The Worst 2023 Movies I Bothered to Watch

I've written before on this blog that I don't generally write "Worst of" lists because I go out of my way not to watch or pay attention to the media that ends up on "Worst of" lists.  I'm not a professional, and am not obligated to subject myself to the horrors of "The Exorcist: Believer" and "My Big Fat Greek Wedding 3."  However, there's been some debate this year about the utility of "Worst of" lists, and I find I'm firmly on the side of those who are for their existence.  Our working critics deserve to have a release valve if nothing else, and these lists can be a fun way to criticize the wider failings of Hollywood.  

Still, I don't feel qualified to write this kind  of list because I just plain haven't seen very many of the usual suspects.  So, this attempt will be my yearly April Fools post.  It's a few months until I can finalize my "Best of" list for movies, but I'm pretty much done seeing all the mainstream releases.  I'm limiting my picks to five this time out, to avoid making this too long.  Minor spoilers ahead. 

And now, without further ado, let's get mean.  

"The Sound of Freedom" - So, remember when a serial grifter named Tim Ballard managed to make himself the subject of a biopic that portrayed him as some kind of badass, righteous crusader against child trafficking in South America?  And the film made millions through a shady pay-it-forward ticketing scheme and relentless fearmongering marketing among religious communities?  And now Ballard is being sued into oblivion for multiple claims of sexual assault and grooming?  Yeah, and the movie's terrible too.  

"Ant-Man and the Wasp: Quantumania" - I'm not mad at the MCU.  I'm just very disappointed.  It was incredibly frustrating to hear that the people in charge of the film thought they'd made a crowd pleaser, and it was only when the reviews and reactions rolled in that they realized how much trouble they were in.  If you want to pick a point when the MCU really started to fall apart, it was "Quantumania" spending the whole movie enthusiastically showing us all of these things that nobody had any interest in seeing whatsoever.  It's a talking slime!  And MODOK!  And… Bill Murray?      

"Magic Mike's Last Dance" - This was a straight to streaming project that was given a theatrical release at the eleventh hour, and it shows.  I think we've found Steven Soderbergh's worst movie, friends, and it's not pretty.  Channing Tatum and Salma Hayek-Pinault are certainly easy on the eyes, but they're obliged to go through the motions of a truly tedious "putting on a show" narrative and avoid being in an actual relationship.  The other dancers are kept in the background.  Instead, we have a precocious teenager narrating the whole story for some reason, who makes no sense even being in this film.

"Rebel Moon: A Child of Fire" - So, doing the "Seven Samurai" plot in a "Star Wars" -ish science fantasy setting sounds like a lot of fun.  And it was!  When Roger Corman and Jimmy Murakami made "Battle Beyond the Stars" in 1980!  Zack Snyder's attempt is, alas, far, far worse.  Everything looks gorgeous, but the writing is abysmal. The whole thing is built on tropes borrowed from other sci-fi media.  Everyone's self-serious and glum, with only Ed Skrien showing a few signs of life as the villain.  I'm going to watch the forthcoming second installment of "Rebel Moon" purely out of spite, so I can continue to mock it with the voracity it deserves.    

"Freelance" - Has Pierre Morel gotten any better behind the camera since the last time I saw one of his movies in 2012?  No, he has not.  I don't understand how you have actors as charming as John Cena and Alison Brie in an action comedy together, and nothing about it works.  There was a lot of hate thrown at "Ghosted" this year, but "Freelance" was so much worse.  It's not funny or romantic or even exciting to watch.  How on earth do you make Brie grating and Cena boring?  And I you just know that Alice Eve and Christian Slater are hoping nobody notices that they're in this movie.  

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Rank 'Em - MCU Phase Four: the Movies

This is the counterpart to the previous "Rank 'Em" list I put together for the MCU Phase Four Disney+ series.  From best to least, here are the post-"Endgame" MCU movies released over the past three years.  I haven't had the chance to see the most recent one yet.  Spoilers ahead.

1. Joker - My take has always been that "Joker" is an excellent Scorsese homage and a terrible "Batman" movie.  No matter what you want to say about what the film does with the comic book elements, it is great as an operatically over-the-top crime drama, and Joaquin Phoenix is fantastic as the instantly iconic Arthur Fleck.  So much of this film worked for me in ways I wasn't expecting, and the hand-wringing over its antisocial elements only made its appeal more evident.  No riots or mayhem happened as a direct result.  So, I say bring on Harley and "Folie a Deux."

2. The Suicide Squad - This is so much better than the first "Suicide Squad" movie, I'm astounded that it didn't make more money at the box office, pandemic or not.  However, it did result in the universally beloved "Peacemaker" spinoff, and it did get James Gunn a new job, so clearly the right people were paying attention.  I just adore these versions of these characters so much - Harley Quinn as the unkillable badass, David Dastmalchian perfectly cast as the unstable Polka Dot Man, and live action King Shark!  Heck, even the Taika Waititi cameo was a nice surprise!

3. The Batman - What I like least about Matt Reeves' "The Batman" is the titular Batman.  That's okay, however, because we're working with a version of the character who is still very much in flux.  The real achievement here is the Gotham City that has been brought to screen - a nightmarish world of urban blight, constantly beset by all manner of disasters.  And we don't just get Batman as a detective here, but Batman as the detective in a David Fincher-esque crime film, up against a radically reimagined Riddler.  Everything is unexpected, and I'm so glad to see it.

4. Birds of Prey - This was my last theater trip pre-pandemic, and I'm so glad I got to see these ladies on the big screen.  And it's nice to have a comic book movie that is operating on its own, very distinct wavelength.  The timeline is chaotic, the colors are bright, and the breakfast sandwich is doomed.  Yes, it's a glorified girl's night out episode, but there's so much packed in here to enjoy.  Awkward Mary Elizabeth Winstead!  Scummy Ewan MacGregor!  Margot Robbie on fire!  We may have to say goodbye to her Harley Quinn soon, and I'll miss her terribly.

5. Wonder Woman 1984 - I clearly liked this movie better than most.  Yes, it's cheesy and the plot doesn't make much sense, but the film is designed to be a throwback to the "Superman" movies of the 1970s and 1980s, which were similarly ridiculous.  Quibble all you like with how they brought back Chris Pine, but the important part is that we got Chris Pine, and we got him in terrible '80s clothing. We also got Pedro Pascal and Kristen Wiig hamming it up for all they were worth, and it was glorious.  If this movie had been released in theaters, I feel the discourse would have been very different.  

6. DC League of Super-Pets - This is "The Secret Life of Pets" with superpowers, and perfectly fine for what it is.  Kate McKinnon is the only one giving a remotely memorable performance as a spurned, hairless guinea pig, but the whole star-studded cast is clearly trying.  For the nerdiest viewers, there's also a fair amount of comic book lore worked into the film in some interesting ways.  I suspect that the film will end up having a long shelf life, and if this is the comic book film that Dwayne Johnson ends up being better known for in the long run, it will definitely serve him right.  Speaking of which…  

7. Black Adam - Well… at least it looked very expensive.  I understand why Johnson would want to play an anti-hero like Black Adam, but I don't understand why anyone thought it was a good idea to make him the star of his own movie, and to tilt the entire franchise in his direction.  I mean, he should have played the villain in the "Shazam!" sequel first to see if there was even any interest.  At least we got decent Hawkman and Doctor Fate appearances.  My biggest peeve, however, is the waste of Sarah Shahi, who got stuck in the role of human bystander and exposition machine. 

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The First Five of "Daredevil"

Minor spoilers for "Hawkeye" and "Spider Man: No Way Home" ahead.

The latest MCU series, "Daredevil," has popped up on Netflix, probably because this series is much more violent and adult than the projects that have premiered on Disney+.  This is clearly an experiment for Marvel, as the show has none of the big budget resources of the other MCU shows, and even uses different branding and logos.  Created by Drew Goddard, it takes a much more gritty, grounded approach to a superhero property, built around the character of Matt Murdock (Charlie Cox), the blind lawyer who was introduced in "Spider Man: No Way Home."

Murdock, who was blinded as a child and gained superpowers, is devoted to making a difference in crime-riddled Hell's Kitchen.  By day, he and his partner Foggy Nelson (Elden Henson), are do-gooder lawyers trying to keep their tiny practice afloat, with the help of new Girl Friday receptionist Karen Page (Deborah Ann Woll).  By night, Matt is a masked vigilante, just starting out, who uses his super hearing and fighting skills to stop local gangsters and other criminals. Crime boss Wilson Fisk (Vincent D'Onofrio), originally a Spider-man villain, and recently seen in "Hawkeye," is being set up as the main villain.  The "Daredevil" version is much more brutal, but also a more well-rounded character with many shades of gray.  The two episodes he's appeared in so far show him romancing a lovely woman named Vanessa (Ayelet Zurer).  Matt is also helped out by a nurse named Claire Temple (Rosario Dawson), who fishes him out of a dumpster in the second episode, and patches him up regularly. 

Everything about "Daredevil" feels much more grown-up than any of the other MCU projects so far, because it exists in a much grimmer universe where everything seems to be stacked against the good guys.  I like how it's so stripped down, feeling very much like a typical network crime procedural rather than a superhero show in a more heightened reality.  There are no fancy costumes, few special effects, and even the showy fight scenes are impressive for their realism rather than any fancy choreography.  This version of Matt Murdock doesn't have super strength and gets beat up a lot.   Initially, I was worried about the higher episode count - this is a thirteen episode season - but "Daredevil" is making good use of its length, setting up its characters and multiple interesting subplots.  This isn't a show where there's any assumption that you already know the characters, and it's good to just spend time with Foggy and Karen, who are revealed to be real people instead of just comic relief.  The usual MCU habit of dropping references and easter eggs everywhere has been mercifully curbed. 

    

"Daredevil" highlights how formulaic the MCU has gotten, and it makes me wonder what some of its other  recent entries would have looked like if various creators had let themselves take their own concepts more seriously.  Would "Falcon and the Winter Soldier" have been better with a higher episode count, fewer guest stars, and fewer ridiculous action scenes?  Would I have liked "Loki" more if it had cut down the amount of snarky quips and crazy characters, and just committed to being a character study of a morally complicated villain?  Clearly the "Daredevil" approach wouldn't work for every corner of the MCU, but it's almost shocking how well developed characters like Matt Murdock and Wilson Fisk are, after relatively little screen time, compared to someone like Doctor Strange, who doesn't even seem to have completed his initial origin story arc yet.   

If you remember the 2003 "Daredevil" movie with Ben Affleck, the show is so different as to be almost unrecognizable.  Instead, Goddard and company are clearly drawing more from the Frank Miller "Daredevil" comics and various recent "Batman" adaptations showing Bruce Wayne in the early days, before the Rogues' Gallery and the wonderful toys.  The impulse to go back to basics has yielded great results here, and I hope we'll see it reflected in more Marvel media to come.

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Behold the Cereal Mascot Cinematic Universe

So, today's announcements from Warner Bros. about their new slate of films made in partnership with General Mills, Kellogg, Quaker, and Post were a surprise, but honestly not unexpected.  The cereal mascots have been a fixture on children's television for ages, and recently strengthened advertising rules in some countries, and the rise of ad-free streaming services, have made marketing to kids more challenging.  So, why not fall back on the classic tactics of snazzy animation and a shared universe?

Here's a rundown of the major titles coming our way soon, with some of my thoughts on each.

  

"Top Cookie" - It's one of those strange generational markers that how old you are corresponds to which of the three Cookie Crisp mascots you remember: Jarvis the Wizard, Cookie Crook and his sidekick Chip the Dog, and now Chip the Wolf.  Eager to appeal to all audiences, the creators have decided to put all of them together in one feature, fighting over the right to be the ultimate Cookie Crisp mascot.  Several crossover guest stars are rumored to be playing the celebrity judges, including Tony the Tiger, Sonny the Cuckoo, and Cornelius Rooster.  

"Do the Monster Munch" - Count Chocula, Franken Berry, And Boo Berry have been around in animated form since the '70s and were already established as being in their own shared universe, so they make the most sense for feature treatment.  Their squabbling rivalry should translate well to the big screen, and the plan to have them band together to combat more contemporary spookies like the Cinnamon Slasher sounds diverting enough.  Bride of Frankenberry and Berrypatra are expected to make their animated debuts.  Yummy Mummy is also expected to get a redesign and a genderswap.

"Quisp" - His cereal may be hard to find these days, but Quisp, alien prince of the Planet Q, who flies with the aid of a propellor affixed to the top of his head, remains ready for action.  Originally designed and animated by the great Jay Ward, there's a little more substance to Quisp than most of the other cereal mascots.  "Quisp" will see our hero finally become king of Planet Q, and have to fend off encroaching  Martians.  A deal is rumored to be in the works to allow Marvin the Martian to lead the invasion.  Quisp's usual antagonists, Quake and the Orange Quangaroo, are also expected to appear.

"Captain Crunch Conquers the Utensils" - Captain Horatio Magellan Crunch is called back into action when several of his fellow mascots, including Dig 'Em Frog, Toucan Sam, and Buzz the Bee, are kidnapped by disgruntled ex-Pop Tarts spokesman Milton the Toaster, who views the popularity of breakfast cereals as the reason for his downfall.  Captain Crunch will have to fight his way through the hostile territories of the Kingdom of Utensia to save the day.  He'll be aided by the crew of the SS Guppy, former rival Jean LaFoote, and crossover guest stars Captain Rik and Captain Star.   

"The Golden Boy" - Former Golden Grahams promoter the Golden Boy is one of the rare live-action cereal mascots, and this announced feature will follow his poignant post-ad campaign spiral and triumphant return to the spotlight as the new mascot of an up-and-coming minor league baseball team.  Quaker Oats mascot Larry is expected to appear as the Golden Boy's mentor, along with various athletes who have appeared on the Wheaties box, including the 1998 Women's Gold Medal Olympic Hockey Team.

"Rabbit v. Leprechaun" - Finally, the showdown we'll all been waiting for, between Lucky the Leprechaun, the most famous of the the mascots who keep cereal away from kids, and the Trix Rabbit, who has been kept away from the cereal bowl by kids for perhaps a little too long.  Both characters will suffer a botched neurosis reprogramming attempt, and unwittingly become simultaneously fixated on the same cereal, a new product yet to be unveiled.  Hijinks and mayhem ensue, summer of 2022.

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Funko Pop Directors Wishlist

It's April Fool's Day, and I'm in the mood for something frivolous. So I'm dusting off a post that I was going to bin, for being way too self-indulgent.

So, let's talk about Funko Pops. I don't like Funko Pops. I think they're weird looking, and I have no idea how they've become the omnipresent collectible in fandom spaces. However, their pervasiveness fascinates me. There are Pops for cereal box mascots, drag queens, the royal family, and SNL sketch characters. And then one day, I found the film director Pops.

Director Funko Pops that already exist include Alfred Hitchcock, Guillermo Del Toro, Taika Waititi (in his notorious Comic-Con pineapple outfit), and Werner Herzog (as his "Mandalorian" character). There are also Pops for Paul Feig, JJ Abrams, James Wan, Patti Jenkins, Ava DuVernay, Vince Gilligan, Jason Blum, Kevin Smith, and The Duffer Brothers. The best looking one is of JJ Abrams, because JJ Abrams happens to weirdly resemble a Funko Pop in real life.

Obviously, these are mostly popular franchise directors, chosen to be Pops because of their prominence in the current pop culture. They aren't being chosen by anyone weighing any of the actual merits of each director against each other. Buuuuuut, what if someone did? Which directors would I want to include if I were making a real cinephile's series of director Funko Pops?

So, here we go. Below, I've listed a dozen directors I think should be immortalized in bobblehead form, along with some haphazard notes. What are the criteria? There are no criteria aside from my own fandom. Heck, those listed below aren't even my favorite directors. They're my favorite directors as larger-than-life personalities, if that makes any sense. They're the directors who it seems the most fitting that there be Funko Pops for.

Stanley Kubrick - My favorite director. The perfectionist. The mastermind. The dude with the eyebrows. And he's got such a great, intense face. Along with Steven Spielberg, he was synonymous with what my understanding of a director was, when I was a kid. I tend to picture him as the somewhat disheveled, balding, bearded, bespectacled presence from the "Making 'The Shining'" doc. Maybe add a couple of the famous Kubrick boxes, and we're good.

Agnes Varda - I mean, she's practically Funko Pop shaped already, isn't she? The tiny Grandmother of the French New Wave, with her two toned pageboy and modernist style, is without question the greatest female film director who ever lived. And there's such a wealth of looks and outfits to choose from. She showed up to the Oscars a few years ago in silk Gucci pajamas, and dressed up in a potato costume to promote her 2003 art exhibition, Potatutopia.

David Lynch - I admit that 90% of the reason that Lynch is on the list is his hair. I almost put Jim Jarmusch in for the same reason. He's just got such a memorable look and demeanor, and he's the only proper American surrealist that we've got left in the mainstream. We can totally cheat and make the Pop of his "Twin Peaks" character, FBI agent Gordon Cole (and even better, if we can also get Agent Cooper, the Log Lady, and the Man From Another Place).

John Ford - Quite a few directors over the years sported eye patches: Fritz Lang, Raoul Walsh, and Nicholas Ray among others. Nobody wore one like John Ford, however, especially toward the end of his life. Maybe add the pipe and hat. Maybe just go for the full, decrepit, pajama-clad look from that famous photograph with Dennis Hopper and John Huston. Speaking of Huston, I'd like a Noah Cross Pop please. Or one of Professor Hora and his tortoise from "Momo."

Quentin Tarantino - Clearly Tarantino is notable enough in the film landscape that he should be on this list, but I wonder if there would be some trouble translating Tarantino's long face and pronounced jaw into Pop form. The lack of a mouth is really an issue here. I guess you could make the Pop of Mr. Brown from "Reservoir Dogs" or Jimmie Dimmick in "Pulp Fiction," but Tarantino is such a huge personality apart from his screen persona, it doesn't feel appropriate.

Wes Anderson - With his impeccably styled, immaculately detailed dollhouse sets and preppy costumes, there's no currently working director as visually distinct as Wes Anderson. He's also beloved by the fashion community, being the originator of many a hipster trend. His most iconic outfit is obviously the brown corduroy suit, also memorably worn by the Fantastic Mr. Fox. There also has to be mustard yellow and baby pink in the ensemble somewhere. And plaid.

Martin Scorsese - Leaving the Carl Frederickson jokes aside, Scorsese's another one who I can already see as a Funko Pop if I squint. Though he made his name in the '70s I find it impossible to picture him as anything other than a grandfatherly, silver-haired man in a suit, passionately championing his world cinema projects. He's also got a fantastic smile - which, alas, would be wasted on a Pop because they don't have mouths. The eyebrows, however, would translate fine.

Steven Spielberg - Yeah, this one is a no-brainer. Spielberg has already been caricatured and animated so many times over the years, his image is pretty well cemented in popular culture. Beard, glasses, baseball cap - just reference his appearance as "his Eminence" in the "Hooked on a Ceiling" short from "Animaniacs." Considering the modus operandi of the Funko folks, I'm surprised that this and George Lucas weren't the first director Pops that they came out with.

Akira Kurosawa - I was very tempted to put Hayao Miyazaki here, but when it comes to Japanese cinema, it has to be Akira Kurosawa. Fortunately he cuts a pretty memorable figure with his dark sunglasses, cap and coat. Chris Marker's "A.K." documentary, covering the production of "Ran," has some of the most memorable images of him in his later years. On the other hand, the old photos of a younger Kurosawa in a bucket hat never fail to make me smile.

Spike Lee - The glasses, the lids, the kicks - I mean, there should probably be a Mookie Pop, but it just wouldn't be the same. Yes, Spike Lee is on the list because he's (regrettably) still the only African-American filmmaker that most people can name. However, he's never failed to live up to the title or present anything but a persistently fascinating, uncompromising image. I leave it to Funko's legal counsel to determine how much NY Knicks gear he should be sporting.

Tim Burton - I mean, how could you not have a Tim Burton Funko Pop? He used to be the king of movies that generated Hot Topic tchotchkes, and put thinly disguised versions of himself in most of his films. Also, the persona is iconic - artsy '90s Goth weirdo with gravity-defying hair. And don't doubt that he was very savvy about exploiting that persona. Add some black-and-white spiral patterns and maybe a Skellington or Frankenweenie plushie, and we should be all good to go.

Orson Welles - There aren't too many early directors on this list, because frankly I'm not familiar with many of them. However, Welles was a lot like Hitchock, someone whose persona just kept growing and growing over time, and he stayed in the public consciousness for decades. The easiest approach would be to make a Pop of Charles Foster Kane from "Citizen Kane" or Harry Lime from "The Third Man." If you're feeling obscure, maybe go for the "Frozen Peas" era Welles.

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My Top Ten Films of 1979

This is part of my continuing series looking back on films from the years before I began this blog. The ten films below are unranked and listed in no particular order. Enjoy.

Rocky II - Some of the best moments in the "Rocky" series are here.  Rocky and Adrian get married. Rocky Jr. makes his first appearance. And, of course, there's the rematch.  "Rocky II" brings back so many good aspects of "Rocky," but with Sylvester Stallone directing, we get a little bit more.  More people climbing the famous steps. More glory in the fight. More bombast and broad strokes.

1941 - It may have been the boldest move of Steven Spielberg's career to make a slapstick comedy about the start of WWII and set it during the week after the bombing of Pearl Harbor.  And just look at that amazing cast. Why, the film is so stuffed with luminaries that even Toshiro Mifune ended up in a bit part. The revolutionary special effects and stunt sequences still have a lot of kick to them, and Spielberg packed in plenty.    

Moonraker - I love that Jaws gets the girl.  Sure, it's nice that Bond joins the 200,000 mile high club, but it warms my heart to see the henchman have his day.  "Moonraker" is full of fun little touches like this, full of irreverence and shiny graphics, making it one of the best of the Roger Moore era Bond films.  It really embraces the inherent silliness and campiness of the spy genre, and uses them to add some laughs to the spectacle.

Star Trek: The Motion Picture - Where would the "Star Trek" franchise be without its first theatrical film?  It's impossible to say, but surely it would have been far different without this splashy, big budget transplant of the television series to cinemas.  The gorgeous special effects were never so well displayed or so heavily leaned on by the narrative, and the characters certainly needed all the shaking up that the big screen treatment afforded them.  

Caligula - One of the most notorious films of its era certainly didn't lack ambition.  The greatest, and to date the only film produced by Penthouse, it features unsimulated sexual scenes, plenty of the old ultraviolence, and so many historical figures behaving badly.  It's still hard to imagine that such a film was actually a commercial success, but the '70s were a different time. Things were possible then that would never happen now.

Lady Oscar - An adaptation of the beloved Japanese manga about a fictional cross-dressing female soldier who looked after Marie Antoinette during her days at Versailles.  Beloved director Jacques Demy helped to make the film feel authentically French, but the real star of the show was Catriona MacCall in the title role. Her Oscar is so utterly unlike the manga or anime versions, it's hard to imagine that they're the same character.  

The Apple Dumpling Gang Rides Again - Tim Conway and Don Knotts return as everyone's favorite bumbling ne'er-do-wells.  More wild west hijinks ensue, this time without all the fuss of taking care of the orphans. There's nothing like a little family-friendly action comedy to gets your spirits up, and this one embodies all the best qualities of Disney's memorable live action films of this era.  They never let an idea, bad or good, go to waste.

The Villain - 1979 saw the release of the Bugs Bunny/Road Runner movie, but the best Looney Toon of the year was definitely Hal Needham's "The Villain."  It's an old west tale that pits Kirk Douglas against a young Arnold Schwarzenegger, in a universe full of cartoon logic and sight gags. At one point they literally paint a hole in the side of a mountain, Wile-E Coyote style, and play out the tunnel bit.  Everyone is so committed to it, it's a blast.

Ultraman - The Japanese, masters of efficiency, went and turned five episodes of their popular "Ultraman" series into a feature film.  Ultraman is a giant alien superhero who fights monsters, and became so popular that his shows are still running to this day. The 1979 compilation feature is made up of episodes from the original 1966 show, even though at least five other "Ultraman" series had aired by the time of its release.

Ultraman: Great Monster Decisive Battle - And why make release one compilation feature made up of old episodes of "Ultraman" when you could release two in the same year?  

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"Game of Thrones," Year Eight Special Review

Spoilers ahead.

Right off the bat, I am so skeeved out at the final pairing of Jon Snow and Sansa Stark.  I mean, I was perfectly happy with Jon ending up on the Iron Throne after Danaerys kamikaze-ed herself out of the running, but kissing cousins is really not all that far off from aunt-nephew relations on the yuck index.  At least it's clearly a political marriage, and both of them have racked up enough failed relationships over the course of this series that they can surely work out some kind of arrangement if one or both of them actually ever manages to fall in love with someone again.    

Okay, now that that's out of my system, lets get to bigger picture.  As expected from the previous season's embracing of spectacle over intimate character drama, so much of this season was taken up by battles and other destructive set pieces.  And since there were only six episodes, that meant many of the story developments felt rushed, though not as badly as last year.  The bigger confrontations and deaths were nicely spaced out and mostly given the room to play out naturally.  I was very satisfied with the final fates of Cersei, Jaime, Daenerys, Arya, and all the rest.  Tormund had my favorite death scene of lot, and though his romance with Brienne was ridiculously brief, it sure was memorable.  I was actually more surprised with some of the characters who made it to the end of the show in one piece.  Well, almost in one piece in the case of Theon.

I was less happy with how little time we got with other members of the cast.  But then, there were still so many characters left after last season, it would have been impossible to give everyone their due in the end.  So a lot of my favorites like Varys and little Lyanna Mormont barely got any time at all, or were gotten out of the way early like Grey Worm and Missendei.  I still have no idea what the point of Beric Dondarrion's arc was, since the show was never very good about exploring the spiritual side of "Game of Thrones."  And I didn't realize how many of the goodbyes from last year were actually final - we couldn't find any extra time for Meera?  Or the direwolves? There were also a lot of places on the map where I wish we could have checked in again, if only for a few seconds.  After all, we did spend considerable amounts of time in Braavos and Essos and with characters who are still kicking around.     

I do feel that Benioff and Weiss were pandering the to fans pretty fiercely.  I mean, there was no reason for the "Cleganebowl" showdown to have taken place, especially in the over-the-top fashion that it did.  All that accomplished was to draw out the Euron Greyjoy subplot, which was already drawn out as it was.  And we all love Peter Dinklage, but Tyrion's unexpected happy ending was one of the more egregious missteps here.  Sure, Sam and Gilly going home with their cute little family is fine, but this isn't the "Lord of the Rings" movies where everyone who survives the big war should automatically get all their conflicts wrapped up with a nice bow on top.  One of the pleasures of this universe is how messy it is.  I was looking for more loose ends and signs of impending bad consequences in the finale beyond Melisandre's usual boilerplate portents of hazy doom.

The production values were spectacular, of course, and I'm a little regretful that I didn't see some of these episodes in a movie theater, specifically "The Battle of Winterfell" and "A Dream of Spring."  "Game of Thrones" may well be the last gasp of the monoculture, and so things like the dragon brawl, Hodor the Wight, and Dany's glorious takedown of the Night King are likely to become cultural touchstones.  It really felt like everyone was going the extra mile, from the map sequence updating from week to week, to the surprise cameos, to that epic choral version of the main theme used in the finale.

I have my qualms with some of the dumb decisions that were made concerning specific story elements, and I'm sad that we didn't really get George R.R. Martin's version all the way through, but I'd be lying if I said I didn't enjoy the hell out of the final six episodes.  Even if I think the end result could have been better, there's a lot of work and passion that went into this ending that I'm very grateful for.

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"Inception 2" Monkey See, Monkey Do

Minor spoilers ahead.

Brett Ratner helming a second "Inception" movie was always an iffy prospect, but somehow he got nearly all the major cast members from the first movie back for another round (with the notable exception of Leonrado DiCaprio), and and seemed to be working with an intriguing new concept: reversing an inception, or removing an artificially implanted idea from someone's mind. Sadly, the execution frequently feels like a retread of the first film, though not a bad one.

Tom Hardy takes over the lead for "Inception: Mindscape" as Robert Eames, the chameleon "forger" who has gotten himself deep in debt with the wrong crowd, and is recruited by a government operative, Louise Revere (Joan Allen) to go into the mind of Senator Edmund Hawkes (Stacy Keach) who they suspect has been incepted by agents of a foreign conglomerate. Arthur (Joseph Gordon-Levitt), Ariadne (Ellen Page), Yusuf (Dileep Rao), and Saito (Ken Watanabe) are back, along with new faces Heloise (Felicity Jones) and Crawford (Anthony Mackie), Eames' new love interest and the new stick-in-the-mud respectively. We also have obvious villains this time out in the form of evil European tycoon Magnus Vang (Aksel Hennie) and his sister, the femme fatale Magdalena (Lea Seydoux).

The good news is that Ratner can still handle an action scene, and though his gunfights and car chases ping as fairly generic, they do a good job of keeping the momentum going. Less successful is the dream imagery. Apparently Ratner took the complaints about the previous dream environments being too utopian and rationally ordered to heart, because he injects several absurd elements into the mix - circus animals in the train sequence and steampunk vehicles in the cathedral showdown, for instance. A better director could have handled these more effectively, but in Ratner's hands they just tend to be distracting. More fundamentally, despite all the fancy new CGI dreamscapes, new characters, and a twisty, complicated plot, the structure of the new "Inception" movie, down to many of the action beats, is almost identical to the first one.

And that's not the only thing that feels too familiar. Hans Zimmer's famously unsubtle score is back, and way more obtrusive here than it should be. We get more gravity-defying stunts, more James Bond inspired fights, but they're only minor variations on things that we've already seen. For the most part the dream worlds are missing that meticulous construction and sense of cyberpunk dystopia that Christopher Nolan brought to his work. Brett Ratner manages to give us a decent approximation, but it's just not the same. I'd have rather seen a more radical departure from the style, maybe from a director with a more distinct visual sense, like Tarsem Singh or Jean-Pierre Jeunet. Probably the best bit of imagery that Ratner pulls off is the M.C. Escher cathedral, where the climax takes place, though we don't get much of a chance to really look at it for more than a few seconds, which is a shame.

The actors pick up a lot of the slack. Tom Hardy is perfectly comfortable in the leading man role, and fortunately much more intelligible than he was in both "The Dark Knight Returns" and "Mad Max: Fury Road." However, he has far more chemistry with Seydoux than he does with Felicity Jones, and the romantic subplot really feels tacked on. The tone of the film is much lighter, with a lot more banter being tossed around by the supporting characters, and Aksel Hennie hamming it up nicely as the villain of the piece. For the most part the humor avoids being jokey and I think it works, though there are a few scenes that feel too much like material cut from one of Ratner's "Rush Hour" films. And I suspect he may have seen "Juno" one too many times considering the amount of snark he has Ellen Page deliver.

What I found really disappointing, though, was that "Mindscape" doesn't do much to expand the "Inception" universe except in the most perfunctory ways. We barely learn any more about the most intriguing characters from the first film, none of the dream technology is expanded upon, and there's little insight into the corporate hegemony that seems to run the world despite the entire plot depending on navigating its intricacies. We do learn a lot more about Eames, but it only serves to genericize him into a typical action hero. I guess that was to be expected, since the point of this sequel seems to have been to genericize "Inception" to the point where it would be easier for Warner Brother to pump out more sequels.

"Inception: Mindscape" is decent enough for a big budget action movie, but viewers hoping for something to match the original movie are bound to be disappointed. I did have fun with it though, and the movie leaves enough unanswered questions that I'm open to seeing an "Inception 3," though I do hope that Ratner cedes the director's chair to someone new.

Someone with less of a simian fixation. Seriously, what was with all the monkeys?
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