About That "Dexter: Resurrection"

Spoilers for "Dexter" and "Dexter: New Blood" ahead.

The original "Dexter" series aired on Showtime back when I had no access to premium cable television.  I only watched the first few seasons, which I liked, but nothing after the fourth season - the one with the Trinity Killer.  However, I definitely got wind of the franchise's ups and downs over the years - the botched ending of the series with Dexter Morgan (Michael C. Hall) becoming an Alaskan lumberjack, the 2021 sequel miniseries, "Dexter: New Blood" that tried to give him a more dignified exit, and finally last year's "Dexter: Original Sin" prequel show.  I didn't watch any of these, but I was finally persuaded by good reviews to give the latest entry in the "Dexter" saga, "Dexter: Resurrection," a fair shot.  And I'm thrilled that I did.

I had absolutely no trouble getting up to speed with what Dexter Morgan has been up to for the past ten years, which comes down to trying his best to stop being a serial killer.  In "Resurrection," however, he's back to bad habits.  Dexter goes to New York City to help his now adult son Harrison (Jack Alcott), who has gotten himself mixed up in a murder.   Inevitably, Dexter becomes an active killer again, despite becoming friends with his new landlord Blessing (Ntare Gumo Mbaho Mwine), and despite the warnings of Dexter's deceased father Harry (James Remar), who hangs around as a personification of his conscience.  Unfortunately, Dexter's ex-pal Angel (David Zayas), is also in town intent on proving that Dexter is a murderer once and for all.  He's helping the detective in charge of investigating Harrison, Claudette Wallace (Kadia Saraf).  Dexter also inadvertently stumbles into a peculiar group run by the billionaire Leon Prater (Peter Dinklange) and his formidable henchwoman Charley (Uma Thurman). 

"Dexter: Resurrection" feels like a series reset to get the main character back to his original status quo, but to the credit of returning showrunner Clyde Phillips, it does a good job of showing how Dexter naturally arrives at this point, and emphasizes that he has changed over the years.  This ten-episode first season spends a lot of time helping Dexter process all the drama and upheaval he's been through, and getting his priorities straightened out.  He wants to be a good Dad.  He wants to be more human and connect to other people.  At the same time, the show treats the audience to a ton of new kills, new serial killer rivals, callbacks, fanservice, and guest stars galore.  This is easily the most star-studded "Dexter" project to date, with Peter Dinklange absolutely stealing the show every time he's onscreen.  I am sorely tempted to write a spoiler post for this season, just so I can gush over some of the other performances, but I'll leave you to discover those for yourselves.

One very good choice was cutting down the complications in Dexter's life so Harrison is his main concern.  They have an interesting relationship to watch, and Jack Alcott has no trouble shouldering the plot for long stretches, thankfully.  I also like the move to a New York setting, which puts Dexter out of his element, but creates all kinds of new opportunities for culture clashes and new character dynamics.  Dexter's past is always on his mind, and sometimes in his face in the form of Angel, but being in New York gives him a chance to shed some old baggage and sort out what he actually wants moving forward.  Dexter's snarky internal monologues were always a fun part of the show, and here they're snarkier and more entertaining than ever.    

And really, that's what caught me the most off guard about "Dexter: Resurrection."  It is so much more fun than I remember the original "Dexter" being.  The macabre, winking opening sequence may be gone, but that same toothsome verve keeps rearing its head throughout this season, which features all kinds of wild twists, loads of black humor, and cheerfully implausible things happening in every episode.  Sure, you could nitpick the plot holes, or you could suspend disbelief and just enjoy watching Dexter outsmart his adversaries with improbable smarts and foresight, narrowly getting away again and again.  And unlike a lot of other sequel series and legasequel series, the formula still works great here.  I hope to see more of Dexter Morgan and friends soon.

  

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About That "F1" Movie

I will preface the following remarks with the disclaimer that I know almost nothing about auto racing, race cars, or what distinguishes Formula One from any other type of racing.  I know that it's not a casual sport, with most of the cars and teams being sponsored by major auto manufacturers with deep pockets.  And fortunately, this is pretty much all you need to know going into "F1," aka "F1 the Movie."

Joseph Kosinski has proven that the success of "Top Gun: Maverick" wasn't a fluke, and he's done it by making a film that establishes a pretty clear pattern of how Kosinski makes a hit.  You make a movie in a nearly extinct action sub-genre, put an aging movie star at its center, have the story be about passing the torch and one last shot at glory, and pretty the whole thing up with cutting edge movie effects to amp up the spectacle.  It's not just a matter of putting Brad Pitt into an F1 racing movie, but boiling all the tropes of racing movies down to their most basic forms and presenting them in a shiny new package.  The version of F1 we see depicted onscreen is very idealized - women and minorities are conspicuously represented - as the U.S. Air Force was in "Top Gun: Maverick," with any political or cultural barriers to entry only vaguely alluded to.  And since the movie couldn't have been made without the participation of the FIA, the governing body of F1, that's no surprise.

I'm also certain that the racing itself doesn't remotely resemble what actually happens on a real Formula One race track.  Pitt plays Sonny Hayes, a maverick racer-for-hire who is constantly using dangerous tricks and stratagems to gain an advantage.  He's recruited by an old racing teammate, Ruben Cervantes (Javier Bardem), as a last ditch effort to save the floundering newbie APXGP team, which Ruben bankrolls.  The team's other primary driver is the talented, but green Joshua Pearce (Damson Idris).  They also have the risk-averse Kaspar Smolinski (Kim Bodnia) as team principal, and F1's first female technical director, Kate McKenna (Kerry Condon), in charge of the cars.  Sonny joins the team and promptly clashes with all of them, but also provokes them to do better.  We watch as they figure out how to work together over the course of an eventful season, chasing victory despite many defeats and setbacks.  There are injuries, disqualifications, ghosts of the past, and plenty of interpersonal frictions.  There's also a secret saboteur in the mix, naturally.  

The pieces of the movie are all very artificial and very familiar, but this isn't a bad thing.  All the old tropes work to the film's benefit, and "F1" turned out to be exactly what I wanted in a summer movie blockbuster.  The performances, the filmmaking, and the execution of all the predictable twists and turns are fantastic.  "F1" is absolutely the kind of movie that you want to see on the biggest screen possible to really immerse yourself in the experience of watching all those beautifully staged race sequences where the cars are barrelling down the track at unfathomable speeds.  There's a first person POV sequence in the last race that is downright breathtaking to behold, and DP Claudio Miranda should be up for every cinematography award in a few months.  The script is bare bones and the characters even moreso, but you buy that Sonny Hayes is getting away with all of this because it's Brad Pitt, looking as handsome and  charming as ever.  And Javier Bardem is a pro at making the implausible behind-the-scenes troubles seem plausible, because he's terribly convincing every time he announces that something else has gone wrong.

"F1" is a sports movie, but it's also a process movie.  What I appreciated the most was getting an up-close and detailed look at the cars and the racing, even if much of it was romanticized and cleaned up for the silver screen.  Half of what sells the racing is spending so much time with dedicated professionals behind the scenes who are obsessed with improving their race times by mere tenths of a second.  It's sitting in on strategy meetings, board meetings, and press conferences.  It's watching APXGP lose race after race, but learning a little bit more each time.  Kosinski embraces being a maximalist storyteller, and ensures that the sizable budget is well spent.  Unlike a lot of other movies this summer, you can see every dollar onscreen.  "F1" is also a long movie, but it earns its running time, and in the end the filmmakers earn the happy ending that could only happen in the movies.  

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Rank 'Em: "Mission: Impossible"

I'll start off with the caveat that I don't count myself as a "Mission: Impossible" fan.  I've seen most of the later movies only once apiece, and there are several I just flat out dislike.  However, when the series was good, it was good, and some of these entries definitely deserve a few kudos.  So here, from best to least, are my rankings of the "Mission: Impossible" movies:

1. Ghost Protocol (2011) - It's all set pieces.  And it's all set pieces orchestrated by Brad Bird, who is so great at balancing action and character and humor.  There's a playfulness to this installment that works so well for me, and helps to set the franchise apart from all the other spy franchises of the time.  And while Tom Cruise is indisputably the star, the team is great - Benji is promoted, Jeremy Renner's William Brandt makes a fun newbie, Paula Patton is a delight, and everybody gets their moment.  

2. Mission: Impossible (1996) - The franchise kickoff is very much a '90s Brian DePalma thriller, and barely feels of a piece with the rest of the series.  It's much more grounded, much more twisty, and doesn't care if the audience can keep up with it.  Still, it delivered the big set pieces as well as anybody.  This is also the "Mission: Impossible" movie where Tom Cruise's ego is the least on display, even though this is the first movie he produced.  I wish we'd gotten a few more entries like this one.  

3. Mission: Impossible III (2006) - After a nice long hiatus, this was a pleasant surprise.  J.J. Abrams isn't great in the director's chair, and the script has some groaners, but what distinguishes this movie is that it has one of the franchise's truly great villains: Owen Davian, played by Philip Seymour Hoffman.  Also, Ethan Hunt' relationship with Julia is the only romantic relationship in the series that ever really worked for me, even if it still feels like Cruise is trying too hard to seem like a human being.  

4. Rogue Nation (2015) - The first of the Christopher McQuarrie directed films that set the formula for the rest of the series.  It feels like it was originally planned as a grand finale or a potential handoff point to another leading man, which might be why it comes across as so celebratory and satisfying.  Rebecca Ferguson makes her first appearance as Ilsa Faust, and the opera sequence is a franchise highlight.  This is also the last "Mission: Impossible" film where I felt the humor worked for me.

5. Fallout (2018) - Here's where I'm going to get in trouble.  I have absolutely no beef with the action sequences or the spycraft or the performances in "Fallout."  This is the one with Henry Cavill and his mustache as the main villain, and he is impeccable.  However, this is also the one where the attempts to sell Tom Cruise as a romantic lead were so grating that it completely took me out of the movie.  Some view this as the pinnacle of the franchise, but it's when I started looking for an escape hatch.  

6. Dead Reckoning Part One (2023) - That title is just hilarious in retrospect.  I enjoy Hayley Attwell as the new love interest, but the movie is a bore whenever it's not in the middle of one of the action sequences.  Fortunately, the ones in this movie are pretty good, and especially the train crash.  However, I take exception to the AI doomsday plot, which is just badly written science-fiction that doesn't feel like part of this universe.  Audiences weren't pleased either, going by the box office.

7. Mission: Impossible 2 (2000) - The motorcycle duel!  The gratuitous slow motion with doves!  Thandiwe Newton looking all winsome!  Bellerophon and Chimera!  It's the John Woo entry into the "Mission: Impossible" series, and it is goofy and ridiculous, and it presages a lot of the franchise's worst habits.  There's Cruise already showboating shamelessly in the opening sequence.  There's the gratuitous use of mask reveals.  I have a soft spot for this one, but I won't pretend it's any good.

 

8. The Final Reckoning (2025) -  I didn't like it.  I think it's good that we're done for now.  

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Getting "Inside the Actors Studio"

This is a late tribute to a television program that fell off of my radar some time ago.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was once the flagship program of the Bravo network, back when they were trying to be a more classy arts channel, before the "Real Housewives" era.  It quietly aired for 24 years and amassed 277 episodes.  I knew that the host, James Lipton had passed away in 2020, and I assumed that "Inside the Actors Studio" had ended as well.  However, I didn't know about the show's move to the Ovation Network in 2019, or the final season that featured interviews by a revolving collection of different hosts.  As far as I'm concerned, the show ended in 2018 after 22 seasons, with Lipton's final interview with Ted Danson.  

I watched a ton of "Inside the Actors Studio" in my college years.  It was one of a very few long form interview shows that survived on the air into the 2010s.  The other major one was "Charlie Rose," which ended in 2017.  "Inside the Actors Studio" was more fun, of course, because it featured well-known actors and other celebrities.  Its format was dictated by its origins as a seminar for the Actors Studio Drama School, of which Lipton was Dean Emeritus.  He sat with each interviewee on a stage and went through their whole career, from soup to nuts, intent on provoking thoughtful discussion, and treating acting (or directing or stand-up comedy) as serious artistic work.  Every episode ended with questions from the real students of the Actors Studio seated in the audience, and the famous Bernard Pivot questionnaire.  The show's detractors found it all stuffy and self-serious, but I loved that the interviews were put in an academic context, lending them an air of gravitas and importance that we didn't see anywhere else on television.

Of course, it was very easy to make fun of the show, and to make fun of James Lipton, who took it in stride and gamely played himself in many parodies and guest appearances on other programs over the years.  He became a beloved celebrity, who I was happy to see every time he popped up on "The Simpsons" or "Conan O'Brien."  His professorial persona was so theatrical and larger-than-life, it might have seemed ridiculous if it weren't backed up by those meticulously researched, thoughtfully conducted interviews with everyone from Roseanne to Steven Spielberg.  The comedian interviews were often my favorites, because it was a chance to see silly people like Robin Williams and Mike Meyers take a pause and give some serious, honest answers about their craft, if they were so inclined.  Mike Meyers did, and Robin Williams elected to perform a comedy set for ninety minutes, riling up the audience to the point where it took Lipton more than ten minutes to ask his first question.  Bravo replayed that episode a lot.  

I stopped watching "Inside the Actor's Studio" roughly around the time I stopped paying for cable television.  It was never appointment television for me, but rather a show I watched when the interviewee was someone that I recognized, or it happened to be on when I was channel surfing.  I feel like the show peaked around 2003, when it started doing the group interviews for the casts of television shows, and some stars like Tom Hanks and Val Kilmer started coming back around for second interviews.  The best interviews were with the performers and creatives who had a substantial body of work behind them, and some of the later shows were with interviewees who were only there because they were popular at the time.  Jennifer Lawrence famously turned down a chance for an interview in 2013, around the time the second "Hunger Games" film was released.      

In 2025 the show has largely fallen out of the cultural consciousness.  This was inevitable considering the age of the program, but it's likely also because it's one of those series that is not streaming anywhere officially and is thus difficult to access.  Amongst the data hoarders, it's one of the most commonly sought-after programs, and pirated versions of various interviews are constantly popping up on Youtube and other video platforms.  I'd love to be able to see some of the early episodes myself - a lot of those director interviews with the likes of Norman Jewison and Stanely Donen sure would have come in handy - but the full archive only seems to be available to students of the Actors Studio.   

And finally, yes, no, attention, stress, laughter, leaf blowers, unfuckingbelievable, screenwriter, apiarist, and "Welcome."  

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Watch Out for "Weapons"

Zach Cregger's new horror film "Weapons" is a very satisfying film to watch, even if you're not a horror film.  Telling a single story from multiple perspectives is a tricky proposition, but if it's done well, it's so much fun to watch all the pieces fall into place, and all the reveals and payoffs play out.  It also helps that "Weapons" has one of the best hooks for a horror movie that I've come across in a long time.  In the Pennsylvania town of Maybrook, we are told, seventeen children from the same third grade class mysteriously vanished in the middle of the night, all at the same time.  They simply got out of bed, ran out of their homes into the darkness, and disappeared.

The action picks up a month later, when the school reopens.  Starting with the missing children's teacher, Justine Gandy (Julia Garner), we follow the POVs of six different characters who are either investigating what happened, or inadvertently stumble across pieces of the truth about the disappearances.  Justine is drawing a lot of ire from angry and frightened parents, including Archer (Josh Brolin), one of the fathers.  She's also concerned about a child from her class who didn't disappear, Alex Lilly (Cary Christopher), who appears withdrawn and isolated.  Other major characters include Justine's policeman ex-boyfriend Paul (Alden Ehrenreich), the school principal Marcus (Benedict Wong), Alex's eccentric Aunt Gladys (Amy Madigan), and a local drug addict and petty thief, James (Austin Abrams).  

"Weapons" had a fantastic teaser trailer that showcased the film's inciting incident, where the missing children are running through the darkened streets at 2:17 AM.  This is one of those rare cases where the movie is as good as the trailer, much better than I expected.  Zach Cregger does a great job of orchestrating his nightmare imagery, jump scares, and thrilling reveals to build on each other, leaving some parts of the story on cliffhangers that don't get resolved until later.  It's similar to how his first film "Barbarian" was put together, but "Weapons" is better written with a much more compelling group of characters.  It helps that the budget and the caliber of the acting talent have both gotten a boost.  However, the storytelling is the main event.  I love how multiple characters come to the same conclusions via different routes.  I love the use of jump cuts to get laughs.  I love that the real protagonist of the film isn't revealed until the last third of the film, and that the villains are as funny as they are terrifying.  And boy are there some potent terrors in this one!

Much of the chatter that I've seen around "Weapons" so far has come from people trying to read hidden meanings into the film ("the real villain is alcoholism!"), and I think that's a result of the worldbuilding being as good as it is.  Without ever drawing too much attention to it, you can see the way that characters are separated by class and social strata, with hints of more complicated histories everywhere.  By using all these different POVs, you get to spend time in each of these characters' private worlds, and see how they think and react.  In the first part of the movie with Justine, notably, all the other POV characters appear, but some are on the edges of the frame, or not quite in her field of vision.  And as the movie goes on, it becomes clear how very important things can be overlooked by those who are only focused on what they want or care about.         

All the performances are good, but I want to single out Cary Christopher and Amy Madigan, who shoulder a significant amount of the film, and do a great job of it.  I'll refrain from being mean to a similar film from last year that "Weapons" reminds me of, but Amy Madigan's performance is exactly how the creepy/funny line should be handled in a film like this.  Aunt Gladys has surely secured her place in the horror movie pantheon.

Finally, despite the participation of so many kids, this is not a horror film for kids.  Many of the deaths are pretty upsetting, which I appreciate is warned for right up front.  However, there are no naked hijinks like there were in "Barbarian," and the ending is - well let's just say it's a little out of left field for a horror film, but in a good way.  I heartily recommend "Weapons" for all your scary movie needs.  It's easily the one I've enjoyed the most this summer.  

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Watching Trailers on Youtube

I went back and forth on whether I wanted to write this post, but I've already sunk way too much time into the research and data gathering to turn back now.  

So, I'm still under the likely misguided impression that if I interact with Youtube enough, I can make its algorithm work for me.  I can get it to understand what I want to watch and improve the quality and relevance of the recommendations and search results that it sends me.  How is this going?  Well, here's a brief example that I found telling.

One constant goal I've had with Youtube for years now is trying to get it to recommend new trailers for movies and TV shows.  I think that this is a fairly simple request, and Youtube has been under a lot of scrutiny lately to improve trailer search results because of the whole fake trailer kerfuffle from earlier in the year.  "Trailers" is definitely a content category on the site, and a "Trailer" button regularly appears on my Youtube front page next to "Podcasts," "Film Criticisms," and "Variety Shows."  I also run searches for trailers often enough that Youtube should have enough information to know what I'm looking for.

So, what happens when I open up Youtube on a random day and navigate to the "Trailers" category?

The first four displayed videos are trailers for upcoming films and shows.  Then there's a clip of "Promising Young Woman," a Red Letter Media review of a recent superhero film, a clip of "Tinker Tailor Soldier Spy," two "Honest Trailer" spoofs, and a film essay on "Alien v. Predator," before the next trailer for an upcoming film.  Then come three more trailers, three commentary/reaction videos about trailers, and then three more trailers before the page refuses to load further results.  That's eleven actual trailers and nine videos that can broadly be called film/TV promotion, but not trailers.  There are also ads interspersed after every five or six displayed results.

I also searched "Trailers" to see what would come up.    The first twenty or so results are trailers for upcoming movies and TV shows, but often grouped into particular categories.  After the first six results (and three sponsored ads) I get three results that were "Popular in my area," then three "popular today" and even a "Previously Watched" category.  However, I'm not counting the multiple attempts to steer me towards the "Shorts" section of the site that is essentially Youtube doing TikTok.  The further down into the results I get, the more older trailers and non-trailers start coming up, including a "South Park" clip, reactions, "Honest Trailers," "Pitch Meeting," "SNL" parodies, and a random news alert.  I was appreciative that about half of the sponsored advertisements were actually trailers themselves, but these results still struck me as pretty dire.   

I expect better from Youtube, and I know they can do better, because there's another, less visible recommendation algorithm on the site.  If you click into any video on the site, a sidebar of similar videos will populate.  If you open a movie trailer, the accompanying sidebar videos have their own category buttons, including "Trailer."  What happens when you click on this "Trailer" button?  The first recommended video was for a new movie review from one of the Youtube channels I'm subscribed to.  Following that, I counted thirty-seven movie and TV trailers and one "Honest Trailers" video before the recommendations stopped loading.  And there wasn't an ad in sight.  Why weren't these the results on my front page?  

Well, the answer is sort of obvious, isn't it?  Once you start watching any video, Youtube wants you to keep watching videos, and will give you the more relevant recommendations at that point to keep you engaged.  The front page and searches want to push sponsored ads and channels that have longer content than the ones that publish official trailers, which rarely run more than three minutes a pop.  

The long and the short of it is that Youtube isn't very helpful to me for keeping up with recent trailers because it insists on focusing on the most popular hits, and then prioritizes showing me content that is popular in related categories.  It doesn't show me anything new until it hits a certain popularity threshold.  Trailers for independent and arthouse films often don't get enough views to hit that popularity threshold, so they require more specific searches.  You can sort search results by "new" to just get a listing of everything uploaded with certain keywords, but even here older results won't show up if they don't hit a certain view count.  

The one thing that I will commend Youtube for is that I no longer see any fake trailers or "trailer concepts," when they used to be all over my search results.  However, that just means that Youtube is perfectly capable of improving their results sitewide.  They just don't want to.      

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A "Superman" For Today

I had my concerns about James Gunn being put in charge of  "Superman."  I've found his superhero movies very hit-or-miss, a little too crass and a little too cynical for me.  After a decade of Zack Snyder and Henry Cavill's grimly god-like Superman, I was definitely ready for a change, but was Gunn the man to do it?  Yes, it turns out.  Maybe this isn't the best "Superman," but it's exactly the right "Superman" for 2025.

We begin not with Issue #1, but somewhere around Issue #200.  Clark Kent/Superman (David Corenswet) is already in a relationship with Lois Lane (Rachel Brosnahan), and is the sworn enemy of industrialist Lex Luthor (Nicholas Hoult), who is devoting considerable resources to destroying him.  In the opening scene we watch Superman in a heated battle with an armored warrior who Luthor controls, and later his superpowered henchmen, giant monsters, and other foes on his payroll.  This is a universe where "metahumans" are plentiful and very active, so Superman also regularly encounters the corporately sponsored Justice Gang, made up of Guy Gardner/Green Lantern (Nathan Fillion), Kendra Saunders/Hawkgirl (Isabela Merced), and Michael Holt/Mr. Terrific (Edi Gathegi).  Superman doesn't know much about his origins, but he has his Fortress of Solitude, with a couple of robot helpers, and also a loveably destructive superdog named Krypto.

Superman has never faced the kinds of challenges that he faces in this movie.  The new Lex Luthor is not only greedy, but obsessive in his hatred of Superman, and using all kinds of crazy technology to attack him on multiple fronts.  This includes an intense online hate campaign using a deluge of misinformation.  The public isn't sure what to think of him.  Metahumans are common, but Superman is an alien from another world, and there are deep suspicions about his motives.  However, the important things stay the same.  The one thing that hasn't been modernized at all is Superman himself.  He's still the same aw-shucks small town reporter from Kansas, raised by loving human foster parents (Pruitt Taylor Vince and Neva Howell), who staunchly believes in helping humanity and doing the right thing.  He's naive about geopolitics, not sure about his place in the world, and has a lot to learn about public relations, but he wants to be a good person wholeheartedly.  David Corenswet gives him the right physicality and heroic gravitas, but also a fair amount of relatable frustration and existential doubt.  This Superman can believably beat up an army of robots and still feel like an underdog.  

And the casting is great all around.  Brosnahan is a fantastic Lois, who is smarter, savvier, and more pragmatic than Superman, but there's never a doubt they're perfect for each other.  Nicholas Hoult is channeling petty tech-bro on a power trip, and it's so satisfying to see him get what's coming to him.  Comic relief characters Jimmy Olsen (Skyler Gisondo) and Eve Tesmacher (Sara Sampaio) get their own ridiculous subplot, and prove to be a lot of fun.  The Justice Gang is made up of the typical James Gunn-style abrasive oddballs, who would be a better fit in the "Peacemaker" corner of this universe, but they're mostly just around to provide a contrast to Superman, and not in the movie too much.  I really love that Ma and Pa Kent are played by non-celebrity actors, and come across as just ordinary, average people.  

The cast is what keeps the overstuffed plot and the in-media-res narrative from being too overwhelming.  Gunn and company decided to throw us in the deep end more or less, introducing us to all kinds of super-powered characters, pocket universes, secret conspiracies, crazy creatures, and other common comic book devices.  There's a cameo cavalcade, naturally.  You couldn't have made a "Superman" like this ten years ago, but after so many years of superhero movie saturation, audiences can be expected to keep up, more or less.  And even if they do get lost, "Superman" offers plenty of action and spectacle that needs no explanation and should satisfy even the nitpickiest fan.  Plus, there's a cute dog, and who doesn't love a cute dog?

My biggest complaint, ironically, is the same one that I had with "Man of Steel," which is that "Superman" isn't kid friendly enough.  I like that this version involves more interactions with kids, and uses a few kid performances to great effect, but there are some intense sequences and a few instances of questionable content that make this hard to recommend to anyone under the age of twelve or so.  (No parent wants to explain what a harem is to a second grader.)  And that's such a shame.  

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My 2025 Holiday Wish List

Well, this has been an eventful year for everybody, Hollywood included.  Focusing just on the entertainment industry, I don't think anything is going the way we'd hoped, but such is the nature of living in interesting times.  And though there have been some tough blows, nobody is down for the count yet.  I'm actually kind of heartened by some of the shifts in the culture I've been seeing over the last few months, and I have every reason to expect better in the year ahead.

I never addressed much from last year's list, but I will express my deepest appreciation for the "KPop Demon Hunters" soundtrack becoming the new favorite in my household.  I don't know how Netflix did it, but the speed at which that movie took over the attentions of the under-twelve set was truly breathtaking.  

So, this year for the holidays, I want…

For Stephen Colbert to make every remaining moment of "The Late Show" count.  The end of "The Late Show" is going to be one of the big cultural moments of 2026, and though I'm not happy about how things have turned out, I can't wait to see the fireworks.  As someone who has kept an eye on the late night ecosystem for decades now, weird and wonderful things tend to happen when these shows are in turmoil, and nothing says turmoil like the highest rated late night show on American television being abruptly cancelled for sketchy reasons.  

For the non-franchise films to score some wins.  I'm not even going to try and distinguish original films anymore.  At this point anything that's not a sequel, prequel, or reboot is getting scarce.  So I don't care if you're adapting the Booktok flavor of the month, or if the cartoon is about a robot beaver, or you're a horror director who has had way too many chances and the trailer was awful.  I am rooting for you.  We have "Scream 7" and "Toy Story 5" incoming, and I'm just so tired.

For more theatrical releases.  Studios are getting the hint that they're leaving money on the table by premiering promising titles on streaming, especially films for family audiences.  "Moana 2" is the biggest example so far of a project that was originally intended as a streaming exclusive turning out to be much more lucrative as a theatrical experience.  There's been a significant shift in the attitude of Hollywood toward the streamers lately, and we're seeing cracks in the resistance to theatrical releases everywhere, even at Netflix.  And I'm all for it.

For the AI bubble to bust more quickly.  I know it's holding up the American economy, but it's so obviously a bubble and it's so aggravating to watch the grifters try to convince everyone that generative AI is some kind of cure-all that's worth paying attention to and investing ridiculous amounts of money in.  So far, aside from some very limited, specific tasks, it just seems to be leading the mentally unstable off of a cliff and further straining the economic prospects of the creative community.  And the amount of AI slop my relatives keep sending me is just excruciating.  

For a long break before the next major merger.  The concept of the Paramount Skydance Warner Brothers Discovery union is still difficult to get my head around.  I knew that Warner Brothers Discovery was looking for a buyer, but any further consolidation of the studios can only be bad for everybody.

For more gainful employment for film critics and other media critics as the legacy media companies continue to reconfigure themselves.  I have never been more aware that I am and always be a hobbyist when it comes to writing about movies and television.  

For "Doctor Who" to find some way forward, even if it means a hiatus.  After twenty years, the show could do with a rest, but it would be a terrible shame if it were mothballed for good.  

For Netflix to take care of my friends at "Sesame Street."  

And finally, for everyone making my favorite shows and movies to keep being able to make money doing what they do best, and have every opportunity to do that work.

Happy Holidays.  

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Exploring "A House of Dynamite"

Katheryn Bigelow's latest thriller, "A House of Dynamite," is one of the most frustrating films I've ever watched, and I strongly suspect that this is the point.  The subject matter is the stuff of typical thrillers and action films, where a nuclear missile is discovered inbound for the continental United States, and those in charge only have minutes to deal with it.  However, this is not one of those universes where everything works like clockwork, and all the systems created to handle this situation function as intended.  Instead, the message here seems to be that if a nuke ever really was launched at the US, the response would be chaotic and insufficient, and the decisionmakers would be woefully unprepared.  The movie is good, but deeply unnerving and purposefully doesn't follow the rules of a typically Hollywood thriller.  The ending in particular is going to make a lot of people very upset.

Past this point, I'm going to spoil the whole movie, because the structure of the piece is important to any analysis of what it's doing.  Also, knowing what's going to happen may better help set expectations.  The actual missile crisis in "A House of Dynamite" only lasts for roughly fifteen minutes, and it's replayed three times from different points of view.  First, we see it unfold from the White House Situation Room, being run by Captain Olivia Walker (Rebecca Ferguson).  Then, we follow the Deputy National Security Advisor, Jake Bearington (Gabriel Basso), who is trying to provide advice to the decisionmakers.  Finally, we follow the President of the United States (Idris Elba), as he gathers information to decide what the US response should be.  There are additional POVs from the Secretary of Defence (Jared Harris), the First Lady (Renée  Elise Goldberry), the commander of a US military base (Anthony Ramos), the commander of STRATCOM (Tracy Letts), an NSA expert on North Korea (Greta Lee), the military aide in change of the nuclear football (Jonah Hauer-King), and others.

Because the situation unfolds so fast, there's no time to cover all of these different characters' experiences in a single narrative, which I believe is the main reason for the repetition.  Also, having that structure in place, where we already understand what the outcome is going to be after the first run-through, makes the audience more aware of the futility of some of the characters' actions, and how small delays and technological snafus can have a massive impact.  Every single character is caught off guard by the crisis, and everyone reacts in very human ways to what they consider an unthinkable scenario.  A significant amount of time is wasted dealing with simple communications issues.  Bearington is on his way to work, and we watch him clumsily try to hold a video call while walking through city streets and navigating a security checkpoint.  The President is in the middle of a youth basketball meet-and-greet when he learns about the situation.  Greta Lee's character, amusingly, is watching a Battle of Gettysburg reenactment with her young son.  Everyone seems to be in a state of shock as they watch the events unfold, often asking if something is really happening, or if anyone knows what's going on.  

Written by Noah Oppenheim, a former broadcast news producer, "A House of Dynamite," offers a degree of realism that I appreciate seeing onscreen.   The security provided by our armed forces and military hardware is largely an illusion when it comes to a nuclear doomsday scenario like this one, and I like that Bigelow isn't afraid to show us the ugly truth of mutually assured destruction strategies up close and personal.  Some of the people in charge stay calm and collected.  Others disintegrate.  This film fits right into the genre of anti-nuclear proliferation films that were common in the 1980s, and since the nukes might be making a comeback, it's fitting that the films warning us about nuclear war should be back too.    

The performances are great, a few questionable accents notwithstanding, though only a handful of characters are onscreen long enough to give us more nuanced portraits of the people involved.  Idris Elba stands out as a President having a bad day that turns into a much worse one, admitting that he's unprepared when the time comes to make the big decisions.  I like that Bigelow includes several brief moments with characters like a Secret Service agent played by Brian Tee, and a FEMA official based in Chicago played by Moses Ingram, to give us more reactions from those on the periphery.

Because the treatment of the material is so unorthodox, I expect that "A House of Dynamite" is not going to get much traction with audiences.  However, its unusual candidness will keep it in the conversation whenever anyone tries to make a similar film in the future.  I certainly won't ever look at a typical "launch the missiles" scene the same way again.

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The Simplicity of "Multiplicity"

I saw the poster for the Harold Ramis comedy "Multiplicity" so many times in 1996, but it was one of those movies that I just never crossed paths with.  It was a box office bomb, and never entered the rotation of syndicated movies that would play constantly on our local television channels on the weekends.  We all knew who Michael Keaton was, but he wasn't enough of a draw in the mid-90s to sway my family to rent one of his movies instead of the latest Robin Williams or Jim Carrey vehicle.  Still, "Multiplicity" seemed to be a movie that I would enjoy.  It had a goofy sci-fi premise.  It had Andie MacDowell, who I generally like, as the female lead.  So, this was definitely on that endless running list of movies that I meant to check out eventually, someday.

Well, someday turned out to be yesterday.  "Multiplicity" is currently available on Tubi, so I went ahead and took the plunge.  The movie is not very good, but it's fascinating to look at as an artifact of the '90s, so I gotta write about it.  Spoilers ahead.

There is very little that surprised me about "Multiplicity."  It fits very well in that vein of 90s comedy based on material taken from "National Lampoon," mining the base instincts and preoccupations of the Boomer male for comedy.  Doug Kinney is a sympathetic protagonist, at least at first.  He's an overworked construction foreman who never has enough hours in the day for his job, his family, and himself.  Through the magic of Harris Yulin in a lab coat, Doug gets his very own clone to help out - meaning a Xerox copy of himself with the same memories up to the point of cloning.  Then another clone.  Then another clone.  These clones are initially referred to by number - Two, Three, and Four - before getting their own names.  Two spends all his time working construction and comes across as very masculine and assertive.  Three does most of the domestic wrangling, has a lot of feminine behaviors, and is very gay coded.  Four, who was cloned from one of the other clones, and thus not as "sharp," is a walking dumbbell who is there for comic relief.  It's obvious why Michael Keaton signed on, because he gets to play four funny versions of the same guy.  Keaton does a decent job, but the writing really doesn't do him any favors.

Though one of the four credited writers is a woman, "Multiplicity" is a product of the male id.  Doug has let his life get so overbooked that he needs two other versions of himself working full time to get a break.  His wife Laura is a flimsily constructed creature who creates a lot of Doug's problems by going back to work, but this isn't a "Mr. Mom" scenario where the couple really feel like partners sharing their struggles.  All the extra work falls on Doug's shoulders and Laura is so preoccupied that she doesn't ever realize that there are three additional Dougs living out of the family shed to help pick up the slack.  Doug insists that the clones should never be intimate with her, as his unbreakable "Rule One," but she ends up sleeping with all three of them inadvertently.  To sidestep any difficult moral questions and emotional fallout, Laura just never finds out the truth.  She takes what she thinks are Doug's wild personality shifts and forgetfulness to be symptoms of a failing relationship, and temporarily leaves with the kids.  Doug, who by this time has been fired from his demanding job, and has learned that too much free time is bad, is able to win her back by finally fulfilling his promise to remodel the house.  He proves his devotion through manual labor and the promise of a job change.  Then, even though there's no sign that Doug's life will get any less busy, he sends the clones off to Florida together to start lives of their own.    

The obvious joke here is that Doug can't handle a situation that many working parents have been handling forever, even with all the extra hands.  However, that's not really fair, as Doug is never shown to be anything but a loving and well-meaning father, who tries to do the right thing with the wrong methods.  The bigger issue is that Doug being overworked is really just scaffolding for all the clone humor, and the movie never really takes his troubles all that seriously.  The scripting also shows a lack of imagination, barely exploring the consequences of having the clones around.  Nobody notices the grocery bill going up or the other extra expenses.  Laura never catches on about the clones, but neither do the kids or anybody else.  The cloning lab is so inconsequential that the clones may as well have been made by magic.  Even the sexual hijinks are pretty tame.  The moral implications are the only interesting part, which are skipped over entirely.   

Instead, a lot of "Multiplicity" hinges on the audience being impressed by the gimmick of multiple Michael Keatons onscreen at the same time.  The effects are very good - good enough that I forgot about them a lot of the time - except that the camera kept drawing attention to the double/triple/quadruple act in distracting ways.  The characterization of the clones also gets overly cartoonish in a hurry.  Two was initially interesting in that he lets Doug see what his life would have looked like if he'd stayed single and unattached, but this doesn't really go anywhere.  When all three clones are interacting, they come off as three completely different personalities - which is great for the comedy, but it all feels arbitrary and convenient, with no attempt to explain why each clone has such different traits.  Three in particular just comes across as bizarre, especially since the implication is that doing housework makes you more feminine.  

Am I overthinking a silly comedy?  Sure, but "Multiplicity" came out a few years after "Mrs. Doubtfire" and "The Nutty Professor" already covered much of the same material much more thoughtfully and successfully.  I can't think of anything that "Multiplicity" did that a dozen other movies of the same era did better.  Keaton's performances just end up reminding me of when he played similar characters in prior films.  Apparently there was quite a bit of improv in the "Multiplicity," and Keaton only had himself for a scene partner a lot of the time, which didn't help.  

I'm glad that I finally watched this, but I don't think I missed much by not having "Multiplicity" in my regular movie rotation growing up.  Keaton's made plenty of movies I like better.     

    

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"Nobody Wants This," Year Two

Joanne and Noah are back, for another season of "will they, won't they," as Joanne considers converting to Judaism for Noah, and Noah considers new career opportunities to be with Joanne.  They spend the season exploring more aspects of the Jewish faith, including episodes about naming ceremonies and Purim.  However, that's not enough to fill a whole ten episodes, so there's a lot of time spent with two other couples this year - Esther and Sasha, and Morgan and her new boyfriend, Dr. Andy (Arian Moayed).

"Nobody Wants This" feels more like a traditional sitcom than most of the comedies I've been watching, even though it's not a multi-camera show, and even though I've never seen another series be this candid about Jewish characters' struggles with their faith.  This season feels like many second seasons of shows that are hoping to be long-running series, especially in the way that it has narrowed down its conflicts to very simple, relationship-centric issues that can be repeated ad nauseum.  The Valentine's Day episode is all about Noah trying to create the most impressive Valentine's experience, while Joanne just wants something more personal.  Awkward culture clashes are repeatedly assuaged with cute affirmations of devotion.  The cast of regulars is also much more clearly defined - Joanne, Noah, Esther, Sasha, and Morgan are the main characters.  We still see plenty of Bina, but other formerly recurring characters like Miriam and the Head Rabbi are very scarce.

However, the leads are all strong, and each one of them can carry the show if necessary.  Now that Esther doesn't have to be the hostile future in-law, she's much more compelling as she considers having another child what it means for her happiness.  Morgan has the most dramatic arc, as is fitting for her dramatic personality, when she pairs up with a new man who seems to be perfect for her, but she might be rushing into things.  Then there's  Joanne and Noah, who discover that they don't know each other or themselves as well as they thought they did, as they keep hitting relationship snags.  The big one, of course, is that Joanne isn't sure about converting, and Noah doesn't want to rush her, but this does impact Noah's life negatively in various ways.  On the Jewish faith front, easily the most interesting subplot involves Noah becoming involved with the much more liberal Temple Ahava, run by Rabbi Neil (Seth Rogen), and discovering that he's more traditional than he realized.       

There are some good guest stars this year.  I want to point out Leighton Meester as Abby, an old friend of Joanne's, who is at the center of the season's funniest episode, where everyone is at a party trying to be on their best behavior.   Arian Moayed as Dr. Andy does a great job of riding the line between eccentric and concerning.  And  then there are Morgan and Joanne's parents, Lynn (Stephanie Faracy) and Henry (Micahel Hitchcock), who prove to be just as much of an aggravation to Joanne this year as the openly disapproving Bina.  They were both around last season, but this year lays the groundwork for the two of them to become much more involved, if "Nobody Wants This" decides to go in that direction.  

My only complaint with the show right now is that it's noticeably shifting gears to prepare for a longer run than I think it originally intended.  Ten episodes isn't a short season by modern standards, and it still feels like it went by too fast and didn't get enough done.  An awful lot of time is spent setting things up that aren't going to pay off for a long time, and very little gets resolved.  Issues that were pretty central in season one, like the fate of Joanne and Morgan's podcast, seem to have been completely backburnered in the second.  I expect that future seasons will address some of these things, but it's frustrating when Noah's employment worries are just ignored after a few episodes, and it feels like we've somehow skipped some important moments with Esther before her big decision in the finale.

Fortunately, a comedy like "Nobody Wants This" has a perfectly reasonable production timeline, and I don't expect it'll be too long before I get a few more answers in season three - assuming the show doesn't get cancelled first.

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Podcasts Ahoy! 2025 Edition

It's been a minute hasn't it?  I did a post for Youtube channels instead of podcasts last year, as several of my favorite media podcasts have been quietly morphing into Youtube channels recently, but there's still a clear distinction between the two mediums.  And I've definitely latched on to enough new podcasts over the past two years to write a new post about.   Below are a couple of new and new-to-me offerings that I've started following since my last podcast post.

Going Rogue - Australian writer Tansy Gardam is my new favorite podcaster.  She is the main writer, researcher and host of "Going Rogue," which has gone through a couple of permutations, but can be broadly described as a show about the endless drama of getting movies made.  Initially, in 2022, it was a six part miniseries on the making of "Rogue One: A Star Wars Story."  This was followed by seasons covering "Solo: A Star Wars Story," the 2007 WGA strike and its fallout, and "The Pirates of the Caribbean" movies.  Lately, there have been a lot of one-off episodes devoted to a diverse selection of titles including "Megalopolis," "Gladiator II," and Kenneth Branagh's "Cinderella."  Every episode is extremely well researched, often following the development of a film for decades on its way to the silver screen.  I love the "Megalopolis" episode in particular for explaining the reasoning behind some of Francis Ford Coppola's artistic choices, including his fascination with "live cinema."    

The Big Picture - I've brought up the Ringer podcasts before, but I want to give special recognition to "The Big Picture," hosted by Sean Fennessey, Amanda Dobbins, and a revolving group of other co-hosts.  The show premiered roughly around 2017, and follows the familiar format of reviews and interviews revolving around new releases.  However, "The Big Picture" is also run by some of the most insanely knowledgeable film geeks I've ever encountered, and they dig into awards races, top five/ten/twenty-five lists, and rankings with a gusto that I find super impressive.  What they're best known for is probably their movie drafts, where they'll invite a few friends and run a draft of movies by year or actor or director.  They did one for Tom Cruise movies recently that ensured I will never forget which "Mission: Impossible" movie is which, ever again.  However, the nerdiest movie podcast discussion I think I've ever heard in my life was probably their Sidney Lumet episode last year, when it became apparent that Sean had seen all or nearly all of the forty-three movies that Lumet had directed over the course of his storied career.  Now that's dedication.

The Spiel - From the folks that brought you "The Kingcast" comes another podcast about a famous Steve.  "The Spiel" is all about the films and shows that Steven Spielberg was involved with in some way.  Hosted by Eric Vespe, the guests have been fantastic, including some of Spielberg's major collaborators like producer Frank Marshall and screenwriter David Koepp.  Rian Johnson stopped by  a few months ago to talk about the early episodes of "Columbo" that Spielberg directed at the beginning of his career.  I especially appreciate that the show counts any Spielberg involvement as fair game, so they'll talk about movies that Spielberg or Amblin only produced, like "Casper" or "The Goonies" or "Joe vs The Volcano."  There's an "Animaniacs" epsiode.  There's an episode on John Williams scores for Spielberg movies.  I hope that Vespe will manage to wrangle an appearance by Spielberg himself one of these days - "The Kingcast" got their Steve, so it's not impossible.

Little Gold Men - Finally, I want to send a little love to Vanity Fair's long-running "Little Gold Men" awards season podcast, especially since we're losing another host to editorial changes.  It's always a great resource for interviews and putting titles on my radar that I might otherwise have missed.  They also talk about festivals, controversies, business deals, campaigns, and pretty much anything else going on in the industry that could affect the awards races, so I like checking in regularly to keep myself informed.  

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Del Toro Finally Made His "Frankenstein"

Guillermo Del Toro has not hidden the fact that "Frankenstein" is one of his dream projects, embodying all the themes of monsters and the monstrosity of men that have appeared in all of his best work.  So, it's no surprise that his "Frankenstein" film is one of his most lavishly beautiful, and the story it tells feels very personal to Del Toro.  I'm pretty familiar with all the major film versions of "Frankenstein," and Del Toro's version is a welcome new addition.  I've never seen one quite like it.

We begin in the frozen Arctic, where a dying Victor Frankenstein (Oscar Isaac) is rescued by a Danish ship on an expedition to the North Pole, led by Captain Anderson (Lars Mikkelson).  After a thwarted attack by the Creature (Jacob Elordi), Frankenstein relays his history to the captain, starting with his tragic childhood and ending with the creation of The Creature.  This takes up the first half of the film.  The Creature has his say in the second half, covering events until the present day.  In this version of the story, Victor's love interest Elizabeth (Mia Goth), is the daughter of the arms dealer Harlander (Christoph Waltz), who funds Victor's experiments.  She's also not Victor's intended, but the fiancee of Victor's younger brother William (Felix Kammerer), and bonds with Victor over her love of the natural world.

There's an over-the-top theatricality to Victor Frankenstein's half of the film, where Oscar Isaac gives us an arrogant, feckless Frankenstein, who is single-minded in his pursuit of reanimating the dead.  Del Toro makes him more complicit in the tragedies that befall him, especially his unwillingness to recognize the Creature as a person.  Frankenstein has never been a very sympathetic character in any telling of this story, but here Del Toro seeks to humanize him more by framing his behavior as part of a legacy of generational trauma.  Isaac makes him funny, charming, and a showman when he wants to be, and a petulant, cowardly, selfish wretch in his moments of weakness.  Yet, this Frankenstein also displays the ability to learn from his mistakes, and the redemptive ending feels earned.  

However, the best performance in the film is far and away Jacob Elordi as the Creature.  He's totally unrecognizable under the elaborate makeup and prosthetics, and using a voice that has been deepened and modified to sound more inhuman.  Initially the mostly mute, nearly naked newborn Creature seems almost human, and it's the actions of Frankenstein and the Creature's subsequent exposure to the world that create the destructive, rampaging  monster who causes so much harm.  Likewise, Elordi's performance becomes more and more compelling as the Creature gains awareness of and experience with the dark side of humanity.  He comes into focus fairly late in the film, in the subdued, melancholic scenes with an old blind man played by David Bradley, as he draws parallels between Bible stories and his own sad history.   

It's easy to lose sight of how deeply sad and macabre the story is, with Guillermo Del Toro indulging in sumptuous art direction and gloriously colorful cinematography every chance he gets.  And there's never a moment that this doesn't feel like Del Toro's work.  There's almost nothing that recalls James Whale and Boris Karloff - even a few campy moments in the laboratory are of an entirely different tenor.  I don't begrudge him any of the excess and pageantry, as the amount of effort that went into every frame of this film is incredibly impressive.  It often feels like Del Toro is throwing everything he has into "Frankenstein," as if he may never get a chance to make another movie.  However, "Frankenstein" is at its most moving when it's at its simplest, and the visuals are at their bleakest.      

And I found it very affecting that eventually we do get to the heart of the story, where Frankenstein has to confront the Creature and himself.  And despite all the beautiful gore and dazzling costumes and magnificent set design, the best parts of the film come down to good, old fashioned storytelling through the carefully played conversations and a great monologue or two.  Guillermo Del Toro's "Frankenstein" is a horror film and a creature feature, but it's also a tremendously touching piece about fatherhood and creation and taking responsibility for your actions.  It's my favorite film of Del Toro's in over a decade, and it was worth the wait.

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"The Diplomat," Year Three

Because I don't know what you're doing watching the third season of "The Diplomat" without having watched the first two, spoilers for those first two seasons lie ahead.  Please step carefully.

Recent events in world politics mean that "The Diplomat" now operates in an alternate universe where there are still some standards as to how major US politicians and officials conduct themselves.  No matter what the outrageous twists and turns the writers come up with this season, it all feels perfectly plausible in light of what's actually going on with the current administration.  And boy did they fit a lot of twists and turns into the eight episodes that make up this season.

Initially, there are several major changes in the status quo, with Grace Penn becoming the U.S. President, which means the Vice Presidency is up for grabs, and Bradley Whitford gets to join the cast as Todd Penn, the delightful First Gentleman.  Kate also gets a new love interest in Callum Ellis (Aidan Turner), a British spy, and we spend a lot more time with Billie Appiah (Nana Mensah), the no-nonsense White House Chief of Staff, and Nora Koriem (Rosaline Elbay), the VP's Chief of Staff.  Kate and Hal's marriage is tested as it has never been tested before.  And while the whole messy affair with the aircraft carrier attack is no longer the most pressing problem in the show, of course the potential for scandal remains high and everyone's trying to figure out who takes the blame.      

I really enjoy the way that "The Diplomat" has become such an ensemble show, and it's now less about solving a particular crisis, and more about seeing what happens when you have Allison Janney and Rory Kinnear facing off against each other in a scene, or how Bradley Whitford has somehow ended up in the position of the show's best comic relief.  We get a lot of Rufus Sewell as Hal this year, which means that the storylines with Hal and Kate feel fully front and center and supercharged in a way they haven't always been previously.  "The Diplomat" is at its best when the Wylers are at each other's throats.  And at the same time, I can't help rooting for them as a couple.  

Though the quality level remains high, It feels like the writing has taken a step down this year, not only because the premise of "The Diplomat" has shifted from its original form into something else, but also because it's clear that the show has become beholden to certain expectations.  We have to end on a big cliffhanger, for instance.  It's also noticeable that the show does a few tricky things to keep every member of our main cast involved in the big storylines and in close proximity with each other, most notably Stuart Hayford and Eidra Park.  "The Diplomat" has proven very capable of juggling all of its characters and ensuring that everyone gets something interesting to do, but there's also a lot less of a sense of narrative momentum with the big mystery of the first season mostly resolved.  The character drama mostly makes up for it, but sometimes they could have used a little more oomph.  

The reliance on big twists also makes it harder to trust when the writers are being sincere about certain storytelling choices.  Aidan Turner is a nice addition to the cast this year, but I was waiting for something terrible to happen to his character  from the moment he was introduced.  I don't think the show is ever going to top the season two finale in any case.  Also, I don't think that the binge model is doing them any favors.  I very deliberately didn't watch more than one episode in a sitting, and it still didn't feel like I had enough time to fully absorb most of the events.  

However, these are pretty minor complaints for one of the best series currently running on any platform.  The production has never looked better, taking advantage of some gorgeous UK locations.  All the actors remain fully at the top of their game, even if they aren't around for long - Rory Kinnear makes his few appearances really count.  And Keri Russell as Kate Wyler remains the kind of heroine who I'll happily watch until the end, even without Hal if it comes to that.  On a show like "The Diplomat," I'm not ruling anything out.  

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PIXAR in the Wilderness

This was a rough summer at the box office, with several notable bombs and unexpected underperformers.  Once sure bets are now no longer guaranteed to even make their budgets back, as evidenced by the shrugs that greeted "Thunderbolts" and "Fantastic Four."  However, today I want to talk about "Elio," the latest PIXAR film.  New PIXAR films used to be a license to print money, and their sequels to past hits like "Inside Out 2" can still be blockbusters.  "Elio," however, despite being well reviewed, and despite being made for the underserved family audience, had the lowest opening for any PIXAR film, not counting the pandemic era releases.

We can parse this in many ways.  First, all films that aren't part of a franchise or based on existing IP have been a much tougher sell in recent years.  However, animated family films tend to have much stronger legs, and aren't so dependent on their opening weekends.  After "Elemental" started soft, with an opening weekend total not much higher than Elio's, it managed a respectable tenth place at the 2023 domestic summer box office, right between "Transformers: Rise of the Beasts" and  "Fast X."  I fully expect that "Elio" is going to perform in a similar way, especially since the reviews have been good.

However, there's no getting away from the fact that the cultural cachet of PIXAR films has been significantly eroded.  Many blame the pandemic, where Disney decided to skip theatrical releases for three original PIXAR films - "Soul," "Turning Red," and "Luca," -  and premiere them on the Disney+ streaming service instead.  However, things may have already been on a downswing.  "Onward," which hit theaters in March of 2020, only had a partial release because of lockdowns, but its opening weekend was one of the lowest for a PIXAR film at that time.  Some blame the flood of sequels that outnumbered the original PIXAR films in the 2010s or the departure of John Lasseter in 2018.  Some blame changing audience tastes and expectations.   

Because I'm an animation nerd, I can't help drawing parallels to Disney animation.  PIXAR has been in the business of making movies for a little over thirty years.  Its first feature, "Toy Story," was released in 1995.  When the Disney animation studios were at the same point in their history, thirty years after "Snow White and the Seven Dwarfs," it was 1967.  "The Jungle Book" was enjoying massive box office success, but Walt Disney had just died, and the studio was about to enter a twenty year period of decline and obscurity before its Renaissance.  They nearly closed down for good in the 1980s.  During this era, the original artists who were the backbone of the studio were retiring, and there was a sense of cheapness and  artistic stagnation around the projects that were being produced.

There are many differences between the two studios, of course, but the one thing I keep coming back to is that PIXAR, like Disney, was a storied pioneer of a particular form of  animation, and set the standard for what animated films could be for a very long time.  Though PIXAR always had competitors from the beginning, their movies just looked and sounded and played better than what came out of Dreamworks or Illumination or Blue Sky.  The level of quality was dependably higher, the films more polished, and the talent involved more impressive.  That's changed over time, and now PIXAR often feels like it's a few steps behind, relying on its old characters and too much nostalgia.  

Probably no bigger indicator of the trouble PIXAR is in is the changed attitude toward its familiar house style.  "The PIXAR style" used to be the default for CGI, what everyone else was trying to look like.  After "Spider-man: Into the Spiderverse," now the 2D/3D hybrid styles are becoming more popular, and a film like "Elio" starts looking safe and old hat.  The big animated hit of the summer was Sony and Netflix's "KPop Demon Hunters," a streaming release that nobody saw coming.  We're far from PIXAR reaching any kind of artistic or economic nadir, but after thirty years, it also feels like the studio is overdue for a change - culturally, artistically, and maybe in other ways too.  "Luca" director Enrico Casarosa has an upcoming feature that could be the beginning of this.  "Gatto," due in summer of 2027, will be PIXAR's first "hand-painted" animated film.  

Change is not easy, however.  Again, it took Disney twenty years to get out of the wilderness, and their transition from traditional to CGI animation a decade later was also a rough one.  Everyone loves "Tangled" and "Frozen," but forgets that "Dinosaur," "Bolt," "Chicken Little," and "Meet the Robinsons" preceded them.  What's really interesting this time around is that there's a high likelihood that we're going to see both PIXAR and Disney Animation go through their next transitional phases simultaneously.  After the recent flops of "Strange World" and "Wish," Disney's in just as bad a position as PIXAR right now with its originals.

But if history tells us anything, they'll be back on top again soon enough.

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