My Top 25 of the Last 25: Animated Characters

I probably bit off more than I could chew with this one.  The last twenty-five years of animation covers a ton of shows and movies, and I'm very aware of all the ones that I haven't seen.  My apologies to "Bojack Horseman."  

As with all the lists in this series, there are twenty five entries, but only the top ten get writeups.  And I will totally cheat and slip in a few extra characters.

Bandit Heeler - "Bluey" is easily the most popular new cartoon of the past decade, and though all the Heelers contribute to the show's enduring popularity and appeal, the character who stands out as the most iconic is Bandit.  He's a great example of a more involved, more active cartoon father than we've seen in the past.  He grumbles and he grouses, but his commitment to his family is crystal clear.

Chihiro - There aren't many anime characters on this list for various reasons.  However, Studio Ghibli needs some representation here, and I can't think of a better Ghibli character than Chihiro - the young heroine that Hayao Miyazaki created with a deliberate effort to evoke a more realistic modern girl.  She's a big reason why "Spirited Away" is still one of the best animated films of the past quarter century.    

Miles Morales - However, I think that the animated film with the biggest impact recently has definitely been "Spider-man: Into the Spider-verse."  Miles is a boundary-breaking animated character for his design, his race, his culture, his comic-book origins and more.  And thank goodness he makes a fantastic Spider-man, with one of the best superhero origin stories that has even been put onscreen.  

Toph Beifong - I've heard the arguments for Zuko, but I'm sorry.  The best "Avatar: The Last Airbender" character is Toph.  The show's pint-sized earthbending champ becomes the gang's bruiser and a reliable source of earthy comedy in the second season, and I simply can't imagine the show without her.  She's such an original.  I even liked the old lady version of Toph who showed up in "The Legend of Korra."

The Ice King - I wanted a villain in the mix, and I kept coming back to the Ice King from "Adventure Time," who is probably the best example of a character who only works through the kind of long-form storytelling we didn't really get from western animated series before the 2000s.  Nobody has a story arc as epic or as surprising as this guy, and if you just want a fun comedic villain, he's surely that too.

Mizu - Adult-oriented animated series have really taken off in recent years, with "Arcane" and "Blue Eye Samurai" leading the way.  And this means some really interesting new characters like Mizu, who is a Japanese heroine from a show with very western sensibilities.  Frankly, Mizu is not the type of character I could ever see coming out of the anime storytelling tradition, even though she's deeply inspired by it.  

Nimona - I am grateful that "Nimona" was rescued and finished by Annapurna, after the closure of Blue Sky, because it's the kind of movie that is not for me, but is absolutely going to be a cornerstone for the audience that really needs it to exist.  The deeply weird, and utterly wonderful shapeshifter Nimona is a classic outsider character, and just subversive enough to feel a little dangerous in the best way.

Rick Sanchez - Here he is - the drunkard, abusive, mad genius whose badassery enables his worst impulses, and tends to lead to trauma and misery for everyone he meets.  Rick is the star of the most twisted family sitcom currently running on television, once you get past the science-fiction trappings.  But as smart as he seems, the truth about Rick is that he's just as clueless as everyone else.

Dr. Girlfriend - "The Venture Bros." do not get enough love despite their massive influence on animation.  The cast is full of wonderful male characters, but the one I really adore is the deep-voiced female lead, Dr. Girlfriend.  Initially, her presence is an opportunity to see a different side of The Monarch, but as the show goes on, she really comes into her own and becomes a force to be reckoned with.  

LEGO Batman - Well, I sort of got Bojack in here.  Lego Batman is a character that could only exist because of the colliding forces of shameless toy marketing, the IP of Warner Bros., with the creative anarchy of Phil Lord and Chris Miller.  "The LEGO Movie" shouldn't work, but it does, and LEGO Batman was enough of a highlight that he got his own spinoff, which somehow also works very, very well.

The Next Fifteen

Shrek

Beckett Mariner

Catra

The Minions

Omniman

Stitch

Shonen Bat/Li'l Slugger

The Other Mother ("Coraline")

Rapunzel

Huntrix

Roz ("The Wild Robot")

Paddington

Viktor ("Arcane")

The Red Turtle

The Incredibles

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My Favorite Michel Gondry Film

Once you've seen the work of Michel Gondry, it's impossible to mistake it for anything else.  The playful DIY aesthetics, the whimsical cartoonish imagery, the reality-breaking transitions, and the gonzo nature of the filmmaking have been imitated, but never quite matched.  Gondry got his start making innovative, eye-catching music videos for artists like Bjork, Daft Punk, Radiohead, and the White Stripes.  When he moved into features, his first two were collaborations with writer Charlie Kaufman, before Kaufman started directing his own scripts.  The second of these, "Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind," is one of the weirdest, most touching screen romances I've ever seen.

"Eternal Sunshine" came about thanks to a confluence of rare talents.  In addition to Gondry and Kaufman, you have Jim Carrey earnestly embracing a dramatic role, and Kate Winslet at the height of her career.   Kaufman's writing is what gives the film the proper emotional grounding to really make the relationship dynamics compelling, but the initial premise came from Michel Gondry and co-writer Pierre Bismuth, who had initially intended to make a sci-fi thriller about erasing memories.  The production was difficult and chaotic, and Gondry clashed with Kaufman over the script, the actors over shooting demands, the editor over the cut, and the production team over the movie's complicated in-camera practical effects - there's minimal CGI in use.  Tracy Morgan and Ellen Pompeo were cut from the film, and Kaufman and Gondry subsequently won the Best Original Screenplay Oscar and went their separate ways for good.

However, all that friction and turmoil produced a fantastic film, where a new technology allows a man to revisit his memories of a failed relationship, processing and interacting with them as they're systematically removed from his mind.  The process is visualised in various ways - some dramatic, like watching a landscape gradually lose all detail and start blinking out of existence, and some as simple as turning off the lights.  There are digressions into Joel's childhood memories, where the Gondry whimsy gets piled on, and interference by ne'er-do-wells, but at its core "Eternal Sunshine" is a relationship drama, and a good one.  All the dazzling cinematic trickery wouldn't be nearly so effective if it weren't for the romance feeling so authentic.  Joel and Clementine come across as a genuine couple, and the memories that Joel fights to preserve are ordinary, but intimate, and often painfully relatable.  

"Eternal Sunshine" feels like an outlier for Jim Carrey and Kate Winslet, who both feel like they're playing against type.  Joel is quiet and reticent, and we first meet him in a depressive funk, which only exacerbates his introversion.  Meanwhile, Clementine is mercurial and spontaneous, but stubbornly refuses to be romanticized - a manic pixie who is anything but a dreamgirl.  The two of them spend the whole movie mercilessly examining themselves and each other, reliving their troubled relationship backwards and forwards, and in the end are on the verge of doing it all over again.  Carrey and Winslet juggle multiple versions of their characters, blissful and bitter, real and imagined.  Between the two of them, the intensity of the emotions that they're able to evoke is extraordinary and cathartic.  You don't question for a moment why they'd consider trying again, despite all the heartbreak.      

As for Michel Gondry, he's still making movies, but he's probably not coming back to Hollywood.  In interviews, he's admitted that he's immature, delusional, and easily frustrated when working on his films, and can be difficult to work with.  Gondry's filmography is littered with fascinating smaller projects, personal documentaries, and occasional big-budget curiosities like "The Green Hornet" and "Mood Indigo."  His creativity seems boundless, but clearly Gondry isn't built for mainstream filmmaking.  I think his most representative and defining work is actually his music videos, which allow for a purity of concept that films rarely do.  

"Eternal Sunshine" was easily his biggest critical success, and it was clearly a collaborative one.  I don't think it would have turned out half as well if Gondry hadn't made it with the participation of so many other creatives who were willing to challenge and question him.  However, there would also be no "Eternal Sunshine" without Michel Gondry fighting for it, and pushing everyone else to do their best work.  

What I've Seen - Michel Gondry

Human Nature (2001)

Eternal Sunshine of the Spotless Mind (2004)

Dave Chappelle's Block Party (2005)

The Science of Sleep (2006)

Be Kind Rewind (2008)

The Green Hornet (2011)

The We and the I (2012)

Is the Man Who is Tall Happy (2013)

Mood Indigo (2013)

Microbe & Gasoline (2015)

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The Matter of "Marty Supreme"

"Marty Supreme" is very much in the vein of the other Safdie films - a tense, chaotic portrait of a terrible man who just can't seem to stop himself from making bad choices.  In this case, we have Marty Mauser (Timothee Chalamet), a table tennis/ping-pong champion loosely based on a real figure from the 1950s.  

When we first meet Marty, he's working as a shoe salesman in New York for his uncle (Ratso Sloman), trying to secure funds to go compete in a London table tennis tournament, and having an affair with his married childhood friend Rachel (Odessa A'zion).  He ends up robbing the shoe store to pay for his plane ticket, and his behavior just gets more reprehensible from there.  Most of the film follows Marty eight months later, when he's in the same position trying to get money to go another tournament in Japan, only his personal life has gotten much more complicated, and he's burned a lot more of his bridges.  Marty is only too willing to send the rest of his life up in flames in the dogged pursuit of his dreams.  

Despite being played by the charming and talented Timothy Chalamet, it's never in doubt that Marty Mauser is a downright horrendous human being.  The movie often seems to be daring us to root for him.  His main rivals in table tennis are the far more humble Bela Kletski (Geza Rohrig) and Koto Endo (Koto Kawaguchi), who have more sympathetic histories.  Marty's endless quest for more money means he takes advantage of everyone he comes into contact with.  He regularly betrays his friends like black taxi driver Wally (Tyler Okonma) and potential business partner Dion (Luke Manley).  He displays some attachment to his mother (Fran Drescher) and to Rachel, though that doesn't stop him from also aggressively pursuing an aging screen star, Kay Stone (Gwyneth Paltrow), who he meets by chance in London.  He ends up running afoul of dangerous characters like mobster Ezra Mishkin (Abel Ferrara) and Kay's husband Milton Rockwell (Kevin O'Leary), and it's entirely his own fault.    

The film, chronicling Marty's many adventures in skullduggery and self-destruction, is two and a half hours of occasional sports drama, interwoven with segments of melodrama, suspense, and escalating chaos.  Some of the material is very difficult to get through, though if you've seen the Safdies' other films, you know what you're in for.  Marty talks his way out of bad situations, creates others, and sometimes has to get more creative or craven in his tactics.  Many of the episodes unfold like shaggy dog stories, with wild twists and improbable getaways.  Other times, Marty's luck runs out and he has to face humiliation and defeat, though he never knows when to give up.  As the film goes on, the stories get wilder and Marty's behavior gets more outrageous and cringeworthy.  I've never seen a sports film work so hard to make you root against its protagonist, and it's definitely on purpose.   

So, obviously "Marty Supreme" isn't about table tennis as much as it's about poking at the audience's own impulses to elevate or vilify people based on totally arbitrary characteristics and how they happen to be positioned in a narrative.  There's also a lot more going on in the margins - post WWII rebuilding, the Jewish immigrant experience, the commercialization and commodification of sports, and of course this is a New York story too.  The movie has more in common with "The Brutalist" than other sports movies like "The Smashing Machine."  Eventually you realize that "Marty" may be a narcissist and a grifter, but many of the people he interacts with are also various degrees of dishonest, and some of the people he's using are using him right back.  Maybe Marty stands for America or the Jewish diaspora.  Maybe he's just another wannabe.

I don't see how it's fair that Josh Safidie got both cinematographer Darius Khondji and writer/editor Ronald Bronstein in the Safdie brothers breakup.  So I'm definitely not giving all the credit for "Marty Supreme" to Josh.  Frankly, I think he was very lucky that Timothee Chalamet decided to get onboard, and committed so hard during the awards season lead-up and promotional campaign, he actually helped make the film a bona fide box office hit.  Odessa A'zion also distinguishes herself nicely in a cast chock full of familiar faces and random cameos.  See if you can spot David Mamet and Penn Jillette.

Frankly, "Marty Supreme" is too mean to its audience for me to embrace it fully.  I will happily respect and admire it from afar, and hope everyone involved enjoys their success.

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"Hamnet" is a Heartbreaker

I have a few major biases when it comes to film.  I get more invested in stories about children and motherhood.  I'm partial to Shakespeare adaptations.  And when it comes to romances and tearjerkers, the more earnest and uncynical, the better.  Chloe Zhao's "Hamnet," which she directed and co-wrote with Maggie O'Farrell, based on O'Farrell's book, is all of these things.

The approach of the book and the film is to treat William Shakespeare (Paul Mescal) like a human being instead of a genius, following him and his beloved Agnes (Jessie Buckley) through their initial encounters, courtship, marriage, parenthood, separation, and then terrible tragedy.  The film never plays coy with the identities of its leads, but neither is William's playwriting presented as anything of particular importance until the last act, when it becomes a way for him to process his grief and despair.  Instead, the focus of the film is on the family - William and Agnes battling their parents to be allowed to marry, the dramatic births of their children, Susanna (Bodhi Rae Breahtnach), and twins Hamnet (Jacobi Jupe) and Judith (Olivia Lynes), William relocating to London for work, and then the arrival of the devastating plague.  

Most of the film is a lovely, intimate domestic drama about love and loss from Agnes' point of view.  She is rumored to be the daughter of a witch, and deeply connected with the forest and nature, so we get a very naturalistic, immersive view of Stratford, England and its inhabitants through her eyes.  However, she's also guided by visions and haunted by portents of doom that follow her all her life.  Lukasz Zal's cinematography captures lush greenery, lively family scenes, a few hints of the supernatural, and all the emotional highs and lows of the performances.  However, I was struck by how evocative some of the simplest shots of trees or quiet interiors were, despite no action or dialogue at all.  I have to point out that a lot of the heavy lifting is also done by Max Richter's score, which does exactly what you expect a Max Richter score to do in a tragedy.

I expect that some Shakespeare fans will take issue with the portrayal of the Bard and his family, as "Hamnet" plays up the relationship of the stage play to the real-life tragedy considerably, even inventing a few additional connections.  It's also clear that nobody was too concerned about the historical accuracy of the period dress and mannerisms.  However, as a piece of pure, cathartic cinema, nothing hit me as hard as "Hamnet" did this year, and I was warned well in advance what kind of movie this was.  The execution is just that good, on every level.  Jessie Buckley's raw, uninhibited performance is extraordinary, as has been widely reported, but the whole cast is  excellent - Paul Mescal, Emily Watson as Agnes' mother-in law, Joe Alwyn as her brother, Noah Jupe as one of the players, and especially the kids for getting us to love them, and really make the big losses hurt.    

It's also one of those rare, ambitious films where everything is building up to the emotional crescendo of the last ten minutes, and about twenty things pay off one after another, which has a tendency to go wrong in less experienced hands.  Considering how the film is structured, it feels positively miraculous that the third act came together as well as it did.  I never expected Chloe Zhao to tackle Shakespeare, but her approach is so refreshing, and her instincts are dead-on.  I expect "Hamnet" works better if you already know Shakespeare's "Hamlet," and I do know Shakespeare's "Hamlet" pretty well, but I'm very curious what newcomers to Shakespeare will think of the movie.  

I know I want to watch this again, but I'll also approach with caution, as the film is very emotionally intense.  And frankly, I'm a little afraid that the magic of that last scene might not work as well the second time around.  This is one trick where I'm not keep on peeking behind the curtain or looking for the seams.

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"Hazbin Hotel," Year Two

Spoilers for the first season ahead.

The second season of "Hazbin Hotel" gets right down to business, showing the aftermath of the big extermination battle from season one.  The Hotel is full of sinners who are all there for the wrong reasons, including newcomers Cherri Bomb (Krystina Alabado) and Baxter (Kevin Del Aguila).  Sir Pentious is causing an existential crisis in Heaven, with angels Sera (Patina Miller), Emily (Shoba Narayan), and Lute (Jessica Vosk) in disagreement about what his redemption means for their relations with Hell.  However, the central character of this year is really Vox (Christian Borle), the TV-headed overlord, who with fellow baddies Velvette (LIlli Cooper) and Valentino (Joel Perez) form a villain triumvirate known as the Vees.  As the head of Hell's major telecommunications company, VoxTek, Vox controls the airwaves and social media.  And he sees the chance to consolidate power and take the fight to Heaven.  

I really shouldn't be watching "Hazbin Hotel" for the plot, because despite some significant improvements in the pacing and overall story flow this year, most of the characters are stuck in a holding pattern.  Charlie naively tries to make the case for the Hotel to the rest of Hell, but Vox and his minions keep warping and twisting her message at every turn, causing her to repeatedly spiral.  Angel Dust is said to be the sinner closest to redemption, except he hasn't addressed any of his personal issues, his past, or the whole involuntary servitude thing.  We do start getting pieces of people's backstories, including flashbacks to when characters like Sir Pentious and Alastor were alive on Earth.  These do help a lot to flesh out characters and relationships.  However, most of the big revelations are either severely anticlimactic, or just keep punting the juiciest stuff further down the road, to be addressed later.  The show also has the terrible habit of nerfing its most powerful characters until they need to be badasses for the big finale.         

I know Season Three and Four are coming, and we're going to get answers to some of the remaining mysteries, but I wanted  more out of Season Two.  Everything to do with Vox is great, especially Christian Borle's committed scenery-chewing.  Everything else feels like it's repeating parts of Season One, or maneuvering characters to where they'll need to be for future episodes.  There are a lot of subplots that have yet to be resolved and there are a lot of balls in the air, but when it comes down to it, most of our heroes don't have a whole lot to do beyond singing about their feelings.  The only one of the leads who actually accomplishes something significant is Alastor, and he literally spends three episodes tied up on an office chair.

Still, this is a musical program and we're here for the songs.  There are some bangers this season, including "Gravity" for Lute, "Easy" for Vaggie and Charlie, and "Brighter" for Vox, and "Love in a Bottle" for Husk.  Probably the funniest moment in the whole season is when Niffty gets her own anime OP out of nowhere.  There's really no attempt to hide that this is an earnest musical anymore, with a big, cheesy, uplifting ending clearly designed to get as many cast members on the soundtrack as possible.  The quality of the music remains variable, but about on par with last year.  However, there's a lot more of it, with multiple episodes featuring three full numbers.  My biggest peeve is that Alastor's best song is the "Season 1 Recap Song" that you have to go watch on Youtube.

Production-wise, "Hazbin" looks and sounds great this year.  The crew feel a lot more comfortable in this universe now, and willing to get more ambitious.  The action scenes in particular have improved, with major fights showing off more of the characters' powers.  Husk in action, using magician-themed attacks is especially fun to watch.  Some of the character designs, especially for minor  background demons, still feel goofy and overworked, but I've gotten used to the style.      

Until next time, I'll be enjoying the soundtrack and looking forward to more.

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The End of "The Late Show"

"The Late Show With Stephen Colbert" wrapped up its last episode on Thursday, after what felt like months of goodbyes.  Colbert didn't manage to land that interview with the Pope he was hoping for, but plenty of others dropped by for cameos and performances.  If you didn't like the final show, which featured Paul McCartney playing the Ed Sullivan theater again, the return of Jon Baptise, and a silly science-fiction storyline, that's fine.  Colbert and company made plenty of others that could stand in for a finale that you might like better - Colbert taking his own Colbert Questionert on Wednesday, the "Worst of the Late Show" program on Monday that spotlighted the contributions of members of the "Late Show" staff, the big President Obama interview from the week before, or the "Strike Force Five" reunion of all the current late night television hosts the week before that.  

My favorite was easily last Friday's return of David Letterman, the previous "Late Show" host, who Colbert took over from in 2015.  Letterman, always the anti-establishment figure, was one of the only final guests who really displayed any sign of being upset about the whole situation.  He dressed down CBS several times during the interview, and then made them the literal target of a resurrected bit from his own version of the show - dropping random stuff off the roof of the Ed Sullivan theater to smash on the asphalt below.  In this case, Letterman and Colbert dropped chairs from the set - including Colbert's desk chair - trying to hit a giant CBS eye logo on the ground.  A few watermelons and a multi-tiered cake were also hurled over for good measure.  The clip  was later released on Youtube as a video titled "Wanton Destruction of CBS Property."  

Stephen Colbert has also been doing a good amount of press to promote these final programs - interviews with Hollywood Reporter, Entertainment Tonight, the Today Show, People Magazine, and others.  He's clearly got mixed feelings about the end of the show, but he's leaving on a high note, despite the fact that he's being pushed out by the network.  What's more, he's at the height of his popularity and everybody in town seems to be on his side.  His fellow hosts Jimmy Kimmel and Jimmy Fallon ran reruns on Thursday in solidarity, while his old colleagues at "The Daily Show" and "Last Week Tonight" have delivered shoutouts and encouragement.  The outpouring of support and good wishes is wonderful to see, and I suppose it's better to focus on that than the grim reality of why "The Late Show" was cancelled - the Paramount Skydance merger and the pettiness of the Trump administration.  Say what you want about Disney, but they only pulled "Jimmy Kimmel Live!" for a week. 

I've been watching Stephen Colbert since his appearances on "The Daily Show," and I'll be very sad if he decides to stop performing.  Colbert has been one of our most reliable satirists, and even though helming a big network show softened his edge, he proved far more watchable than his competitors.  His keen intelligence, steady faith, and winning wholesomeness never clashed with his killer sense of humor or willingness to be ribald and ridiculous.  Then again, if writing "Lord of the Rings" movies and sleeping in late will make Colbert happy, all the best to him.  I'm more worried about the staff of "The Late Show," who are all now unemployed.  CBS is ending their late night talk programs entirely, opting to replace "The Late Show" with a program called "Comics Unleashed with Byron Allen."  Allen has already made it clear he will be avoiding political commentary.  

Of all the finales and cancellations this year, "The Late Show" is the toughest to reckon with, because it shouldn't have happened, and the fact that it did indicates that things are very wrong at CBS and Paramount right now.  I know the end of "The Late Show" was an inevitability, considering the decline of network television, but Colbert easily could have gone on many more years as host.  He might make a return to late night on another show, the way Jon Stewart did, but it won't be the same.  This is the end of an era, not just for Colbert, but for television.  And as wonderful as these last weeks of "The Late Show" have been, there is nothing that is going to make this ending sit right.

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"Roofman" and "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You"

Minor spoilers ahead.

"Roofman" is Derek Cianfrance's latest film, telling the stranger-than-fiction story of the criminal career of Jeffrey Manchester (Channing Tatum), an ex-soldier who turns to burglary in the late '90s to make ends meet.  He picks up the moniker "Roofman" because he robs fast food restaurants by cutting his way through the ceilings.  Manchester is eventually incarcerated, escapes in 2004, and manages to secretly live in a Toys "R" Us while waiting for his friend Steve (La Keith Stanfield) to arrange a way out of the country.  There, he falls in love with one of the employees, a single mother named Leigh (Kirsten Dunst), while doing his best to steer clear of her jerk of a manager, Mitch (Peter Dinklage).

I don't think this is the best movie that Channing Tatum has appeared in, but this is the best Channing Tatum movie.  It's very easy to root for Jeffrey Manchester, because Tatum is so charming and so wholesome in the part.  Manchester prioritizes making his loved ones happy, and does his best to make sure no one gets hurt during his robberies.  He's also got a mind for figuring out systems and schedules that makes him an expert infiltrator.  The trouble is that he's a big kid at heart, someone who doesn't really appreciate the deeper repercussions of his actions, or the harms that he can cause long term.  His antics in the  Toys "R" Us are a lot of fun, but there's deeper thematic stuff going on there.  Living in a toy store sounds fun, but the reality of it hits Manchester pretty hard.  And ultimately, "Roofman" is about him figuring out far, far too late that he doesn't have the temperament or the need for criminality, even though he's so good at it.  

The movie runs a little long, but it's sweet and fairly heartwarming.  "Roofman" is easily Derek Cianfrance's most accessible film - it's still got a very un-Hollywood ending, but it offers a lot of fun on the way there.  The romance works, which surprised me, though I do wish that we could have gotten more of Kristen Dunst's side of the story.  And special kudos go to Peter Dinklage, who I feel like I've been seeing everywhere this year, doing solid work playing that petty manager that everyone hates.   However, the one thing that kept taking me out of the movie was some of the other casting choices.  It was distracting how many of the actors I recognized in the minor roles, like Ben Mendelsohn as the local pastor, Uzo Aduba as his wife, Juno Temple as Steve's girlfriend, and Jimmy O. Yang showing up to sell Manchester a used car.  

On to "If I Had Legs I'd Kick You."  This one really caught me off guard, because all the marketing has been about Conan O'Brien having a supporting part, his first significant dramatic role.  He's fine in the movie, but definitely not what "If I Had Legs" should be remembered for.  This is the second film from director Mary Bronstein, about an overstressed, anxiety-riddled mother named Linda (Rose Byrne) who is taking care of a medically fragile young daughter (Delaney Quinn) with an eating disorder.  Her husband (Christian Slater) is away for an extended period for work.  The ceiling of their apartment has caved in, forcing Linda to relocate to a seedy hotel, run by a friendly superintendent, James (A$AP Rocky). 

Conan O'Brien plays Linda's therapist, who is also a colleague, because Linda is also a therapist.  So, it turns out that on top of all of Linda's problems, her job is to listen to other stressed out, anxious people  all day and try to help them with their problems.  It's no wonder that Linda starts to crack under the pressure.  "If I Had Legs" feels similar to other paranoid thrillers like "Uncut Gems," but with a more heightened, subjective POV.  Linda occasionally disassociates, staring into holes and voids where the blackness seems to temporarily mute all the chaos around her.  "If I Had Legs" never gets to the level of surrealism of something like "Beau is Afraid," but there's definitely the same willingness to make the viewer viscerally uncomfortable by focusing on the most nerve-grating moments of the protagonist's life. There's also plenty of black humor.

What really stands out is the performance of Rose Byrne as a woman who is in the throes of failure and can't seem to stop making things worse.  Maternal regret has become a more common subject in recent films like "The Lost Daughter," and Byrne embodies it wonderfully, layering on the reactive hostility, self-flagellating guilt, and endless frustration.  Bronstein shows the world from Linda's POV as an endless series of escalating irritants and disruptions that simultaneously enrage her and deepen her self-loathing.  It's difficult to watch, especially the subplot with one of Linda's patients, a new mother named Caroline (Danielle Macdonald), but I found it rewarding.  I especially like the ending, which is a series of rug-pulls that finally bring us to an inevitable conclusion.  I hope to see more from Bronstein soon.  

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"The Boys," Year Four

Spoilers for the first three seasons ahead.

I nearly dropped "The Boys" after a third season that felt repetitive and stalled out.  It was only because I knew that the show was ending with the fifth season that I decided to catch up on the fourth one, and then I debated whether to just write up the last two seasons together.  However, I think the fourth season has enough for me to talk about in its own post.

There's still a lot about the fourth season of "The Boys" that is repetitive and feels like it's stalling for time.  We don't appear any closer to the show's final goal of either killing Homelander or watching everybody die trying.  However, there are some different goals and side-quests this year that play out in interesting ways, as well as a few new characters and old characters in new roles.  Right off the bat, the best new addition to the show is Susan Heyward as the superintelligent Sister Sage, who is absolutely fascinating to watch because she is working toward her own unstated goals the whole time, which don't match the goals of anyone else in the show.  She also has a habit of temporarily lobotomizing herself to enjoy sex and junk food binges, which gets funnier every time it happens.  

I also like Valorie Curry as Firecracker, a right wing influencer and conspiracy theory peddler, who spearheads the media misinformation campaign against Starlight.  I didn't think it was possible, but "The Boys" becomes even more blatant about tying Homelander's supporters to the alt-right this season, with Firecracker as a cutting caricature of the new breed of MAGA-era white nationalist zealot.  The show apparently got a little too close to current events for comfort, prompting the finale to change its official title from "Assassonation Run" to "Season Four Finale," due to some of the depicted events.  I found the Firecracker storyline the most difficult to watch due to how grating her schtick is, but I'm also very appreciative of it, because the satire is so spot-on.

Easily the most improved performer is Cameron Crovetti as Ryan, who is given much more to do as he gains more autonomy and starts asking more difficult questions of his two father figures.  "The Boys" is better about balancing its dark humor with more sincere storylines this year, and Ryan experiencing some growing pains was one of the better ones.  I also want to highlight Claudia Doumit as politician Victoria Neuman, who is one of this year's major villains.  Like Sister Sage, she's a villain with some shades of gray, and it was genuinely hard to predict where her loyalties were ultimately going to land.  I also want to acknowledge that Jeffrey Dean Morgan, Rosemarie DeWitt, Will Ferrell, and Tilda Swinton appear in this season in roles I will not spoil. 

As for the main characters, the showrunners did a decent job of giving everyone new things to do, while not making it too obvious that nobody was making much progress.  A-Train and Ashley got some of the funnier interactions as they toyed with dumping Vought.  Deep and Black Noir (Nathan Mitchell) are pretty much pure comic relief at this point.  Homelander gets points for never getting any less disturbing every time he shows up.  On the other team, Hughie and Annie had a good season, weathering a lot of ups and downs.  I wasn't sure why Frenchie and Kimiko were seemingly on a break at the beginning of the season, or how Frenchie ended up in a deeply problematic relationship with a guy named Colin (Elliot Knight), but at least that one wrapped up well.  Butcher had a very big, meaningful arc this year, but it wasn't executed too well, regrettably.

I continue to prefer the show's worldbuilding to any of its actual plot.  Season Four gives us a holiday ice show, an Avenue Q parody (complete with a song number about informing on your parents), superpowered farm animals, and the most depraved versions of Batman and Spiderman I have ever seen.  The shocks are still pretty inventive and disgusting, which I respect, even if this part of the show hasn't worked for me for the past few seasons.  And I'm looking forward to the finale, and seeing if "The Boys" can top itself one more time.  This feels like the right time for "The Boys" to be ending, and I'm glad it's going on its own terms.

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"She Ra" With Spoilers

I finished "She-Ra and the Princesses of Power," (the 2018 Netflix series, not the one from the '80s) which was a thoroughly enjoyable action-adventure series aimed at girls.  In lieu of one of my usual top ten lists, I'm going to write up a spoilery wrap-up post to talk about some of the elements of the show that I thought were particularly novel and worthy of attention.  The best episode was "Princess Prom," by the way.

I don't think I've ever seen a kids' show where the villains aren't only well-rounded characters, but they have roughly equal narrative emphasis as the heroes.  I really enjoy Adora, Glimmer, and Bow, but all the standout characters in "She-Ra" are the ones who spend most of the series on the opposing side: Catra, Scorpia (Lauren Ash), Entrapta (Christine Woods), and Double Trouble (Jacob Tobia).  They do just as much growing and learning and maturing as any of the good guys.  Major baddie Hordak gets a redemption arc.  We even get a whole episode devoted to Lonnie (Dana Davis), Rogelio, and Kyle (Antony Del Rio), the three Horde soldiers who grew up with Adora and Catra, and mostly appear as background characters in the rest of the show.

The message is clear.  You can't write people off just because they do bad things or follow the wrong leaders.  A simple good/bad dichotomy doesn't account for the misguided, the confused, and the complicated.  Entrapta, for instance, is operating with an entirely different moral compass than the rest of the cast, valuing technology and information over human relationships.  With her prehensile hair and neurodivergent coded behavior, she's one of the show's most unique creations.  Muscle-with-a-heart-of-gold Scorpia is one of the sweetest characters and dearly values her friends, but all her friends are members of the Horde.  And of course there's Catra, who has made a habit of dealing with her trauma and expressing her insecurities in very destructive, unhealthy ways.  And it turns out that every single one of them can become a  friend and ally.  It just takes Adora a couple of extra seasons to win them over, or for them to make the decision to defect on their own.  There are also characters who stay firmly on the sidelines, only governed by their own self-interest throughout, who can still be appealed to and reasoned with. 

It's very impressive that the show manages to raise its stakes every season, to the point where the whole universe is at risk by season five.  While the violence is very mild and the relationships are kept PG, the show does go to some dark and upsetting places emotionally.  Catra spends most of the show working her way up the ranks of the Horde, and it's always ambiguous whether or not you should be rooting for her, because her villainy is so entertaining.  Then she finally finds an enemy who completely outclasses her, who she's not going to be able to manipulate, and it's time for reform.  N.D. Stephenson, who also created "Nimona," does a great job at exploring the fraught emotional lives of her characters, both bad and good, while putting on a rousing adventure show.  The only one I'm a little disappointed with is Glimmer, who becomes much more reckless and aggressive after her coronation, coming close to crossing some lines thanks to Shadoweaver's influence.  She self-corrects very quickly when the plot needs her to, and she and Bow feel a little shortchanged in the last seasons compared to Catra and Adora.

I've seen some comparisons to various anime series with similar fantasy settings, but "She-Ra" is very much a Western cartoon that is careful to serve its younger audience.  I appreciate that there's plenty of humor and fun, even in the more intense episodes, and the storytelling can provoke some big emotions without ever getting too traumatic .  For instance, while Adora and Catra are having one of their more desperate duels, Entrapa is off on a side quest, making friends with a Horde Prime (Keston John) clone she thoughtfully names "Wrong Hordak."  There are a couple of deaths that are handled very well, though this being a fantasy show, I suspect they may not be gone for good.  

This is one of the better transitional programs I've seen for middle grade kids and preteens, the ones who love cartoons but are ready for more substance to chew on.  There are not a lot of these shows, so I greatly value the ones that we've got.  And "She-Ra" is one of the best I've seen.  

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"Beef" Year Two

So, Netflix's "Beef" is going the anthology route.  The newest eight-episode season tells an original story about more desperate people in conflict, with no connections to the first season.  Showrunner Lee Sung Jin continues to explore themes of the Asian-American diaspora and misplaced rage, this time through a story about three couples in three different socioeconomic categories.

The Monte Vista Point Country Club is managed by Josh (Oscar Isaac) and his wife Lindsay (Carey Mulligan).  They have money troubles and their marriage is on the rocks, despite their lavish lifestyle and the lofty company they keep.  One of the employees of the club, Ashley (Cailee Spaeny), and her fiancée Austin (Charles Melton), catch Josh and Lindsay in the middle of a violent fight one night, and manage to film it.  This gives them the leverage to potentially escape their own stalled lives in low-income purgatory.  However, there's another wrinkle.  The club has a new Korean owner, Chairwoman Park (Youn Yuh-jung), a very rich and influential businesswoman who has a habit of playing favorites.  Her husband, plastic surgeon Dr. Kim (Song Kang-ho), is in the middle of a potential scandal, and Chairman Park is eyeing the club as a potential way out.   

Like the first season of the show, all the main characters are people who do terrible things.  Some are driven by money or ambition.  Some act badly due to being in relationships that enable their worst behavior.  Some are bad because their circumstances or upbringing seems to give them no other choice.  Nearly everyone turns out to be redeemable, but hardly any of them choose redemption in the end.  The show follows all the players as couples and as individuals, having some episodes focus only on one or two characters at a time.  A noticeable difference from the first season is that there isn't a simple inciting incident that pits two or more characters directly against each other.  The character dynamics are much more complicated, and the intra-couple hostilities are just as important as the ones between the different couples, especially when the lines start to get blurry.

The high level of acting talent involved means that there are all kinds of subtleties and shadings to the characters that are exposed as the show examines them from different angles.  This is very much a black comedy, so while there's some tugging at the heartstrings, the characters have a tendency to turn on a dime.   You might be rooting for someone in one episode, and rooting against them in the next.  For instance, Ashley starts out as the most vulnerable character with the least amount of power, and seems perfectly nice and sweet.  It's understandable that she decides to try the blackmail scheme when she discovers a medical issue and needs health insurance fast.  However, behavior that just seemed quirky and innocent when she was at the bottom of the ladder becomes more and more distasteful as she moves higher up, and starts getting used to wielding her privilege.  We see her at her best and her worst.  In one episode she's utterly sympathetic as the hapless victim of systemic forces arrayed against her.  In another, she's a nightmare of a selfish, social-climbing shrew, who doesn't hesitate to take advantage of Austin's tendency to be a doormat.  

Speaking of Austin, with the cast pretty well balanced between Korean and non-Korean actors, Austin is the lynchpin character narratively, a half-Korean, half-Caucasian former sports star who is an aspiring personal trainer.  He's gone for most of his life without much connection to his Korean heritage, and suddenly he's around all these Koreans, including the lovely interpreter Eunice (Seoyeon Jang), and his ethnicity is unexpectedly seen as an asset.  The new opportunities mean new temptations to avoid and new expectations that he struggles to meet.  I found one of the best moments in the whole season is the revelation of how fluent in Korean Austin actually is, during a pivotal moment.  Charles Melton was absolutely the highlight of the show for me, along with Youn Yuh-jung getting to be more of a villain for once.  

Isaac and Mulligan are probably the most familiar names in the cast, but Josh and Lindsay strike me as broader characters who aren't all that interesting, and their actors really have to do some heavy lifting to keep them engaging.  They're the characters who are the most caught up in schemes and stratagems against everyone else, and are done the most disservice by the twisty nature of the plotting and a relatively straightforward disintegrating marriage storyline.  There are class and race issues that could have been explored in their pairing that just never materialized, and the glimpses of their happier past together weren't enough to make it feel like there were real stakes to their conflicts.  Issac and Mulligan are two of my favorite working actors at the moment, so this was the major disappointment of this season of "Beef" for me.  

I'm still glad they're here, and I enjoyed the season overall, but this is a step down from the first season.  However, I'm still rooting for the show, and I'd be happy to watch a third installment of "Beef" somewhere down the line.    

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My Top Ten Episodes of 2007-2008

Below, find my top ten episodes for the 2007-2008 television season below, in no particular order.  A few spoilers lie ahead, including the ending of "The Sopranos."

Pushing Daisies, "Pie-lette" - Barry Sonnenfeld and Bryan Fuller joined forces to bring us one of the most beautiful television series ever created, this hyper-stylized fairy tale world where a lovelorn pie-maker has the ability to bring the dead back to life.  The cast is great, and writing is fun, but the production design and cinematography are what make this premiere especially memorable.  The rest of the show, sadly, never quite lived up to it.  

The Sopranos, "Made in America" - I nearly picked "Heidi and Kennedy" for Christopher, but the impact of "Made in America" helped to burnish the show's reputation in a way that keeps it in the public consciousness to this day.  What happened after the screen cut to black?  Is Tony dead?  If so, who got him?  In the end it doesn't matter.  Whether Tony survives this outing or not, the pattern of his life and his inevitable fate are already set in stone.

30 Rock, "Rosemary's Baby" - As a "Star Wars" fan, I'm as glad to see Carrie Fisher guest starring as anyone.  However, it's useless to claim that this episode isn't here because of one specific scene - Jack Donaghy taking over Tracy's therapy session with a glorious "Good Times" inspired rant that gives him the excuse to say "chifforobe."  Is it racist?  Is it in bad taste?  Absolutely, but it's so sensationally done, all I could do was marvel at its existence.

Mad Men, "The Wheel" - The Carousel pitch is one of the high points of "Mad Men," putting Don Draper's talent for dream-building and self-deception on full display.  Meanwhile, his marriage is in trouble, his family is on edge, and it will shock you how much "this never happened."  The first season of "Mad Men" is still one of the best seasons of television ever made, and "The Wheel" is a great exemplar for why it resonates so deeply.

South Park, "Britney's New Look" - "South Park" was really good at occasionally delivering social critique in a way that made the message stick.  So it goes with the incredibly dark episode where Britney Spears attempts to commit suicide but survives with most of her head blown off.  This doesn't dissuade the paparazzi or the media apparatus at all.  And the boys learn that modern pop stardom is the new form of ritual human sacrifice, because of course it is.

The Wire, "-30-" - I love that epic ending montage that checks in with so many characters, but what I find so striking about the final episode is that so much is left unresolved.  Many fates are left up in the air and the only real resolution is that the cycles of crime, poverty, corruption, and institutional dysfunction will go on with a new generation.  There's some hope offered, but little justice.  I'd love another season, but no ending will be more fitting.

The IT Crowd, "The Work Outing" - It may not be the best episode of "The IT Crowd," but it's the one that everyone remembers.  Generally gay panic themed media hasn't aged well over the past two decades, but this one is still a lot of fun.  I'd call the depiction of "Gay!: A Gay Musical" over the top, except that the satire is pretty spot-on, honestly.  Roy and Moss's antics at the theater are exactly what they should be, with a perfect comeuppance.

Breaking Bad, "And the Bag's in the River" - I picked the third episode of "Breaking Bad" over some of the more famous entries because this feels like some of the most interesting character turns for Walter White happen here.  Forced into a life-or-death situation with Krazy-8, Walt takes his first major steps toward becoming the villain Heisenberg.  I also love the thriller elements and fight scenes, including a truly jawdropping reveal.

John Adams, "Part I: Join or Die (1770-1774)" - HBO's "John Adams" miniseries remains a favorite.  The premiere covers Adams' stint as defense counsel for the soldiers involved in the Boston Massacre, demonstrating his moral forthrightness and sense of duty.  It also sets the precedent for his involvement in the American Revolution, which requires long absences from his family and cultivating a reputation for obstinacy with the founding fathers.  

Late Night with Conan O'Brien, "February 4, 2008" - Do you remember that time that Jon Stewart at "The Daily Show," Stephen Colbert at "The Colbert Report," and Conan O'Brien had a feud over a Mike Huckabee interview?  And the climax was all three of them throwing down in a hysterical mock fight over on "Late Night With Conan O'Brien," set to an Arctic Monkeys song?  I still think about this a lot.

Honorable mention:

Jimmy Kimmel, "February 1, 2008" - Speaking of feuds, Sarah Silverman's special birthday video for Kimmel,  is still easily the best thing to have ever come out of the long-running Jimmy Kimmel and Matt Damon hostilities.

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"Song Sung Blue" and "Rental Family"

"Song Sung Blue" is easily mistaken for a musical biopic about Neil Diamond.  It's actually a musical biopic about a Neil Diamond impersonator, or "interpreter," named Mike Sardina (Hugh Jackman).  Based on the documentary of the same name by Greg Kohs, "Song Sung Blue" follows frustrated musician Mike as he falls in love with a Patsy Kline impersonator named Claire (Kate Hudson), and forms the fabulous performing duo of "Lightning and Thunder" with her.  Both have children from prior marriages, including Claire's hostile teen daughter Rachel (Ella Anderson) and son Dayna (Hudson Hensley), and Mike's daughter Angelina (King Princess).  Despite finding great fulfillment in performing, Mike and Claire's lives see dramatic ups and downs over the years, and their love is tested in many ways.

Directed and written by Craig Brewer, the movie is utterly charming from the opening frames.  I love biopics about people who are more adjacent to fame rather than very famous, so we don't have to worry so much about the audience's existing relationship with a celebrity.  The Sardinas are a fairly ordinary couple who live ordinary lives and have the problems that ordinary people have.  However, since they're impersonators, we still get the benefit of hearing Jackman and Hudson perform lots of catchy Neil Diamond songs.  You can tell how much the filmmakers genuinely love Thunder and Lightning, because they always look fabulous onscreen, in spite of the kitschy stage outfits and goofy played up personas.  The performances are very good, with Jackman and Hudson selling the love story, and keeping the Sardinas very human as they face major challenges together.    

 

I'm not a Neil Diamond fan and I admit that "Sweet Caroline" is one of only three Diamond songs that I know.  However, I had a very good time with this film.  I think the actual fans would like it too, because the Sardinas love Neil Diamond as much as anybody.  Mike is initially reluctant to assume the role because he's worried that it might be disrespectful, and when he does he displays a very protective attitude towards Diamond's music throughout.  After listening to the songs for two hours, I still don't think the music is really to my taste, but I enjoyed watching Jackman and Hudson as the Sardinas so much, it didn't matter.

On to "Rental Family," which is a dramedy about the Western and Japanese cultural divide, from director HIKARI, but in a more interesting and nuanced way than I expected.  Brendan Fraser plays an actor named Phillip Vanderploeg, who has lived in Japan for several years since starring in a popular toothpaste commercial.  He's adapted to life in Japan very well, but his career has stalled.  Unexpectedly, he gets a gig with "Rental Family," a service owned by a man named Shinji (Takehiro Hira), who hires out actor stand-ins for personal and social situations.  Phillip is called on to play a groom for a sham wedding, a mourner for a fake funeral, and a reporter to conduct a fake interview with a forgotten filmmaker, Kikuo (Akira Emoto).  However, his most challenging assignment is to play the father of a little girl named Mia (Shannon Mahina Gorman), who isn't supposed to know he's just an actor.

Companies like Rental Family are real, having originated in Japan in the 90s.  As a very Japanese phenomenon with very particular cultural nuances, it's a great angle to illustrate how Philip still thinks like an American, and hasn't quite figured out how to fit in Japanese society.  Casting Brendan Fraser for this was a wonderful choice, since he's so physically out of place wherever he goes in Japan, and dwarfs all of his co-stars, especially little Shannon Mahina Gorman.  The concept of hiring people to play loved ones has great comedic and dramatic potential, but "Rental Family" chooses to be very gentle, heartwarming, and sincere.  Regarding less savory aspects of the business, there's only a brief subplot involving one of Philip's co-workers, Aiko (Mari Yamamoto), who specializes in playing fake girlfriends to deliver apologies to wives who've been cheated on.   As a result, there's a very old-fashioned feel to "Rental Family," and the comedy is extremely nice in a way that's becoming very rare.

"Rental Family" reminds me a lot of "The Farewell" in the way that it deals with Western and Eastern approaches to personal difficulties, and love is shown in very different ways that seem to be contradictory.  This is a very sanitized and idealized depiction of the rental family concept, but I admire the impulse to make a movie like this, more than I like the movie itself.  "Rental Family" is a pleasant watch that I'd happily recommend to those who might need a comforting feel-good movie, but the resolutions are all a little too pat and tidy for me.  People's emotions are treated very carefully, but the more morally troubling aspects of the rental scheme are largely sidestepped or dealt with superficially.  Everything may look fine, but everyone in this movie still needs a ton of therapy.  

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"Death By Lightning" is Illuminating

At some point, a few years ago, I wrote up a post on this blog about the dearth of American costume dramas, wondering if we'd ever get more media about the less well-known periods of American history.  "Death By Lightning," the Netflix miniseries about the eventful presidency of James A. Garfield, America's twentieth POTUS, is exactly the kind of program I was talking about.  It may not be the most historically accurate dramatization of the events of the 1880s, but I'm very glad to have it.  

Created by Mike Makowsky, and directed by Matt Ross, we trace the lives and careers of several men over the four-episode miniseries, primarily President Garfield (Michael Shannon), and his eventual assassin, Charles J. Guiteau (Matthew Macfadyen).  Initially a Republican Congressman, Garfield is the surprise nominee for the American Presidency, who has to deal with a doubtful running mate, Chester A. Arthur (Nick Offerman), jealous political rivals James Blaine (Bradley Whitford) and Roscoe Conkling (Shea Whigham), and a worried wife, Lucretia (Betty Gilpin).  The other half of the narrative is taken up by the troubled grifter Guiteau, who sees politics as a potential pathway to the success and renown that he seeks.  He makes multiple attempts to ingratiate himself with Garfield's campaign, and later his administration, becoming less and less emotionally stable as time goes on. 

Clearly this is a very fictionalized take on history, which paints Garfield as a great man, who reluctantly accepts a presidency that he doesn't want, and inspires the best in those closest to him.  From what little I've read about Garfield, in real life he was a much shrewder operator whose non-campaign was a deliberate ploy for the presidency from the beginning.  The script also offers modern profanity in abundance, modern attitudes toward class and race relations, and modern views on a slew of issues from immigration to industry.  However, we still get a very entertaining and enlightening look at how politics functioned during the Reconstruction era, with rampant corruption and political machines in operation, affecting every stage of the election.  I was especially impressed with the first episode, where the nominating convention shows the various groups and organizations and processes in action, and reveals that there's still the opportunity for surprises.  

And if you don't care about any of this, "Death By Lightning" is still a great watch for the performances.  The show presents a bonanza of excellent character actors delivering memorable, colorful performances.  MacFadyen is the standout as the weaselly, deluded and yet perpetually hopeful Guiteau, who exudes a nervous energy every time he's onscreen.  I disliked him immensely, but he always held my attention.  Conversely, I loved Nick Offerman as Arthur, a jovial cog in the political machine who is happy where he is, but eventually is encouraged to become more.  Shannon is more constrained by having to be presidential, but he gets plenty of opportunities to play big moments.  The dialogue is full of shouting and colorful invective, and this was the era of epic facial hair, so you have truly never seen some of these actors the way you will see them here.  I mistook Matthew Macfadyen for a different actor for the first two episodes, because he looks completely different from the guy  in "Succession."  

I wish that the series was longer and some of the secondary characters a little better flushed out.  I enjoyed some of the brief looks we got of the earlier, formative chapters of the protagonists' lives, such as Guiteau spending time in a free love utopian religious sect, and Garfield's time fighting in the Civil War.  However, it's probably better that the show left me wanting more.  "Death by Lightning" was constructed from the outset as a true crime story, focusing on everything that led up to the assassination.  However, it's also a great entry point into this particular era of American history, and I hope that the creators find their way back to it one of these days.  And that other creators will take inspiration to get a little more historical.     

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"No Other Choice" and "The Secret Agent"

It brings me no pleasure to tell you that both of the major foreign language contenders in this year's award season, "No Other Choice" and "The Secret Agent," didn't work for me.  I don't know why, as I've liked previous movies directed by Park Chan-Wook and Kleber Mendonça Filho, but I'm going to use this post to try to tease some of the answersout.

"No Other Choice" was one of my most anticipated films of last year, about an unemployed family man Yoo Man-su, (Lee Byung-hun) who figures out who his likeliest competitors are for getting a specific job, and decides to eliminate them.  Son Ye-jin plays Man-su's wife, and the targets are played by Lee Sung-min, Cha Seung-won, and Park Hee-soon.  Park Chan-Wook wrote and directed the film, based on a Donald Westlake thriller, "The Ax," examining his protagonist's obsession with getting his perfect life back, and what he's willing to do to make it happen.  "No Other Choice" has plenty to say about the merciless state of modern-day capitalism, and how a man's morals can be warped by desperation.  The filmmaking has a lot of fun visual flourishes, and I like Lee Byung-hun's performance.  However, it takes forever for the action to get going, and once it does the movie is overlong, repetitive, and lacking in much tension.  

I appreciate that "No Other Choice" is much more restrained than some of Park Chan-Wook's other films, and doesn't feature any extreme content.  However, this means that as a comedy it's not as much fun as I was hoping for, and as a thriller it's not nearly as exciting.  I was never quite onboard with the story either - Lee Byung-hun makes Man-su a compelling tragicomic character, and his targets all turn out to be reflections of different aspects of himself - but there was never a sense of real urgency about his quest.  The worst casualty of the job loss is only Man-su's ego.  The wife is downsizing their lives, but otherwise seems fine with the state of affairs.  One of the clear messages is that the stakes are only so high in Man-su's own mind, and whatever advantage he might gain isn't worth all the madness that he puts himself through.   I was frustrated with Man-su for his pig-headedness more than anything else, especially since he's confronted with his own hubris repeatedly.  I derived the most enjoyment from watching his schemes unfold in unpredictable ways.  Well, until they wore out their welcome.

On to "The Secret Agent," a political thriller which has several secrets, so I'll have to discuss the film more obliquely.  I liked this one more than "No Other Choice," as the storytelling was better able to hold my interest, despite a similar running time, and I found the characters more enjoyable.  The year is 1977, and a man named Marcelo (Wagner Moura) arrives in the northern Brazilian city of Recife during carnival season.  Political turmoil means that the atmosphere is dangerous and uncertain, and Marcelo is being targeted by two men of dubious intentions.  Information comes slowly about Marcelo's identity, but we learn he has a young son who lives with his grandparents, an extremely helpful landlady, and many neighbors and acquaintances who have their own secrets.  The film's title promises intrigue and excitement that it does deliver on, but not in the way I expected.

There is a very strong sense of time and place in "The Secret Agent."  Marcelo spends much of his time settling into Recife and meeting various characters, some who only show up for a single scene, like a WWII vet played by Udo Kier and a political resistance member played by  Maria Fernanda Cândido.  We see recreations of '70s apartments, government buildings, a movie theater, a barber shop, a gas station, a university, crowded streets, bridges, parks, and many, many glimpses of lives being lived out by a variety of people.  All of them together contribute this wonderfully eclectic, lively setting for an old fashioned political thriller in the vein of Alan J. Pakula and Bernardo Bertolucci.  I was enjoying myself until the abrupt ending, which left me clutching at straws. 

Still trying to avoid spoilers here, I think my issue with "The Secret Agent" is the same as my issue with last year's "I'm Still Here."  The film is too fragmentary to be narratively satisfying for me, even though its messages about living under an oppressive regime are well conveyed.  Also, I still don't know enough about South American history.

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