"Heartburn" and "Postcards Form the Edge"

I tracked down two of Mike Nichols's films that he made with Meryl Streep, both of them based on the memoirs of famous women who wrote for the movies.  One is "Heartburn," a loosely fictionalized account of Nora Ephron's marriage to Carl Bernstein, and the very public subsequent divorce.  The other is "Postcards From the Edge," a loosely fictionalized account of Carrie Fisher's recovery from drug addiction and her relationship with her mother, Debbie Reynolds.  "Postcards" got much better reviews when it was initially released, but I liked "Heartburn" better. 

I don't necessarily think that "Heartburn" is the better film, but it's far more to my tastes.  Rachel (Streep) is a divorcee who falls for Mark (Jack Nicholson), also divorced, but has strong misgivings about marrying him.  Nonetheless, she goes all in on a new life together, navigating housing woes and motherhood, before infidelity throws a wrench in the works.  Streep's performance here is from that early part of her career when she was able to just disappear into the characters she played without a trace.  I found it so easy to empathize with her, and share the ups and downs of the relationship.  And a big strength of "Heartburn" is that the highs are as strong as the lows.  When the marriage is good, it's good.  Nicholson is terribly charming, and there are scenes of bonding and intimacy that are truly heartwarming and uplifting, while also being very ordinary in the best way.  It also helps that Ephron wrote the script, and I've loved her writing for decades.   

"Postcards From the Edge," written by Carrie Fisher, features a Meryl Streep that I instantly recognized as the Meryl Streep who has been a movie star for the last thirty-odd years.  She plays Suzanne Vale, an actress and the daughter of screen legend Doris Mann (Shirley MacLaine).  We start with Suzanne at a low point, ODing during a film shoot, and being sent to rehab.  After checking out, she discovers that the only way she'll be allowed to work again is if she moves back in with her mother, who she finds overbearing and impossible.  Also involved are a new love interest (Dennis Quaid), a fed-up director (Gene Hackman), and a very nice doctor (Richard Dreyfuss).  There are some excellent individual scenes, and just about everything involving Streep and MacLaine sings (sometimes literally).  However, the struggles with addiction and the jabs at the fakery of Hollywood didn't do much for me.  I have a history of being less interested in movies about actors, though this one was perfectly fine.  I just never got as invested as I did with "Heartburn."

The two films are so different in subject matter and tone that comparing them feels ungenerous.  "Postcards From the Edge" was made four years after "Heartburn," when Streep was deliberately moving into more commercial fare.  Though both ensemble casts feature a lot of well-known actors, "Postcards" is more self-consciously star-studded, and is very much a Hollywood story.  The comedy is broader and the melodrama more theatrical, though there are a few wry moments of honesty too.  "Heartburn," though it's about a pair of famous writers, feels like it could be about any couple trying to navigate a bad   marriage.  There are some nods toward the East Coast milieu where Ephron was based in the late '70s, but most of the narrative keeps the focus on Rachel and Mark's fairly mundane day-to-day lives.  Rachel's writing is used as a framing device, but has little to do with the plot, while Suzanne's career struggles are central to her movie.   

And in the end I'm very glad that I saw both.  Both movies offered a wealth of surprises, from Annette Bening's brief but winning appearance as a rival actress in "Postcards From the Edge," to Jack Nicholson breaking out the showtunes in "Heartburn."  It's been so long since I've seen a good Jack Nicholson movie.  And it's been a few years since we lost Carrie Fisher, Nora Ephron, and Mike Nichols, and I miss them all.        

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"The Bear," Year Five

I was under the mistaken impression that the fourth season was the final season of "The Bear."  So imagine my surprise when eight new episodes were dropped a few weeks ago, plus an extra episode titled "Gary" that is about Richie and Michael taking a fateful day trip to Gary, Indiana.  It was probably meant to be a flashback at some point in this season, but it doesn't really fit into the flow of this batch of episodes anywhere, so I'm glad that they released it separately.  

 

Anyway, the fifth and final season of "The Bear" is required viewing if you enjoyed any of the previous parts of this show.  If you lost interest during the increasingly meandering and indulgent (but still very good) third and fourth seasons, it's time to get back in the kitchen.  Season five wraps up the whole series and pays off all the various character arcs, resolves some longstanding problems, and answers most of the big questions too.  The pacing issues are largely gone, with the show's creators taking a page from "The Pitt," and having seven of the eight episodes take place during one tense, nail-biting, stormy night at the The Bear where everything goes wrong, but the staff still has to pull off a miracle and keep the restaurant running through a full meal service.  The last episode serves as a coda that surveys the aftermath and lets everyone say goodbye.

What's great about this last season is that it shows us the characters at their best and working as a team at last.  After so many seasons of everyone being at odds, fighting their own personal demons, and only making progress in fits and starts, this final run of episodes lets them all succeed together.  There are still plenty of clashes and setbacks, and the writers engineer crisis upon crisis in the final push, but the characters get to rise to the occasion, showing all the ways that they've grown.  For those viewers who like "The Bear" because it lets them watch professionals work at the top of their game, this will be catnip.  I especially like the way that all these different, interlocking subplots develop involving the crew in the kitchen, the staff in the front of the house, and even Oliver Platt's Uncle Cicero, who gets to trudge around Chicago with a misfit crew on his own mission.    

I love that everything in this season feels like it's been taken back to basics.  There are still an array of impressive guest stars, but the show doesn't draw much attention to them.  The only major new character is the Computer's niece Cheese (Elsie Fisher), who tags along with Cicero's crew for the evening.  Some episodes run significantly longer than others, but not in a way that feels excessive or indulgent.  One of the longest episodes, "Caramel," is also the most tense and nerve-wracking, where we go through the process of creating every single course of the final dinner service, almost in real time.  The running time is close to a full hour, but it's an hour that flies by.  The humor worked for me throughout - even the Faks, who are deployed exactly as much as they need to be.  Also, the show backing off from being so singularly focused on Carmy helps it immensely.  You could absolutely make another season or two of "The Bear" with Sydney or Richie taking over at this point.  I don't really want that though - I feel like the show is already pushing its luck, and it would be a shame to undercut the finale.

Frankly, I'm a sucker for a happy ending, and that's exactly what "The Bear" gives us here.  Nearly every major character gets a win, even if it's coming to the decision that they need to throw in the towel. Best of all, the wins feel earned, never coming too easy and never feeling too telegraphed.  Sure, some loose ends don't get tied up, and I know there will be complaints about the resolution of Carmy's character arc, but I came away from "The Bear" thoroughly satisfied with the last course and inclined to leave a big tip.  

Check please. 

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"Hoppers" is a Delight

I got a little overhyped for "Hoppers," which is a pretty typical piece of children's entertainment when all is said and done, but it's definitely gutsier than most recent PIXAR films, and it's nice to see audiences responding so well to it.  I'll spoil the basic premise for this review, but will do my best not to get into the particulars of the plotting or give away any of the good jokes.  The less you know going into this one, the better.

Mabel Tanaka (Piper Curda) is a hotheaded college student who is staunchly devoted to protecting nature and animals.  She is especially keen on saving the glen and beaver pond where she spent much of her childhood with her beloved grandmother (Karen Huie), and where a new freeway extension is set to be built by the stubborn Mayor Jerry Generazzo (Jon Hamm).  One day, Mabel stumbles upon a secret project called "Hoppers" being carried out by her mentor, Dr. Sam (Kathy Najimy).  She and her team have built robot animals that peoples' conscious minds can "hop" into "like 'Avatar.'"  Mabel puts herself into a beaver robot and sets out in search of the glen's missing animals, eventually uncovering a dastardly plot.  Other characters include the beaver king, George (Bobby Moynihan), an antagonistic caterpillar, Titus (Dave Franco), an intimidating bear named Ellen (Melissa Villaseñor), and another beaver named Loaf (Eduardo Franco), who is maybe a little too chill.

Initial trailers for "Hoppers" made the film look very similar to "The Wild Robot," which was also about a robot and a community of woodland creatures in the Pacific Northwest.  "The Wild Robot" even felt like a PIXAR movie more than a Dreamworks one, featuring heartwarming found family connections and meditations on parenthood.  "Hoppers" has some of this too, with Piper struggling with the loss of her grandmother, and forging new friendships.  However, "Hoppers" also has a lot of comedy in it.  And not just comedy, but zany, off-the-wall, we're-in a-cartoon comedy that isn't what I've come to expect from recent PIXAR movies. I liked that "The Wild Robot" was willing to be pretty frank about the perils of the natural world and the life cycle without sugarcoating things too much for a younger audience.  "Hoppers" goes a step further than that, mostly just for the sake of getting some surprisingly dark laughs.  And it's super effective at keeping the movie entertaining while getting its messages across.

Despite the more zany style of the humor, this still feels like a PIXAR film, mostly due to little things like the thoughtful way that the visual storytelling is executed, and the way that the worldbuilding has a couple of fantastical elements, but not too many.  The animals' character designs change depending on whether the POV character in each scene can understand them or not.  Mabel's beaver robot form looks like an ordinary beaver from a human POV, but immediately looks like Mabel, with her personality and expressiveness, from an animal POV, or when a human is using Dr. Sam's communication interface with the robots.  There are some great jokes that play around with this concept.  The editing often sells some of the punchlikes too - look out for those smash cuts.  

I also appreciate that "Hoppers" has some nuance when it comes to its eco-fable.  It doesn't just argue for the importance of nature, but also points out how the wrong kind of overzealous advocacy can end up doing more harm than good.  It would have been very easy to make Mayor Jerry an evil, irredeemable bad guy, but he's not.  There are degrees of villainy, and Mabel has to learn not to see the world in black and white.  The movie is pitched toward older kids, with some of the intense sequences pushing that PG rating, so parents should plan accordingly.  

However, this is the first PIXAR film in a while that I feel comfortable recommending without any reservations.  Some of their recent offerings have felt awfully polished and prestigious, but haven't been as entertaining as what's been coming out of its competitors.  "Hoppers" seems intent on proving otherwise, and I'm all for it.     

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"Send Help" is a Scream

Linda Liddle (Rachel McAdams) is an overacheiving corporate worker who has been promised a VP position at her company.  Unfortunately the new boss, an insufferable youngster named Bradley Preston (Dylan O'Brien), won't give her what she's due.  However, the tables are turned during an overseas work trip, when the two are stranded on an uninhabited tropical island together, after their flight crashes.  

It's been far too long since we had an original Sam Raimi film, and this one is a lot of fun.  It's got action, comedy, bloody gore, and pig snot being flung on the camera lens.  I love that it gives Rachel McAdams a really juicy leading role.  Linda Liddle is great at her job, but she's got terrible people skills and some hygiene issues that signal that she's not very self-aware, and probably deluded about her career prospects.  McAdams isn't afraid to get gross or come off as a weirdo.  She's stellar at juggling the movie's variety of different tones, from straight drama to wildly over-the-top genre nastiness.  Dylan O'Brien is also very good at being obnoxious and awful, but also just charismatic enough that he's not entirely unsympathetic.  And that's important, given where the movie goes.  

You could classify "Send Help" as part of the recent spate of media about the class-divide, similar to "Triangle of Sadness" and "The White Lotus."  Linda turns out to be a "Survivor" enthusiast who thrives in the wild, while Bradley is useless.  However, Raimi has little interest in social satire, and puts all his efforts into thrills and mayhem.  Linda and Bradley might represent the forces of the privileged and the exploited, but it's their decisions as individuals that make the movie so compelling to watch.  It's not clear cut who you're supposed to be rooting for, all the way up to the end, and the movie gleefully keeps subverting common genre conventions and keeps the audience guessing.  What kind of movie are we even watching?  Is this a revenge thriller?  Is this a "Misery" style psycho caretaker scenario?  Is this some kind of twisted romance?  Maybe a little of everything?

One thing that I've noticed about modern comedies is that there aren't many of them that have a good grasp of comedic film language anymore.  Sam Raimi has always been fantastic at it.  There's a montage sequence involving Bradley getting dehydrated that's just a long string of dissolves of Dylan O'Brien head shots, floating over the screen one after the other.  It stood out because it had been so long since I'd seen any other action comedy attempt something similar - with the exception of last year's "Naked Gun" reboot. I hope to see more comedies that follow suit.   Raimi also manages the shifting tone extremely well.  Here, he balances cartoonish gags and heightened imagery with pretty grounded characters.  Sure, they're broadly drawn and are prone to unhinged behavior, but they exist in a pretty believable emotional reality for most of the film, so you get more invested in their clashes.   

My only major criticism of "Send Help" is of the ending, which I found too abrupt.  I liked the ultimate outcome, just not how we got there.  Maybe I was looking for more closure and maybe I was hoping for more carnage, but it feels like Raimi could have gotten more out of the material.  Then again, "Send Help" already runs 113 minutes, and hits every element you want out of a Raimi film, so it feels greedy to want more.  I hope the film's success means that we can get Rachel McAdams in more starring roles, and that it won't be over a decade before they let Sam Raimi make something similar again.  There hasn't been nearly enough screen splatter in circulation lately.

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"Margo's Got Money Troubles" and More

"Margo's Got Money Troubles," based on the book by Rufi Thorpe, is an admirable attempt to try and navigate some of the murky attitudes around sex work, drug addiction, and non-traditional family structures.  It's also a prime opportunity for some talented older actors to play some colorful, interesting characters that we haven't seen them play before.  The adaptation is spearheaded by David E. Kelley, who really outdid himself casting this one.

Margo (Elle Fanning) is a 20-year old with a bright head on her shoulders, who gets involved with her literature professor Mark (Michael Angarano), which results in a cutie pie baby boy named Bodhi, and Margo dropping out of school to support him.   Her mother Shyanne (Michelle Pfeiffer), a former Hooter's waitress, is wooing the local pastor Kenny (Greg Kinnear), and can only offer limited help.  Her father Jinx (Nick Offerman), a former wrestler, eventually shows up fresh from rehab and in need of a place to stay.  Margo and her roommate Susie (Thaddea Graham) let him move in, where he becomes Bodhi's regular babysitter.  Unfortunately, Margo finds that the only way she can reliably make money is with an OnlyFans account, where she posts risque stories and photos under the persona of the Hungry Ghost, a sexy space alien. 

"Margo's Got Money Troubles" is absolutely bursting with talented actors.  Marcia Gay Harden and Nicole Kidman show up later in the series in roles that I will not spoil.  In addition, familiar faces like Kerri Kenney, Paul McCrane, and Laura San Giacomo keep showing up in bit parts.  And it's clear why.  "Margo's Got Money Troubles" is largely a family dramedy full of complicated, entertaining characters struggling to connect with each other.  It's offbeat, but heartwarming and an easy watch.  Nick Offerman and Michelle Pfeiffer strike me as the clear standouts, two people who had a wild youth together and now have to deal with the consequences as best they can.  Offerman as a burly, hard-living ex-wrestler who effortlessly slides into the role of doting grandfather, is a joy to watch.  Pfeiffer as the more reluctant, status-obsessed grandmother trying to maintain the fiction of a wholesome family life, takes longer to warm up to, but I found her deeply relatable in the end.

And of course there's Elle Fanning, taking on one of her most challenging roles yet as an overwhelmed young mother whose life gets complicated very quickly.  The show's creators make it clear that motherhood is tough, spending a good amount of screen time on the hell of newborn care.  Most of the nudity in the show involves Margo nursing, or in other non-sexual contexts.  And for all the talk of demystifying and destigmatizing sex work, Margo quickly discovers that making money with OnlyFans has its own challenges.  She has to be a smart self-promoter, find a niche,  and eventually partner up with other creators.  My biggest criticism of the show is that it's a little too cutesy about portraying OnlyFans as a platform where Margo is able to find a creative outlet, and focuses on the cosplay and the kitsch while avoiding the sleaze.  There are negative social consequences that Margo has to face for her OnlyFans work, but the depiction of the work itself feels too sanitized, and probably paints a misleading picture of how much effort is actually required.

Then again, "Margo's Got Money Troubles" isn't really about the sex work.  It's about Margo making choices about her life that society deems unacceptable and having to deal  with the fallout.  And it's about the people closest to her also reckoning with their choices, and eventually reconnecting and becoming close enough to try and help one another when things get tough.  I was constantly being surprised by the show, whether it was Shyanne repeatedly misjudging Kenny, or Jinx and Susie unexpectedly bonding.  I don't expect that "Margo's Got Money Troubles" will be around for the long term considering the caliber of the cast, but it's so nice to see talented actors in roles where they actually get to use that talent.  Nicole Kidman in a slightly kooky supporting role is great - she could totally transition to being a character actress if she wanted.  Michelle Pfeiffer doesn't get enough good roles, and I'm so grateful she got to do this.

And with an eight episode season, "Margo" doesn't outstay her welcome.  I know another season is in the works, but the first feels like a complete show, and one I will happily recommend.

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"The Boys," Year Five

Parts of "The Boys" fandom seem to have vocally turned against the show in its last season, which is getting weirdly common with genre media these days.  I find this a little mystifying, because "The Boys" has been pretty consistent in quality throughout its whole run, and has even been released on a reasonable schedule - five seasons across seven years.  My pet theory is that it's the same old story.  Some of the fans expected the show to be something that it never was, and handled the disappointment badly.  "The Boys" did decrease in quality the longer it went on, ran short on ideas, started repeating itself, and had to juggle the same issues that all long-running shows do.  Still, I thought it ended just fine - better than "Supernatural," or "Preacher," other genre shows from the same creators.

The fifth season has its ups and downs.  Like "Daredevil: Born Again," events in "The Boys" mirror current events in 2026 to a startling degree.  However, "The Boys" has been purposefully reflecting the rise of MAGA and the alt right since the beginning, with Homelander standing in for Donald Trump.  Still, it's wild how some of the extreme escalations in Homelander's tyrannical behavior look an awful lot like what the Trump administration is actually doing, starting with our heroes incarcerated in a "freedom camp" in the season premiere.  The season's biggest storyline involves The Boys hunting for the means to create a plague that will only affect people with superpowers, and to prevent Homelander from obtaining Compound V, a substance that will potentially give him immortality.  After establishing total control over the US government, Homelander finds he's still miserable, so he turns to religion.  With the help of the superpowered televangelist, Oh Father (Daveed Diggs), he decides to create a new American belief system with Homelander himself as the supreme being.  

Beyond this point, there will be spoilers.

I suspect that one of the reasons certain fans of "The Boys" were so unhappy is that this season, is that it stays pretty small scale throughout.  There's no epic spectacle, no mass casualty events, and a fairly modest amount of property damage.  We do get our big showdown in the last episode, but it's not any more impressive than the showdowns we've seen in previous seasons.  The pacing is also fairly slow and meandering, not really building up to a major climax.  Instead, the season could be called a collection of false-starts, abrupt endings, and lots of indulgent nonsense that the creators wanted to try while they still had the chance.  There's an episode that's essentially a bunch of one-shot character shorts that at one point involves a lot of random celebrity cameos and a few "Supernatural" alums.  It's also very apparent that the creators are setting up storylines for other shows in "The Boys" universe - we're at three spinoffs so far.  This means some characters like Solider Boy really wear out their welcome, and nobody bothers to explain who any of these kids from the "Gen V" show are.  

Still, I was satisfied with the way things shook out, even if the season felt like it was running short of material.  This time there is no more pulling of punches or ducking out on the consequences.  The bill comes due and there are a lot of major character deaths.  Some of them should have probably happened earlier, but none of them feel cheap.  Endings are difficult, and I thought that the showrunners did the right thing choosing to focus on the characters instead of the carnage.  My favorite storylines this year had to do with the Vought toadies like Ashley and Firecracker dealing with their complicity in Homelander's reign of terror.  Ashley becoming Vice President and literally growing a second face on the back of her head (Who has her own personality!  And is telepathic!) is so much fun. 

Sure, there are missteps.  Everything involving Soldier Boy and Sage is pretty underwhelming.  Kimiko being able to talk felt kind of pointless, though clearly it needed to happen.  I wish some of the big character moments, like Hughie finally standing up to Butcher, were given some better buildup.  Honestly, I haven't been very invested enough in the show since the first season, so its slipping quality simply didn't bother me much.  The ending was telegraphed long in advance, and the fact that they stuck it was all I really wanted.          

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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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"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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"A Man on the Inside," Year Two

I've spent some time comparing and contrasting "A Man on the Inside" with the other major mystery show featuring go-getter seniors, "Only Murders in the Building."  I'm sorry to say that "A Man on the Inside" too often falls short.  It has no lack of talent, having been created by Michael Schur, features the work of writers like Megan Amram, and has a horde of great acting talent.  However, "A Man on the Inside" feels very slight this year, when I was hoping it would branch out a bit more and establish itself as a show that could sustain multiple seasons.

Moving past its original premise, Charles has taken on a new case investigating a theft at the fictional Wheeler College, where the provost, Holly Bidgemark (Jill Talley), is hoping to secure a major donation from a billionaire, Brad Vinick (Gary Cole), thus ensuring the school's future.  Someone has made off with a laptop full of sensitive material and left a threatening note.  The suspects include members of the faculty, including professors played by David Strathairn and Mary Steenburgen, so Charles is on the case, posing as a visiting lecturer as he searches for clues.

I love spotting familiar older actors in this series, like Constance Marie as Julie Kovalenko's estranged mother, and Jackee Harry as a new love interest for Calbert.  Strathairn is a highlight as a grumpy classics professor who immediately antagonizes Charles.  Unfortunately, the mystery doesn't offer much of interest, and the tone of the show has settled for being blandly pleasant and low stakes.  Most of Charles' attention is taken up with a new relationship - he's fallen head over heels for Wheeler's music professor Mona Margadoff (Steenburgen), and often neglects gumshoeing to pursue her.  Julie takes up some of the slack with the investigation, and we also spend more time with Emily, Didi, and some of the Pacific View Retirement Community characters from the first season. 

"Only Murders" has a similarly cuddly dynamic with its leads, but is much more lively and retains a darker humorous edge.  The crimes may be ridiculous, and the baddies may be overdramatic, but there's an urgency to the show that is completely missing from "A Man on the Inside."  It's not just a matter of murders versus thefts, but the universe of "A Man on the Inside" is generally a much nicer, friendlier, slower-paced sitcom setting that is prioritizing an older audience.  And as much as I appreciate this kind of content, I can't help feeling a little too young for it.  Ted Danson and Mary Steenburgen, who have been a real couple for decades, are absolutely adorable in the show, but their romance did nothing for me.    

I like "A Man on the Inside" better when it's closer to its original format, with Charles eagerly jumping into situations without thinking them through, and discovering that being a spy is harder than it looks.  The season's best episode by far is the one where Charles recruits a couple of his Pacific View friends to help him steal Vinick's phone at a party, which has a lot of fun foibles involving code names and foiled plans.   The season is only eight episodes, but there are several episodes that feel too much like filler, just playing out old sitcom plots instead of moving the case forward.  Also, as much as I like Julie and Emily, the time spent with them that doesn't directly involve Charles feels like I'm watching a different show.  

I'm sure that "A Man on the Inside" could go on for a few more seasons with Charles taking on more cases and making more friends.  There's definitely an audience for this kind of show.  I'm just not sure that I should be part of it.  

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The Movies I Watched on the Plane, 2026 Ed.

I really should be working on the backlog of prestige pictures I need to watch, but I recently spent a lot of time stuck on international flights with nothing to do except watch movies, so I ended up watching an awful lot of movies that I wouldn't have watched in other circumstances.  A few of them turned out to be very good, titles that had fallen into my cinematic blind spots.  So, I wanted to talk about some of these - both the movies and the blind spots.  

First, there were the bad movies that I knew were going to be bad: "A Bad Moms Christmas" (2017), "Bicentennial Man" (1999), and "Rambo: Last Blood" (2019).  The first two were exactly what I thought they would be, but I liked the actors involved so I sat through the crass comedy and the schmaltzy sci-fi with terrible writing for them.  I didn't know that "Rambo: Last Blood" existed, figuring that the series had ended with the 2008 entry, so I gave it a shot.  I appreciate the first half for being a more realistic take on "Taken," where the lone vigilante gets beaten up, and doesn't accomplish anything he set out to do.  The second half is just a standard orgy of violence against an endless stream of faceless Mexican baddies. 

Then there was "Hope Gap" (2019) is a small, personal British drama that I completely overlooked.  Even when I was browsing the movie selections on my flight, I repeatedly passed this over, confusing it with the similarly named romantic drama "Hope Floats."  It's the only film directed by noted screenwriter William Nicholson, and it was not very well received at the time of release.  There was zero awards attention, despite some very strong performances.  "Hope Gap" is a family melodrama with a very strong sense of place, and worth seeing if you like any of the three lead actors: Bill Nighy, Josh O'Conner, and especially Annette Bening as the difficult mother.  It reminded me a lot of "45 Years," but messier.

However, the three films I really want to focus on are "Step Up" (2006), "Legends of the Fall" (1994), and Hearts in Atlantis (2001).  These are all films that I knew about for years, but were never a priority for me.  All three were much better than I expected - not great, but certainly deserving of my attention.  The original "Step Up," directed by Anne Fletcher, and starring Channing Tatum and Jenna Dewan, came out during a period when I wasn't paying attention to movies, and I had largely outgrown teen fare, so it was never on my radar.  I knew who Channing Tatum was eventually, and the "Step Up" sequels got some good press, but the franchise was always talked about in terms of spectacle instead of its dramatic bona fides.  The first "Step Up" isn't reinventing the wheel, and Tatum is still very rough as an actor, but it's a solid young adult romance that makes some of the old tropes feel new again.  There are parts of the film that are undeniably weak, but I still had a great time with it.

"Legends of the Fall" was a movie that I had meant to watch at a few different points over the years, because it has one of Brad Pitt's most famous thirst trap roles and it garnered enough of a reputation to keep it in the pretentious film nerd conversations.  It won a Best Cinematography Oscar.  However, it is very long and usually classified as a western.  I'm still not great with westerns.  However, I'm always on the lookout for good adult dramas and epic romances, which have gotten much rarer over the years.  So it was a nice surprise to find out that "Legends of the Fall" was earnestly an epic romance from start to finish.  There's some anti-war messaging and a silly shootout at the end, but for the most part, it's full of simmering family melodrama and improbably hot people angsting all over the place.  And sometimes that's exactly what I'm in the mood for.  There are a couple of other movies in this category like "A River Runs Through It" that I should probably get to.  Also, I haven't watched "Yellowstone," which is apparently heavily influenced by "Legends of the Fall," and I don't intend to.    

Finally, "Hearts in Atlantis" is an adaptation of a Stephen King short story, and had absolutely no traction with critics or audiences.  It wasn't a bomb, and it certainly has its defenders, but it tends to get passed over and forgotten, even by King fans.  I understand why, because "Hearts in Atlantis" is an outlier from King's work, more of a childhood memoir than a genre piece, and its exploration of the supernatural is much subtler and quieter than King's usual horror stories.  The movie, directed by Scott Hicks, is small in size and scope, about an eleven year-old boy and the few people in his life.  However, it is incredibly poignant in retrospect, because the boy is played by Anton Yelchin in his screen debut, and he's fantastic.  So is Hope Davis as his mother and Anthony Hopkins as the mysterious lodger who comes into their lives.  There are a couple of structural similarities to "Mr. Harrigan's Phone," but "Hearts in Atlantis" is a much more well developed piece of work, and I was delighted with it.  

Until next time.

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Digging Into "The Lowdown"

From FX and Sterlin Harjo, the co-creator of "Reservation Dogs," comes "The Lowdown," a comedic crime series about a Tulsa investigative reporter loosely based on Lee Roy Chapman.  It is highly entertaining, and easily the best new show I've seen all year.

Ethan Hawke plays our hero, a scruffy writer and bookstore proprietor named Lee Raybon, who is always low on funds and habitually pushing his luck.  However, his most defining trait is that he styles himself a "Truthstorian," who is doggedly committed to uncovering the truth.  His latest article, about the powerful and influential Washberg family, appears to have led to the suicide of Dale Washberg (Tim Blake Nelson), but Lee thinks it was murder.  Suspects include Dale's widow Betty Jo (Jeanne Tripplehorn), his brother and gubernatorial candidate Donald Washberg (Kyle McLachlan), and some other suspicious characters played by Tracy Letts, Paul Sparks, and Scott Shepherd.  Among Lee's allies are a sympathetic private investigator named Marty (Keith David), an antiquities dealer named Ray (Michael Hitchcock), a reliable employee, Samantha (Kaniehtiio Horn), an unreliable employee, Waylon (Cody Lightning), and Lee's thirteen year-old daughter Francis (Ryan Kiera Arnstrong).

"The Lowdown" has the air of a throwback for a lot of reasons, as it belongs in both the neo-western and crime fiction genres, and centers around a man with the nearly extinct profession of independent writer for a long-form print publication.  More than that, it's about a self-aggrandizing, barely functional dreamer with a lofty moral code, who seems to be patterning himself off of the pulp heroes of the Jim Thompson paperbacks that he cherishes.  Ethan Hawke plays Lee Raybon with relish, a charming scarecrow of a man who is always sticking his nose where it doesn't belong, and always making excuses for his utter inability to be a reliable father, employer, friend, or partner.  He consorts with a parade of eccentrics, who all grumble about his flightiness, but clearly enjoy his company.  As someone who avoided Ethan Hawk movies in my youth after finding him insufferable in "Reality Bites," Lee Rayburn strikes me as a natural extension of the pretentious young slacker he played in that movie, if he were from Oklahoma and got a lot funnier and more undignified with time.

And "The Lowdown" being set in and around Tulsa is a big part of the show's appeal.  The city is portrayed as an eclectic melting pot with major Native-American and African-American populations.  As Lee digs into the death of Dale Washberg, he keeps coming across old issues of stolen land, ugly bigotry, and those in power having too many secrets.  Eventually a Native street artist named Chutto (Mato Wayuhi) and his grandfather Arthur (Graham Greene) are caught up in the mystery, and Lee has to acknowledge his own privilege as a white man carelessly blundering into other people's business more than once.  The culture clashes are often played for laughs, but the show does quietly make a point of keeping several minority characters at the forefront, and forcing the hero to weigh his own need to tell the truth against what is best for the community he values and depends on.  

I like that "The Lowdown" isn't in a big hurry to solve its central mystery.  Several episodes have an appealing hangout vibe, where a guest star or two drops in for some shenanigans.  Peter Dinklage's episode is a fun one, for instance.  I especially appreciate the looseness of the show's format, where there's room for humorous digressions, a romance or two, and even opportunities for Lee to learn to be a better father. Lee's life is complicated, and keeping on top of everything means constantly switching gears from one situation to the next.  We're constantly hearing snippets of people telling stories and enjoying stories that we'll never have the full context for.  It's a good sign when minor characters keep surprising you with new dimensions every time they reappear, and you wish that there was time to get to know all of them better.  Even some of the villains come off as surprisingly well-rounded and relatable.  

It's interesting timing that "The Lowdown" premiered pretty close to the release of "One Battle After Another," which doesn't really share much in the way of genre or subject matter, but has a very  similar vibe.  You have a constantly floundering white guy, playing at being much cooler than he actually is, chasing after a romanticized ideal of heroism.  Both ultimately discover that they are at their best when they're part of a multi-racial community fighting against a common enemy, and supporting the next generation.  "The Lowdown" may not have the feature film fireworks of "One Battle After Another," but I'd argue it gets its points across just as well, and is definitely just as entertaining.  

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"Only Murders," Year Five

After two years of showbiz capers, this year's "Only Murders in the Building" murder sticks closer to home.  Lester (Teddy Coluca), the beloved doorman of the Arconia is found dead in the courtyard fountain, and someone's severed finger is found in Oliver's shrimp cocktail.  This means the "Only Murders" gang gets to dig into the history and secrets of the Arconia.  Potential suspects include Lester's widow Lorraine (Diane Wiest), new doorman Randall (Jermaine Fowler), local mobster Nicky Caccimelio (Bobby Cannavale) and his wife Sofia (Tea Leoni), a trio of billionaires, Bash (Christoph Waltz), Camila (Renee Zellweger), and Jay (Logan Lerman), Mayor Tillman (Keegan Micahel Key), and a pop star named The (Beanie Feldstein).  With Meryl Streep and Da'Vine Joy Randolph still making occasional guest appearances, you don't need to have won an Oscar to be in this season, but it certainly helps.

There's a lot going on this year, which means that none of our intrepid trio really gets much of a personal subplot, and I think that's for the best.  Oliver is a newlywed, but Loretta's career keeps her busy without much time to have any relationship issues.  Charles has a new love interest in Sofia, but she's not a very serious one.  Mabel knew The back when she was known as Althea, and spends most of the season trying to get over their past falling out.  It's all very low stakes, familiar territory, and our leads don't spend quite so much time feeling gloomy or in crisis, which is nice.  There is a bigger, looming threat that affects all of them in the second half of the season, but it's a threat to the Arconia rather than any of them personally.   And arguably, it's the Arconia that gets the most fleshing out this time.  Last season revealed the lives of the tenants living on the west side of the building, and this year reveals other secret parts of the Arconia that we haven't seen yet.  The second episode, which covers Lester's entire time as doorman over three decades, is easily the highlight, especially as it gives us glimpses of many familiar characters before we knew them, sometimes in surprising circumstances.  

It feels like the show is getting more gimmicky.  There's an episode told from the POV of a robot.  There's an episode that suspiciously resembles a "girls' night out" episode.  However, "Only Murders" remains consistently entertaining, and it always feels like everyone involved is having a blast.  Other highlights of this season include a spoof of the rich billionaire getaway weekend plot, and everything involving Sofia Caccimelio's pack of overgrown, cheerfully lunkheaded sons.  I'm a little surprised it took "Only Murders" this long to dip a toe into "The Sopranos" territory, but they did it right.  The Caccimelios  are involved just enough that they're a fun break from the norm every time they appear.  I expect that if the whole season had been built around them, it wouldn't have worked half as well.  

The performances remain the best part of the show, and this year's guest stars are a great bunch.  You've got Christoph Waltz and Logan Lerman as two different versions of rich egomaniacs, with Renee Zellweger as the evil Martha Stewart in their midst.  You've got Tea Leoni radiating untrustworthiness as the mob wife, but understand immediately why Charles is attracted to  her.  Teddy Coluca as Lester is wonderfully warm and charming, and I wish we could have gotten more of him. However, he's not the only performer I wish got more screen time.  There definitely wasn't enough Diane Wiest, Jermaine Fowler, or Bobby Cannavale.

I'm already looking forward to next year's mystery, which is supposed to take place in London and will hopefully give some UK acting talent the opportunity to join in on the murder mystery hijinks.  As is tradition, next year's murder happens at the end of the current season, and it's delightfully silly, self-aware, and tongue-in-cheek in all the right ways.  Just like the rest of the show.

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"Caught Stealing" Caught Me Off Guard

I was expecting very little from "Caught Stealing," the latest Darren Aronofsky film.  The discourse around this one has been very, very quiet, and I completely missed the initial release.  It was at the tail end of my "To Watch" list for a while, because while I recognize and appreciate Aronofsky's talent as a filmmaker, his work is generally so bleak and nihilistic that I rarely enjoy his films.  Well, I enjoyed "Caught Stealing."  This might even be my favorite Aronofsky film.

Written by Charlie Huston, and based on his book of the same name, "Caught Stealing" follows a bartender named Hank (Austin Butler) who inadvertently becomes embroiled in a conflict involving at least two New York criminal organizations, when he agrees to watch a cat belonging to a disreputable neighbor, Russ (Matt Smith).  Set in Lower East Side Manhattan in 1998, "Caught Stealing" features a New York that is grungy, dirty, largely ungentrified, and full of people of every ethnicity living on top of each other.  It is also a very violent film, with Hank constantly on the run from terrible people, and his own life marked by the memory of past traumas.  Because it's Darren Aronofsky, the violence is graphic and upsetting.  Yet somehow, the movie avoids being bleak, and might even qualify as intermittently fun by the time the credits roll.

This is accomplished largely due to two things.  First is the performance of Austin Butler, playing a baseball-loving, hard-drinking, but generally decent guy who keeps trying to do the right thing, keeps getting knocked down for it, and gives us someone to root for.  He's got plenty of charisma, and yet he also fits the nastiness of the surroundings.  He credibly gets into very physical fights, and does a great job of adjusting to each new phase of the story as it keeps morphing into different things.  And the film's unpredictability is its other major strength, where Hank keeps being thrown into one unlikely situation after another, with a parade of colorful characters.  One minute he's in the middle of a ridiculous car chase with Russ and a corrupt police officer, and the next he's having dinner with a nice Jewish lady played by Carol Kane, the mother of  the Drucker brothers (Liev Schreiber, Vincent D'Onofrio), a pair of Hasidic mobsters.  

Darren Aronofsky manages to juggle a lot of disparate elements and some serious tonal whiplash.  This is a story where Russian thugs send Hank to the hospital in the first act, and several nasty deaths occur, and yet there's room for Hank being cute with his girlfriend Yvonne (Zoë Kravitz) and several appearances by the grouchy cat.  It has all the uncomfortable subjective tactility and emotional intensity of Aronofsky's earlier, more paranoid films, but it sidesteps the existential horror.  Hank experiences tragedy, but unlike most of Aronofsky's other protagonists, he's not a tragic character.  His jaunts into subjective introspection reveal that he's got his reasons for angst, but he's perfectly redeemable and I was pleasantly surprised to see him successfully work through a lot of his personal baggage.      

It feels strange, spotting all of these stylistic flourishes that I associate with Aronofsky's grimmest work being used to tell a story that feels so un-Aronofsky.  There are a few places where the dissonance was too much for me, but in the end I found that I liked "Caught Stealing" very much.  It's chaotic while still being perfectly coherent, and pulls off some great surprises, especially when it comes to the cast.  I didn't recognize Schreiber or D'Onofrio at all in their Hasidic regalia.  Matt Smith delivered my favorite performance, sporting a massive mohawk and studded leather jacket, and seemed to be having a ball playing a total reprobate.  Regina King, Bad Bunny, Action Bronson, and Griffin Dunne also appear in roles I will not spoil.  

After "mother!" and "The Whale," I was resigned to cringing my way through all future Darren Aronofsky projects, but "Caught Stealing" gives me hope that this doesn't have to be so.  I'd like very much for this this is a new direction for him, and not just a brief digression from his nihilistic norm.  

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"One Battle After Another" Lands On Top

I read exactly one Thomas Pynchon novel in high school - the shortest one - before I decided that I didn't know enough about politics to read Thomas Pynchon novels.  Since then, I've learned a little more about politics and history, and watched a few adaptations of Pynchon's work - enough to mostly parse what's going on in Paul Thomas Anderson's "One Battle After Another," which is loosely based on Pynchon's "Vineland."  It centers around the members of a far-left militant revolutionary group called the French 75, who do things like liberate an immigrant detainment center in the opening sequence.

The French 75 and its members are modelled after the militant groups of the 1960s and 1970s, like the Weather Underground, but "One Battle After Another" takes place now, with plot points involving smart phones and DNA testing.  This results in an interesting mix of old and new satirical elements and cultural signifiers.  Paul Thomas Anderson used a lot of the same tropes in "Inherent Vice," his adaptation of a Pynchon 1970s neo-noir, so I knew some of the character types already - the drug-addled hero "Ghetto" Pat Calhoun, aka Bob Ferguson (Leonardo DiCaprio), his complicated ex, Perfidia Beverly Hills (Teyana Taylor), and the evil embodiment of the government hunting them down, Col. Steven J. Lockjaw (Sean Penn).

"One Battle After Another" is doing a lot, as it explores the ins and outs of the far-left groups that Bob is part of and interacts with.  Most of the film is about the conflict that erupts when Lockjaw tracks down Bob and teenage daughter Willa (Chase Infiniti) to the sanctuary city of Baktan Cross, and decides to go to war.  This means Bob has to get back into the revolutionary game, and he does a terrible job of it.  "One Battle After Another" is one of those movies that's filled with a multitude of enjoyable little character portraits.  Bob and Willa are helped out by other revolutionaries played by Regina Hall, Paul Grimstad, April Grace, Shayna McHayle, and Benicio Del Toro as the unflappable Sensei Sergio.  Meanwhile, Lockjaw is trying to get into the good graces of an exclusive enclave of right-wing power brokers known as the Christmas Adventurers Club, so we get slimy appearances from Tony Goldwyn, Kevin Tighe, and Jim Downey.  

If you're here for the politics, Anderson does a very good job of highlighting the dysfunctions and difficulties of being a revolutionary, while never pretending for a moment that the corrupt, violent government thugs and moneyed elites deserve any mercy from them.  It takes a while to get oriented in the chaos of the militant code-names and torrents of Marxist sloganeering, but once Anderson lays out all the major characters and relationships, "One Battle After Another" turns out to be wildly entertaining.  It's clever and funny and a lot of good actors like DiCaprio, Penn, and Del Toro get to be absolutely ridiculous onscreen.  There are also some fantastic action set-pieces, including a mass exodus of undocumented immigrants, multiple clashes between the revolutionaries and the agents of the government, and an extended car chase in the last act through a hilly stretch of California highway.  The ending hinges on the actions of a minor character, Avanti (Eric Schweig), a Native American assassin who reaches the end of his patience.    

It's the performances that stand out.  I wouldn't be surprised if this is the role that Sean Penn ends up being remembered for.   Lockjaw is a biting caricature of a career military man - loathsome, self-hating, and utterly obsessed with achieving his goals.  DiCaprio's Bob is a walking shambles, but he does a great job of maintaining an anxious energy throughout.  Perfidia is already a figure of controversy - a committed revolutionary whose loyalties are pulled in too many directions, who commits several cardinal sins.  And then there's Chase Infiniti making a name for herself, taking the lead for much of the second half and going toe to toe with every scene partner, no matter what the star wattage.  And of course, we all wish we were as cool as Benicio Del Toro.  

"One Battle After Another" is very Thomas Pynchon in the sense that it features layer upon layer of satire.  You have the characters with names like Mae West, Billy Goat, and Junglepussy.  You have the atmosphere of paranoia with the secret societies and underground revolutionaries who communicate in pop culture-heavy codespeak.  However, the movie is also extremely relevant to the modern state of America, and at its heart is about a contemporary father and daughter learning to relate to each other.  Unlike "Inherent Vice," there's a clear path through the mountains of obscure references, and a satisfying resolution at the end.  You can tell this is material near and dear to Paul Thomas Anderson, and he nailed it.

Viva la revolucion!

   

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Honoring "The Las Culturistas Culture Awards"

Award shows haven't been doing well over the past few years.  Their ratings have been sinking and their cultural cachet has plummeted.  Therefore, it's the perfect time for  a satirical awards show to rear its head.  It's time for the "Las Culturistas Culture Awards 2025," honoring the best of pop culture.

Hosted by the "Las Culturistas" podcast hosts, Matt Rogers and Bowen Yang, the ceremony runs an efficient ninety minutes, the winners have all been notified in advance, and all the boring parts of the ceremony have been effectively curtailed, leaving all the bits of an award show that the majority of people care about - spotting celebrities, fun musical numbers, well-edited clip packages, and zippy presenter banter.  It helps that Rogers and Yang are comedians, and able to both land a joke and pull off a song-and-dance number with enthusiasm and flair.  Everyone involved is aware that the awards are totally arbitrary, and the point is just to enjoy themselves and the spectacle of it all.  Will the award for "Most Amazing Impact in Film" be awarded to shirtless Jeff Goldblum in the thirty year-old "Jurassic Park" just to get him to come to the ceremony?  Yes it will.  Will the obvious product placement (Dunkin, Volkswagen) and promotional appearances (Jamie Lee Curtis for "Freakier Friday," in theaters August 8th) be delivered with a knowing wink at the audience?  Yes, it will.  

I haven't listened to "Las Culturistas" much beyond clips of a few random interviews, as I figured out quickly that the show is not for me.  It's obsessed with the pop part of pop culture to a degree that I will never be, and is especially focused on all the drama and gossip that I try my best to avoid.  However, I appreciate that it's so unapologetic about serving its audience of women and members of the LGBT community.  The "Culture Awards" came about from a bit on the show, where the hosts would randomly announce nominees for silly categories like "The Creatine Award for Straight Male Excellence" or "Tiny Woman, Huge Impact."  Whoever decided to let them take over the Orpheum Theater in Los Angeles and do the same thing with all the pageantry and glitz of a real awards show is a genius.  The best thing about the "Culture Awards" is that it makes no attempt to appeal to everybody, the way too many other awards shows have.  There were a couple of geek-adjacent categories for me, like "Best Batman Woman," where the winner was a fake Riddler henchgirl, but most of the focus was on fashion, music, and lots of celebrities I had never heard of.  And I didn't mind at all, because the show was so entertaining.  

And this is a valuable thing.  The woman-centric parts of pop culture have too often been framed as existing in opposition to the male-centric parts of pop culture, and the played up rivalry is simply tiresome and not necessary.  Aside from a vague mention of terrible things happening in the country right now, the "Culture Awards" sidesteps all politics, and leans into the celebration of all that is fabulous and iconic.  Lisa Rinna is called on to model all the Outfit of the Year categories, and walks away with the trophy (a spray painted West Elm doorstop).  Matt and Bowen dancing to Lady Gaga's "Abracadabra" and substituting the "In Memoriam" montage with an "In Absentia" montage of all the celebrities who passed on participating is fabulous stuff.  The point of view provided by "Las Culturistas" exists in reaction to nothing else except the pop culture that it adores, and the awards show stands on its own without bothering to justify itself or explain itself.  

The "Culture Awards" ceremony aired on Bravo in August, and may be the most interesting thing they've produced in years.  It's currently available on Peacock.    

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"Eddington" Gets Halfway There

Let's see if I can write this review without getting too political.

Ari Aster's latest film, "Eddington" reminds me an awful lot of his last one, "Beau is Afraid."  Not only is Joaquin Phoenix returning to star as Sheriff Joe Cross, but the whole film takes place in a heightened version of reality where Joe's deepest fears and insecurities seem to be amplified.  However, this time the film's reality is closer to our own.  "Eddington" takes place in a small New Mexico town in 2020, right at the beginning of the COVID pandemic.

This isn't the first film to try and address the conspiracy and paranoia that ran rampant in the United States thanks to the pandemic and social media, but this is probably the most ambitious in its scope to date.  A dark satire of the culture wars and political polarization, Aster uses "Eddington" to take aim at just about everybody.  Joe refuses to wear a mask, for reasons he can't ever seem to articulate, but the dislike seems to be tied to his distrust of the government, embodied by Eddington's mayor, Ted Garcia (Pedro Pascal).  Buzzword-spouting Ted is the ex-boyfriend of Joe's mentally fragile, perpetually ailing wife Louise (Emma Stone).  After a few clashes with Ted, Joe decides to run for mayor himself, enlisting the help of his underlings Guy (Luke Grimes) and Michael (Michael Ward), the only black officer in town.  Tensions escalate when the BLM protests hit Eddington, led by Sarah (Amelie Hoeferle), a social justice influencer.  Conspiracy theories are everywhere, many of them being parroted by Joe's hostile mother-in-law Dawn (Deirdre O'Connell), and a cult leader, Vernon Peak (Austin Butler), who Louise becomes infatuated with.  

The first half of the film is everything that Aster does well - putting together these incredibly anxiety-ridden scenarios, ratcheting up the tension scene by scene, and creating plenty of terrible people for us to alternately laugh at and despair of.  I love all the little details of the worldbuilding, from hardly anybody wearing a mask correctly, to somebody always filming in every public space, to the new data center Ted is trying to get built having a ridiculous name that is both a Reddit and a "Pokemon" reference.  I could argue that Ari Aster is unfairly mean to the BLM protesters, who are a bunch of annoying white kids whose idea of discourse amounts to a lot of self-flagellation and unhelpful theatrics, except that the film goes on to prove them mostly right.  I really enjoyed when Joe started taking matters into his own hands, revealing his own biases and blind spots.  However, this is where "Eddington" started going off the rails.

Up until the third act I was on board with how Aster was treating the politics - trying to represent all viewpoints and concerns, showing the absurdity of everyone's behavior,  and taking the opportunity to clap back against some of the most ridiculous antics.  However, past a certain point he tips completely over into conspiracy fantasy in order to raise the stakes and set up a big action finale.   This derails the more interesting examination of Joe as an increasingly troubled, morally compromised man, and sticks us in pure genre territory for almost the entirety of the rest of the film.  The big action finale also winds up being kind of a dud, because the cinematography becomes unreasonably dark and difficult to see.  Sorry Darius Khondji, but I had to read the Wikipedia summary afterwards to figure out what happened.  "Eddington" is also very long in the tooth at 149 minutes.  It's not as long as "Beau is Afraid," but there are a lot of unnecessary digressions and rambly dialogue-heavy scenes that wore on my patience.  And a few good retorts aside ("You're white!"), the pitch black humor wasn't to my taste.

Still, I admire what Ari Aster accomplished here, successfully addressing difficult material and blending satire, paranoid thriller, and character study.  The use of social media as a storytelling device is handled very well. The assembled cast is impressive all around, with Joaquin Phoenix continuing his streak of playing hapless, incoherent men struggling in vain against an uncaring universe.  Joe is a fairly sympathetic picture of someone who falls prey to conspiratorial thinking and develops a persecution complex, though his flaws are always very clear and his comeuppance is well deserved.  I also want to highlight a few performers new to me, including Michael Ward, Amelie Hoeferle, and William Belleau as a Pueblo officer who shows up in the second half.

However, with current events unfolding the way that they are, "Eddington" can't help feeling premature as an examination of the COVID era.  The more I think about some of its treatment of the various players, the more tone deaf the film comes across, even if you take all the events that unfold as being from Joe's very subjective and biased point of view.   The shaky existential underpinnings of "Eddington" don't help matters, leaving too much open to interpretation.  I expect that that the conspiracy theorists will inevitably totally misread and embrace the film's narrow, cynical POV as justification for their own beliefs, instead of taking its timely warnings to heart.

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