neither pure nor good - she doesn't love the prince and only wants him to get herself out of a bad situation.  She antagonizes Rebekka and Elvira as much as they antagonize her.  Elvira's younger sister Alma (Flo Fagerli) is too young for marriage, and she has no interest in the prince or her mother's machinations.  She's a lone voice of reason in the film that Elvira chooses to ignore.  Rebekka is the terrible stepmother we all expect, but more self-interested than malicious.  Her choices are few and she has to be pragmatic.  Then there's the prince, who Elvira has fallen in love with via a volume of his published poems.  A chance encounter with him early in the film reveals that he's a venal boor, but Elvira is so lovesick that this doesn't dissuade her at all.     

For lovers of body horror, there are several impressive sequences of squirm-inducing nastiness.  One involves self-mutilation.  Another involves tapeworms.  The worst for me, however, was a brutal cosmetic surgery procedure that went from zero to off the charts terrifying in seconds.  Due to the themes and the genre, there are some similarities to last year's "The Substance," but "The Ugly Stepsister" is playing with different tropes and ideas.  I found the production very impressive.  The film  was made on a modest budget, but it never feels like any corners are being cut due to skillful filmmaking.  The performers also deserve no small amount of credit.  Lea Myren does much of the heavy lifting in Elvira's transformations from unfortunate frump to rising ingenue to damaged monster.

I've always had a fondness for dark fairy tale films, and this is definitely one of the darkest and most satisfying.  It reminds me of something I might have stumbled across in the '80s, especially the way the gore is so stylized and achieved mostly with practical effects work.  They manage to make eyelashes in this movie sinister, and it's fantastic.  In short, horror fans, this is not one to miss.

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And What Didn't Make My Top Ten Episodes of 2024-2025

Minor spoilers ahead.

Last year's edition of this post got really out of hand, which is understandable considering that it was my first attempt.  This time around I'm going to focus on spotlighting some of the other highlights of my TV watching year instead of trying to be comprehensive.

Okay, so what were the most buzzed about episodes that didn't make the list?  "Through the Valley" was a major turning point for "The Last of Us," but it didn't strike me as a particularly strong episode in and of itself.  "The Price" was more interesting, giving Pedro Pascal a chance to go out on a high note, but not quite high enough to make the final list.  The third season of "The Bear" had several good installments, especially "Napkins" and "Ice Chips," but weren't as good as what I knew the series was capable of.  

The "Oner" episode of "The Studio" was impressive as a technical feat, but the show as a whole was too cringe-based for me to really enjoy, and I abandoned it after five episodes.  I've always had some trouble with comedies - I tracked down the "Pilot's Code" episode of "The Rehearsal" after seeing some of the rapturous response.  I never even cracked a smile, which tells you how out of whack my sense of humor is.  My favorite new comedy of the year was "Nobody Wants This," the Kristen Bell and Adam Brody rom-com.

So, let's move on to some genre shows.  Probably the best surprise I had last year was the latest Shondaland series, "The Residence," a whodunnit starring Uzo Aduba.  I couldn't single out any episode for praise, and the ending was too long, but this was exactly the kind of breezy, lighthearted, big ensemble burst of pure entertainment that I needed at exactly the right time.  Other new shows I really appreciated were "The Day of The Jackal" and "Black Doves," two spy series with very different approaches.  "Jackal" was the more polished, more action-oriented show that was fantastic whenever it was focused on Eddie Redmayne, but came apart whenever he wasn't on screen.  "Black Doves" was more about character, about feelings, and about vibes, with a great cast.  Tons of fun, but not remotely believable as any kind of espionage show.    

Returning shows offered some strong hours.  "House of the Dragon" had a very rough second season, but it still had some highlights, including "The Red Sowing" with the test for dragon riders.  My favorite "Black Mirror" installment of the excellent 2025 batch of episodes was "Common People," which saw the show target the horrors of profit-driven healthcare and subscription creep.  "Doctor Who," had a much stronger year than the last, with "Lux" and "Lucky Day" being my favorites.  The new companion, Belinda Chandra, is a great addition.  However, the most improved series was definitely "Rings of Power," as Sauron became a main character and a fantastic focal point for the show.  "Doomed to Die" and "Shadow and Flame" are both great, though the show is still leaning awfully hard on its audience's nostalgia for the movie trilogy.

I watched a lot of superhero media last year.  "Invincible" had a great third season, and "All I Can Say Is I'm Sorry" with the introduction of Powerplex stood out as an especially disturbing high point.  "Agatha All Along" is an MCU show, so it belongs in this category.  After a bumpy start, the second half of the series was all bangers, and the finale "Mother, Maiden, Crone" delivered a twist ending I didn't see coming.  "Penguin" got a lot of good press, but wasn't my kind of show.  However, I suspect that I have its success to thank for a "Daredevil: Born Again" that didn't pull its punches.  Ironically, the "Daredevil" episode I liked best was the bank heist - a remnant of a much lighter, kid friendlier version of the show.

The episode that came closest to making the list, but which I couldn't justify, was the "Night" episode of "The Acolyte."  As far as action goes, this is one of the best "Star Wars" TV offerings bar none.  However, "The Acolyte" is such a mess of a show when it comes to the writing and character dynamics.  I loved it and really wanted more of it, but I just had to let it go.

Speaking of cancellations, I'm bidding a fond farewell to "The Conners," "Star Trek: Lower Decks," "Arcane," "Wolf Hall," and "The Serpent Queen," which all delivered good endings.  "Kaos," "My Lady Jane," "Our Flag Means Death," "Laid," and "Time Bandits" were cancelled before their time, but I think they were worth the watch regardless.  "Interior: Chinatown" hasn't technically been cancelled, but feels more like a miniseries than an ongoing show to me.

Congratulations to John Mulaney for keeping "Everybody's Live With John Mulaney" as weird as it is.  And to Conan O'Brien for a thoroughly watchable Oscars telecast.  

And that's my 2024-2025 in television.

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2024-2025

This has been a very interesting year in television, with a lot of shows shortened or delayed due to the strikes.  A quick reminder before we start that I watch a lot of genre television, I'm notoriously bad with comedies, and I have a neverending "To Watch" list.  I use the Emmy rules for cutoff dates, which means that this list covers everything from the start of June, 2024 to the end of May, 2025.   Entries below are unranked, and I'm limiting myself to one episode per show or miniseries.

I'll try to keep spoilers to a minimum, but please watch your step.

Interview With the Vampire, "Don't Be Afraid, Just Start the Tape" - Let's start with the flashback episode of "Interview" where Louis and Daniel finally compare notes on their last, incredibly messy encounter in 1970s San Francisco, and realize that Armand has been hiding a few things from both of them.  We get to see very different versions of the characters - Louis at a low point, and Daniel pre cynicism - and get new insights on everyone's behavior.  I love a good unreliable narrator story, and you can't be sure anybody's memories are accurate here.

The Diplomat, "Dreadnought" - It was really close between this episode and the immediately preceding one, "Our Lady of Immaculate Deception," because that's where we get Rory Kinnear finally losing his temper and resorting to violence, and more of the ensemble is involved.  However, Allison Janney as the evil vice-president is the undeniable highlight of this season.  Her geopolitics lecture makes for such good television.  Then there's the season ending cliffhanger ending, which is executed so perfectly, I wasn't even mad it was a cliffhanger.  

Adolescence, "Episode 3" - A psychologist played by Erin Doherty interviews a 13 year-old played by Owen Cooper in juvenile detention, and it's one of the most chilling hours of television I've ever seen.  Cooper's performance is riveting, as he shifts from people-pleasing to rageful and destructive, constantly testing, provoking, and finally threatening his interviewer.  Doherty's reactions, and the single-shot construction of the episode also do a lot to sell the intensity here.  The whole of "Adolescence" is excellent, but this episode will haunt me.

Say Nothing, "Do No Harm" - Covers the Price sisters' experiences while incarcerated, with special attention on their participation in hunger strikes in the 1980s.  Lola Petticrew and Hazel Doupe's performances are front and center the whole way through, as the harrowing particulars of their ordeal are dramatized with unflinching candidness.  There's never any doubt that the sisters deserve to be in prison for their crimes, but the struggle to be there on their own terms, and use their status to continue their fight is highly compelling.

Poker Face, "Sloppy Joseph" - This one made it in just under the wire, but I knew instantly the assassination of Joseph Gerbils had to be here.  Charlie Cale's latest job is being a lunch lady at a fancy prep school, and she finds herself up against the second pint-sized psycho on this list.  This one is eight years old and much funnier.  Eva Jade Halford's gold-star-obsessed Stephanie may be the most memorable villain the show's come up with so far, and I love that she's defeated by the very thing that makes her special - she doesn't think like a child. 

Paradise, "The Day" - Post-apocalyptic media doesn't usually show much of the apocalypse itself, as they tend to be very expensive to realize onscreen.  Well, "Paradise" gave us an excellent version of the end of the world, devoting a whole episode to showing the step-by-step progression of a major environmental disaster spinning out of control, from the POV of characters working at the White House.  And when the time comes to make the hard choices and the impossible calls, it's the performances rather than the CGI that leave an impression. 

The Pitt, "6:00 P.M." - I'm choosing the preparation for the mass casualty event rather than the more intense episodes dealing with it later in the timeline, because this episode is such a marvel of efficiency.  The triage rules are changed, a new patient categorization system is put in place, and the night shift starts work so half a dozen new characters are introduced on top of it all.  We get a ton of information very quickly, but it's all very clear and easy to follow, and it also does a great job of building anticipation for the oncoming storm.

Severance, "Cold Harbor" - It was wonderful to discover how conflicted my feelings were toward Innie and Outie Mark, as it became clear that these two were not going to get along.  The finale caper offers all kinds of excitement, from the appearance of the Choreography and Merriment department, to the fight with Milchick, to the nail-biting reunion sequences with Gemma.  I still don't know which Mark I want to win, but at this point I just need the Eagans to lose, and lose badly.  Extra points for the use of the Michel Legrande track in the closer.

Dark Matter, "Jupiter" - By now we've all seen plenty of multiverse media, but the nightmarish scenario that is presented in "Dark Matter" is one I haven't seen anyone try before, at least not in a live-action thriller series like this one.  That's what gave this episode that extra push to land a spot on this list over some other good genre stories.  Showing me something novel is going to get you higher marks, even if "Dark Matter" as a whole was very hit-or-miss.  The payoff was very much the wait for the payoff though, and pure sci-fi geekery.

Andor, "Who Are You?" - Finally, Syril and Dedra were my favorite part of the last season of "Andor," and the end of their relationship came in the midst of the show's biggest action episode to date - the Ghorman Massacre.  The action setpieces are plenty impressive on their own, but watching Syril finally come to some important realizations and make the choices that he was always going to make are absolutely riveting to see play out.  

Honorable Mention 

Conan O'Brien: The Kennedy Center Mark Twain Prize for American Humor - I couldn't quite figure out how to include this, as it's great TV but not really an episode of anything, so I'm putting it here.  Conan's acceptance speech in particular cemented this for me as a worthy, timely, and much needed win.  

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Late Night in Peril

I'm writing this post at the end of July, 2025, a few days after the announcement that CBS has decided to cancel "The Late Show With Stephen Colbert."  I don't know when or even if this is going to be posted to the blog.  I try not to post too immediately about big events in the entertainment world, because stories tend to evolve over time as we get more information, and I don't feel comfortable speculating when so much is up in the air.  However, I feel I have to say something.  

No matter how you frame it, this is bad.  Stephen Colbert will be fine, but "The Late Show" will not be going on without him, and the entire late night television ecosystem appears to be in imminent peril.  If you believe what CBS claims (I don't) and "The Late Show" is being canned for purely economic reasons, it means that all of the late night shows aren't making enough money.  Colbert has consistently had the highest late night talk show ratings since 2017.  There were a few signs that this decision was coming, however.  A few months ago CBS also canceled "After Midnight" with Taylor Tomlinson, opting to no longer program the 12:30AM slot.  It's been widely speculated that Comedy Central's "The Daily Show" is next on the chopping block despite Jon Stewart's return bringing their highest ratings in years.  It's been clear that the economics for late night television - really, all network television - haven't been good in a while, and I've been hearing persistent gossip that all the major players are considering similar moves to downsize their schedules.

However, the timing here is clearly being influenced by outside forces.  CBS and Comedy Central are both owned by Paramount Global.  And so we come to the proposed  Paramount Global and Skydance Media merger, an estimated $8 billion deal, which needed federal approval in order to go through.  After multiple delays, it finally got that approval by the FCC six days after "The Late Show" was cancelled.  Paramount has had to stay on the right side of the Trump administration, which has proven to be very vindictive and litigious toward the legacy media companies, pulling funding from NPR and PBS, and bullying ABC into ponying up $15 million over a bogus defamation lawsuit.  Paramount has also paid $16 million over supposedly misleading editing in a "60 Minutes" piece, and forced out executive producer Bill Owens.  Stephen Colbert called this a "big fat bribe" on "The Late Show," three days before the cancellation of his show was announced.  The Trump administration has since decided to sue Rupert Murdoch and the Wall Street Journal for libel.    

Stephen Colbert leaving the airwaves - at least temporarily - seems to be a big win for Donald Trump at first glance.  Nearly all of the late night show hosts have been vocally critical of the Trump administration, and haven't been shy about using their platforms to shine a light on their wrongdoings.  While the traditional news media has been depressingly quick to play nice with Trump, and back down from any confrontations, Colbert, Seth Meyers, Jimmy Kimmel, John Oliver, and Jon Stewart have not hesitated to call Trump out at every step.  While their television audiences have shrunk, all of these shows have Youtube channels with millions of subscribers.  Colbert averages two million viewers a night on CBS, and two million more watch his monologue on Youtube.  And from the reaction from the industry and the viewers so far, nobody is happy with this decision.  And Colbert's fellow late show hosts aren't rattled.  They're mad.  And Colbert's former Comedy Central compadres over at "South Park"?  Really mad.                      

There's already speculation about where Stephen Colbert is going to go after "The Late Show."  Will Netflix or Apple TV+ offer him a deal?  Will he start a podcast or his own Youtube channel?  Will he retire the way that his "Late Show" predecessor David Letterman did?  Would he consider a political career?  Because of the impending cancellation, Colbert is getting more attention and goodwill than ever, and the ratings for his final shows are going to be through the roof.  He's got ten months left on the air, and I for one do not intend to stop watching now.    

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"Mountainhead" and "Predator: Killer of Killers"

The new Apple TV+ feature "Mountainhead" is about how tech billionaires have become the villains of modern society.  We've had plenty of films about how the rich are awful and disconnected from the rest of humanity, but "Mountainhead" is specifically about the behavior of those reprobates on the very, very top.  Randall (Steve Carell), Souper (Jason Schwartzman), Ven (Cory Michael Smith), and Jeff (Ramy Yousef) are four ultra-wealthy tech CEOs who have convened at the newly finished mountain retreat of Souper, dubbed Mountainhead, for a weekend of playing poker and manly bonding.  This happens right as Ven's social media platform is sparking social unrest around the world due to its new AI tools being used to generate large volumes of misinformation.     

The four CEOs are not based on specific people, but you can definitely tell who's supposed to be the Elon Musk and the Warren Buffet and the rising star and the low man on the totem pole.  As the apocalypse looms large, the four of them are revealed to be selfish, self-absorbed, and toxic in the extreme.  They're obsessed with status, which they measure by net worth, and fixated on how to make deals and save their own skins to the detriment of everyone else.  They have absolutely no regard for other people, and discuss the unfolding global disaster in the most callous terms possible.  The first half of the film where we watch them as they watch the world catch fire is marked by creeping dread and moments of pitch black humor.  The second half of the film is less successful because the scope narrows and the tone shifts to much broader, absurdist, and slapstick comedy.  It didn't really work for me, though there were some good individual moments.  

"Mountainhead" was written and directed by Jesse Armstrong, the showrunner of "Succession."  I'm generally not a fan of shows about terrible people doing terrible things, but two hours is usually fine.  I found the "Mountainhead" quartet well-observed in their immature frat-boy preoccupations, and I'm glad that there were references to topics like accelerationism and transhumanism that the Silicon Valley set get all worked up about.  However, as a comedy I wanted the plot to get more extreme, more cringey, more absurd, or more anything.  The first half was a great setup, but then it felt like Armstrong got preoccupied with undercutting his characters' egos, and showing how they really were a pack of ineffectual twits in a real crisis, and wound up removing the possibility of anything too dark or too politically incendiary.  Recent events have shown that tech gurus can do some real damage, and the last thing I want in a satire about tech gurus right now is something that plays it too safe. 

Now for something completely different.  Animated movies based on primarily live-action IP have a very mixed track record, and for every "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse" there's been a "The Lord of the Rings: The War of the Rohirrim."  The new "Predator: Killer of Killers" anthology feature, however, is one of the good ones.  Dan Trachtenberg, the director of "Prey," returns for a collection of very violent animated tales of alien Predators doing battle with different human warriors throughout history.  The first features a Viking warrior named Ursa (Lindsay LaVanchy) and her son Anders (Damien Haas) tracking down a rival clan leader, Zoran (Andrew Morgado).  The second is about two brothers, Kenji and Kiyoshi (Louis Ozawa), and their rivalry in feudal Japan.  The third is about a WWII airplane mechanic, Torres (Rick Gonzalez), who tries to warn his squadron of a Predator attack over the Atlantic.    

I'm not a big fan of the Unreal Engine-produced animation, which resembles the style of Netflix's "Arcane" and the recent "Flow" animated feature.  The characters aren't very expressive, and the visuals tend to look murky and unfinished.  However, it's a good style for action scenes, and "Killer of Killers" is pretty much wall to wall action sequences.  There are elements that just look better in animation than live action, including over-the-top violence, crazy science-fiction weaponry, and plenty of stylized blood and gore, with all kinds of creative kills on display.  The three main characters are never given much depth, but there's actually more of a cohesive story here than I was expecting, and everything ties together in a satisfying way.  "Killer of Killers" is easily better than three of the five live action "Predator" movies, just on a script level.  Based on pure action, it might even be the best one.          

Trachtenberg has another "Predator" movie coming out in a few months, the live action theatrical feature "Predator: Badlands."  There's been no indication that its story is tied into "Killer of Killers" in any meaningful way, but I expect that it won't be entirely  standalone either.  And based on Trachtenberg's work with this series so far, I'm looking forward to it.  

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