My Favorite Charles Laughton Film

Beloved stage and screen actor Charles Laughton only directed a single film, which was received so badly upon its release that he never made another.  However, it enjoyed a great critical reappraisal over the years, and "The Night of the Hunter" is now widely considered one of the best American films ever made.  It's a Southern Gothic chiller brought to life through German Expressionism, featuring one of Robert Mitchum's most iconic performances.  Its distinctive visuals are an homage to silent films - but unfortunately "The Night of the Hunter" was made in the 1950s, an era where nobody wanted anything to do with silent films.  

The story unfolds like a fairy tale, told largely from the perspective of two children who hold a dangerous secret.  The setting is a small town in West Virginia during the Great Depression.  The wolf at their door is the evil, murderous preacher Harry Powell, best remembered for the tattoos of "Love" and "Hate" across his knuckles.  Mitchum makes Powell calculating and intimidating and very, very charismatic.  His seduction tactics are rough and unpolished, but the traumatized and deeply religious widow played by Shelly Winters doesn't stand a chance.  All too soon they're married, and the evil preacher is now the evil stepfather as well.  The townsfolk fall for his oratory, and soon the children have no one left to protect them.  There was a lot of concern around Powell being perceived as too much of an anti-Christian presence onscreen, and at least one other major star turned down the role for being too villainous.  Mitchum, however, needed no convincing, and Harry Powell may still be the character he's best remembered for.       

There's a starkness and a simplicity to the film that is absolutely riveting.  Many of the suspense sequences have little to no dialogue, or are driven by Walter Schumann's score.  The child's eye view of the world and heavy use of religious and natural symbolism set the scene for a battle between good and evil in the most elemental terms.  As Powell puts it, it's the little story of right-hand/left-hand.  Laughton uses multiple silent film techniques and fills the screen with older cinematic devices and macabre Expressionistic imagery that had largely gone out of style in the sound era.   The black and white cinematography relays the story in light and shadows, and in some key scenes the characters are only visible as silhouettes.   So much of the storytelling is done through the shot compositions and set design, particularly the night sequences that can make the most idyllic settings seem eerie and threatening.  Huge portions of the screen are allowed to be totally dark, creating the opportunity for images with these dramatic, gorgeous contrasts.

One of the most famous scenes involves the reveal of a corpse seated in a car at the bottom of a flowing river, a surreal underwater shot created entirely in a studio by Laughton and cinematographer Stanley Cortez.  Other shots feature exaggerated storybook images, achieved with experimental editing tricks and clever stagecraft.  At one point the silhouettes of a horse and rider arrive on an impossible horizon, clearly artificial and yet incredibly  unnerving.  Children's faces appear in the stars, animals watch over the escape on the river, and Harry Powell casts a looming shadow that dwarfs everything in its path.  Children's songs and games are a recurring motif, and a framing device shows an old woman telling a group of children a warning fable about the "wolf in sheep's clothing." 

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That old woman is Rachel, the only grown-up who sees Harry Powell for exactly what he does, and joins in the fight against him in the last act.  She's played by silent film veteran Lilian Gish, toting a rifle as she tells her foundlings Bible stories.  She's symbolic of a true Christian winning out over a vile pretender, of good triumphing over evil.  Faith is restored, the night ends, and everything is brought out into the daylight.  However, the legacy of Harry Powell has persisted through both horror and non-horror cinema, and Charles Laughton is now better known in some circles as a great director than a great actor.  

What I've Seen - Charles Laughton

Night of the Hunter (1955)

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"Squid Game" is Back

Minor spoilers ahead

Did we need another season of "Squid Game"?  Obviously not, but the new one is doing everything right.  Also, there were a few loose ends left from the first season that it's nice to see getting tied up, and I'm not going to begrudge creator Hwang Dong-hyuk for pursuing a pay bump.  If you liked the first season of "Squid Game," you'll probably like the second.  However, be warned that the seven episodes that Netflix released in December are only the first half of a longer season that was split in half for various reasons, and this batch ends on a cliffhanger.  

So, Seong Gi-hun (Lee Jung-jae) is still searching for the people behind the mysterious games where hundreds of people battle to the death for the chance at a cash prize.  I don't think it's too much of a spoiler to say that he's not quite successful, accidentally putting himself back into the games while a team of his employees are trying to find him and the secret island where the games are held by the Front Man (Lee Byung-hun).  There's a rule change this year, and contestants are allowed to vote for the games to end by simple majority after every round, and keep whatever money has been accumulated.  Gi-hun spends a considerable amount of time trying to convince the other players to vote to quit.

The players this year are an interesting bunch.  Gi-hun quickly teams up with an old friend, Park Jung-bae (Lee Seo-hwan), a former Marine Dae-ho (Kang Ha-neul), and a transwoman Cho Hyun-ju (Park Sung-hoon).  Others include a mother-son duo, a pregnant girl and her ex, a crypto Youtuber, and a rapper named Thanos (Choi Seung-hyun).  In an interesting wrinkle, we also follow one of the guards, 011 (Park Gyu-young), whose motives are yet unclear.  There are a few new games this year, but with the shock value of all the deaths significantly reduced, the show spends more time on the psychology of the players between the games.  It quickly becomes clear that even with the promise of receiving some money for their efforts, and even with Gi-hun explaining what will happen to them, many of the players are incentivized to keep playing.  Some of this is because of the characters' personalities, but others are influenced by group dynamics, peer pressure, and the choices of others.    

It's hard to judge this season because it's clearly unfinished, with several of the subplots progressing pretty slowly.  The creators have made a promising start, but it's hard to say how well they're going to hit some of their intended targets.  There's a welcome refocusing of the satire and social commentary to look at the mechanisms for why people act against their own best interests, but none of this has paid off yet narratively.  The show is also moving at a slower pace this season, and most of the sympathetic characters are still alive, so it's nowhere near hitting the melodramatic peaks of the first season.  

However, I feel like this season of "Squid Game" is in many ways better than the first.  We have several different characters working at cross purposes with a variety of different agendas.  The formula set up by the first season is subverted and interrogated in various ways.  There's not as much exploration about what goes on behind the scenes of the games as I would like, but the new information we do get is intriguing.  For instance, most of the first episode of this season is spent with The Recruiter (Gong Yoo), who turns out to have a fascinating mindset.  Also, those cringey foreign VIPs in the animal masks do not make an appearance this year. 

Where the show has lost a step is with the games themselves.  So far no clever strategies or techniques have been employed during the gameplay.  No sudden twists or sacrifices have occurred.  None of the kills have been especially creative.  Gi-hun isn't there to win the game but to stop it and save as many people as possible, so the stakes are very different.   I'm not surprised that many of the gore junkies have gotten impatient, even with all the carnage in the format-breaking finale.

I, however, am not watching this show for the gore, and I'm looking forward to season three.  

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"Gladiator II" and "Juror #2"

So, what have our seniormost senior directors been up to lately?

If you like the first "Gladiator" movie, you'll probably like "Gladiator II."    It's very much a retread of the first movie, starring a new hero named Hanno (Paul Mescal), whose wife is killed in a battle against invading Roman forces under General Acacius (Pedro Pascal), and ends up a gladiator owned by the conniving ex-slave Macrinus (Denzel Washington).  Acacius turns out to be married to Lucilla (Connie Neilson) from the first "Gladiator," and secretly planning to overthrow the degenerate twin emperors currently in charge of Rome, Geta (Joseph Quinn) and Caracalla (Fred Hechinger).

I've missed good, old-fashioned action spectaculars like "Gladiator," where the director isn't afraid to kill off most of the cast, because they need to worry about sequels or setting up a franchise.  The killings here are also very graphic, and often very creative.  Hanno fights an opponent who rides a rhinoceros into the area.  Later, the Coliseum is flooded so that a naval battle can be reenacted.  I'm betting that when the actual Romans did it, they didn't put sharks in the water to chow down on the unfortunate combatants, but historically gladiators didn't typically battle to the death anyway, so historical accuracy wasn't really ever in the cards.  When we're out of the arena, "Gladiator II" isn't too interesting.  The characters are thin, though the excellent cast is very good at pretending they aren't.  Denzel Washington is the most fun to watch as the genial villain, Macrinus, who steals every single scene he's in.

I'm not a big fan of the original "Gladiator," but the movie assumes that I am, spending the whole opening sequence replaying the greatest hits from "Gladiator," and recycling a lot of the visual motifs.  There's a big twist that depends on a relationship from the first movie, and a character I didn't even remember existed.  It didn't really impact my enjoyment of "Gladiator II," except to remind me of the deficiencies of the original movie.  I suspect that the sequel may be a worse film, but I enjoyed it more because Ridley Scott and his collaborators were willing to lean into the spectacle and melodrama more wholeheartedly.  Scott's last few movies had me worried that he was coming to the end of his viability as a commercial filmmaker, but "Gladiator II" shows he still knows how to please an audience.        

 

Now, on to the latest Clint Eastwood film, which some are predicting is the last Clint Eastwood film.  "Juror #2" is a very old fashioned kind of courtroom drama and morality play, with a few scenes that contain direct echoes of "12 Angry Men" and other classics of the genre.  The titular juror is Justin Kemp (Nicholas Hoult), a recovering alcoholic with a very pregnant wife, Ally (Zoe Deutch).  The case involves a woman who was found dead, with all signs pointing to her boyfriend as the perpetrator.  Justin comes to believe that he may have actually killed the woman in a hit-and-run, and his guilt drives him to influence the jury to find the suspect innocent.  Supporting characters include the district attorney (Toni Collette), the public defender (Chris Messina), the judge (Amy Aquino), and a juror who turns out to be an ex-police detective (J.K. Simmons).

"Juror #2" is very no-frills and matter-of-fact, with some good performances and decent enough writing for a legal thriller.  The filmmaking is sparse, as it usually is in Eastwood films, and though the editing is a little jarring for my taste, there are no major unforced errors.  The case and the way that events unfold are preposterous, but we see far worse procedural and legal mistakes every night on network television.  "Juror #2" is not about law or justice, but about putting the viewer in the shoes of a man facing an awful ethical dilemma, and getting them to empathize and relate, and it does that pretty well.  There have been a couple of attempts over the years to turn Nicholas Hoult into a leading man, and he's clearly got the acting chops for it.  However, I think he's a character actor at heart, and "Juror #2" benefits from that.  The movie is small, but sturdy, and a better swan song for Clint Eastwood than any of his films from the past decade.  

   

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The Age of "Adolescence"

Spoilers for the first episode ahead.

Netflix's "Adolescence" is being billed as a mystery or a thriller in some places, which is misleading.  It's a four-episode miniseries about a terrible crime, and there are certainly elements of suspense and tension, but we know who was responsible from very early on.  Instead, "Adolescence" is better characterized as a social drama, each episode covering a new development in the investigation and resulting fallout.  In addition, each episode is done in one nerve-wracking shot, with no cuts, and apparently no technical cheats.   

Created by Jack Thorne and Stephen Graham, "Adolescence" is about a 13 year-old who is accused of murdering a classmate. Graham plays Eddie Miller, the father of Jamie (Owen Cooper), a sweet-looking kid who is arrested in the first episode by DI Bascombe (Ashley Walters) and DS Frank (Faye Marsay).  The second episode follows the detectives when they conduct interviews at Jamie's school.  The third is spent with Jamie while he's being interviewed by a child psychologist, Briony Ariston (Erin Doherty).  Finally, the fourth focuses on Eddie, his wife Manda (Christine Tremarco), and their daughter Lisa (Amélie Pease) dealing with the aftermath several months later.

"Adolescence" is designed to ask questions and spark debate, not to provide all the answers.  We get a rough idea of what happened and Jamie's probable mindset, but there is so much left unresolved for the audience to parse themselves.  We don't know why the victim's friend, Jade (Fatima Bojang), attacks Jamie's friend Ryan (Kaine Davis) during the school episode.  We don't know if the version of events relayed by Jamie to Briony during their session is truthful.  We don't know how much responsibility the Millers have regarding Jamie's actions.  We don't know what part his school environment or his friends might have played.  There's certainly a lot suggested by what we witness, but nothing confirmed.  The performances from the entire cast are excellent, with Stephen Graham anchoring the whole enterprise with heartbreaking commitment.  It's also hard to believe that this is Owen Cooper's first screen role, as he displays a remarkable amount of control over Jamie's shifting moods and mannerisms.    

I appreciate that "Adolescence" is keen on tackling current events and issues head-on.  Ripped-from-the-headlines media like "Law & Order" or the Netflix true crime docuseries are usually so sensationalized, it's a real surprise to find something that's approaching these subjects with real care and nuance.  The Miller family is completely ordinary, and the parents have no major domestic issues or personal problems, so you can't point to any of the usual suspects for Jamie's disturbing behavior.  There's more scrutiny placed on school and the internet, where adult supervision is lacking, social safety nets are failing, and kids are falling through the cracks.  Alarms have been raised for years now about how educational institutions have been in crisis post-Covid, and seeing the chaos up-close is a real eye-opener.  There's also a gentle, but pointed push for parents to be more involved in their children's lives, as a recurring theme throughout the show is that the well-meaning adults have little to no idea what's really going on with their kids.  

The UK has a long history of producing excellent social dramas, but Ken Loach and Mike Leigh have slowed down lately due to funding troubles, and it's been a while since I've seen a piece of drama that feels so immediate and so relevant to the lives of everyday people.  It's wonderful to have "Adolescence" carrying on in their footsteps.  I don't know that the one shot format adds all that much narratively, but it's all very well done.  And if the fancy filmmaking attracts more viewers, then I'm all for it.  I think we need much more media in this vein being produced, hopefully by creators as insightful and empathetic as the ones responsible for "Adolescence."

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"Conclave" and "Here"

Quick thoughts on two more prestige pics.

I probably wasn't in the best mindset to watch "Conclave," which is about the election of a new Pope in the present day.  Ralph Fiennes stars as Cardinal Lawrence, the Dean  of the College of Cardinals, and the one in charge of running the conclave.  Among the hopefuls are the liberal Cardinal Bellini (Stanley Tucci), far right Cardinal Tedesco (Sergio Castellitto), popular African conservative Cardinal Adeyemi (Lucian Msamati), ambitious moderate Cardinal Tremblay (John Lithgow), and an obscure newcomer, Cardinal Benitez (Carlos Diehz).  Isabella Rossellini also plays a minor role as Sister Agnes, who heads the nuns serving the assembled cardinals.    

"Conclave" is essentially a political thriller, full of secretive conversations and new information being revealed every few minutes.  I went in expecting a more earnest depiction of the conclave process, and what I got was closer to something out of an airport paperback.  The performances are good, and director Edward Berger does a great job of putting interesting things onscreen - the Vatican pageantry is on full display - but the handling of the material felt shallow.  Actual debate over doctrine and faith are explored to some extent, but are also totally dwarfed by the scandals involving the individual cardinals, and some very high-school level factionalism.  I was especially exasperated by the very last reveal about the newly elected pope, which just felt like a needless soap opera twist for the sake of having a final punchline.

Of the excellent cast, Fiennes stands out as the good man put in the terrible position of having to ensure a fair process, despite very unfair tactics being employed on all sides, while under unimaginable pressure.  His internal journey is the most believable and affecting part of the film, particularly when has to face his own faults and ambitions.  The plot machinations are otherwise far too contrived for me to take seriously, and I find myself classifying "Conclave" with the adaptations of Dan Brown's Robert Langdon novels instead of something like "The Two Popes," which presents a far more even-handed and approachable depiction of the modern day Catholic leadership.  I don't mind some liberties being taken for the sake of entertainment - and "Conclave" is certainly entertaining - but I was hoping that this film would also be a little more grounded and sober in light of the subject matter.  

On to "Here," which I wasn't planning on writing anything about originally, until I thought about it in the context of the rest of Robert Zemeckis's career.  Zemeckis is a director whose work is marked by technical innovations, who always seems to be pushing at the limits of what filmmaking can do.  "Here" is very much a film that fits into this mindset, and is built around the gimmick of the whole narrative playing out in a single location and within the frame of a single camera shot.  We move backwards and forwards in time, watching the lives of multiple families playing out, because the imaginary camera happens to look in on the living room of a house somewhere on the East Coast.  Occasionally, floating rectangular inset panels will change only parts of the frame, so we can see multiple points in time simultaneously.  

There's a ton of other effects work involved here, including many instances of digital de-aging, face swapping, CGI backgrounds, animation, and more.  The timeline of "Here" covers everything from the dinosaurs to the present day, but is primarily about the life of Richard Young (Tom Hanks), his parents Al (Paul Bettany) and Rose (Kelly Reilly), and his wife Margaret (Robin Wright).  Other people who inhabit the same house include an aviator in the 1900s, an inventor in the 1940s, and an African-American family in the COVID era, who we get glimpses of in counterpoint to the Youngs' story.  Richard and Margaret live out an eventful, but fairly typical suburban American life, full of disappointments and setbacks, but also many small joys and important milestones.  The de-aging work is pretty seamless, and it's fun to watch the various scene transitions play out.  

The narrative, however, never struck me as more than an interesting formal experiment.  Most of the heavy lifting of creating the film's visual language was already done by Richard McGuire, whose comic "Here" provided the source material for the film.  The script by Zemeckis and Eric Roth is well-intentioned, but very narrow in scope and too sentimental for my tastes.  All the men are frustrated dreamers of one kind or another, and nearly all the women are unhappy.  There's some humor and some subversiveness here and there - the kids are allowed to be real brats - but I was mostly reminded of Zemeckis' work on "Forrest Gump," and not in a good way.

The innovation is admirable, and I hope it wins a lot of tech awards, but "Here" isn't where I'll be returning anytime soon.

  

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"The Electric State" Ain't Great, But…

I knew that "The Electric State" was going to be a bad movie before I saw it.  The reviews are abysmal.  The reactions to the trailer elicited nothing but scorn.  How did Netflix spend in excess of $300 million on this thing?  However, I find the finished project fascinating.  It's another one of those ambitious, grandiose fantasy projects in the vein of "Tomorrowland," "Jupiter Ascending," and "Mortal Engines" that takes a lot of big swings and totally fails to connect.  And if you've been watching much dystopian media over the past decade, some of those swings are awfully familiar.

Joe and Anthony Russo have made a string of poorly received action projects in the wake of "Avengers: Endgame," including "Cherry," "The Gray Man," and the very expensive Amazon Prime series, "Citadel."  None of these have been especially bad, just nothing that remotely meets the expectations created by being from the directors of some of the most expensive and lucrative films ever made. "The Electric State," loosely based on a book by Simon Stalenhag, is another big effects spectacular that takes place in an alternate history version of the United States, in the aftermath of a failed robot uprising.  This is a version of the 1990s where humans spend most of their time living in virtual reality, piloting drones to do any physical fighting, while the remaining robots live in a dangerous "exclusion zone."    

Our hero is an orphaned teenager named Michelle (Millie Bobby Brown), who discovers that her younger brother Christopher (Woody Norman) might be alive, when she's contacted by a drone robot named Cosmo.  She goes looking for a doctor (Ke Huy Quan) in the exclusion zone who might know where Christopher is, and along the way meets a goofy veteran named Keats (Chris Pratt) and his robot pal Herman (Anthony Mackie), who work as smugglers.  In the exclusion zone, they also befriend a ragtag community of robots, lead by an animatronic Mr. Peanut (Woody Harrelson).  Enemies include the evil leader of the drone-creating Sentre corporation, Skate (Stanely Tucci), and the mercenary Bradbury (Giancarlo Esposito).

What I primarily enjoy "The Electric State" for is its weird, fanciful worldbuilding.  This is a world where robots are very prevalent, so we have anthropomorphized pitching machines, jukeboxes, and construction machinery running around.  Most of the robots who went to war against humanity seem to have been advertising cartoon characters brought to life, which means that parts of the premise are awfully close to that old "Treehouse of Horror" segment, "Attack of the 50ft Eyesores," with Mr. Peanut filling in for Lard Lad.  And what kind of deal had to be struck with Planters to make a robot version of their spokes-legume part of this movie?!  There's a bipedal 7-Up can running around in the battle scenes, but not any other branded characters.  Who else was under consideration that turned the filmmakers down?  Bob's Big Boy?  The Energizer Bunny? Charles Entertainment Cheese?  

All due credit should go to the animators and effects professionals for making the movie's quasi-steampunk dystopian aesthetic look as good as it does.  Some of the bots are delightfully rendered, including a post office robot voiced by Jenny Slate, and a piano-playing taco, who is responsible for some of the film's terrible needle-drops.  Somehow, we get both "Don't Stop Believing" and "Wonderwall" in the same movie, even though "Wonderwall" was released after this movie is supposed to take place.  Despite it all, I thought that Herman and Keats made a perfectly respectable comedic duo, trading the kind of silly banter and terrible pop culture references that always seem to show up in movies like this.  Chris Pratt proves once again that he is really good at playing action doofuses, and "The Electric State" would be much worse without him.     

By setting their film in the 1990s, the Russo brothers try to provide some kind of an excuse for their retro-futurist visuals, but the whole thing is still an oddball mishmash of different influences.  Since Walt Disney is cited as the creator of the bots, this could take place in the same universe as Brad Bird's "Tomorrowland," and the use of IP and themes of internet addiction suggest ties to Spielberg's "Ready Player One."  "The Electric State" is much less sophisticated than either of those films, but as children's media it's more accessible than both.  Despite the allusions to "Astro Boy" and cameos by Billy the Big-Mouth Bass, "The Electric State" feels retro, but rarely nostalgic.  And while it has all the bad habits of all the other over-bloated YA dystopian films of the last decade, I don't find it any worse than any of the other films I've referenced in this review.

Yes, "The Electric State" is a bad movie, but it's not a terrible one, and I've seen plenty of equally unimpressive fare lately that hasn't attracted this much scorn. At least "The Electric State" is taking some hefty risks, though I suspect this will be the Russos' last blank check for a long time.   

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"Black Doves" For Christmas

Of all the new spy series that have come out recently, "Black Doves" is easily my favorite.  Part of it is Keira Knightley and Ben Whishaw as the leads, playing a pair of spies who work for the same secret mercenary organization, the Black Doves.  Part of it is the effective blend of wry humor, potent melodrama, and a few good action scenes, and Christmas cheer.  Yes, the whole series takes place in London at Christmastime, when a series of assassinations and a dead Chinese diplomat spell trouble for everybody.

One of the victims is a man named Jason (Andrew Koji), who was having an affair with Helen Webb (Knightley), the wife of the UK Secretary of Defense, Wallace Webb (Andrew Buchan).  Helen has been undercover as an infiltrator into the UK government for years, playing the part of dedicated wife and mother, while feeding information to the Black Doves.  Her handler Reed (Sarah Lancashire) brings in an old friend of Helen's, Sam Young (Whishaw) to help protect Helen, as they search for the killers.  Sam had to leave London and his partner Michael (Omari Douglas) when a job went very badly in 2017, and is tentatively trying to reconnect.  Unfortunately his old enemies, including his old boss Lenny Lines (Kathryn Hunter), are also keen to pick up where they left off.  

Spy thrillers are usually pretty chilly affairs, featuring characters who have closed off their emotions so they can better compartmentalize the less savory parts of their occupations, and better deceive those closest to them.  This is not the case in "Black Doves," which is full of big emotions and heartfelt conversations at every turn.  Helen is truly in love with Jason, and she's furious and heartbroken that he's dead.  Wallace turns out to be truly in love with her, and Sam and Michael were truly happy and committed to each other before Sam's work got in the way.  Best of all, Helen and Sam are real friends who are affectionate and loyal to each other, even if they mostly spend their time together trying not to get killed.  They're operating in the kind of universe where everyone is unreasonably good at hand-to-hand combat, and there is an inexhaustible supply of baddies to fight, so most episodes have at least one big action scene to inject some excitement.  However, the relationship drama is equally as fun to watch, which I can't say about any other spy show I've seen lately.

The mix of tones and genres plays a big part in the watchability of "Black Doves."  I love the collection of characters that Helen and Sam interact with, from the no-nonsense Reed to a couple of mouthy local hired guns, Williams (Ella Lily Hyland) and Eleanor (Gabrielle Creevey), who they have to team up with for a mission.  The teamup really doesn't make sense if you think about it too hard, but the banter is so good, why would you complain?  Everyone is also terribly good at spycraft up until the point that they aren't, and there are plot holes everywhere, but the point here is to let veteran character actors like Kathryn Hunter say effortlessly cool lines, watch Keira Knightley be a righteous badass, and to root for Sam and Michael to get back together in spite of all their baggage.  I'm so glad that the writers don't let logic and reason get in the way. 

Ben Whishaw's had a good run lately and does excellent work here, but I haven't seen Keira Knightley in something that has matched her talents this well in far too long.  Helen is a complicated character, but I appreciate that she has such a passionate, active role in every episode, and there isn't a whole lot of time wasted on whether she's morally in the wrong for having an affair, or for being part of a secret spy organization in the first place.  This is not that kind of show.  This is the kind of show that assumes you're already familiar with all the usual spy tropes, have gotten a bit bored with them, and would like a different spin on the genre with a bit more black humor, a bit more irreverence, and a touch of Christmas tinsel on top.  Enjoy.

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It's "Saturday Night"

I write this review as an admirer of "Saturday Night Live," but I wouldn't count myself a fan.  I know enough about the early days of the show that I can recognize about 80% of the people being portrayed in "Saturday Night," but I don't know enough of the details to take issue with how they're portrayed - with one exception.  We'll get to that later.

Directed by Jason Reitman, who also co-wrote the film with Gil Kenan, "Saturday Night" covers the ninety nail-biting minutes before the first episode of the show, that would eventually be known as "Saturday Night Live," was broadcast on NBC in 1974.  The show's creator Lorne Michaels (Gabriel LaBelle) is our main POV character, desperately trying to corral the crew, the writers, the NBC executives, and his temperamental cast to put on a show in spite of numerous setbacks.  Nothing is ready, everyone is unhappy, and Lorne is constantly being pulled in a dozen directions.  We're dropped into the chaos very much in media res, constantly being introduced to new characters and new issues as Lorne problem solves on the fly. 

John Belushi (Matt Wood) and Chevy Chase (Cory Michael Smith) are at each other's throats, and Belushi won't sign his contract.  Lorne's boss Dick Ebersol (Cooper Hoffman) wants product placement in the show, while his boss David Tebet (Willem Dafoe) doesn't want the show on the air at all.  Contributors like Garrett Morris (Lamorne Morris) and Jim Henson (Nicholas Braun) aren't sure what they're doing there, while Billy Crystal (Nicholas Podany) and Valri Bromfield (Corine Britti) can't get a straight answer on whether they've been cut from the show.  George Carlin (Matthew Rhys), the very first guest host, refuses to participate in the sketches.  Also, the set is on fire, the lighting director quit, and nobody taped the rehearsal so it's the live broadcast or nothing.  And someone ordered a llama.

There's a very Aaron Sorkin feel to "Saturday Night," with a lot of walk-and-talks, torrents of dense dialogue, and everyone playing very fast and loose with the actual facts.  It doesn't bother me so much with a project like this, which isn't a serious portrayal of any important historical figures, but rather designed to be more of a feel-good trip down memory lane.  We know that everyone is going to pull together in the end and triumph, so we can enjoy the temporary flailing and inflighting.  The whole film feels like a half-remembered showbiz anecdote, with a lot of mythologizing, a lot of name-dropping, and a lot of screwing up of timelines.  I appreciate that it puts several unsung heroes, like writers  Michael O'Donoghue (Tommy Dewey) and Rosie Shuster (Rachel Sennott), in the spotlight, and lets the less well-known actors like Ella Hunt as Gilda Radner, Emily Fairn as Laraine Newman, and Kim Matula as Jane Curtin have their moments.

As I understand it, most of what's portrayed in "Saturday Night" actually happened at some point, but everything's been massively compressed into ninety minutes of cinematic madness, with a few key scenes that have been totally invented to pile on the drama.  So, the famous story of Lorne hiring Alan Zweibel (Josh Brener), a shocking encounter with Milton Berle (J. K. Simmons), and Dan Aykroyd (Dylan O'Brien) coming up with his Julia Child sketch all take place within minutes of each other.  We even get Andy Kaufman (Nicholas Braun) doing his Mighty Mouse bit as part of the pre-show.  Everyone's portrayed as larger than life, but they're all treated mostly with great affection and consideration.  The one exception is Jim Henson (Braun), who famously didn't gel with the "Saturday Night Live" sensibilities at all, and was hated by the writing staff.  He's way too much of a weirdo and a square here, and gets the worst subplot.    

Fortunately, the rest of the film comes off better.  The performances range from dead-on to passable, with an emphasis on getting the voices and energy right rather than the looks.  Only a few of the actors actually get enough screen time to give their characters much depth - LaBelle as Lorne, Sennott, as Shuster, and Matt Wood as Belushi.  Lamorne Morris gets my pick for MVP, for really helping to distinguish Garrett Morris, who I admit I knew nothing about going into the film.  The production design is also a lot of fun, resurrecting the television ecosystem of '70s, complete with all the old tech, the big hair, and the constant drug use.  The scripting is messy, but does a good job of setting up the stakes and keeping the momentum going.  When things go down to the wire, and the cast finally starts clicking with the material, it's a genuine thrill to see.  

"Saturday Night" was released to coincide with the 50th anniversary of "Saturday Night Live," and is exactly the kind of movie that you'd expect it to be.  It's probably a little too safe and self-important, but it also packs a whole lot of entertainment into one movie.  And the collection of talent assembled to pay tribute to the original Not Ready for Prime Time Players is really something.  For fans of SNL, this is a must-see, and for newcomers, it's a great introduction to an earlier era of comedy.  I suggest finding that first episode of "Saturday Night Live" before seeing the movie, because you're going to want to watch it right afterward.      

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"My Old Ass" and "Your Monster"

"My Old Ass" is a movie about a very specific time in life.  Elliott (Maisy Stella) is celebrating her eighteenth birthday by going camping with some friends.  She takes some hallucinogenic mushrooms, and suddenly her thirty nine-year-old self (Aubrey Plaza) is having a conversation with her.  Older Elliott offers some advice, like staying away from the cute guy, Chad (Percy Hynes White), who is working for the summer at her parents' cranberry farm, and spending more time with her family before she goes off to college in a few weeks.  

Written and directed by Megan Park, "My Old Ass" is a movie that snuck up on me.  It's incredibly sincere, despite the fantasy premise and lighthearted characters.  The grown-up Elliott drops a few hints about the future, but in a sly way where you can't tell if she's joking or not.  Plaza's been in a few projects lately that haven't had the best idea of what to do with her, but she's perfect as the untrustworthy mentor figure here.  After the mushroom trip, teenage Elliott discovers she can still talk to her older version on the phone, because she added her number to Elliott's phone while Elliott was asleep, under "My Old Ass."  The two develop a relationship that initially seems one-sided, but becomes wonderfully symbiotic and mutually helpful.  Maisy Stella carries the film with ease, and I look forward to anything she wants to do next.  

There's a lot of nostalgia in "My Old Ass," despite it taking place in the present day, in Southern Ontario.  Park seems to have constructed her ideal of what her teenage years could have been like.  Elliott is a lesbian with a supportive family and friends, looking forward to striking out on her own.  There's a great little romance in the mix, with one of the silliest, most winning fantasy sequences I've seen on film in a long time.  The pacing is very unhurried, and the sunny visuals are lovely.  Elliott's family lives in a lakeside community where everyone seems to get around by boat, and we see her constantly surrounded by nature.  Older Elliott urges her younger self to enjoy her time there while she can, and the audience should take that advice as well. 

On to "Your Monster," which is also about a young woman who finds herself talking to a possibly imaginary aspect of herself.  Melissa Barrera stars as Laura, an acting hopeful whose career trajectory was interrupted by getting cancer.  Her boyfriend Jacob (Edmund Donavan) left her, and the musical they worked on together, with the expectation that Laura would play the lead role, is being produced without her.  Shattered by the breakup and recovering from surgery, Laura finds a literal monster (Tommy Dewey) living in her closet.  He's a grump at first, and wants her to leave, but eventually the two become friendly and maybe something more.    

Caroline Lindy wrote and directed "Your Monster," which turns out to be a unique combination of breakup movie and putting-on-a-show movie.  Laura decides she wants to be part of the musical, and crashes the auditions with unexpected results.  Barrera is the main event here, handily navigating the toxic relationship and rom-com tropes, and a few Broadway-style song numbers too.  She's a charming, lovable presence, even when she's deep in the breakup funk, crying through mountains of tissues.  I found the monster romance an interesting idea, but underbaked.  The visual of this quasi-werewolf guy cuddling with Melissa Berrera and sharing her Chinese takeout is fine, and the banter is cute, but I was hoping for a little more fleshing out of the monster as an actual character.  I don't feel like I had enough time with him to get to know him as well as I should have.    

"Your Monster" has some good ideas and takes its story to some unexpected places.  I like the  mix of multiple genres and the particular tone - very light and comedic, with just a few touches of horror and fantasy in the right places.  However, I wish the movie and its central metaphor could have given me a little more to chew on.  It's a fun watch with a great ending, but not very filling.      

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A Too Brief "One Hundred Years of Solitude"

One Hundred Years of Solitude by Gabriel García Márquez is one of those towering works of literature that I never managed to finish.  The book was too much for me, with so many characters that shared the same names to keep track of, and I had to admit defeat after only a few chapters.  Now Netflix has made a miniseries from the first section of the book, covering the lives of the first two generations of the Buendía family, and the early years of the town they help to create in the wilderness, Macondo.  Authenticity and respect of the source material is paramount here, because of the status of the novel and its author, so the series was shot in Colombia with many non-professional actors, in Spanish, with a mostly Colombian creative team.  There was clearly a lot of effort put into this production, and the show  reflects this.

Márquez's novel is one of the primary examples of magical realism, so the story of the Buendías takes place in a world where the dead can stick around as apparitions, the weather seems to change whenever something momentous happens, and curses and bad omens have as much impact on the the characters as science and technology. The story begins with a pair of cousins, José Arcadio Buendía (Diego Vásquez) and Úrsula Iguarán (Marleyda Soto), who marry in spite of the warnings of their family, and leave to find a new home.  Eventually they build the town of Macondo, have three children - José Arcadio (Édgar Vittorino), Aureliano (Claudio Cataño), and Amaranta (Loren Sofía) - adopt two more - Rebeca (Akima) and Arcadio (Janer Villarreal) - and live through several decades of upheaval, misfortune, and cyclical destiny.  

I can't say much as to whether the miniseries is a good adaptation of the source novel, but I liked it very much as a piece of epic storytelling.  We get to watch several characters live out their entire lives, from birth to death over the course of eight episodes.  We see the influence of forces beyond the characters' control upon multiple generations.  As Macondo grows, it accumulates more problems - plague, politics, and unwelcome outsiders.  It's a little difficult to be truly invested in the characters when their choices seem to be predetermined, and so many of them are so stubbornly self-destructive, but I found many of their stories very moving regardless.  The elder José Arcadio is a self-styled inventor, alchemist, and dreamer who spends most of his life in the pursuit of impossible wonders, failing at every pursuit, and leaving Úrsula to run the household and look after her brood.  Multiple characters fall in love with the worst partners, have brushes with incest, and hold terrible grudges.  The performances are strong, with Claudio Cataño, Édgar Vittorino and Marleyda Soto making the strongest impressions.  

The production values of the series are very high, with the town of Macondo as its centerpiece.  There's a repeated motif of children running through multiple locations, helping to show off the town and the Buendía home as they change over time.  The show starts in the 1800s and progresses through the Colombian civil war at the turn of the century, referencing and recreating a good amount of Colombian history in its later chapters.  There's not as much emphasis on the magical realism elements as I had expected, with the showrunners devoting most of their attention to the more tangible everyday lives of the Buendías.  Characters have visions and José Arcadio befriends an immortal gypsy, Melquíades (Moreno Borja), at one point, but these events are portrayed with restraint and subtlety.   So when it does rain flowers, or a plague of insomnia turns everyone into zombie-like shambling figures, the magic of the magical realism has far more impact. 

This is the first official dramatization of One Hundred Years of Solitude, and it's a prestige project through and through.  I think it's probably too enamored of the source material to work as well onscreen as it could have, and the story needs some additional streamlining, but I had no trouble getting to the end of this one.  I'm glad that the miniseries version gave me the opportunity to finally connect to and appreciate this story.  I hope that it'll be back for a second series to finish adapting the rest of the novel.     

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The Mysterious Emilia Pérez

"Emilia Pérez" is an odd movie.   And the more I learned about the movie, the odder it got.  This is a Spanish language musical about a transgender Mexican drug cartel leader, Manitas, who secretly transitions and creates a new persona - Emilia Pérez (Karla Sofía Gascón).  All the creatives behind it are French.  The writer and director is Jacques Audiard, who won the Palme d'Or a few years ago for the Tamil language film "Dheepan," but mostly works in his native language.  French singer Camille wrote the songs.  The fabulous costumes came from a Yves Saint Laurent designer.  Everything about the movie strikes me as very French, despite three Spanish speaking leading ladies being given the opportunity to shine.  I understand why it's gotten some raves, because it goes very big and the performances are all very impassioned and melodramatic.  However, I've historically had some difficulty with French cinema, and could not wrap my head around this.

My first thought was that "Emilia Pérez" simply reeked of inauthenticity, both as a film about Mexican characters and as a transgender narrative - and boy have there been plenty of transgender narratives in film this year to compare against.  However, "Emilia Pérez" is a musical, and also arguably taking place in the heightened world of telenovelas - the famously melodramatic Latin American soap operas.  Karla Sofía Gascón is a veteran of the genre, having spent much of her early career in Mexico.  The unlikely plot, involving multiple twists and turns, mistaken identities, and the past coming back to haunt everyone, are familiar components of this kind of storytelling.  I'm not saying that the film should be forgiven for its glib portrayal of gender transitioning, or its simplistic take on Mexico, but I think the choices make more sense in this context.  "Emilia Pérez" is a fantasy, and some exaggerations are to be expected.

The best thing about the film is unquestionably the performances.  Zoe Saldaña made the movie for me as Rita Mora Castro, an Afro-Latina lawyer who Emilia hires in secret to facilitate her transition.  Saldaña gets to sing and dance and rage and take charge of the screen in a way that she doesn't get to often enough.  Selena Gomez has a more limited role as Manitas's abandoned wife Jessi, a wronged woman who is expected to put up with far too much.  I like her very much as an actress, but she feels a bit miscast, despite nailing her song numbers.  As for Karla Sofía Gascón,  she does what she can, but the character of Emilia Pérez is constructed of such disparate parts that often seem to be working against each other.  The whole plot is predicated on Emilia becoming a saintly figure through her transition, but gradually being undone by her inability to cut ties with her past.  However, Manitas and Emilia feel like entirely different people, and it was a mistake to not give Emilia any sign of internal life pre-transition.  Gascón has a wonderful presence, but ends up coming across as more of a caricature or icon than a full-blooded human being.

"Emilia Pérez" feels similar to "Annette," the Leos Carax musical with a similarly outlandish story that works best if you treat it as allegory.  A major problem I have with both is not liking the music at all.  In the case of "Emilia Pérez," it's entirely due to the style of the songs, which are mostly very internal and angst-ridden.  The language barrier is an issue for me, as is the total lack of any earworms.  I wonder if this would work better as a stage musical, since the plot is so disjointed and the ending is so abrupt.  I haven't yet mentioned an entire subplot involving Emilia falling in love with the widow of a man she killed, because it goes absolutely nowhere and I don't understand why it's in the film, except to give Adriana Paz a role.  Some of the fundamental construction of the story and music here is so lacking, it comes across as downright amateurish.  I don't speak Spanish, but there have been some significant complaints circulating about the misuse of dialects and local vernacular too.

I'm left wondering why on earth Jacques Audiard and his collaborators decided to make this film - about this subject matter, in this language, and in this format.  Audiard is a fine director, and I respect his commitment to showing us the human condition in many different forms, but this was clearly biting off way more than he could chew.  I'm not disappointed, really.  Just very puzzled and a little at a loss for words.  

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"A Man on the Inside," Sneaks in the Heart

The latest Michael Schur comedy is a very welcome star vehicle for Ted Danson, playing retired college professor Charles Nieuwendyk, who is given an unusual employment opportunity.  Private investigator Julie Kovalenko (Lilah Richcreek Estrada) has been hired to look into a theft at a San Francisco retirement home, and needs a senior citizen to be her "man on the inside."  Charles fits the bill, and is delighted at the prospect of playing spy and detective.  However, he unexpectedly finds himself connecting to the residents and staff of Pacific View Retirement Community during his assignment.

While the investigative aspect of "A Man on the Inside" provides a nice hook, and carries through the whole season, the show is really about Pacific View, a very affluent and well-maintained senior care facility that is populated by a wealth of older character actors like Sally Struthers, Clyde Kusatsu, and Veronica Cartwright.  The facility is managed day to day by the dedicated director Didi Santos Cordero (Stephanie Beatriz), who becomes a major POV character.  Julie is also a constant presence, regularly getting updates from Charles and keeping him on track.  She impersonates Charles' daughter Emily (Mary Elizabeth Ellis) during the investigation.  The actual Emily lives in Sacramento with her husband Joel (Eugene Cordero) and their three screen-addicted boys, but tries to stay in her father's life as much as she can.   So, we've got both older and younger characters to represent a lot of different perspectives, keeping a nice balance in the cast. 

"A Man on the Inside" is all around a very pleasant, very heartfelt show.  It tackles some difficult subjects at times, such as Charles addressing the lingering emotional issues from the death of his wife, and a woman named Gladys (Susan Ruttan) at Pacific View who starts having memory issues.  However, it's got a great mix of comic actors and the premise is a lot of fun. Charles spends most of the early episodes trying to get the hang of being undercover, which is not as easy as it looks.  He makes a lot of mistakes and gets himself into a lot of misunderstandings, earning him a grumpy rival named Elliott (John Getz), but also some genuine new friends, like Virginia (Struthers), Flo (Margaret Avery), and Calbert (Stephen McKinley Henderson).   

I really appreciate the way the humor in the show is pitched a little slower and more gently than most modern sitcoms.  As you'd expect, there are a lot of jokes about the main characters being old and out of touch, but it's always with a lot of sympathy and compassion.  Probably the edgiest jokes involve a few digs about Elliott being a misogynist, but there's not much bite to them.  Most of the laughs are very character based, and a lot of it boils down to Charles being this irrepressibly curious and genial man, suddenly thrust into a new environment where his odd behavior can often be excused as eccentricity.  Ted Danson is an absolute delight every moment he's onscreen, and I'm so glad that he and Michael Schur got another chance to collaborate after "The Good Place."

"A Man on the Inside" is loosely based on a Chilean documentary, "The Mole Agent," where the ornery undercover senior citizen its center was more intent on advocating for the forgotten residents of the senior home that he infiltrated.  "A Man on the Inside" is more of a typical American sitcom, and while it touches on many of the same themes, and has plenty of moments of poignancy, it comes from a very different point of view.  The Schur universe is a much nicer place, where everyone is fundamentally good at heart, and Pacific View is an unusually well-run community where everyone cares about each other.  I prefer to think of it as not so much unrealistic as aspirational.

Also, extra kudos for the San Francisco setting, which makes me very nostalgic.    

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And "Anora"

Moderate spoilers ahead.

At the time of writing, "Anora" is far and away the best American film of 2024.  Like most of Sean Baker's work, it's about a sex worker - this one a New York based stripper and escort named Anora Mikheeva (Mikey Madison) who goes by "Ani."  She meets a young Russian client named Vanya (Mark Eydelshteyn) who doesn't speak much English.  Ani speaks a little Russian, enough to charm Vanya and keep his attention.  Soon they're flying off to Vegas together, and getting married.  However, Vanya is the son of a powerful Russian oligarch (Aleksei Serebryakov) and a formidable mother (Darya Ekamasova) who are not happy about this turn of events. 

"Anora" is a film that kept me on my toes.  Initially I was wary of the modern-day Cinderella story it seemed to be telling, with its long sequences of watching Vanya engage in hedonistic behavior, including multiple encounters with Ani.  He pays her for lap dances and strip teases - some far more explicit than mainstream films usually feature - escalating to sex and a whole week of exclusivity.  I wasn't buying the love story, but I liked the performances - Madison gives Ani some real hardscrabble grit and shrewdness, while maintaining her vulnerability.  Vanya is deceptively naive and unruffled by any situation.  Eventually I let myself be convinced that they could be happy together.  And that's when the movie took a swerve.

The second part of "Anora" turns into a raucous comedy, where we're introduced to three more characters: an Armenian priest named Toros (Karren Karagulian), his brother Garnick (Vache Tovmasyan) and, and a younger Russian man named Igor (Yura Burisov).  Vanya's father has paid these three to look after Vanya while he's in America, and they're frantic when they realize their charge has somehow gotten married on their watch.  Initially they come across as threatening, but Ani proves to be much more than they bargained for, and it's impossible not to feel bad for all of them.  These are not the Eastern European thugs of your usual action movie, but blue collar guys trying to do their jobs, who do not want to get violent, and aren't used to dealing with this amount of aggravation.  The situation escalates into an absurd odyssey across New York, where we get to know everybody a little better - including Ani and Vanya in some very different contexts.  

Some of the reviews I've read find this middle section too drawn out, but I think it's vital, especially for Ani's character.  Suddenly, she's not the perfect fantasy girl from the unlikely romance, but a stubborn, resourceful scrapper who refuses to be intimidated by three men who each dwarf her in size, and who will out-curse, out-threaten, and out-scream anyone who tries to talk down to her.  The intensity of the film ratchets up to dizzying heights, and the whole tone shifts.  Suddenly Ani's not the underdog we're rooting to find a happy ending, but a loose cannon in a precarious situation that just keeps getting weirder and wilder.  And it's all vital setup for the third act, where you find out who Ani really is.  Sean Baker really hits his stride here as well, nailing well-observed character moments, fun visual punchlines, and some gutting social commentary when you least expect it.  Extra kudos for nailing the feel of pornographic fantasy while avoiding the venality.

There's a lot going on in "Anora" that I'm still unpacking.  Ani's relationship with her Russian heritage is a big piece.  Vanya's status as a privileged millennial 1%er is another.  The characters' relationships with technology, specifically their phones as facilitators of courtship, is a third.  I don't think I've seen a film so in tune with the transactional, depersonalized nature of intimacy among many young adults.  Then you have the portrayal of sex work, the immigrant narrative, the New York setting, the subversion of the "Cinderella" story, and so many more layers under all the vibrancy and excitement.  I'm glad that Mikey Madison is getting so much attention for her work, along with Yura Burisov as Igor - who quietly ended up giving one of my favorite performances of the year by just being present and observing the madness going on around him.

And all kudos to Sean Baker for capturing the act of seeing in a way that really hit home.  He hasn't missed yet after four films, and is really overdue for all the acclaim he's finally receiving.  

  

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My Top Ten Episodes of "Star Trek: Lower Decks"

I decided not to write a season review for the final season of "Star Trek: Lower Decks," because despite a good amount of serialization, the show has always worked best as an episodic series for me.  Also, I lost track of the seasons at some point and binged the whole ending in one go.   So I'm just going to skip ahead to the Top Ten episode list, where I'll be discussing my favorites episode by episode, and the last season will definitely get some representation.

Episodes are unranked and listed by airdate.  Despite the overrepresentation of the first season, I really enjoyed the show consistently the whole way through.  Lots of "Trek" references ahead, and it gets pretty nerdy.  

"Moist Vessel" - You can see the influence of "Rick and Morty" the most clearly in the first season.  Mike McMahon is an alumnus, and definitely brought some of the sensibilities of that show with him to "Lower Decks."  Here, we get concepts that you could never do in a live action "Star Trek" show, like the terraforming agent wreaking havoc on the Cerritos and the ascension ("Space koala!").  And yet, the best gags are character based, with Mariner's priceless reactions to being promoted. 

"Terminal Provocations" - This is the first Badgey episode, and the one where he works the best.  Honestly, the joke wore pretty thin after they brought them back a few times, but Badgey's introduction is absolutely priceless.  Having a holographic assistant character based on Microsoft Office's Clippy is funny enough, but then they're also a talking Starfleet icon badge?  And they're evil?  And Rutherford has to resort to some pretty extreme violence to put him down?  It's perfect.  

"Crisis Point" - The entire episode is a spoof on the "Star Trek" movie franchise, complete with modified credits sequences, ridiculously drawn out beauty shots of the Cerritos, J.J. Abrams lens flares all over the bridge, and Mariner playing a campy Khan figure named Vindicta.  Of course, the meat of the story is Mariner confronting some of her own issues through the holodeck therapy, and Boimler finally learning the truth about Mariner being the Captain's kid - which predictably freaks him out.  

"No Small Parts" - The first season had some significant competition, but the appearance of a special guest star convinced me it had to be on this list.  I think the big sacrifice play would have had a lot more impact if it stuck, but this was still a chance to see the Cerritos handling a major crisis with some real stakes.  Bonus points for the introduction of exocomp Peanut Hamper and turning the dopey Pakleds from "Star Trek: The Next Generation" into some pretty formidable villains.  

"I, Excretus" - This is one of my favorite episodes of the entire series because Boimler demonstrates his ability to be a total badass for the first time.  He spends most of the episode grinding a holodeck training simulation of a Borg mission until he's turned himself into the coolest action hero ever.  Meanwhile, it's nice to see Freeman and Mariner getting along, and other familiar "Trek" plots and scenarios getting goosed in the other simulations - including a wild new take on "The Naked Time."

"Grounded" - I picked the premiere of season three instead of the finale of season two because I love the way that it shows how much Mariner has progressed as a character over the last two seasons.  The big cliffhanger isn't resolved because of her efforts, but boy does she put in the effort.  This involves hijacking a theme park ride, complete with a hologram of Zephram Cochrane, then hijacking the Cerritos, and finally being brought down a peg when she learns Starfleet did the right thing anyway.  

"Reflections" - This is easily the best Rutherford episode, where we finally learn what's going on with his sinister implant and discover what a different person he was in his past.  I haven't written enough about Tendi, but this is such a good Tendi episode too - giving her relationship with Rutherford some emphasis.  This is also the episode where Mariner and Boimler are essentially stuck manning a recruitment booth at a job fair the whole time, and Mariner gets the opportunity to process her life choices. 

"The Inner Fight" - Nerd that I am, I absolutely loved that the last two episodes of season four paid so much tribute to the original "Lower Decks" episode of "The Next Generation" that was a big inspiration for this show.  They brought Robert Duncan McNeill back again, this time to reprise his one-episode role as the bad influence Nick Locarno!  I also found it very sweet that Mariner had a significant connection to the departed Ensign Sito in her younger days - I always loved that character.

"Starbase 80?!" - At last, the crew of the Cerritos visits the notorious backwater Starbase 80, which offers some interesting surprises.   Most of the episode functions as a horror thriller, with a giant bat and something that's turning people into zombies.  However, the "don't judge a book by its cover" message is delivered just right, and the new characters are all delightful.  I was so glad that the "Lower Decks" series finale provided an extra coda to this episode that ties up a lot of loose ends.  

"Fissure Quest" - I suppose that it was inevitable that "Star Trek" would end up exploring the multiverse, and this is the best possible result.  The episode is spent with the crew of an entirely new ship, populated by alternate versions of familiar characters - Boimler's clone, a Garak and Bashir who got married, a T'Pol, a Curzon Dax, and many, many Harry Kims.  It's pure fanservice, and yet it works so well because nobody's playing the material for laughs.  I hope to see this group of characters again one day.

Honorable Mentions:  "Those Old Scientists" (Technically a "Brave New Worlds" episode, or it would totally be on the list), "First First Contact," "Hear All, Trust Nothing," "Parth Ferengi's Heart Place," "A Mathematically Perfect Redemption," "Caves," and "The New Next Generation."

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Oscar Aftermath 2025

The Oscar ceremony was a nice break from reality this year.  There were a few shots at activism related to ongoing conflicts overseas, but not much related to the current Trump administration.  Kamala Harris was rumored to be making an appearance, but those were only rumors.  I had a pretty good bead on all of the winners well in advance, with the exception of Mikey Madison surprising in Best Actress, so there wasn't much suspense.  That left the usual pageantry and production snafus to enjoy, which I did.

 

Conan O'Brien hosted this year, which was a great choice.  He's very much of the old school late night host mold, but still current enough and silly enough to put a giant sandworm playing the piano on stage, pull up old headshots of nominees, and devote a whole opening musical number to promising to not waste time.  His monologue was only so-so, but a real stroke of genius was inviting some of the local first responders onstage to be lauded for their efforts in the recent disaster efforts - and then having them deliver a few below-the-belt jokes to capitalize on the goodwill.  Conan's audience interactions were great, and I will be very disappointed if the disappointed John Lithgow bit doesn't become a widespread meme immediately. 

Format changes this year included not having any of the Best Song nominees actually performed.  It was a sorry crop of nominees anyway, thanks to the inexplicable support for "Emilia Perez."  Instead, we had the show open with Cynthia Erivo and Ariana Grande doing an Oz medley, and later on there was a Quincy Jones tribute and a whole James Bond extravaganza that feels a few years too late. Did Amazon sponsor that one?  The presenters were decent - Ben Stiller got to do a great physical bit -  and I liked having actors pay tribute to the craftspeople, but I still missed having the clips.  There were good speeches (Zoe Saldana), weird speeches (Kieran Culkin), bad speeches (Camille), really bad speeches (Animated Short turning into a power struggle), and Adrien Brody beating the Greer Garson record for longest acceptance speech in Oscar history.  Of course the show ran over, but at least they didn't hit the four hour mark.  

It was a bad year for the Oscars' production design.  The virtual backdrops were often very busy looking, and showrunners were having trouble getting what was on the screens to look right on the broadcast.  The orchestra was elevated above the stage, and for some reason partially blocking the central screen at times.  This resulted in the worst In Memoriam segment I have seen in a long time, which not only had the musicians blocking the screen, but also headshots of the deceased superimposed over their tribute clips, resulting in visual chaos.  And they left out Tony Todd.   And whoever decided to have a choir up there singing Mozart's "Requiem" as the accompaniment needs to be held accountable.  At least Morgan Freeman  was recruited at the last minute to pay respects to Gene Hackman. 

I didn't watch the reportedly disastrous live broadcast on Hulu, which apparently didn't account for  the extended running time of the ceremony and kicked a lot of people off the feed right before the announcement of  Best Actress.  I was hoping that this would be a viable alternative to my having to wrangle the local ABC broadcast signal every year - always a dicey proposition when you live in an apartment.  Alas, no such luck.   As long as we're  saving movie theaters, maybe we should also look into maintaining the television broadcast networks for situations like this.    

In the end "Anora" won big, and Sean Baker especially (tying Walt Disney's trophy count), but nearly all the Best Picture contenders walked away with something.  There were more Bob Dylan jokes than Trump jokes, and it's always great to see Goldie Hawn, Mick Jagger, and Bowen Yang.  June Squibb did a solid comedic bit with ScarJo.  The Quincy Jones number was worth it to see Whoopi, Oprah, and Queen Latifah looking fabulous.  Not everyone who won should have, but there were no glaring misses either.  And I hope Conan considers coming back regularly in the future.    

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